By Corina Curry

Rockford Register Star

December 21. 2014 5:00AM

Nashville-Rockford Alignment connection: How it happened

PHOTO/ RRSTAR.COM FILE PHOTO

Laurie Preece

NASHVILLE, Tenn. Sydney Rogers didnt know what to do about the woman from Rockford, Illinois, who kept

calling her.

Alignment Nashville is a one-of-a-kind organization formed in 2004 to coordinate collaborative efforts to improve

Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools. The groups efforts were starting to show promise. Rogers, its executive

director, and her team presented on systemic high school reform to an educational symposium at Harvard University.

People started to take notice.

Rogers got a lot of calls in 2008 and 2009 asking how other districts could do what Nashville did, but Laurie Preece

was relentless. I tease her that she stalked us.

Preece was the executive director of the Rockford Charter Schools Initiative. The group had just finished advocating for

charter schools in Rockford, and Preece was looking for her next project.

Laurie recognized pretty quickly that they had done some good work in Rockford but that was not scalable and not

able to transform everything, Rogers said. She was looking for something that would really impact education as a

whole, which was what we were working toward, too.

The districts steadily increasing graduation rates caught her eye, Preece said, but the Alignment Nashville model kept her coming back.

Typically when problems arise, people look for a program as the solution, which can yield incremental change but is hard to scale and is dependent on

funding, Preece said. I knew that we needed to change the system with which we interacted, or didnt interact, with (the Rockford School District). ... We

needed something that raised the tide for all children.

Rogers persuaded her board that helping Rockford launch Alignment was the right thing to do. Preece raised money to help pay for consulting services, and

Alignment Rockford was born.

There are 10 other Alignment communities including Elgin; Jackson, Mississippi; Polk County, Florida; and Coachelle Valley, California with more being

developed.

Alignment USA formed in 2012. Preece was Alignment Rockfords executive director for nearly five years, then became a consultant for Alignment USA,

helping other communities do what Rockford did.

Rockford took Nashvilles Alignment model and re-created it, bringing educators and business people together to work in a strategic manner to raise student

achievement and outcomes for all students. Both efforts strongly emphasized high school reform through the use of academies schools within schools that

cluster students with similar interests with teachers who work closely with those students on college and career readiness.

When we did Rockford, it was an experiment, Rogers said. What we saw was, this can be replicated and it can be very powerful in other communities. ... The

fact that we are all over the country now, thats all Laurie. That would not have happened if we didnt go to Rockford.

Alignment Nashville will celebrate its 10-year anniversary Jan. 15.

Corina Curry: 815-987-1371; ccurry@rrstar.com; @corinacurry

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