By James Harrison - nooga.com -

A little over a month ago, Gov. Bill Haslam announced his decision to name Chris Barbic as the first superintendent of Tennessee's Achievement School District (ASD).

The ASD, a newly formed district under the Haslam administration, is composed of Tennessee's five lowest performing schools. It includes Chattanooga's Howard Academy of Academics and Technology, and four schools in Memphis.

When Barbic begins his job on August 1, his task will be to oversee efforts to turn around performance in the school district. He brings along with him a track record of success from Houston, where eleven years ago he founded YES Prep Public Schools, a system designed to prepare low-income students for college and adult life.

The YES model has been met with phenomenal success. Eleven years since the first school opened its doors, every student has gone on to graduate and pursue higher education. Today the system is comprised of eight campuses, and serves over 4,200 students. Thousands of names are submitted every year for admittance, which is conducted through a lottery system.

Barbic took the time to speak with Nooga.com about his decision to leave YES and his thoughts on beginning a new job in Tennessee.

Nooga.com (N): Since starting YES 11 years ago, every student who has been through the program has graduated and gone on to college. That's incredible. What are some of the key lessons you've gained from your success?

Chris Barbic (CB): I've learned how important it is to have a really clear mission and goal with what we're trying to do. At YES, we start in 6th grade. It's a lottery admission system. In the communities that we work in, the neighborhood schools aren't very good, so from the beginning, we try to be clear on what the end goals are. We're singularly focused on our mission, and we try to hire and recruit based upon people who will help our students meet that goal.

That focus helps create a high performing culture that we can work in. It provides support, and keeps us accountable on the back end as well. We've tried to keep it fairly simple. Also, the fact that we created YES from scratch helped. We were able to create a culture every time we opened a new school.

That will be something different about this new ASD job, but I think that the fundamental principles we developed for YES will also hold true for what we'll be doing with the ASD.

(N): How do those lessons contrast with some of the more conventional approaches towards education?

(CB): It varies from place to place. Right now, I'm in the middle of having as many conversations as I can to get a sense of the current context and landscape in Tennessee. We'll need to look at who's leading schools, how those leaders are selected, and what kind of training they've had. These high schools are complex places, and it's crucial to have the right leadership.

I'm also looking at how leadership teams at the schools are selected and hired, along with the amount of authority and latitude principals are given. If you have the right people leading, you need to provide them with a steady stream of talent. But you also have let them have the final say on who they're hiring and who they're firing. And it's important not to forget that accountability comes with that. So, leaders better hit their goals.

One of the things we do at YES is that we go to school longer, from 7:30 to 4:30. We also have an extended year, which lasts 190 days a year. We also hold Saturday programs. We'll be looking at what kind of college culture is being cultivated in schools, and how early those discussions start happening. We want to make sure kids are thinking about the day after they graduate, before the first day of their senior year.

(N): Tell me about your recruitment process for this new job. How long ago did it begin, and how was it initiated?

(CB): I was originally contacted about this job back in December. This was a point when the governor had just been elected, and the commissioner hadn't even been named yet. No one knew who the commissioner would be, but there was still that initial contact. I told them that it sounded interesting and asked them to get back to me.

When Kevin Huffman was announced as the Commissioner of Education in April, I knew that he was kind of an unorthodox selection. Kevin, who I had known from Teach for America, called me and I kind of begrudgingly went out for an interview. On the plane, I came up with 10,000 reasons why I wouldn't take the job.

But when I got on the ground and met people, along with the governor, I saw this as a radical opportunity. There's some pretty bold legislation being passed by states for education these days. But if there's not people on the ground who can implement those laws and see those policy changes through to the point where they have a positive impact on our kids, then we're gonna miss a really big opportunity. If we miss the mark, we'll be having the same conversation about the same schools five years from now.  

(N): To be leaving Houston after what you've done must be incredibly difficult. How did you come to the conclusion that now was the time to try something new?

(CB): Go on YouTube and type in YES Prep Senior Signing Day. It's a really cool event. I was sitting on the stage in April this year, watching student after student announce where they were going to college. Many of them were the first in their family to go to college, and a lot of them were leaving Houston for the first time, to go a long way away. Those are huge steps for them.

That day, I was thinking about the opportunity I had been presented. And I realized that the only reason why I hadn't said yes to it, was because I was scared. I realized that it was hypocritical of me to push kids about going big and getting out of their comfort zones, and not be willing to do it myself. So I decided to get out of my comfort zone, take a risk, and do something different.

(N): During your introduction by Gov. Haslam and Commissioner Huffman last month, you said that you truly believed that Tennessee was becoming the epicenter for education reform. Why?

(CB): First to the Top was the beginning of it. That, and the combination of a governor who was committed to this type of reform, along with a lot of players in Tennessee that weren't there a few years ago. Teach for America, New Leaders for New Schools, The New Teacher Project, and the new teacher evaluation systems, for example.

You've also got the recent legislation on lifting the charter cap, the new collective bargaining legislation, and the charter growth fund. When you look at all those pieces, I can't think of another state that has all the chips in place to do something big right now than Tennessee. The environment is right.  

(N): The idea of an Achievement School District is pretty new. Not many states hand pick schools that are failing, and begin to oversee them. What are your thoughts on the approach?

(CB): I'm still trying to think about the best way to do this. When you've got a school that hasn't met AYP for five or six years in a row, despite the efforts of everyone working hard, I think there's got to be some sort of mechanism in place to do a reset. The ASD seems like a possible way to do that.

But I really want to emphasize that I want to do this in collaboration with the local district, with folks on the ground, and with folks in the community. The trick is going to be bringing the resources together. It's gonna take a little bit of time to figure out how that's going to work.

(N): Have you had the chance to speak with our interim superintendent, Rick Smith, or Paul Smith, the principal of Howard?

(CB): I met with Paul briefly last week. I also know that the new superintendent just took over recently, so I haven't had the chance to meet with him yet. I may try to get to Tennessee one more time before we start in August, but I'll definitely be talking with him. I understand that he's in a new role, and a lot of people are coming at him right now.

(N): You've been a champion of human capital, and providing students with the right messages and resources. Why is this so important to you?

(CB): Well, I think that in any great organization, the degree of success is a reflection of the leadership and the people who are there. It's also about those people's commitment to the vision of the organization. And I think the same is true for schools. People are the most important resource in a district or a building, and if you don't get that right, the rest of the program is incremental.

Teach for America is a great example. You've got over 45,000 people applying to a program that selects around 8,000 a year. You've got 10 percent of Harvard's graduating class applying to work in the poorest schools in the country. If someone doesn't want to teach for 30 years, or 25 years, that's okay. The days of that are over, no one does the same job at the same place for 30 years anymore.

As long as the conversation is about anything but the quality of the teacher first, we're missing the mark.

(N): How involved are the parents in your schools? What are the most important things that low-income parents can do to help their kids succeed?

(CB): A lot of our parents are working two and three jobs, so we make a distinction between parental involvement and parental support. We're respectful of their time, but ask that they emphasize the importance of education to their kids. The long term mission is about what they're doing after high school. We want those types of conversations and questions getting asked as early as possible. Helping kids with their homework is great, but parents who don't have time to do that can still be actively engaged with what's going on, and have a line of communication to the school.

If families need us, we're available, and if we need them, they're available. For that kind of communication to be available is important.

(N): Is there anything else you'd like to add?

The only thing I would add is this: I know that there are folks who have spent a lot of time working in these schools before I come, and I want to spend a lot of time learning before I get anything done. I don't want to be the reformer who comes in and throws bombs. I want to learn and continue along with the things that are being done right.

Hopefully, I've learned some things at YES prep that will be applicable. But having the support of the schools and the community is so important. I'm not about making anybody right or wrong, I'm about wanting to honor and respect what's been done, and take that and try and build on it.