Chamber Releases Education Report Card

The Nashville Chamber of Commerce is expressing a sense of “cautious optimism” for Metro Schools. The chamber released it’s annual report on the district Thursday.

It’s billed as a report card, but the chamber’s document doesn’t actually give any grades. It does make a number of recommendations. Several deal with finding new funding. Others hinge on that money coming through.

For example, in classes for kids who speak a language other than English, the chamber wants to see one teacher for every twenty students. Schools director Jesse Register says it will take a good deal of money to hit that goal.

“We’re pretty far away from that-6 or 8 or 10 students away from that per classroom for all of our English Language Learners. Significant amount of resources to meet that standard.”

The report essentially gives Register a stamp of approval, saying he’s overseen a, quote, “180-degree change” since taking the job about a year ago. It praises new approaches in the way high schools are run and finds that efforts to cut down on students skipping school or dropping out are working. But the report also finds that test scores just aren’t high enough at any grade level.