The Nashville Public Education Foundation and the Tennessee College Access and Success Network will jointly present the findings from their recently released report, Bridge to Completion: The First Year of Nashville’s Campaign for College Success, which follows their inaugural report on Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) students’ college-going experiences released last year.
The event will be held Friday, May 31, at the First Amendment Center, 1207 18th Ave. South, from 12–1 p.m. CT. All members of the Metropolitan Council are invited to attend and join the discussion.
Last year’s Bridge to Completion report provided a glimpse into the reality of far too many of Metro Nashville Public Schools’ graduates: that despite 80 percent of our students’ taking concrete steps to enroll in college, just one in four MNPS graduates ultimately earned a degree from a postsecondary institution. Those findings led to several actions that will have a real impact on graduates, including a citywide College Success Collaborative, the launch of the Nashville Goes to College family resource portal, and Mayor David Briley’s Nashville GRAD (Getting Results by Advancing Degrees) initiative to support low-income college-goers.
Yet despite these successes, this sequel to last year’s report, which explores the pipeline to a college degree by race and ethnicity and examines what early postsecondary experiences are available to high school students, shows that much work remains. A discussion of the findings from the report will be followed by an exploration of recommendations to improve the college-going and persistence rates of our graduates.
The event is free and open to the public on a first-come, first-served basis.
