In Review: East High Partnership

SUPER SCHOOL: The superintendent of the University’s partnership with East High School since 2015, Nelms says the initiative has grown into a model for how area organizations can work together in meaningful and authentic ways to the benefit of both the Greater Rochester community and the University community. (Photo: J. Adam Fenster)

As he’s overseen a project to transform a challenged urban Rochester school, Shaun Nelms ’13W (EdD) is well aware that observers are paying close attention to metrics like graduation rates.

But for Nelms, who is the superintendent of the University’s East High Educational Partnership Organization (EPO) as well as a Warner School of Education faculty member, numbers represent only part of what makes the EPO a success.

Since the partnership began in 2015, graduation rates at East have climbed from about 33 percent to above 85 percent.

“As we surpassed the 50 percent mark and then the 60 percent mark, individuals started to recognize that we can apply our school model to address generational poverty, to give students an opportunity to earn income, create generational wealth, and address some of the equity issues that we see locally and nationally,” Nelms says. “What began as a school project to address failing graduation rates, abysmal reading levels, and low math scores has become a model for establishing opportunities for students well beyond high school.”

A foundational effort of Warner’s Center for Urban Education Success (CUES), which Nelms leads as the William and Sheila Konar Director, the project has earned national attention for its efforts to use research, relationship building, and best practices to improve educational outcomes in K–12 urban schools.

Last November, the State Education Department renewed the EPO through 2025, an educational vote of confidence in the work of Nelms and the staff at East, the Warner School, and the University to help the school and its students succeed.

What does the renewal of the EPO represent for you and for the East community?

We hope that it not only justifies and validates the performance improvements that we’ve documented since the start of the partnership, but that it also positions us to creat–e the next phase in our model. This renewal was approved based on our performance, but it also was based on the connections and alignment that we’ve developed with the University and other community partners. The state saw that our model not only affects students within grades six to 12 but also helps reinforce the pipelines we’re building to local colleges and universities. Not to mention helping prepare our student to enter the workforce.

Is everyone still on board and excited about what’s happening there?

Before we could get the extension, we had to meet with each of the bargaining units that represents labor unions as well as with the parents and students to get their endorsement. I didn’t want to advocate for an extension if the school community didn’t find value in the partnership. Each of those groups overwhelmingly supported the extension, including the teacher ranks, who approved it with a 100 percent approval rate.

What makes East unique and attractive to the state is that we have very healthy relationships with all our other stakeholder groups—with our kids at the center of our decision making.

How does East, and the commitment to the school, connect to Warner and the Center for Urban Education Success?

The center began several years ago when we were unable to partner as meaningfully as we would have liked with the city school districts and the leadership at the time. We knew that the work that was being done was special and had the potential to improve graduation rates to levels comparable to high performing schools throughout the region. We created a research center to document our work and have it shared and curated. The idea is that the center would be able to share information and provide consultant services for districts looking to address issues of curriculum, leadership, design equity, and other educational challenges. I’m interested in solidifying CUES to be the research, professional development, and consultancy arm of school transformation.

Is CUES working with other schools?

I’ve had several meetings with all types of schools who are looking at their strategic plans and frameworks for leadership. We’ve interacted with a number of schools, including those who are interested in whole school reform and others who want to look at pieces of it, like sharing curriculum or evaluating their leadership models or talking through a strategic planning process. Those schools are from different states and from urban, rural, and suburban settings.

Were you expecting University-wide engagement with the project?

I was hoping for that type of engagement, but it wasn’t a University-wide project until the University made it so. After year one, we could feel the Board of Trustees and the University administration begin to understand what the EPO was, and they wanted to lean in and to participate. At that point we started getting support that ranged from volunteers to direct alignment within the school. That was special, but I have to credit members of the board and the president’s leadership for making it a priority.

This project has always been about creating a system of care for students that went well beyond the classroom, but it really is a bidirectional relationship. As much as the University supported the school, the school also helped the University better understand the Rochester community, and the realities that the Rochester community is facing. Working with East gives University faculty and staff a better understanding of life in Rochester and how to better engage the community in meaningful and authentic ways. The bidirectional nature of this relationship is going to play dividends on both ends for years to come.

What are the key lessons that you’ve learned from being involved with East and the EPO from the very beginning?

One is that any successful transformation process must represent the authentic voice of the people that we seek to serve. For East, it was making sure that students felt visible and valued, so making sure that the adults in the system have a cohesive plan to work from so that we all can move in the same direction. Being able to focus on the process of giving kids the best and most valuable learning experience was critically important. I also think leadership matters and not leadership by formal titles, but by those who step up to do the work. For example, we were blessed to have the same principal in the building for seven years. Her name is Marlene Blocker and she doesn’t get the credit she deserves. She has been able to establish positive relationships with the school community, so much so that she sent her own son to the school his senior year of high school. That matters; leadership matters.

Having the University be, I don’t want to say “backer,” but having the University be such an important presence in the community and across the country allows people like myself and others to take a risk. It helps to know that we have the support—politically, socially, academically—to do this heavy lift. And so having the University as a partner creates enormous credibility within the community, in other spaces within education, and particularly in the research community.

That allowed us to think differently about school transformation and how to address the needs of this community.