Change isn't just for Washington anymore. The Metro Nashville public school system is on the brink of its own changes, thanks to Mayor Karl Dean's new education reform plan. Public schools across the country are failing to meet their potential. This news is neither shocking nor new. What is new, however, is the strong movement of independent organizations across the country taking the matter into their own hands. The most well-known of these organizations, especially on the Vanderbilt campus, is Teach for America, and if Dean's efforts succeed, Teach for America will announce at the end of this month its plan to add Nashville to its ever-expanding list of locations for the 2009-2010 school year.
Princeton graduate Wendy Kopp founded Teach for America in 1990 to recruit top-notch, recent college graduates to teach for two years in America's lower-income schools. Today, the organization is the No. 1 provider of teachers to the country's failing schools. According to their Web site, "Our mission is to build the movement to eliminate educational inequity by enlisting our nation's most promising future leaders in the effort. Our vision is that one day, all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education." They seem to be well on their way to achieving that mission, as the 20,000 people who have joined the program to date have touched the lives of over 3 million students nationwide from New York City to Houston, Honolulu to rural South Dakota.
Nashville needs to be on that list. With a failing public school system on the verge of a state takeover and a teacher turnover of 500 to 600 teachers per year, the Metro Nashville public school system must look beyond traditional means of teacher recruitment to meet the needs of our most vulnerable citizens. A fifth-grader at Cameron Middle School may not tell you the reason he doesn't do his homework is because he is too embarrassed to admit he cannot read many of the words. A senior at Whites Creek High School may only be blowing off writing college application essays because she doesn't want to be made fun of when her friends are all going out instead. The students of Nashville need to be inspired. They need to be told, and shown, they are smart. They need teachers with the passion and patience to push them to success.
Nashville already has many incredible teachers who unflinchingly take on this task every day, but as a city, our goal is to give every student a teacher who can fulfill this mission. As Dean said earlier this month in a speech to the Downtown Rotary Club, "We have to do everything we can to get the very best teachers to the schools that need them the most."
"Everything we can" means pursuing every resource and opening every door. Teach for America attracts many of the brightest college graduates this country has to offer. We see proof of that each spring on the Vanderbilt campus as dozens of our smartest and most actively involved seniors choose Teach for America as the way for them to use and share their education.
Nashville needs Teach for America, but it won't be easy. By the end of September, Dean will need to have raised $1 million dollars. He is actively seeking private donations from Nashville businesses and members of the community to help make this goal a reality. In addition, the city will need to raise another $1 million each year for the next two years. It's an ambitious, yet admirable and achievable, goal. I commend Dean for facing this need, and look forward to the day his plan is brought to fruition.
Neily Todd is a senior in the Collge of Art and Science. She can be reached at neily.p.todd@vanderbilt.edu.
