Nashvillians know "it's what's under the hat that counts." But, is Nashville at a Brainpower disadvantage? Music City has won more kudos! than most cities for its entrepreneurship, quality of life, affordability, e-government and other features. Nonetheless, earlier this month, American City Business Journals' latest brainpower index found Nashville ranked 59th, wedged-in between Cincinnati and Providence, R.I. ACBJ Reporter Scott Thomas pointed us to his methodology, here, which penalizes cities with soaring high-school dropout rates and low per-capita college degrees. Even being the home of state government and host to more than a dozen colleges and universities didn't offset our Achilles heel, K-12 education. ACBJ owns Nashville Business Journal. Top spot in this ranking? Madison (the one in Wisconsin).
Monday, April 28, 2008
Nashville's Brainpower Index
Nashvillians know "it's what's under the hat that counts." But, is Nashville at a Brainpower disadvantage? Music City has won more kudos! than most cities for its entrepreneurship, quality of life, affordability, e-government and other features. Nonetheless, earlier this month, American City Business Journals' latest brainpower index found Nashville ranked 59th, wedged-in between Cincinnati and Providence, R.I. ACBJ Reporter Scott Thomas pointed us to his methodology, here, which penalizes cities with soaring high-school dropout rates and low per-capita college degrees. Even being the home of state government and host to more than a dozen colleges and universities didn't offset our Achilles heel, K-12 education. ACBJ owns Nashville Business Journal. Top spot in this ranking? Madison (the one in Wisconsin).
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I love Nashville and my kids have had some great teachers and principals but compared to our former home city, I have to say Nashville's educational approach seems backwater. The conservative kick-butt approach doesn't work now, the traditional curriculum only reaches about 20 percent of the students, and teachers desperately need aides to help them with the multiplicity of conflicting needs. Want to know why it's not working? Volunteer to substitute for your kid's teacher for a couple of hours. It's like riding a five-horse rig at the circus. Montessori methods for elementary school are research-proven to work...it's not hopeless to teach these kids, we're just too in-the-box in our thinking around here to make the changes needed instead of complaining about how bad the kids are and how low our expectations are etc. Most of the comments I hear about the schools are coming from people who base their assessments on how kids act at the K-Mart; they haven't gone to the schools to see first-hand what the problems are.
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