| Name | David |
|---|---|
| Last Name | Baird |
| Home Address | 809 Stellar View Chattanooga, TN 37405 United States |
| Organization Name | Teach For America Nashville-Chattanooga and Project Inspire Teacher Residency |
| Describe Your Role In The Organization | As Managing Director, Chattanooga, I am responsible for maximizing the reach and impact of Teach For America's contribution to the movement for educational equity by cultivating partnerships with external champions and by connecting alumni to each other, to great opportunities, and to the work of Teach For America. I oversee consequential workstreams in the region and in Chattanooga, represent and make decision in consideration of the region's vision, wield senior authority in the region, and serve as a key advisor and accountability partner to the regional Executive Director. Over time, my charge is to cultivate a theory of systems change in Chattanooga and work in partnership with regional staff and board, local alumni, and local partners and donors to manifest it. Along the way, I assure that our site in Chattanooga has the resources we require to sustain our operations and impact in Chattanooga. |
| Organization Address | 123 E 7th Street Suite 302 Chattanooga, TN 37402 United States |
| Website | https://www.tfanashchatt.org |
| Best Phone Number To Reach You | 4236188098 |
| Alternate Phone Number | |
| Email Address | david.baird@teachforamerica.org |
| Alternate Email Address | mneal@projectinspiretn.org |
| Please Describe Your Project In Detail | Abstract: Teach For America (TFA) and the Project Inspire Teacher Residency are two of the leading teacher pipelines in Hamilton County Schools in terms of academic achievement growth, number of teachers recruited, racial and economic diversity, and fulfillment of high-demand endorsement areas. Unlike the vast majority of teacher preparation programs, TFA and Project Inspire focus nearly exclusively on placing in hard-to-staff schools that primarily serve economically disadvantaged students and students of color. While our two organizations place educators in many of the same schools throughout Chattanooga – and we are equally aligned to the theory of change articulated by Chattanooga 2.0 that centers on improving learning outcomes and economic mobility – we do not yet have the capacity to formally collaborate and leverage our networks to drive transformational change in public education. We believe now is the time for TFA and Project Inspire to move forward together in trust and partnership to establish a shared vision for academic excellence and high-quality teacher development throughout Chattanooga schools. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, school closures, and the general unpredictability in schools over the last two years, students in Chattanooga have unfinished learning that is exacerbating existing educational inequities. Moreover, the State of Tennessee is preparing for a looming teacher shortage, as 20% of educators are estimated to leave the workforce at the end of the year, and approximately 29% of educators are eligible to retire between 0 and 5 years (Professional Educators of Tennessee, 2021 Fall Educator Survey). The need for multiple pathways for teacher accreditation and development has never been more urgent. TFA and Project Inspire are uniquely positioned to build upon our track record of success in recruiting and placing high-quality teachers in high need schools throughout the district. We are honored to submit a proposal to the City of Chattanooga to pilot a TFA-Project Inspire collaboration to address the needs of students today while creating the conditions for innovation tomorrow. We humbly request $450,000 that will serve as the foundation of a public-private partnership we are building with a local base of foundations, corporations, and individuals who are committed to positioning Chattanooga as a viable, competitive city for teacher-leaders who will generate results for students in the classroom. Teach For America Background: Teach For America finds and develops a diverse network of leaders who expand opportunity for children from classrooms, schools, and every sector that shapes the broader education system. We recruit outstanding individuals to make a life-long commitment that begins with two years of teaching in a high-need public school. During these two years in the classroom, corps members exceed traditional expectations to advance the academic and personal growth of their students. In partnership with schools, families, universities, and community organizations, TFA provides initial training, ongoing professional development, and access to an unparalleled resource and support network. Corps members expand their perspectives, knowledge, and skills as educators, advocates, and systems-change leaders, thereby impacting outcomes for students and families. TFA provides coaching and professional development to our teachers, and our coaches are attentive to the need for flexibility amid the ongoing pandemic. We match each corps member with a coach who supports them with regular observations and feedback, models instructional techniques, and recommends strategies for overcoming challenges to help students achieve goals. Throughout the school year, TFA hosts multiple professional development sessions for our corps members in addition to ongoing individual and small group coaching opportunities. These sessions are focused on leadership development, culturally competent teaching, relationship building with parents and students, and problem solving for barriers their students may be facing. Our professional development program ensures students receive the best education, support, and leadership possible. TFA advances educational outcomes for Chattanooga’s most vulnerable students by finding, developing, and supporting equity-oriented leaders to transform education and expand opportunity with children. In 2019, TFA answered the need for strong teacher talent in Hamilton County by expanding into Chattanooga, creating the Nashville-Chattanooga region. In our first three years in Chattanooga, we have brought a total of 45 teacher-leaders into the highest need schools with students predominantly from low-income backgrounds in the MidTown and Missionary Ridge Learning Communities. Throughout the year, we interview and matriculate incoming corps members to the Chattanooga corps, ensuring Hamilton County Schools has a strong teacher talent pool for the upcoming academic year. TFA trains those corps members during an 8-week summer pre-service experience that includes in-person teaching in collaboration with the Hamilton County Summer REACH initiative. Corps members meet their coaches during summer training, and we begin our professional development and coaching cycles immediately. As the year progresses, coaches adjust their approach according to individual corps member needs, and they collaborate with school leadership to ensure our training supplements the coaching teachers receive day-to-day on campus. This holistic approach to coaching and professional development ensures students in Hamilton County receive the highest quality education possible from our corps members. Project Inspire Background: Project Inspire is a teacher residency program that trains college graduates and career changers to become effective, day-one ready teachers through a 14-month experience that leads to a Master’s degree and licensure in a critical area of need. Project Inspire residents receive a living allowance as AmeriCorps members and are also able to use the AmeriCorps Education Award to support the costs of tuition with partner universities. The model centers around a full-year apprenticeship in the classroom of a highly effective teacher-leader, called a clinical instructor, and also includes four semesters of coursework for licensure/Masters. Both residents and their host clinical instructors are provided with specialized training from Project Inspire staff around an equity-centered coaching framework developed through more than a decade of experience in training residents alongside high-need partner schools (host residency sites). Project Inspire coaching staff have the advantage of a long history of experience in city schools led by lead coach, Dr. Edna Varner, who has been a teacher, a principal, and a celebrated community volunteer. All Project Inspire coaching staff are former Hamilton County teachers. Like TFA, Project Inspire has the goal of developing its teachers as leaders within the profession; one out of four clinical instructors for the class of 2021-22 is a Project Inspire graduate. Other graduates have been promoted to leadership roles within their schools, tapped to serve on local and state education committees, and one, after four years of service in the classroom, is part of the district’s leadership program for principal candidates. In the most recent 2021 annual program survey, clinical instructors unanimously reported that the experience improved their capacity as teacher-leaders. Partner schools also recognize the value of residents–both during and beyond the residency year. 100% of principals reported residents to be more prepared to teach compared to a typical first-year teacher. The Project Inspire staff leads monthly “lab” days for both clinical instructors and residents, and these are opportunities for program participants to see the coaching model in action–through a learning cycle that is repeated and deepened through the residency year: 1) Introduction of specific teaching practices; 2) Preparation/rehearsal of what those practices should look like; 3) Enactment of those practices in a real time with students; 4) Analysis of evidence collected during the enactment. Project Inspire is a longstanding member of the National Center for Teacher Residencies network, and the Public Education Foundation played a key role in convening a partnership with Hamilton County Schools to launch the residency model here in Chattanooga in 2010-11. Since then, the program has successfully trained more than 150 teachers, with those teachers staying longer, earning higher levels of effectiveness, and advancing to leadership more frequently when compared to their traditionally trained peers. In addition, a nationally recognized student survey (Tripod) shows that host residency classrooms, in the Midtown and Missionary Ridge learning communities, have significantly higher levels of engagement, achievement, and motivation than the national average. Project Inspire is currently recruiting for a class of up to 25 residents with five available pathways for meeting the critical needs of Hamilton County Schools (6-12 Math, 6-12 Science, 6-12 ELA, K-5 Elementary, and K-12 EXED). Project Description: Teach For America and Project Inspire operate as separate levers Hamilton County Schools pulls to meet the needs of its students and place highly-skilled educators in classrooms of some of the lowest performing schools in the state. Chattanooga has a vibrant community of leaders, organizations, and coalitions that are committed to tackling educational inequities, and we believe that a formal collaboration between Teach For America and Project Inspire would maximize impact for students in the classroom and reimagine what education looks like in schools throughout the district. Hamilton County students face persistent challenges, especially those experiencing poverty, and the ongoing pandemic threatens to further erode the possibility that students graduate on a path to economic mobility and a future filled with possibility. Economically Disadvantaged students in HCDE have an average ACT score of 16.9, which is lower than the Tennessee average of 19.3 and lower than the college-ready score of 21. Additionally, only 20% of Economically Disadvantaged students in HCDE are Ready-Graduates, as defined by the Tennessee Department of Education (Tennessee State Report Card data for 2020). Our combined footprint provides the district annually with nearly 60 educators who are placed in the lowest performing schools that serve the highest proportion of Economically Disadvantaged students in Hamilton County. Through the “Great Teachers, Great Leaders” (GTGL) coalition coordinated by the Benwood Foundation, Teach For America and Project Inspire have identified multiple areas of overlap between our two programs, chief among them our shared belief that all students deserve a high-quality education and have a right to top-tier educators with a passion for teaching. Given the fact we place teachers in many of the same schools – the majority of which are priority schools, we believe there is fertile ground for a partnership that deepens our investment in developing teachers and leaders who are committed to systems change in Chattanooga-Hamilton County. We are aligned with the City’s investment in the Community School Framework, and our footprint in Chattanooga overlaps neatly with the schools in greatest need of in-house wraparound supports and high-quality programming. Teach For America places corps members in all seven of the Community Forward Schools, and between corps members and alumni, has a total of 27 educators and leaders in those schools. Project Inspire currently has a total of 30 educators, 8 residents and 22 graduates, serving in seven of Community Forward Schools. We propose to use funding from the City of Chattanooga to launch our pilot collaboration in the schools that naturally bring together TFA corps members, Project Inspire residents, and Community Forward coordinators. We will focus our initial collaboration on our shared footprint in seven schools: 1. Brainerd High School 2. Calvin Donaldson Elementary School 3. Dalewood Middle School 4. Hardy Elementary School 5. Orchard Knob Elementary School 6. Orchard Knob Middle School 7. Woodmore Elementary School Funding from the City would enable TFA and Project Inspire to innovate and make the necessary programmatic shifts to launch a pilot and determine how our teacher-leaders can maximize impact in the classroom. In the first year of our collaboration, we aim to focus on five domains across our programs that we will strengthen to drive increased teacher retention and academic growth in our placement schools: Areas of collaboration: 1. Staff skill building: program staff in both organizations engage in professional development relative to the management of their cohorts and specific areas of teacher training (socioemotional learning, culturally responsive teaching, for example) 2. Shared Large-Scale Programming and Professional Development: we will open up our respective professional development cycles for participation by corps members and residents in both TFA and Project Inspire. We intend to invite TFA alumni and Project Inspire graduates who are working in education in and around Chattanooga to attend these sessions as well. 3. 1-2 Mandatory Professional Development Sessions led by each Organization: these sessions will be longer and cater to the specific strengths of both TFA and Project Inspire as they relate to different domains of teacher-leadership development. They will be specifically aligned to elevate student engagement and community building and mitigate the effects of missed learning. 4. Community Building: each organization will host a series of social events to build community and foster relationship-building between our two organizations. Over time, we hope to build a community of educators, both active in our programs and alumni, who are committed to educational equity in Chattanooga long term. 5. Creation of Learning Labs: we will orient our community’s collective learning toward select schools that have witnessed a high degree of growth/progress along some of the district-aligned priorities. We will include corps members, residents, alumni, and staff to join us in observations and walking tours to identify best practices and position our educators to bring those skills and competencies to their school communities. The quality of a teacher has an extraordinary impact on students’ economic mobility. According to Stanford economist Eric Hanushek, a teacher is the #1 school-based factor that affects student achievement. A 75th percentile teacher generates an additional $1 million of lifetime earnings compared to a 25th percentile teacher in a class of 30 for one year. The City’s investment in recruiting, training, and developing strong teachers in Chattanooga will directly contribute to increased economic mobility for local students – what TFA and Project Inspire have achieved separately will expand and evolve as we harness the collective wisdom and skill of our networks to drive change across the district. Many studies have shown that children growing up in historically marginalized and disenfranchised communities lack access to a broad spectrum of resources and often attend schools that are not equipped to meet their needs. Yet, we know it doesn’t have to be this way. In classrooms and schools across the country, we are seeing significant progress being made in creating education systems that prepare all students to succeed. Behind each proof point stands a group of leaders committed to educational equity and excellence. The City of Chattanooga has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to deepen its investment in Chattanooga youth and enable Project Inspire and Teach For America and Project Inspire to scale a model of teacher leadership and excellence that will, one day, put every student on a path to economic mobility and co-creating a future filled with possibility. |
| Please explain how your project meets the requirements of the American Rescue Plan | The disruptions to the school system over the last two years have exacerbated existing educational inequities that threaten to jeopardize the future of our most vulnerable students, specifically, those experiencing poverty and students of color. The interim final rule published by the U.S. Department of the Treasury makes plain the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on these same communities: "Pre-existing social vulnerabilities magnified the pandemic in these communities, where a reduced ability to work from home and, frequently, denser housing amplified the risk of infection. Higher rates of pre-existing health conditions also may have contributed to more severe COVID-19 health outcomes. Similarly, communities or households facing economic insecurity before the pandemic were less able to weather business closures, job losses, or declines in earnings and were less able to participate in remote work or education due to the inequities in access to reliable and affordable broadband infrastructure. Finally, though schools in all areas faced challenges, those in high poverty areas had fewer resources to adapt to remote and hybrid learning models. Unfortunately, the pandemic also has reversed many gains made by communities of color in the prior economic expansion." Our collaboration aims to address educational disparities and “enhance educational supports to help mitigate impacts of the pandemic.” We already operate in schools that serve an outsized percentage of Economically Disadvantaged students, and our partnership would focus specifically on establishing Chattanooga-specific best practices that will enhance the learning environment for students who experience poverty. Moreover, each of our organizations will play a vital role in supporting the district as it prepares for the looming teacher shortage expected in the 2022-2023 school year. |
| Where would your project take place? | TFA currently places corps members in ten schools throughout Hamilton County, including all of the Community Forward Schools in which the City has already invested. Project Inspire currently places residents in fourteen host residency schools that have completed a multi-step application process for earning host status. As we both strengthen our existing programs in these schools, we would also look to grow our footprint wherever the need exists in the district and would thus expand our collaboration to cover our teachers and their students in schools we partner with in the future. |
| How much will your project cost in total? | 450000 |
| Do you have any matching funding sources from other local governments, private entities, non-profits, or philanthropic entities for your project? | No |
| Please describe the source and list amounts of any other funding. | |
| What portion of the project are you asking the city to fund? | |
| If funded, when would your project start? | June 1, 2022 |
| How long would your project take to complete? | Our plan is to use funding from the City to catalyze investment from a local base of foundations, corporations, and individuals over the next three fiscal years. The money from the City would be used from June 2022 through June 2024. |
| What milestones would you use to measure your project’s progress? | We will rely on an array of key milestones to gauge the progress of this intentional partnership and collaboration between TFA and Project Inspire. As our collaboration deepens and evolves over the next three years, we will pay particular attention to the results our educators drive in their classrooms and schools and how that work impacts teacher retention in Community Forward Schools. Specifically, we will rely on a series of surveys and interviews to measure over time how corps members, residents, and staff are feeling about the collaboration between TFA and Project Inspire. We will likewise look to our educators to conduct student perception surveys that elevate student voice in the evaluation of corps members and residents. Program staff at TFA and Project Inspire will coordinate a regular cadence of meetings to codify what we are learning in schools and monitor progress of the collaboration overall. The essential question we must answer is: does density of our programs and collaboration increase student outcomes at our schools? We would expect over time to see meaningful student achievement growth at target schools where we have shared overlap and density. Our commitment is to monitor our progress toward that goal and report out what we learn. |
| How would you ensure accountability and transparency throughout the project lifecycle? | We will leverage several structures and systems to ensure accountability and transparency: 1. Student focus groups: culturally relevant protocols for feedback on instructional quality 2. Program director check-ins: implementation planning, progress monitoring 3. Share staff meetings: review performance, data, goal-setting, action planning 4. Principal network meetings at placement schools 5. Advisory walkthroughs: utilize existing partners of TFA and Project Inspire, including local foundation representatives, community leaders, and school district/board leadership |
| If successful, how would your project benefit the community? | Project Inspire and TFA both understand the game-changing impact of providing students with reliable and consistent access to an effective teacher. If successful, this project will demonstrate and codify an effective playbook for sustaining positive improvement in our most marginalized schools. It will demonstrate a deep commitment to undoing the current, oppressive nature of what we know as “high-need” schools. What we know at Project Inspire and Teach for America is what we want to demonstrate effectively for the community: ability is equally distributed among the population but opportunity is not. When that ability is coupled with access to a teacher who is culturally responsive, who knows how to leverage the amazing social capital that every student brings to school, it will only flourish and grow. The community of Chattanooga will benefit when students across the district have reliable access to teachers who are effective from day one, not a revolving door of inexperienced teachers who repeatedly quit and are replaced by the next. In more concrete terms, this looks like improvements in student achievement, particularly at key benchmarks like 3rd grade reading and 8th grade math, college and career readiness, and ultimately, economic mobility. The proof point of a talented group of adults working alongside a skillful leader to effect meaningful change, which both TFA and PEF have demonstrated in partnership with multiple schools in Chattanooga, will be the critical benefit, because it demonstrates the true possibilities of an equitable school experience. |
| How will you attract community buy-in for your project? | The City has an opportunity to seed money to launch a collaboration between TFA and Project Inspire that will not only impact student achievement but complement its focus on attracting and retaining talent as Chattanooga looks to further cement its reputation as a competitive, thriving market for workers and families. With the City’s initial investment through the One Chattanooga Relief and Recovery Plan, we will be able to broaden our base of local funders and build out a sustainable revenue stream and scale our partnership and commitment to educational equity. At the core of what we do, we are committed to systems change work and building a coalition of partners across multiple domains who are invested in the economic mobility of young people in Chattanooga. Our goal is to build credibility and trust with the broader community as we consider how we work alongside historically marginalized communities to co-construct the vibrant school ecosystem all students in Chattanooga deserve. |
| Name | Mark Neal, Director, Project Inspire Teacher Residency |
| Contact Information | 4236938278 |
| Is there anything else you would like us to know about your project? | This is a joint proposal between Teach For America and Project Inspire in Chattanooga. Should we be fortunate enough to receive funding through the One Chattanooga Relief and Recovery Plan, Teach For America will be the entity to receive funds as revenue and disburse them to Project Inspire as a vendor. |