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Metro school board member Will Pinkston wants a renewed look at the reports conducted by the Tribal Group. (Photo: Larry McCormack / File / The Tennessean )



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For two years, researchers talked to teachers, principals and students from some of Nashville’s most struggling schools. They reviewed performance data. And they compiled findings in nearly three dozen individual reports that included suggested areas of improvement.


It was the work of a British-based education consulting firm, Tribal Group, which Metro Nashville Public Schools paid $2.2 million from 2011 to the spring of 2013.


Now, Director of Schools Jesse Register’s biggest critic on the school board, Will Pinkston, is looking to re-shine a spotlight on those reports, several which are nearly three years old.


Pinkston said that eight of the schools analyzed are among Metro’s low-performing priority schools, a number that has now ballooned to 15 in two years and spurred Register to pursue a controversial turnaround plan for East Nashville.


He plans to call for a special board meeting for the board to review the Tribal reports. And he said he may even ask that Tribal consultants to visit the board to weigh in on which recommendations were implemented.


“Clearly, we either didn’t take these Tribal recommendations to heart or perhaps the recommendations weren’t exhaustive enough,” Pinkston said. “But either way, we’ve got to get to the bottom of what happened.


“The central office has been sitting on a wealth of information about the challenges and opportunities in these schools. A starting point for turnaround should be revisiting Tribal reviews, not just starting over from scratch, which appears to be what’s happening.”


Metro school officials say the board has long had access to the Tribal reports and the results helped guide turnaround plans at those schools. But now, the reports are becoming dated, Metro officials say.


“We used them for two years. They were expensive. We learned what I felt like we could learn,” Register said. “The leadership team got out of them what felt we could.”


The district in 2011 contracted Tribal with $6.3 million in federal Race to the Top dollars for five years worth of work. But Metro parted ways with the firm in 2013.


In addition to reports on individuals schools, Tribal produced a separate report in late 2012 that said the MNPS central office uses an “outside in” approach. According to this analysis, principals at the time were fearful that if they did not do as they are told will be transferred or demoted.


Register responded at the time by reorganizing the central office and creating a system of “lead principals” who took on new decision-making for small groups of schools, a move he said was aimed at greater autonomy. It nonetheless came under scrutiny from critics who wanted a larger shake-up.


He is currently pushing for a turnaround plan in East Nashville that could include closing one or two struggling schools, turning others over to charter school operators and transforming the Stratford and Maplewood high school clusters into a new “open zone” that allows parents to choose their school. East Nashville is home to schools the state has labeled “priority” for being in the bottom 5 percent in performance statewide.


Asked about Tribal now, Register said that the company worked at 34 schools, many which he said improved as a result, and that the firm inspired the district’s current approach to evaluating instruction inside schools. A system of lead principals is also still in place, he said.


“Were we 100 percent successful with those schools?” Register said of Tribal’s work. “We were successful with some. With others, we weren’t.”


Tribal employed a staff of nine while in Nashville. At the time, it marked one of the groups first projects in the United States. Neither of the consultants who led Tribal’s work in Nashville, David Moran and David Crossley, remain working with Tribal today.


Pinkston said the board was never briefed on Tribal’s findings.


But the district’s Alan Coverstone, who oversees the schools studied by Tribal, said individual reports sat in the board’s office for inspection after they were finished. He said “everything that was developed at the school level” through Tribal’s review process became the goals and turnaround paths of those schools.


“Every school writes a school improvement plan every year, which is informed by the diagnosis of their own data,” Covertone said.


“At this point, they’re a couple of years old and they don’t take into account a lot of the changes and reforms put in place since.”


Reach Joey Garrison at 615-259-8236 and on Twitter @joeygarrison.


Tribal Group’s work in Metro Nashville Public Schools


• Originally contracted in 2011 with $6.3 million in federal Race to the Top dollars


• Actual work spanned until 2013 when Metro ended the relationship


• Reviewed and developed improvement action plans for 34 low-performing Nashville schools


• Credited with inspiring the district’s “lead principal,” which gave greater decision-making to some school leaders


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