TnAchieves concluded its 84-county tour in Rutherford and Williamson counties – 84 counties in less than 3 months! Kicked off on May 22nd, the goals of the tour were simple. We wanted to celebrate early wins with TN Promise, provide critical county-specific data that ensures we continue to focus on challenges, offer the opportunity for candid feedback and keep our promise to our stakeholders of remaining locally owned. Thanks to Governor Haslam, the General Assembly, our mentors and countless other K12, post-secondary and community partners, Tennessee is now a post-secondary model. It is amazing what we can do when we all pull in the same direction for student success!
While tnAchieves works on a more formal summary of lessons learned from the tour, I want to quickly share some highlights.
1. We heard loud and clear the importance of the arming our parents with more college-going knowledge. With the Class of 2018, tnAchieves will mail a TN Promise parent manual to the home of every applicant. We are excited to strengthen our parent/guardian communication strategy.
2. We know our mentors want real-time access to student level data to provide more targeted interventions. We are currently working on proposals for a mentor portal that will allow our mentors to log in at their convenience and determine student status.
3. We understand the need for summer opportunities to eliminate summer melt. We are also working to explore potential options to increase the number of students participating in programs like our successful Summer Bridge Program (91 percent success rate this year!).
4. We also recognize the need for a strategy to tackle transportation challenges. While I do not have a solution now, we will continue to brainstorm, collect best practices and share potential opportunities with our communities.
After nearly a decade, I also understand and share frustrations regarding students who are not as responsive as we would like. Our message to students will be stronger than ever this year in an effort to continue to foster better student and mentor communication.
For those of you who were able to attend the tour, thank you, thank you! For those of you who were unable to attend, please reference https://tnachieves.org/about-us/ for your county-specific numbers.
And for everyone, we need 9,000 volunteers to provide the local support system we know is critical to our students’ success. Apply TODAY to mentor the Class of 2018 by clicking here: https://tnachieves.org/mentors/apply/.
We cannot do this work without you! Thanks for all you do to change lives and transform our communities!
Krissy
Krissy DeAlejandro
Executive Director, tnAchieves
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