The following presentation gives the objective information pertinent to the career and credentials of Sonia Stewart, along with a few remarks giving my view of the Stewart candidacy.
Sonia
Stewart
Deputy Superintendent
Hamilton County Public Schools (HCPS)
45,176 students
As Deputy Superintendent
of the Hamilton County Public Schools, Sonia Stewart has responsibility for the
departments of Teaching and Learning, School Leadership, Opportunity and
Access, and Social Emotional and Academic Development. Her initial position
at HCPS was Community Superintendent for the MidTown Learning Community.
Prior to her three and
one-half years at HCPS, Stewart spent 13 years in the Nashville Public Schools,
where she became Executive Officer of Organizational Development after serving
as Math Teacher and Head Girls Basketball Coach, Freshman Academy
Administrator at Glencliff High School, and then an eventful tenure as
Executive Principal at Pearl-Cohn High School from June 2012 through June 2018.
This latter position created a high-profile media story of success but has
brought negative reflections from some of her HCPS colleagues who say that
testing policies at Pearl-Conn inflated test scores and prohibited giving
students failing grades.
With regard to
questionable policies that Stewart may have utilized, former Pearl-Cohn
guidance counselor Kelly Brown conveys her view that Stewart and staff at
Pearl-Cohn maneuvered to make standardized test scores look better than
they were. A Nashville television report in 2015 revealed that Pearl-Cohn
had implemented a policy prohibiting giving students a grade below a
60--- even if all the student did was “wad up the test and throw it back
at the teacher.” A
district spokesperson at the time defended Stewart by saying that Metro
Nashville Public Schools had implemented a controversial policy two years
earlier that no student could get a grade below a 50 and that Stewart had
simply misinterpreted that policy.
Brown also criticized a
policy at Pearl-Cohn that automatically gave an A to any student who took an
Advanced Placement exam — even if they slept through it. She also claimed
that under pressure from the district’s central office to improve test scores,
just before students were to take end-of-course exams for which they had not
done well on practice exams, Stewart pressured counselor Brown to transfer
students from the classes in which they had been enrolled to the Credit
Recovery program. The district said in a statement that such an action was
in violation of district policy that may not have been clearly communicated to
principals, and Stewart vigorously denied the accusations.
Before those 13 years in
the Nashville Community Public Schools, Stewart
taught math in Los Angeles, California and served as the Founder and Executive
Director of The Oaks Community Development Corporation in Chicago, building a
network of parents, community leaders, and partner organizations for bringing
educational reform to a neighborhood at the urban core.
Stewart has written a
book, All Children Are Our Children: A Pearl at the Heart of the
City (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform), based on her
experiences at Pearl-Cohn.
Stewart’s academic
credentials are as follows >>>>>
Ed, D., Education,
Leadership, and Policy
Vanderbilt University
(Nashville, Tennessee)
M. Ed.
Trevecca Nazarene
University (Nashville TN)
B.S., Mathematics
Biola University (La
Mirada CA).
U.S. News and World
Report data on public school districts
indicates the following for Hamilton county Schools >>>>>
Hamilton County Schools
79 schools; 22
high schools
Student enrollment
45,176
White
47.6%
African
American
25.6%
Hispanic
17.9%
2 or more ethnicities
6.9%
Asian/
1.8%
Pacific Islander
American
Indian/ 0.0%
Alaska Native
Native
Hawaiian/
0.0%
Other Pacific
Islander
Free/Reduced Price
Lunch 46.7%
English Language Learners 6.0%
Academic Proficiency
Math
Reading
Elementary
39%
35%
Middle
School
26%
26%
High
School
21%
42%
College Readiness
18.3 (Rated on scale of 0-100)
Graduation
Rate
86.5%
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