Tennessee Commissioner of Education Penny Schwinn is keynote speaker at Saturday’s annual College Goal Tennessee conference for high school students, their parents and high school educators and guidance counselors.
The free, half-day conference takes place in the University Center on the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga campus and begins with registration at 8:30 a.m. and concludes at 1 p.m.
Dr. Schwinn’s presentation takes place at 9 a.m. in the University Center Auditorium.
It kicks off a series of presentations on applying for, attending and succeeding in college. The conference is organized by the Public Education Foundation, created to support public schools in Chattanooga and Hamilton County.
Dr. Schwinn, sworn in to office on Feb. 1, was appointed as a member of his cabinet by Tennessee Governor Bill Lee. Dr. Schwinn has declared building on Tennessee’s public education momentum a goal, along with continued growth in achievement, empowerment of students and teachers and stakeholder engagement.
She is from a family of educators and began her career as a high school history and economics teacher in Baltimore, Md. Her early career also includes experience as a new teacher coach in south Los Angeles and time in the private sector, where she supervised work in operations, marketing and information management.
Prior to joining the Tennessee Department of Education, Dr. Schwinn was chief deputy commissioner of academics at the Texas Education Agency. She also has served in other state- and district-level roles including as assistant secretary of education in the Delaware Department of Education and assistant superintendent of performance management for the Sacramento City Unified School District in California.
She is the founder and former superintendent of Capitol Collegiate Academy, at the time one of the county’s highest-performing charter schools serving low-income students from a region of Sacramento, where she grew up. She also is a former elected member of the Sacramento County Board of Education.
Dr. Schwinn has a bachelor’s degree from the University of California-Berkeley, a master’s degree in teaching from Johns Hopkins University and a doctorate in education policy from Claremont Graduate University in California.
Saturday's College Goal Tennessee conference is free and open to the public. For more information or to register, visit
http://www.pefchattanooga.org.