Dreamstime
It is often said that Memphis needs a vision, and Mark Sturgis knows what it should be: Every child who graduates from high school will be prepared for college, career, and success in life.
“A child-focused agenda is really a people-focused agenda,” he says. “It is often said, as hyperbole, that our children are our single greatest investment, but if you take a moment to consider this, the value of a healthy, thriving, and successful generation cannot be ignored. The future trajectory of a person, family, or place hinges on the majority of us broadening and deepening our economic power, and ultimately, building equitably designed systems that secure opportunity and resources across every subgroup.”
Sturgis is executive director of Seeding Success, an organization whose work below the radar pulls together people from various fields who agree to focus on a common set of goals “that take a child from cradle to career, no matter what it takes.”
To do this, Seeding Success is active across a broad spectrum of issues: early childhood education and care, effective teachers and school leadership, safe and healthy learning environments, after-school and summer learning, dropout prevention, access to college, effective transportation to services and resources, and stable, safe homes for children and families.
Speaking with the passion of the community organizer that he once was, working in the Mississippi Delta fighting inequality, Sturgis sees Seeding Success as “propelling us to move from deep insight to innovate.
“Our current systems produce the exact outcomes they were intentionally designed to achieve,” he says. “We can also spend the time to redesign them to solve the real underlying root causes of our challenges: racial segregation, insufficient funding, failed transportation, household poverty, and parental education.”
For Sturgis, it comes down to a willingness to change. “Our partners have the will to improve and change what we do to get better outcomes,” he says. “That is true for most. For others, the path will be more challenging, and we will have to face those roadblocks to change through our political voices.”
For example, 11 percent of people living in poverty have associate’s degrees or higher. “We fail every time we let people fall out of the system,” says Sturgis. “As a community, we can’t put this back on the people but on the systems, so that if someone gets to that place, we can say, ‘Here are all the other opportunities.’”
Shelby County faces daunting realities: Only 7 percent of high school graduates in Shelby County schools are ready for college or careers, based on their ACT scores. The Memphis MSA is ranked #1 in youth 16-24 years old who are neither working or in schools. And, according to a Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth report, Shelby County ranks last among Tennessee’s counties in the well-being of children.
And yet, these challenges just prove that the stakes are high and that Seeding Success’ partners cannot give up.
“We believe that changing little things can get big results,” says Sturgis. “We can develop even bigger changes in the educational core system to find the highest opportunities to work with students and families and to bring other organizations into the system.”
He points to “bright spots across programs and schools.” For example, the 130 graduates from Memphis’ first adult charter school, Goodwill Excel Center, saw an average $10,000 increase in income, suggesting an approach to the 130,000 adults in Shelby County who do not have high school degrees.
At the other end of the educational spectrum are the 7,500 4-year-olds enrolled in pre-K.
“That means we are only 1,000 seats — 50 classrooms — shy of the estimated goal for Shelby County, and the kids in our pre-K now outperform the national average,” Sturgis says. “It proves we can put the systems in place to build success.”
In a partnership between the City of Memphis, Shelby County Schools, Literacy Mid-South, and 16 nonprofit organizations, more than 15,000 students were in summer learning programs that proved that around 1,440 minutes of intervention prevented the normal two months of reading loss in the summer. Meanwhile, other programs have reduced chronic absenteeism by as much as 25 percent.
“We can and must do better,” Sturgis says. “I believe we can because I see it every day across our partnership. If enough of us join in an accountable process, we can live up to the promise of every child, from cradle to career, and not just as hyperbole, but as a real system.”
It’s hard to think of a more compelling vision for Memphis and Shelby County.
