Can Tennessee rank first in education among southeastern states within five years?

Former U.S. Sen. Bill Frist believes it's possible, and on Thursday rolled out a detailed road map for getting there.

Dr. Frist, a heart/lung transplant surgeon and former Senate Majority Leader, has devoted a year of his life and a great deal of effort toward making that happen.

Speaking by teleconference Thursday to reporters who could not attend the kickoff event in Nashville, Frist said he will use every means of communicating with Tennesseans that he can, to reach people who normally may not give a lot of thought to education as they go about their daily lives.

The goal, he said, is to make enough people in business, industry, education, government and many other fields aware of the effort that they can "buy into the vision," and believe that, "if you do your job, and everybody else does, we're going to reach the goal" and lead the Southeast within five years. "That's why it has to be statewide."

Already Frist, the founder and chairman of the Tennessee State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE) has held 56 town hall meetings across the state to gather recommendations, and eight statewide meetings of the steering committee that produced the report released Thursday. (See related article on Page A-?)

"It's just a year old," he said. "We've been sprinting."

On Nov. 16, the implementation phase will be rolled out, he said, and partnerships will be announced.

"A lot of it is about culture change," Frist said, and setting high expectations.

Right now, only public school students in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama rank below the Volunteer State, based on nationalized tests, Frist said, mentioning the recent national math assessment, where Tennessee ranked 43rd.

Stating a clear-cut goal that "we know is achievable" is one reason that Frist said he believes this report will not just gather dust on shelves.

Frist said the SCORE steering committee has heard from the governors of Florida and North Carolina, who shared how their states made striking educational gains in the 1990s.

Conceding that it may be hype to say that Tennessee will have a "once in a lifetime opportunity" to improve education in 2010, Frist maintained "It's more like a once-in-20-years opportunity."

The initiative is unique, he said, in that it is not government-generated, but has had input from many elected officials across the state.

He said about 30 state legislators attended Thursday's kickoff, and noted that the recommendations in the SCORE report can be implemented without additional state funding, at least in the short run.

In addition, the initiative has the backing of many in the business and philanthropic community, as well as teachers and teacher organizations.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is providing money for Tennessee to use in appying for federal "Race to the Top" funding, for example.

Frist noted that Bill Wiman, the president of the Tennessee Education Association, and the president of the Knox County Education Association both are on the SCORE board, and "have attended every meeting," giving their input.

The fact that the heads of two large teachers' unions are still involved "gives me real confidence that teachers unions realize that what we have been doing is not working, and they are committed to being part of the solution," Frist told The Greeneville Sun.

"Teachers are the backbone of all the recommendations," Frist said.

Frist also said that parents across the state are concerned about education, and those concerns will probably be heightened next year as school systems and students face much tougher national tests.

Tennessee already has a good system for measuring school improvement, he said, one of the best in the nation, the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS).

One element in the SCORE report will focus on training to make better use of data already collected, and make TVAAS data more accessible.

For more information and to view an electronic copy of the SCORE final report, go to www.tennesseescore.org.