Department of Finance & Administration
Dave Goetz, Commissioner

Volunteer Tennessee
Jim Snell, Executive Director

2009 Moving Forward Graduation Summit

Governor Bredesen speaking to the Summit

Welcome to the Moving Forward Graduation Summit support page. Below you will find information that we hope will make your local summit planning a success. Check back often for updates to this page!

Thank you

Next Steps

Contact

Thank You:
We are very pleased that you were able to join us for the 2009 Moving Forward Graduation Summit, which convened leaders from ten school districts from across the state. This statewide summit served as a starting point for the process of planning local summits and implementing dropout prevention strategies that will increase graduation rates in your district. During the Summit, each of the ten invited school districts met in breakout sessions to begin discussions on next steps and talk about how to take the information back home to implement local dropout prevention plans. The summit really was just the staring point, and our hope is that the leaders who attended the summit will have local summits in each district to figure out what will work best to increase graduation rates within their district.

The 2009 Moving Forward Graduation Summit was hosted by the Tennessee Department of Education and Volunteer Tennessee in partnership with America's Promise, AT&T, Junior Achievement of Middle Tennessee, State Farm, the Tennessee Business Roundtable, the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development, the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development, and the Tennessee Higher Education Commission - Gear Up Tennessee.

Next Steps:
Summit attendees should now begin the process of organizing a local summit. The local summit should include a wide range of community leaders, including those from education, state and local government, business, non-profit organizations, parent and teacher groups (e.g. PTA, TEA), and youth. This local summit should focus on developing a drop out prevention plan using strategies that will work in your community. We recommend using the Action Planning Guide as a starting point. Funds are available to support the expenses related to local summits (please see Funding Availability below).

Here are a few documents and links that will assist you in planning your local summit:

Action Planning Guide

Alliance for Excellent Education - www.all4ed.org

America's Promise Alliance - www.americaspromise.org/APAPage.aspx?id=9172

Civic Enterprises - www.civicenterprises.net

Engaging Parents in Preventing School Drop-Out

Everyone Graduates Center - www.every1graduates.org

Grad Nation A Guidebook to Help Communities Tackle the Dropout Crisis

Jobs for the Future - www.jff.org

Learn and Serve America - www.learnandserve.gov

Multiple Education Pathways to Graduation Blueprint Tool

Raising Graduation Rates: A Series of Data Briefs