Knoxville Chamber President and CEO Mike Edwards received the Knox County Council PTA Partner In Advocacy Award May 1st at the Crowne Plaza in Knoxville.
“PTA members honored Edwards for his persistent and persuasive efforts on behalf of the children of Tennessee,” says Karen Davis, Knox County Council PTA president. “He has been unrelenting in his quest to remind all stakeholders that it is the right of every child to receive a quality education and it is our duty to provide them with an education that will give them the tools to be successful no matter the path they take in life.”
“The Chamber has been diligent and focused on providing the children of Knoxville the education they need and deserve,” says Edwards. “We feel very strongly that their future and the future economic prosperity of our region depend on their classroom achievement today.”
The Chamber hosted the Workforce and Education Summit in March at the Knoxville Convention Center. The event gave Knoxville businesspeople and educators a chance to share ideas and goals that will improve the region’s educational systems, which ultimately determine the quality of the workforce. The Chamber will host a follow-up to the summit on June 10th to discuss ideas and responses. The meeting will be from 8:30 - 10:30 a.m. at the Cokesbury United Methodist Center located at 9919 Kingston Pike in Knoxville. Chamber sponsorship of events such as these is part of the reason Edwards was recognized by the PTA.
The PTA’s Evening of Elegance honored individuals and local PTA/PTSA members’ schools for their hard work and dedication to the children of Knox County. PTA/PTSA members, parents, teachers, principals, community partners, and elected officials attended the event. In addition to the Partner in Advocacy Award, the PTA announced its Awards of Excellence for Outstanding Local Unit, Outstanding Teacher, Outstanding Principal, Outstanding Elected Official, Outstanding Volunteer awards, and others were presented.
Four University of Tennessee MBA students consulted with the Chamber on issues of data collection and use by the Knox County School system. They found that current practices did not meet benchmarks, currently adopted by other school systems, that would help align achievement goals with individual student information.
For example, the students found that manual data entry of test scores administered by the state was not the preferable method of delivery; an electronic format would be more efficient and have no margin for human error.
In addition, they found that 17 data sources are used in the district to find and analyze student data. This impacts accessibility for teachers and administrators.
The UT students presented their findings to the Chamber and interested parties on April 3.
The students were Alicia Cottrell, Drew Davenport, Eric Edens, and Maxim Shabrov. As part of their MBA instruction, they spent 300 student hours on the project.
They compared Knox County standards to three benchmark institutions and one comparable district. They found Knox County Schools' practices lacking in many areas, including accessibility to data, relevancy of data to goals, connectivity between databases, and having a culture of data information systems and communication.
Read the UT students' final report about KCS data collection and use.
Members of the Knoxville business community and Knox County Schools are partnering to initiate students' interest in math and science fields.
In January, the Knoxville Chamber, Tennessee Society of Professional Engineers, Knox County Schools and the Partnership for Great Schools launched an Internet-based clearinghouse at Vols4STEM.org which will pair educators with science, technology, engineering and mathematics professionals to share expertise and work with students on projects relating to their field.
They recently held meetings to organize the project and gain volunteer professionals for the partnerships.
"Vols4STEM is a model for aligning the work force and education," said Cheryl Kershaw, executive director of the Great Schools Partnership.
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