Chalkbeat

House GOP to push forward Memphis school takeover plan with ‘teeth’

2025-12-23T15:47:16+00:00

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Tennessee House Republican leaders will push forward a plan in 2026 to install a Memphis-Shelby County schools oversight panel that would seize significant decision-making authority from the locally elected school board.

House Speaker Cameron Sexton and education committee Chairman Mark White confirmed this month they are committed to working with the Senate to pass a form of takeover legislation in the 2026 legislative session.

Republicans in the two chambers failed to find a compromise after passing differing versions of the bill earlier this year amid ongoing frustrations with school board governance and academic performance issues. If lawmakers can agree this year, change could come quickly to Memphis-Shelby County schools, which is already primed for major upheaval in 2026.

White’s plan would essentially install a governing oversight board with the authority to veto part or all of the local school board’s budget, the largest single decision the school board is responsible for.

White argued the oversight board must have the “teeth” to make significant district decisions, compared to the 2025 Senate version of the plan that would operate as an advisory board.

The oversight board under White’s plan would also have approval authority for any contracts or expenses larger than $50,000 and essentially control final charter decisions in the district. White’s proposal would institute the board for three years, with the potential for another three-year extension.

“Putting a board in place that has no authority to do anything is a waste of time,” Sexton said. “It does nothing. If you’re going to put it in, then you’ve got to trust them to make the decisions.”

Sen. Brent Taylor, a Memphis Republican carrying the Senate version of the bill, did not respond to a request for comment.

The Senate and House passed differing versions of the legislation in 2025, with the two chambers at odds over details of oversight board authority.

If Senate and House leaders can come to a compromise on the legislation when the General Assembly reconvenes in mid-January, it could quickly be passed into law. Because the bills are still live, the chambers could hash out any changes in conference without reverting back to a lengthy legislative committee process.

Potential oversight changes would be one of several significant changes on the horizon for Memphis schools.

The early 2025 firing of former Superintendent Marie Feagins ignited long-simmering dissatisfaction with the school board and triggered both local and state backlash. Now, all nine seats on the board are up for election in 2026, meaning Memphis voters may go to the primary ballot box this spring to vote for a board whose governing power could soon be greatly diminished under the legislative plan.

The board must also make a decision on the interim superintendent’s contract sometime in 2026.

White said he will move “full speed ahead” to enact “drastic” changes.

“I don’t believe an elected school board can fix decades of bureaucracy. I’m not putting blame on any past or present school board,” White said.

Legislative Democrats and Memphis-Shelby County school leaders have sharply criticized the takeover effort as political overreach, pointing to previous state takeover failures in the Achievement School District and incremental progress the district has made recently.

“State intervention in Memphis schools has historically failed to improve outcomes,” Memphis-Shelby County schools interim Superintendent Roderick Richmond said during a fall community meeting.

Launched a decade ago, the Achievement School District took control of low-performing schools and often turned them over to the charter operators. But the state intervention model led to no meaningful long-term improvements for students, research showed, and often sparked community backlash for takeovers in low-income neighborhoods.

Memphis schools have had some growth in recent years. This year, MSCS students outpaced the state average for academic growth in reading and math. More Memphis schools also earned top marks in Tennessee’s report card system for the 2024-2025 school year.

Yet the district continues to lag significantly in academic achievement, with less than 25% of MSCS students meeting grade level benchmarks in reading and math on state tests.

Sexton suggested any improvement is too little, too late after decades of underperformance in the state’s largest school district.

Republicans are also eyeing an ongoing state financial audit of the district, though both Sexton and White said the takeover legislation would move ahead regardless of those findings.

White has denied that the legislation amounts to a state takeover, given that members of the governing board must be residents of Shelby County. White says he, along with other Memphis natives, believe “we have to have local intervention.”

But under White’s 2025 bill, the appointing power for the oversight board would sit in state government and, by extension, give the Republican Party governing authority of local schools in a majority Democratic county.

Under the House bill, the Tennessee governor would appoint five members, and the House and Senate speakers would receive two appointments each.

Critics of the legislation have also warned the measure could have ripple effects beyond Memphis and encroach on local control in other areas of the state, though the legislation currently only applies to Shelby County. White’s 2025 legislation could trigger an oversight board in a local district if:

50% or more of enrolled students did not meet state testing grade level expectations.
30% or more of schools in a district receive a D or F state letter grade.
25% or more of students enrolled were chronically absent in the most recent school year.
One or more schools have been identified as a priority school by the state education department.
And the local legislative body of the county approves a resolution of no confidence in the local school board.

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee charter commission denies charter appeals from last Memphis ASD schools

2025-10-21T21:25:03+00:00

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The last two schools in Tennessee’s failed Achievement School District will return to local control next year after the Tennessee Public School Charter Commission upheld a Memphis-Shelby County school board decision to deny their applications to become district charter schools.

Now, Memphis-Shelby County leaders will have to decide whether to continue operating Kirby Middle School and Hillcrest High School as standard public schools or shutter the locations that serve more than 800 students when the district absorbs the schools in June 2026.

The district will make the decisions as discussions about other school closures continue in a plan to address longstanding facilities issues in the coming months. Though commission members indicated last week the district plans to keep Kirby open, the district said this week it has not made a decision.

“We are still in the preliminary stages following the charter commission’s decision,” a district spokesperson told Chalkbeat Tennessee this week. “Over the coming weeks, the district will begin gathering data and engaging the communities to determine our next steps for both locations. As always, our focus will remain on doing what’s best for students as we prepare to make a final decision.”

In July, the Memphis school board denied charter applications from IOTA Community Schools, the charter group currently running the two schools, ahead of the upcoming sunset of the ASD program. IOTA appealed to the state commission this fall, but on Oct. 17 commission members cited inconsistent enrollment and low academic performance when discussing their decision to uphold the district’s ruling.

IOTA will continue to manage former ASD school Wooddale Middle in Memphis as a charter school after the commission overturned a MSCS denial last year.

Tess Stovall, the commission’s executive director, noted both Kirby and Hillcrest scored the lowest possible score on Tennessee’s school scoring system for the past three years. Hillcrest also has a significantly lower graduate rate than the district and state average, and Stovall is concerned about an overreliance on virtual instructors at the school.

Stovall acknowledged that the majority of Hillcrest students came to the school already several grade levels behind, but she said charter agreements must end at some point if there are no academic gains.

“This is particularly challenging work; these are challenging recommendations because we know this is a school that is in operation. There are staff, there are students, there are families impacted by this decision,” Stovall said. “We know the staff of IOTA community schools, as with many other operators, have dedicated the last decade trying to turn around some of the most difficult school circumstances in Memphis.”

Commissioner Terence Patterson, who is also CEO of the Memphis Education Fund, called the ASD schools’ decision “really, really difficult. Patterson said he couldn’t overlook the “trend of underperformance” at Kirby, despite his concerns that existing Memphis schools in the neighborhood would not necessarily be a better option or are at capacity.

Tennessee took over Kirby and Hillcrest a decade ago due to low academic performance, assigning the schools to a charter operator that later became IOTA Community Schools. The goal of the Achievement School District was to improve academic performance through a turnaround plan that would allow schools to exit the ASD plan. But the two never met that goal.

At its peak, the ASD portfolio oversaw 33 schools, many of which were turned over to charter operators. The program cost taxpayers more than $1 billion and netted few results. The ASD saw high teacher turnover and did not lead to long-term improvements for students, research showed, while the takeover of schools in mostly low-income and communities of color sparked community backlash. MSCS in recent years has transitioned several schools back into the district.

“I’m incredibly troubled that we went through the legislature’s initiative to set up the ASD to try to address low-performing schools,” said Commission Chair Chris Richards, who represents west Tennessee. “We’ve been 10 years into this, and we continue to have this low-performing school. I can’t warrant a situation where I can support another 10 years.”

The Tennessee General Assembly this year passed legislation to sunset the existing ASD program, though it replaced it with a different intervention plan for low-performing schools that will start by the beginning of the next school year. The new plan will have escalating interventions for targeted schools and initially allow local districts to implement their own turnaround plan or work with an expert before moving toward a state takeover.

Bri Hatch contributed to this story.

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee education bills: What passed, and what didn’t, in the latest legislative session

2025-04-25T19:20:22+00:00

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Tennessee’s legislative session ended this week, after lawmakers considered several controversial bills that would directly affect students. Here’s a roundup of how the most important education legislation turned out.

The failed Achievement School District has a replacement

The Achievement School District is set to shut down by the start of the 2026-27 school year, replaced by a new model of state intervention in low-performing schools.

The ASD aimed to push Tennessee’s bottom 5% of schools up to the top 25% by removing local control and placing schools in a state-run district, with mostly charter operators running the schools. But research shows the district’s schools experienced high teacher turnover rates and little gain in academic performance. After ASD’s peak of serving 33 schools, only three remain in the district.

The new model promises to give more control to local districts over how to intervene in low-performing schools. If a school does not improve, the state can escalate its level of intervention, up to the extent of school closure.

Takeover bill for MSCS evolves, then stalls

Bills aiming to intervene in Memphis-Shelby County Schools passed the state House and Senate, but stalled until next session because the two chambers didn’t agree on a final version.

The proposals emerged after the MSCS school board fired Superintendent Marie Feagins in January, less than a year into her tenure, a move that drew strong objections from the community and calls for accountability.

Republican Rep. Mark White of Memphis first proposed a version that would strip most powers from the elected school board and hand authority over to a state-appointed board of local residents. The version ultimately approved by the House called for an oversight board with authority to approve the district budget, among other powers, and allowing for expanded conversion of schools to charters.

The Senate version, from Republican Sen. Brent Taylor of Memphis, also called for a state-appointed advisory board for the elected school board. His bill would also allow the state education commissioner to recommend removing the MSCS superintendent and school board leaders, and allow the Shelby County Commission to choose their replacements.

The sponsors intend to take up the legislation again after a state-funded forensic audit of MSCS.

A bill targeting undocumented students didn’t pass

A bill that would allow school districts to deny free public education to undocumented students in Tennessee stalled due to financial concerns.

The legislation faced wide protest after its introduction. On multiple occasions, lawmakers had to abruptly end sessions as members of the public and activists in the gallery chanted and sang prayers.

The bill would directly challenge a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that guarantees a free public education for all students, regardless of immigration status. Along with its constitutional challenge, the bill also could also jeopardize more than $1 billion of federal education funding, according to its fiscal memo.

The legislation passed the Senate 19-13 on April 10, with seven Republicans joining Democrats to vote against it. But its fiscal note prevented the bill from moving forward.

Schools will have to teach a ‘student success sequence’ that includes marriage

The legislature passed a bill requiring public schools to teach students that the keys to success are to graduate high school; enter the workforce or pursue postsecondary education; marry; and then have children — in that order.

The success sequence emerged in the early 2000s, as researchers argued taking these steps leads to better economic futures. The concept has since generated support in conservative-leaning education policy circles. Critics say the concept does not account for the structures that drive poverty.

Much of the bill matched model legislation from the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, a policy plan for changing the U.S. government.

Cellphone ban coming to Tennessee public schools

A ban on cellphones in Tennessee public school classrooms will take effect beginning in the 2025-26 school year.

Students will be able to use their phones with teacher permission. There are also exceptions for emergencies and when students need to use devices for managing their health.

The majority of Tennessee schools already have bans in place. The new legislation gives districts the flexibility to decide details of their policies – such as how students would be disciplined for violating the ban and when the cellphones must be stored.

Tennessee lawmakers vote to replace failed Achievement School District turnaround program

2025-04-22T00:26:09+00:00

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After more than a decade of state takeovers and contentious charter conversions, Tennessee is set to shut down the state-run Achievement School District and create a new model of intervention for low-performing schools by the start of the 2026-27 school year.

Legislation to replace the failed ASD cleared the House 75-15 on Monday, sending the bill to Gov. Bill Lee, who has indicated his support.

“Tennessee needs a support system for priority schools that contains accountability but also provides school districts more local flexibility in determining which interventions will be most effective,” a Lee spokesperson told Chalkbeat in a statement.

The ASD removed low-performing schools from local control and placed them under a state-run district, with the goal to push Tennessee’s bottom 5% of schools to the top 25%. Many of the schools were turned over to charter operators to run under 10-year contracts.

Research showed the ASD led to high teacher turnover, and did not generate long-term improvements for students. The district also faced community backlash for taking over schools in districts that served mostly low-income communities and predominantly Black student populations. The ASD cost taxpayers over $1 billion. Only three schools remain in the ASD.

The new model creates a tiered system, with escalating levels of intervention for schools that do not academically improve. Schools identified for intervention for the first time would start at the first tier. The Tennessee Department of Education then will review each school’s performance annually to decide whether to change the level of intervention.

Tier 1 would give districts the option to direct their own intervention plans or partner with a turnaround expert.

In Tier 2, districts can choose between conversion to a charter school, transfer of operations to a higher education institution, or the replacement of some or all school leadership and specific staff. There is also the option to implement an intervention committee – made up of school board members, school employees and parents – to develop a plan with a turnaround expert.

Tier 3 involves school closures or replacement of school leadership and instructional staff under the direction of the state department of education.

All strategies would require state approval.

The new model applies to “priority schools” across the state, defined as:

The bottom 5% of schools in performance. Federal law requires states to intervene in public schools in the bottom 5%.
All public high schools that fail to graduate one-third or more of their students.
Schools with chronically low-performing student groups that have not improved after receiving additional support.

Democratic Rep. Antonio Parkinson of Memphis, who has previously brought legislation to end the ASD, celebrated its sunset.

“We finally end this catastrophe of an experiment in education, served on the backs of our communities,” said Parkinson. “Just when we thought the schools couldn’t perform any worse, because they’re at the bottom of the 5%, the Tennessee Achievement School District came and proved us wrong.”

However, he said the bill’s new model was a “remix” of the ASD and cautioned that the legislation could expand charter conversion.

Republican Rep. Debra Moody of Covington, who sponsored the bill, said charter conversion is one option among many that the district could choose.

The legislation now heads to the governor’s desk for signature.

Last schools in Tennessee’s shrinking Achievement School District seek to make their move

2025-02-21T00:33:23+00:00

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The operator of the last charter schools in Tennessee’s waning Achievement School District is seeking to continue managing them as part of their original school system in Memphis.

A decade ago, the State of Tennessee took over Kirby Middle and Hillcrest High schools due to low academic performance and assigned them to a charter management group called Green Dot Public Schools, now known as IOTA Community Schools.

The schools didn’t improve enough to exit the ASD on their own under a turnaround plan that was never meant to last more than a decade.

But now, with its 10-year contracts with the ASD soon to expire, IOTA has applied with Memphis-Shelby County Schools for new charter agreements to manage the two campuses in southeast Memphis beginning with the 2026-27 school year.

IOTA already is transitioning Wooddale Middle, the third and final Memphis school leaving the ASD, to reopen this fall under a new contract between IOTA and the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission.

Last fall, the commission authorized IOTA’s new charter after overturning the Memphis school board’s decision to deny its application to continue operating Wooddale.

Planning for the future of the Achievement School District’s last three schools — and its 1,352 students — foreshadows changes ahead for the state’s most ambitious and aggressive school turnaround model, which had 33 schools in its portfolio at its peak in 2016.

The initiative, created under a 2010 state law as part of Tennessee’s federal Race to the Top initiative, has been marred by painful takeovers of neighborhood schools, contentious handoffs to charter networks, and mostly abysmal student performance on state tests.

Last year, a proposal to eliminate the ASD passed the Tennessee Senate but a different version to revamp the program stalled in the House, even as several of the GOP-controlled legislature’s top Republican leaders acknowledged that the model has failed and should be replaced.

Gov. Bill Lee’s administration is expected to propose changes this year, but neither his office nor the state education department has said what that might look like.

Elizabeth Lane Johnson, the governor’s press secretary, confirmed Thursday that Lee’s administration was “working with stakeholders to consider legislation around the Achievement School District.”

A potential successor could be the likely expansion of a small pilot turnaround initiative that began in 2022 with five low-performing schools. It has received generally positive reviews.

The antithesis of the Achievement School District, the pilot model emphasizes collaboration over takeover and does not use charter management organizations to lead its turnaround work. Instead, low-performing schools partner with an independent turnaround expert and a locally appointed committee to create and implement an improvement plan emphasizing data, coaching, and making adjustments in real time.

In Memphis, Trezevant High School and Hawkins Mill Elementary have shown marked improvement under the pilot program with the aid of turnaround consultant Cognia.

Other schools still in the pilot are Jere Baxter Middle School in Nashville and Lincoln Elementary in Jackson-Madison County, both using Ed Direction as their turnaround consultant, with mixed results. Orchard Knob Middle, in Chattanooga, dropped out of the program before it started after Hamilton County school board members said an existing improvement plan was already working.

Fate of the last two ASD schools is uncertain

The future of the last two schools exiting the ASD will be decided this year after staff with Memphis-Shelby County Schools reviews IOTA’s applications and recommends whether to approve them.

Both campuses serve mostly students of color, more than half of whom are considered economically disadvantaged. According to the state’s most recent school report card, Kirby Middle made average progress for its students in 2023-24 and was graded an F by the state. Hillcrest High made below-average progress for its students and was graded a D.

If the Memphis school board denies IOTA’s applications, the network could appeal those decisions to the state commission, which has the power to transition more ASD schools from one state-run district to another state-run district — just as it’s in the process of doing with IOTA’s Wooddale Middle.

Adding to that discussion could be a new charter-friendly proposal from the governor to create ways for charter operators to bypass their local elected school boards and apply directly to the state commission for authorization.

If the legislature passes the governor’s bill, beginning July 1, any school board whose decision to deny a charter application is overturned by the state three times within three years could be bypassed, allowing a charter operator to apply directly to the state commission for authorization during the next five years.

Appealing to the commission isn’t a slam dunk, however. Since it began hearing appeals in 2021, the panel has sided with local school boards on half of their application denials.

State commission is familiar with ASD’s last charter operator

The commission already has one IOTA school in its portfolio.

Bluff City High School opened in Memphis in 2017 when IOTA was part of the Green Dot Public Schools network based in California. Last summer, the network’s charter schools in Memphis transitioned to IOTA, a new Tennessee-based network, after Green Dot ended its expansion efforts in Tennessee and Texas.

Asked Thursday whether she’d prefer to operate under the oversight of Memphis-Shelby County Schools or the state commission, IOTA Executive Director Jocquell Rodgers said she can’t compare them because the local district has never authorized one of the network’s schools.

Under Executive Director Tess Stovall, the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission has expanded its footprint and impact on Tennessee education.

“My goal has always been to forge a relationship with the local district because I believe we serve the same children,” Rodgers said. “But I will say that I’ve enjoyed working with the state charter commission. Their expectations are very clear, and our relationship has helped us build stronger processes as an organization and stronger academic outcomes for our students.”

For instance, when the commission put Bluff City High School on academic probation in 2022, the state was clear about necessary improvement steps, Rodgers said. Last month, in recognition of the school’s progress, the commission moved Bluff City off academic probation to a lesser intervention level.

The state Board of Education rated both the commission and Memphis-Shelby County Schools as “exemplary” in its most recent evaluations of charter authorizers in Tennessee.

The commission currently has six former ASD charter schools in its portfolio, most of which left the turnaround program under a 2021 state law letting higher-achieving ASD schools bypass their home districts to transition to the commission’s control:

Cornerstone Prep Denver
Cornerstone Prep Lester
Lester Prep
LEAD Neely’s Bend
Libertas School of Memphis
Promise Academy Spring Hill

All of those former ASD schools are in Memphis except LEAD Neely’s Bend, which is in Nashville.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee’s costly, disruptive school turnaround work didn’t help students long term, says research

2024-11-01T10:00:00+00:00

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New research shows middle school students exiting Tennessee’s two primary school turnaround models experienced few educational gains in high school, raising new questions about the much-scrutinized strategies.

In fact, there’s evidence that assignment to a school operated by the state-run Achievement School District, the more ambitious and aggressive of the two models, generally worsened high school test scores.

And assignment to a middle school campus in the Innovation Zone, a locally run school improvement program in Memphis and other cities, led to worse math scores in high school.

Neither initiative made a significant dent on ACT scores or high school graduation rates. Data related to attendance, chronic absenteeism, and disciplinary actions wasn’t encouraging, either.

The research, published by Brown University’s Annenberg Institute, offers the biggest indictment so far of the Achievement School District, where most students didn’t show short-term gains either.

And it fills a crucial gap in data about the Innovation Zone, where early achievement gains faded as middle school students moved on to non-iZone high schools that offered fewer interventions and support.

“Our findings suggest that reform policies may need to be designed in a way that is connected across school levels to support students throughout their K-12 educational experience,” the paper says.

Long-term effects of school turnaround reforms have been understudied

Both of Tennessee’s turnaround programs launched in 2012 during the Obama administration’s push for systemic reforms to improve teaching and learning in America’s public schools.

But so far, most research on their effectiveness has focused on short-term results such as annual standardized test scores.

The latest analysis looked at how students performed in high school after attending a turnaround middle school up through the 2017-18 school year. It’s based on data from test scores, attendance, chronic absenteeism, disciplinary actions, dropouts, and graduation.

The research should inform imminent state and local decisions about changes to turnaround work across Tennessee. It also has national implications for reforms aimed at making swift and dramatic improvement to persistently low-performing schools. The models pioneered in Tennessee, with Memphis as their hub, overlap with ongoing turnaround work in states such as Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, and North Carolina.

Such reforms have received billions of dollars in federal funding through the Race to the Top competition and school improvement grants, plus from philanthropic groups. Their success is especially important to students of color and from low-income families, who are disproportionately served by those campuses. These students also experienced the largest decreases in student achievement as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lam Pham, who led the research team’s work in Tennessee, said a major takeaway is that school improvement work needs to broaden its focus beyond raising annual test scores.

Lam Pham

“Educators respond to the accountability system that’s set for them, which in this case was test scores,” said Pham, an assistant professor at North Carolina State University.

“If we’re thinking about how to model this in the future, yes, we want improved test scores, but we also want a better schooling experience for our students,” he continued. “Our accountability systems need other measures so that educators respond more holistically to improving long-term student outcomes.”

The paper also suggests a more comprehensive approach that supports students’ social-emotional learning, engages surrounding neighborhoods, and includes resources like mentoring, mental health services, out-of-school programming, and family assistance.

Tennessee’s school takeover district was controversial from its outset

The Achievement School District, the most controversial of Tennessee’s two turnaround programs, introduced dramatic changes to school governance by removing chronically low-performing schools from their local school systems in Memphis and Nashville.

The state placed them in its own district and typically used a charter management organization to relaunch the campuses. The thinking was to remove bureaucratic oversight and give school leaders flexibility to adapt staffing and curriculum to individual school needs.

Students and parents line a Memphis street in 2015 to protest the proposed takeover of Sheffield Elementary School by the Achievement School District. The state-run district later removed the school from its takeover list for 2016-17.

The ASD is still in operation, though significantly smaller.

As charter operators have cycled out of their 10-year contracts, the initiative has shrunk from a peak of 33 schools serving more than 10,000 students in 2016 to currently three Memphis schools with a total enrollment of 1,300 students.

Many lawmakers, including top Republicans who have stuck by the model, acknowledged earlier this year that the ASD has mostly failed.

“This new research just confirms what we’ve known for some time — that we need to be doing something different,” said Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Memphis Democrat who sponsored legislation to phase out the ASD and shift its schools to state-approved but locally managed intervention models.

The legislation passed in the state Senate this year but not in the House, where Rep. Antonio Parkinson, also a Memphis Democrat, advocated for a different approach that would turn the ASD into a school improvement resource hub for the entire state.

Akbari plans to reintroduce her legislation in January.

“We really need to get on the same page and get this one done,” she said, “because ultimately it’s the kids who suffer.”

Under federal education law, the state can’t close the ASD without replacing it with a new rigorous improvement plan for its “priority schools” that are academically in the bottom 5%.

This week, a spokesman for the Tennessee Department of Education said the agency “will continue working with the General Assembly and the governor’s office to evaluate the best way to serve students in priority schools as we finalize next year’s legislative agenda.”

Locally run iZone fared better initially

The Memphis iZone, which remained under the control of the local school district, also gave its principals charter-like autonomy over staffing and curriculum but offered an extra hour of instructional time every school day and additional pay for educators.

The model has operated in the state’s four largest cities, with the largest program by far in Memphis. It began there with eight schools under the leadership of turnaround specialist Sharon Griffin and a team of coaches, then peaked in size this year with 36 schools.

The iZone showed early promise in improving student test scores. But its gains began to stall by 2015 as its portfolio of schools grew quickly, partly to stave off ASD takeovers. Funding became more difficult to sustain, and the churn of iZone leadership was another challenge.

But perhaps most significant was the limited supply of teachers who are rated as highly effective and willing to transfer to and remain with low-performing schools.

“It’s a pitfall we see in many turnaround models in many places,” said Pham, the researcher. “There are usually strong plans for improvement, but virtually no plans for sustaining and growing and expanding.”

One reason might be that federal school improvement grants that helped launch such programs lasted for only three years.

“As soon as you take your foot off the pedal on school turnaround, the gains go away.”
Lam Pham, assistant professor, North Carolina State University

“When you get one of these grants to start with, you’re not thinking about eventual expansion. You’re thinking about whether it’s going to work in the first place,” Pham said.

The iZone is now being phased out of Memphis-Shelby County Schools as part of a district-wide reorganization under its new superintendent, Marie Feagins. She hired Roderick Richmond, an early iZone architect, to work with low-performing schools but offered few details about the kinds of resources they would receive.

“It may be time to reassess the iZone,” said Akbari, the state lawmaker, “but I would like to see the model as the foundation for what comes next for school improvement work in Memphis-Shelby County Schools. This model was working. But it matters who’s at the wheel and how much support that leader is getting from the district.”

Human capital is the most important factor in turning schools around

Low-performing schools that relaunched under both the ASD and iZone replaced their principals and at least half of their teachers as part of coordinated, schoolwide changes aimed at achieving swift and dramatic improvements in student performance.

The changes didn’t translate into higher test scores at ASD schools, where researchers surmise that the reforms “likely disrupted the schools’ staffing, culture, and daily operations” and created “instabilities in students’ instructional experiences” without adding effective interventions and support.

But the changes at iZone schools told a different story in the program’s early years.

Its leadership recruited highly effective principals and teachers with a long tenure and a track record of success to staff the turnaround schools. And they rewarded them with sign-on, retention, and performance bonuses, plus compensation for the added hour of instruction.

Principal Rodney Rowan works in 2015 with reading teachers on instructional strategies at Cherokee Elementary School, an iZone school in Memphis that posted big gains in student test scores that year.

“Staffing is the most expensive part of schooling, and you get what you pay for,” Pham said. “If I were going to invest in one thing to really improve low-performing schools, it would be the teachers and principals — first to get them there, then to support them well and keep them there.”

Unfortunately, the Memphis iZone model changed through the years, probably contributing to its students’ achievement fade in high school, Pham said.

“It’s also possible,” he said, “that the improvement that students experienced during middle school just wasn’t big enough to last into high school. Or students may just need more time under these interventions. Middle school only lasts three years.”

Another factor: the pandemic. The sudden rush of overwhelming needs in lots of schools systemwide diverted attention and resources away from low-performing schools.

“As soon as you take your foot off the pedal on school turnaround, the gains go away,” Pham said.

He said the disappointing long-term data shouldn’t take away from early successes by both programs, whether boosting test scores or creating a sense of urgency to improve education in a city that also struggles with widespread intergenerational poverty. It’s a position echoed by some local education advocates.

“You have to remember that the circumstances were dire in 2012, with so many of our schools in the bottom 5%,” said Terence Patterson, CEO of the Memphis Education Fund, which helps coordinate local philanthropic work.

“I would make the case that the ASD wasn’t a failure,” he continued. “As a whole, the ASD certainly didn’t perform as we had hoped, but there were pockets of success, several schools did have gains, and many students benefited.”

Patterson has called school turnaround “heavy, hard heart work” that doesn’t result in magical outcomes, but offers lessons for the future. Among them: the need for collaboration at all levels and a greater emphasis on interventions and wraparound supports like social-emotional learning across the K-12 continuum.

“We’ve learned a lot together,” he said. “We also know that there are things we can do better.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

State renews charter for Wooddale Middle School, overturning Memphis board decision

2024-10-18T14:25:05+00:00

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The operator of Wooddale Middle School, a Memphis charter school exiting the state turnaround district, will continue managing it after a state panel overturned a decision by Memphis-Shelby County Schools to deny its application.

The Tennessee Public Charter School Commission followed the recommendation of its executive director, Tess Stovall, in approving the application by IOTA Community Schools, formerly known as Green Dot Public Schools.

The 7-1 vote on Thursday came despite a recommendation by the commission’s own review committee to deny the application based on shortcomings in IOTA’s plan for academics and operations, as well as the performance of other schools in the network’s charter portfolio.

Arlandra Parker, who oversees charter school development for Memphis-Shelby County Schools, also argued that Wooddale had shown “inconsistent academic performance” for nearly a decade under the management of Green Dot/IOTA during its time in the state’s Achievement School District turnaround program, or ASD.

But Stovall said her review of the record tells a bigger story.

While acknowledging Wooddale’s mixed academic performance, she said the school has shown improvement in the past two years and generally outperforms nearby middle schools operated by the local district.

“I do not have confidence that, if responsibility for operating the school is shifted to Memphis-Shelby County Schools, Wooddale students will perform any different than the students at the other zoned middle schools,” Stovall wrote in her analysis.

Commissioner Terence Patterson, who is also CEO of the charter-friendly Memphis Education Fund, said the dearth of high-quality middle school options around Wooddale should factor into the state panel’s decisions on charter appeals, especially for Memphis schools transitioning out of the ASD.

“To even consider giving the option of running the school back to a district that has four neighboring schools with single-digit proficiency, I would almost view as negligence,” he said, referring to proficiency rates on state standardized tests.

Chairperson Chris Richards, a retired FedEx executive who also represents West Tennessee on the commission, cited concerns that Memphis-Shelby County Schools recently shuttered its Innovation Zone, another school turnaround program that could have provided Wooddale with additional resources and support when returning to its home district.

“We’re facing great uncertainty (about) the support of the local district, and that bothers me a lot,” she said, adding “that kind of support makes the difference between whether kids can get to school or not.”

The vote was the clearest example so far that the commission is willing to look beyond the state’s established metrics for scoring a charter school application, leaning instead on members’ views of whether approving it is in a community’s best interest.

It was also the third time in seven appeals that the commission has overturned the Memphis school board’s denial of a charter application since the legislature created the appellate entity under a 2019 law.

Last year, the commission approved an application from Capstone Education Group to continue operating Cornerstone Prep Lester as it prepared to exit the ASD at the end of the 2023-24 school year.

The commission also sided last year with Empower Memphis Career and College Prep, which is planning to open a K-8 charter school in the fall of 2025 focused on career and technical education in the city’s Orange Mound community.

In her analysis, Stovall said approving IOTA‘s application was in the best interest of Wooddale’s 450 students, the local district, and community. But she also identified challenges.

Wooddale’s chronic absenteeism rate is significantly higher than nearby middle schools, and there’s no guarantee that Memphis-Shelby County Schools will lease or sell the campus in the city’s Parkway Village area to IOTA.

Bluff City High School, another IOTA Memphis school that is already under the commission’s oversight, has been on charter probation since 2022, based on its failure to meet academic performance standards. The school’s charter is up for renewal under the commission in 2026-27.

IOTA has two remaining ASD schools — Hillcrest High and Kirby Middle — whose charter agreements with the state will end after the 2025-26 school year, creating uncertainty for the network in the next few years.

“While I do have some concerns when reviewing the amended application for Wooddale, the evidence of the entire record demonstrates to me that Wooddale is offering a higher quality option to families in the Parkway Village area,” Stovall said.

The commission also voted this week to uphold Rutherford County Schools‘ denial of a charter to Novus Smart Academy, as well as Nashville school board’s denial of a charter to Nashville School of Excellence.

But it overturned the Nashville district on three applications and approved charters for LEAD Southeast Elementary, Nurses Middle College, and Encompass Community School.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools and Metro Nashville Public Schools now have 30 days to reach mutual agreements with the respective charter networks for authorization. If that doesn’t happen, the state commission becomes the default authorizer.

Visit here to see the outcomes of all charter appeals to the commission.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Editor‘s note: This story has been updated to include the commission’s decisions on more 2024 charter appeals.

Amid big shifts, Memphis school district’s enrollment is up, but still short of projections

2024-08-28T22:09:59+00:00

Enrollment in Memphis-Shelby County Schools is ahead of what it was at this time last year, but lags projections for the school year amid significant changes in the composition of the district.

As of this week, 109,636 students were enrolled in Tennessee’s largest district, 1,446 more than a year ago, according to a presentation to the school board Tuesday from Superintendent Marie Feagins.

But that’s below the district’s projected enrollment of 111,983, which includes students in the district’s 54 charter schools.

More than 2,300 students who were expected to attend district schools haven’t shown up.

The enrollment update comes amid big changes in local education, including the shift of nearly a thousand students in three campus schools that were operated by the University of Memphis under a contract with the Memphis district. Under a new state law authorizing the creation of innovative school districts, those schools are now in their own university-run school system.

Meanwhile, the district expected to absorb students from five school buildings that moved this summer from charter operators back to the Memphis district’s control after 10 years with the state-run school turnaround program known as the Achievement School District.

Three of those ASD campuses — Humes Middle, MLK College Prep High, and Memphis Scholars — are now shuttered. MSCS officials have encouraged their students to attend other local schools.

School board member Kevin Woods said MSCS likely would have had fewer students enrolled this year without the ASD transitions.

“I think you’re sharing the narrative that the district has more students, the district is still trending in the right direction,” he told Feagins during his final meeting before departing the board after 13 years in office.

“But we do have students that simply are still not showing up,” he added.

Feagins has made enrollment and attendance two of the top priorities of her new administration after taking over as the district’s leader this spring.

Last week, through her initiative dubbed “Hey Neighbor!” she went door-to-door to track down students who have not shown up since the academic year began on Aug. 5.

“Come on and open the door for me. It’s your superintendent. I want to make sure you’re OK,” she said during one of her visits, shown on a video posted on social media.

Under the initiative, she said, her team has knocked on more than 600 doors in areas of Memphis with the most no-shows. The goal is to help families reconnect with their schools so their children are back in class.

Woods praised Feagins for knocking on doors, but reminded the community that “it’s everybody’s job” to get kids in school.

“Continue to lean in on friends, folks in churches. Somebody know where these kids are, right?” he said.

Board member Kevin Woods listens during a Memphis-Shelby County Schools board meeting on Oct. 24, 2023. Woods, who has served on the board since 2011, leaves his elected office this month.

Feagins’ presentation also showed an increase of more than 1,100 pre-K students over this time last year.

Charter school enrollment as of Tuesday was 19,624, nearly 900 students more than this time last year.

She reported that average daily attendance is 95% so far this year. But the district has historically struggled with chronic absenteeism, defined as a student who misses 10% or more instructional days in one school year, or about 18 days.

In the 2022-23 academic year, according to the most recent data released by the state, the Memphis district’s chronic absenteeism rate was 28%, equating to nearly 29,000 students.

That means significantly less learning time.

Research suggests that chronic absenteeism puts students at greater risk of negative outcomes that include dropping out or developing poorer reading skills.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis school board approves 2 charter applications, denies 1

2024-07-31T02:27:50+00:00

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An all-girls charter school proposed for downtown Memphis and supported by the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies’ foundation can open for the 2025-26 school year, as can a K-8 charter school planned for Northeast Memphis.

But one other application from a newly rebranded charter operator didn’t fare so well with Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

The school board on Tuesday followed the recommendation of district staff and approved the application by Grizzlies Prep, which already operates an all-boys charter school downtown for 300 students in grades six through eight.

The Memphis Grizzlies Preparatory STEAM School for Girls will focus on science, technology, engineering, art, and math to try to address the underrepresentation of women — and particularly women of color — in those fields. It’s on track to become the city’s second all-girls charter school and the third one in Tennessee.

Without comment, the board ignored staff’s recommendation to reject the application of Journey Community Schools, formerly known as Aspire. The 5-1 vote means Journey Northeast Academy can open in the city’s Sycamore View area.

However, the board sided with staff by denying the bid of Green Dot Public Schools, which recently rebranded as IOTA Community Schools, to continue operating Wooddale Middle as it transitions back to Memphis-Shelby County Schools from the Achievement School District, a state-run turnaround program for low-performing schools.

IOTA has 10 days to appeal the decision to the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission.

If the decision stands, IOTA has one more year to operate Wooddale Middle. Superintendent Marie Feagins promised a “deep review” of how to strengthen the school.

It was an especially busy meeting for school board members ahead of Thursday’s elections to fill five of their nine seats — and the first day of school for Memphis students on Aug. 5.

Without discussion, the board voted to end its contract with the University of Memphis to run its Campus Schools program in partnership with the district. That paves the way for the university to form its own K-12 school system under a new state law that encourages the creation of innovative school districts.

The contract had been for the university to operate its three K-12 schools on the university’s campus through 2026. But the board opted to end that long partnership at the urging of several state lawmakers.

Backers say the new arrangement positions the program to open more university-run K-12 schools in Greater Memphis and leverage an academic model that has generated some of the best results in Tennessee.

Feasibility studies and community conversations are already under way to determine an expansion plan.

The board also approved plans to return two additional schools to Memphis-Shelby County Schools from the beleaguered ASD.

Caldwell-Guthrie Elementary will rejoin its home district as a pre-K-8 school emphasizing STEAM skills. Among those enrolled will be students from Humes Middle School, another state-run school that closed at the end of last school year after a decade in the ASD. It had a hundred-year track record of serving Memphis students, including a young Elvis Presley who graduated when it was Humes High School.

Another ASD campus, Florida Kansas, which previously was operated by Memphis Scholars under a charter agreement with the state, will return to the MSCS district but no longer educate students. Its enrollees are moving to Riverview K-8.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis’ iZone school turnaround program appears to be on the way out

2024-06-10T02:00:00+00:00

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A longtime turnaround program that supports the Memphis district’s lowest-performing schools appears to be winding down, and it’s not yet clear what will replace it.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools’ Innovation Zone, known as the iZone, will no longer offer schools an extended hour of instructional time each day, Superintendent Marie Feagins recently told staff. The reduction in hours is likely to end the additional compensation teachers in those schools received for their time. That would remove two key pillars of a program that received national attention in its early years for outpacing efforts of the state-run school takeover model, the Achievement School District.

Some of those gains stalled as the Memphis program expanded — and as it struggled to maintain funding — illustrating the challenges of improving multiple chronically low-performing schools.

The changes at MSCS coincide with an upheaval in Tennessee’s school turnaround efforts, leaving major questions about how the lowest performing schools will be prioritized. Tennessee was once considered a turnaround pioneer, thanks in part to a $500 million award in 2010 from the federal Race to the Top competition to implement various education reforms.

But a new hire in Memphis, announced late Friday, suggests new plans for improvement could be on the way after all. Feagins selected Roderick Richmond, a career education administrator in Memphis, to oversee the district’s lowest performing schools.

She recently laid out her plans to reorganize the district’s schools into three new categories based on their state letter grades, which were assigned to schools for the first time last fall under a new formula that stresses achievement more than growth.

In recent years, Memphis' iZone program has absorbed returning schools from the Achievement School District, the state-run turnaround district.

Richmond, an architect of the iZone, will take on D and F schools in his new role as Transformation Officer. The schools are now in the “Supe” category, short for superintendent. Schools with C grades will be called “Ignite” schools, and A and B schools will be called “Soar” schools. The categories could help determine how resources are allocated to schools and offer what Feagins says will be more appealing labels than letter grades.

“It’s tough when your school has been branded and labeled as an ‘F,’” Feagins told board members during a May meeting.

While the district’s budget proposals have suggested additional staff will be available to the Supe schools, they haven’t been specific about how the offerings will compare with existing iZone resources.

The Supe category comprises more than 70 schools, Feagins said, or about double the iZone’s current 36 schools.

The iZone started out with just eight schools, and by 2019, it had grown to 23. At that time, researchers found that gains for the iZone and the ASD had stalled, and pointed to high teacher turnover and the struggle to recruit top teachers as replacements as possible challenges. The model wasn’t necessarily unsuccessful, the researchers said, but they raised concerns about being able to replicate its features at a large scale.

Even so, in recent years, the iZone has continued growing, absorbing schools that languished in the state’s ASD. At least one of those schools, Whitney Elementary, has since moved off of the list of the state’s lowest performing schools since returning to the district. More ASD schools and students are coming back to MSCS as the state takeover district continues to unwind.

Reflecting on Tennessee’s turnaround programs in 2021, Richmond told Chalkbeat that more collaboration among communities, the district, and the state could have improved outcomes for struggling schools.

Schools have struggled to add learning time after COVID. Here’s how one district did it.

It isn’t clear what Feagins believes any new turnaround model should include. Asked by Chalkbeat if removing the extra hour of instruction would effectively end the so-called iZone program, Feagins struggled to respond.

Tito Langston, the district’s chief financial officer, said at the time that MSCS will continue to receive the federal funds it receives for its lowest-performing schools. But those funds are disbursed based on a federal accountability system that separated from the state’s system when Tennessee leaders revamped the letter grade formula. That means that not all D and F “Supe” schools will have access to additional federal dollars.

The district did not respond to questions seeking clarification in time for the publication of this story.

Changes for the upcoming academic year are expected to be final once the school board votes on its budget later this month. The meeting has yet to be scheduled. Look to the school board’s website for a date.

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Where Tennessee lawmakers landed on vouchers, guns, AI, and other education issues in 2024

2024-04-29T10:00:00+00:00

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Tennessee’s legislature is done for the year after a session marked by political infighting over private school vouchers and emotional debates about whether teachers and staff should be able to carry a gun in public schools.

The statewide voucher proposal fizzled after the Senate and House couldn’t agree on the specifics. Gov. Bill Lee quickly pledged to come back next year with another plan.

The bill to arm some school employees easily passed, defying dramatic protests at the state Capitol, a year after a Nashville school shooting in which three children, three adults, and the intruder were killed.

“This was a session of good, bad, and ugly,” Senate Minority Leader Raumesh Akbari said after the legislature adjourned on Thursday.

“Unfortunately, some really really bad bills ended up passing,” the Memphis Democrat added.

Republican leaders hailed the four-month session as a success.

“We accomplished things that will benefit the people of this state,” the governor told reporters minutes after the gavel fell.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee speaks with reporters at the close of the 2024 legislative session on April 25. He's flanked by the General Assembly's Republican leaders.

He cited the passage of a “historically important budget” that includes a consolation prize of $144 million for his Education Freedom Scholarship Act, in case it passes in future years. The failed voucher proposal seeks to give taxpayer money to any family who wants to send their children to private schools, regardless of their income.

“That shows a clear intent that we believe in this concept and that we expect that to get done next year,” Lee said.

By the end of the week, the governor had signed the bill to let some school employees carry guns, which took effect immediately.

The new law marks the biggest expansion of gun access in Tennessee since the killings at The Covenant School. Last year, the legislature appropriated $140 million to help place an armed officer in every public school, but many districts, especially in rural areas, haven’t been able to hire an officer for every campus.

“Districts have the option to choose,” Lee said earlier, arguing that some school systems need to let some employees carry a concealed handgun.

Protesters stage a "die-in" on the rotunda floor at the Tennessee State Capitol outside of the House chambers on April 23, 2024, after state lawmakers passed a bill to let certain teachers and school staff carry handguns in schools.

Legislation at the intersection of schools and guns

Lawmakers sorted through some 230-plus education bills filed in time for this year’s session — about 300 if you count those left over from last year in the two-year General Assembly. They ultimately passed about 70 that directly affect K-12 education.

For the second straight year, they made tweaks to a 2021 reading and retention law to address what many called unintended effects for students in grades three and four. Under a compromise approved on the last day of session, parents and educators of fourth graders will now have input on whether their students get held back because of low reading scores on state tests.

The legislature rejected tighter gun laws sought by Democrats and gun control advocates, and continued instead to pass legislation aimed at fortifying campuses. Among the initiatives: new school fire alarm protocols to take into account active-shooter situations; a pilot program to give teachers wearable alarms; increased safety training for school bus drivers; and guidelines to digitize school maps so first responders can access school layouts quickly in an emergency.

A rare bipartisan bill increases the penalty for anyone who threatens to commit an act of mass violence on school property or at a school-related activity.

Another measure, which Lee has signed into law, requires public schools to teach children age-appropriate firearms safety concepts as early as pre-kindergarten. The video-based training is to begin in the 2025-26 school year and, among other things, will instruct students who find a firearm that they shouldn’t touch it and should notify an adult immediately. The bill bars parents from opting their children out of the training.

So-called culture war issues played prominently again

One new law requires public school students to watch a video on fetal development produced by an anti-abortion group, or something comparable. Another measure will require public school employees to out transgender students to their parents. But a bill designed to ban LGBTQ+ flags in schools failed in the Senate amid concerns of a legal challenge based on First Amendment rights.

Tennessee’s age-appropriate materials law, championed by Lee in 2022 to cull certain titles from school libraries, now includes a definition of “suitable” materials for certain ages and maturity levels. And if a local school board doesn’t address a book complaint within 60 days, the complainant can now take the issue straight to the state textbook commission.

Another GOP bill that passed seeks to make sure that material related to “sexual activity” is excluded from the state’s mandatory family life curriculum for students in kindergarten through the fifth grade.

Meanwhile, legislation sponsored by Democrats directs the state education department to develop a program that public schools can use to teach students the skills of nonviolent conflict resolution.

Lawmakers exit the House of Representatives at the Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville on April 25 after adjourning their two-year session.

Social media and technology also were on the minds of lawmakers.

They signed off on legislation requiring minors to have parental consent to create social media accounts.

In addition, school districts, charter schools, and higher-education institutions must develop and implement their own policies on the use of artificial intelligence in the classroom, if they haven’t already done so. Those policies could include restricting or outright prohibiting the use of AI.

Amid that discussion, one bill requires that Tennessee history be taught in fifth grade. Having that issue codified in state law settles, for now, a debate that erupts whenever the state revises its academic standards for social studies.

Memphis was the focus of more legislation

Rep. Mark White and Sen. Brent Taylor, both Memphis Republicans, drafted several proposals aimed at education in their community.

The legislature passed one bill allowing the University of Memphis to create its own K-12 school district and expand its innovative University Schools model beyond campus borders. University officials said they’ll launch the district this fall, even as they’re still in talks with Memphis-Shelby County Schools about their contract that runs through fall 2026.

Another proposal — giving the governor the power to appoint up to six new members to the board of Memphis-Shelby County Schools — was never heard in committees after White agreed to hold off and work with the existing board and the district’s new superintendent, Marie Feagins, on an improvement plan.

Rep. Antonio Parkinson D-Memphis, has sought for years to shut down the Achievement School District.

A Democratic-sponsored proposal to end the Tennessee Achievement School District, the state’s sputtering takeover and turnaround initiative, passed out of the Senate but not the House. Rep. Antonio Parkinson, the sponsor there, pulled the legislation on the last day of session when White sought to amend the bill. Still, the ASD continues to shrink on its own as its 10-year contracts with charter operators end.

An effort to expand a separate pilot school turnaround project — which started in 2021 in Memphis, Nashville, and Chattanooga — failed to clear budget committees.

Lawmakers passed House Speaker Cameron Sexton’s charter school proposal to create new alternative education options for Tennessee’s at-risk youth. The plan opens the door to residential charter schools, a concern of disability advocates who warned against any measure that could lead to the institutionalization of youth or commingling distinct student populations facing varying issues such as substance abuse, juvenile crime, chronic absenteeism, and teen pregnancy.

Sexton trumpeted his and other charter school legislation headed to the governor’s desk. One bill rewrites state law governing vacant and underutilized public school properties to give charter operators the “right of first refusal” to purchase those public assets.

“This session did more than it’s ever done in our history to continue to put (charter schools) on a path to give parents the choice and alternative to traditional schools,” Sexton said.

A tighter budget meant fewer education initiatives

Passing a budget for state government is the legislature’s only required constitutional duty, and the task was more challenging this year as tax revenues flattened and federal COVID relief funding ended.

Still, Republican lawmakers approved a $1.9 billion package of tax cuts and refunds to corporations and businesses.

Representatives on the floor of the Tennessee House in 2022

They ultimately approved a nearly $53 billion spending plan that allocates an additional $126 million to raise the annual minimum salary for public school teachers from $42,000 to $44,500. The goal is to get to $50,000 by the 2026-27 school year.

Also included is $8 million to hire more school-based behavioral health specialists amid record reports of students experiencing stress, depression, anxiety, and other mental health challenges exacerbated by the pandemic. Another $15 million in non-recurring funds will help charter school operators pay for school facilities and maintenance.

But the legislature killed efforts to hire more school-based nurses and counselors, reimburse teachers for some of their child care expenses, and provide free feminine hygiene products in high schools, as well as separate proposals by a Democrat and a Republican to make school meals free for all students. It also said no to a bill to use tax revenue from Tennessee’s growing sports betting industry to offer child care scholarships to low- and middle-income families.

When the 114th General Assembly convenes next year, it will look somewhat different after this year’s elections. All seats of the 99-member House of Representatives and half of the Senate’s 33 seats will be on the ballot.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis’ Humes school, Elvis Presley’s alma mater, is closing after yearslong turnaround attempt

2024-04-16T22:16:54+00:00

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Humes Middle School in North Memphis will close at the end of this school year as it returns to the Memphis Shelby-County district’s control after a decade in Tennessee’s failed turnaround district for low-performing schools.

The last-minute decision to shutter the nearly 100-year-old building, where a young Elvis Presley attended high school, is a change in plans since the fall, when teachers were told the school would stay open, said Bobby White, head of Frayser Community Schools, the charter company that runs Humes for the state’s Achievement School District.

“I just wish it had been sooner,” White said of the decision.

The school has long struggled with low enrollment. Students will be rezoned to Booker T. Washington, a grade 6-12 school 3 miles away in South Memphis, according to Memphis-Shelby County Schools documents.

The decision, shared with families and staff in recent days, happened with little to no public discussion in the community or by the school board. And the prospect of students having to shift to a faraway school has some education leaders concerned.

White and district leaders have known for years that they would need a plan for Humes’ students and the building. Schools like Humes that are taken over by the state typically spend a maximum of 10 years in the ASD.

Students set to attend Humes Middle School will be rezoned to Booker T. Washington, a school for grades 6-12 in South Memphis, about 3 miles away.

Humes is one of five Memphis schools that are reaching the end of their 10-year term this summer. Of the other four, one will remain open and operated by MSCS, one received approval to operate under another state-run charter district, and one will continue to operate as a charter school under MSCS.

The fourth, MLK College Prep High School, operated by the Frayser charter network, is also set to close in its current building, but families have received more regular communication from the Memphis district about the changes there. MLK is set to merge with Trezevant High in the fall while a new neighborhood high school is built.

Meanwhile, the Humes community has been waiting for clarity. Last summer, the Memphis district rejected White’s application to continue running the school under Frayser Community Schools.

“When you’re dealing with poor, marginalized folks,” White said, “you respect them enough to communicate with them as soon as possible, and think through things in a way where they’re going to be valued and respected, where you’re doing right by them.”

For Humes, conversations changed after the district faced renewed concerns about the physical condition of the building, which turns 100 years old next year. When another charter school inquired about leasing the building during a January board meeting, then interim Superintendent Toni Williams said the building had “major issues.”

Around that time, Chalkbeat reported that a draft plan for all district schools suggested that Humes would close. Still, the district hadn’t communicated any new plans to Humes teachers and families since an earlier fall meeting, said White.

MSCS did not respond to Chalkbeat’s inquiries in time for the publication of this story. During a meeting with board members Tuesday, Superintendent Marie Feagins said the district reviewed several factors including the capacity of the buildings. Feagins, who became district leader on April 1, told board members she was under the impression the news about Humes had already been shared.

Elvis Presley is a graduate of Humes, which was once operated as a high school. The building, which is nearly 100 years old, is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The building is on the National Register of Historic Places because of Presley, who graduated in 1953 from Humes when it was a high school.

But enrollment at Humes has remained low since even before it was taken over by the state. It can serve more than 1,300 students, but only 193 are enrolled. A previous charter operator, Gestalt Community Schools, also struggled with low enrollment at Humes.

White says the district’s plans to send students from Humes’ zone out of the neighborhood for middle school could result in lower enrollment at Manassas High School in North Memphis.

Memphis board members Stephanie Love, who has kept a focus on schools in the turnaround district, and Michelle McKissack, whose district includes Humes, Manassas, and Booker T. Washington, both said the board should revisit the district’s policy on school zoning.

“The culture in South Memphis and North Memphis is not the same,” Love said, adding that she understands why families and teachers could be upset by the last-minute closure.

The district and board face more decisions about remaining Memphis schools in the ASD, as their charters expire in the next two years. The takeover district itself could wind down, too.

In a letter to parents, Feagins suggested that they consider Cummings K-8 Optional School and Grandview Heights Middle School as alternatives to Booker T. Washington. White said some of the students have considered nearby charter school options as well, including KIPP Collegiate Middle or Frayser Community Schools’ Westside Middle.

The district is holding online meetings for family members on April 17 at 12:30 p.m. and 5 p.m. A community meeting will be held at 6 p.m. at the Porter Leath location at 628 Alice Avenue.

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee Senate passes bill to do away with the Achievement School District

2024-04-02T00:27:56+00:00

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A proposal to shift low-performing schools from Tennessee’s sputtering takeover and turnaround district to other state-approved but locally managed intervention models passed unanimously Monday in the full Senate.

The bill, which is awaiting action in the full House, seeks to phase out the Achievement School District, the state’s most ambitious and aggressive school improvement model, by the end of 2025-26 school year.

It also would strip the state education commissioner’s authority to take over neighborhood schools that are performing academically in the bottom 5%. Under the ASD, the state typically assigned those schools to charter operators to run.

In place of the ASD, the bill would create a school improvement model designed to foster more collaboration between the local district and the state education department.

Tennessee’s education chief would have authority to direct a local district to choose from three turnaround approaches — under a charter operator, a public university, or an independent turnaround expert — for each of its low-performing “priority” schools.

The turnaround work would be locally managed, but with state oversight. For starters, the state would have to approve local districts’ turnaround choices.

“The ASD has not worked for some time, which we can all agree (on),” said Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Memphis Democrat who is co-sponsoring the legislation with Rep. Antonio Parkinson, also of Memphis.

“This will put the control back in the hands of the locals,” she said on the Senate floor.

The bill is one of several legislative proposals seeking to address the failures of the ASD, created under a 2010 state law as part of a package that helped Tennessee win a $500 million federal grant in the Race to the Top competition.

Parkinson’s companion bill has similar goals.

Meanwhile, GOP leaders in the House are pressing for a massive private-school voucher bill that includes a provision to phase out the ASD on July 1, 2026.

All three measures advanced this year after several top Republicans in the GOP-controlled legislature acknowledged that the state-run district isn’t working and should be replaced.

Not only did removing struggling schools from local governance fail to improve student outcomes, but most ASD schools also performed no better than low-performing schools that received no intervention, according to researchers. Among the challenges, the state-run district struggled with high teacher turnover and significant community backlash, especially in Memphis, which became the hub of the ASD’s work.

The ASD, which had a peak of 33 schools in 2016, continues to shrink, especially since 2022, as schools began to complete their prescribed 10 years under the model. Currently, 13 schools are left in its portfolio, the last of which will complete their charter contracts at the end of 2025-26 school year.

“We’ve got to do something different,” Akbari said before Monday’s vote. “This bill would create a partnership between the local district and the state education department to make sure priority schools are receiving meaningful interventions that give it a chance for turnaround.”

How much those interventions might cost is unknown. School turnaround work is expensive, but the legislature’s fiscal analysts said the cost will depend on which turnaround methods and contractors are used for the work.

Akbari and Parkinson have been working with the education department to develop a new school turnaround strategy that doesn’t include the heavy-handed takeover tactics that put the ASD at odds with the districts that previously ran the schools, and their communities.

They also want to keep Tennessee in compliance with the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, which requires each state to have a rigorous improvement plan for schools that are struggling the most.

Some details of Akbari and Parkinson’s companion bills differ. For example, Akbari’s proposal could apply to any of the state’s approximately 95 priority schools, at the direction of Tennessee’s education commissioner.

Parkinson wants to create a hub of school improvement tools for any Tennessee public school to access, no matter how much it falls short or in what area. He wants to avoid adding negative labels to schools beyond existing state or federal designations that are based on their overall achievement, or the achievement gaps among certain student groups.

“You kill the esteem of the school, the teachers, the students, parents, when you label a school as being part of the ASD, or whatever you want to call it,” Parkinson said. “The fact that our state already gives priority designations to schools is enough.”

Even so, Parkinson said his and Akbari’s proposals “aren’t that far apart,” especially on the most important issues.

“There will be no state takeover under either version,” he said. “That’s been a dismal failure for our state. In the process, we’ve wasted over a billion and a half taxpayer dollars. And we’ve fallen short when it comes to some precious years in the lives of ASD students.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee lawmakers are increasingly ready to ditch the Achievement School District. What’s next?

2024-02-23T11:00:00+00:00

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After a decade of painful takeovers of neighborhood schools, contentious handoffs to charter networks, and mostly abysmal student performance, Tennessee’s Achievement School District appears to be on its way out.

Several of the GOP-controlled legislature’s top Republicans are acknowledging that the state’s most ambitious and aggressive school turnaround model has failed — and should be replaced eventually with a more effective approach.

Meanwhile, Democrats continue to push for legislation designed to end the so-called ASD, created under a 2010 state law aimed, in part, at transforming low-performing schools.

“I expect we will move in a different direction,” Sen. Bo Watson, the powerful chairman of his chamber’s finance committee, recently told reporters.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Bo Watson

The Hixson Republican called the charter-centric school turnaround model an “innovative” idea that fell flat, at least in Tennessee. It would be foolish, Watson added, to keep spending money on an initiative that isn’t working and already has cost the state more than $1 billion — a sentiment echoed by Lt. Gov. Randy McNally and House Speaker Cameron Sexton.

But if the legislature decides to shutter the ASD and Gov. Bill Lee signs off, important questions remain about how Tennessee will support thousands of students in its lowest-performing schools.

How quickly will the shutdown occur?
What will happen to ASD school communities? Currently, the district serves 4,600 students in 12 schools in Memphis and one in Nashville.
Will the state honor remaining contracts with charter operators, the last of which end in 2026?
What statewide improvement strategy will replace the ASD for schools in the state’s bottom 5%? Ninety-five schools currently fall in that category and many have undergone a variety of interventions, with limited success.
And will the U.S. Department of Education approve the change as part of Tennessee’s plan for complying with the 2015 U.S. law known as the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA?

In order to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in federal education funding to support Tennessee students and schools, the state is required to have a rigorous improvement plan for schools that are struggling the most. Since Tennessee’s ESSA plan was approved in 2017, the ASD has served that purpose.

The turnaround district “serves as our most intensive intervention for priority schools,” declares the 401-page plan, the state’s guiding document for K-12 accountability policies. It also commits Tennessee to making school turnaround a priority.

“Students can’t wait,” the plan says. “Schools that have been historically underperforming and are not showing adequate growth must have state intervention.”

Brian Blackley, a spokesperson for the state education department, said scrapping the ASD would require two things: a change in state law and an amendment to Tennessee’s ESSA plan.

If the legislature changes the law, ESSA revisions are doable, according to a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Education.

“Tennessee has the ability to make changes to the design and structure of its local educational agencies, including the Achievement School District, without first seeking approval from the U.S. Department of Education,” the spokesperson told Chalkbeat.

That said, because the ASD is central to Tennessee’s federal accountability plan, the state would have to submit an amendment to the federal government, and “the department will work with the state as needed,” the spokesperson said.

The process likely would take months, since a period of public engagement on potential changes is required.

ASD brought high hopes, hard lessons

While the ASD’s demise has been looming, its birth was filled with hope when Tennessee passed the First to the Top Act, a sweeping education reform package that was the cornerstone of its winning federal Race to the Top grant application.

Taking cues from the successful turnaround of schools in New Orleans and using tens of millions of federal dollars to pay for the rollout, Tennessee’s new law created a state-run district with the power to take over struggling schools and recruit charter management organizations to run them, giving those operators autonomy to design and implement plans for curriculum, instruction, and school leadership. KIPP and Green Dot Public Schools were among national networks that signed on, and the model inspired several local charter groups to form and join the work.

Unlike incremental academic gains associated with school improvement, school turnaround calls for dramatic gains in a short period of time. Founding ASD leaders set an extraordinarily ambitious goal: to move those schools from the bottom 5% to the top 25% of performers within five years.

But the large academic gains never came.

Removing schools from local governance didn’t improve student outcomes. In fact, most ASD schools performed no better than low-performing schools receiving no intervention, according to researchers.

High teacher turnover was a constant challenge, and it became increasingly hard to recruit high-quality charter networks to do school turnaround work.

Community backlash was also significant, especially in Memphis, which became the hub of the ASD’s work and has a long history of charged racial dynamics. ASD critics viewed the takeover of neighborhood schools — and introduction of charter operators who often came from out of state — as another example of racism and reckless social engineering.

The level of poverty in Memphis was another major challenge.

“I think that the depth of the generational poverty and what our kids bring into school every day makes it even harder than we initially expected,” founding superintendent Chris Barbic told Chalkbeat in a 2015 interview. “We underestimated that.”

Chris Barbic, a former charter school leader in Texas, was the founding superintendent of Tennessee's Achievement School District.

The ASD has been shrinking for awhile

The state-run district had a peak of 33 schools after taking control of its last four campuses in Memphis in 2016.

While there’s been no official decision on its future from lawmakers or new recommendations from Lee’s administration, the ASD has been unwinding on its own, especially since 2022, as schools began to complete 10 years under the model.

Originally, the state promised to return ASD schools to their home districts in better shape than when they left. But that policy changed over time, and now there are multiple ways to exit, and even remain a charter school, depending on academic performance.

Some non-charter ASD schools began returning to Memphis-Shelby County Schools, while three charter schools pivoted to the oversight of the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission, another state-run entity, after showing enough improvement to exit on their own. The Memphis district also regained control of a charter school and placed the campus in its own turnaround program known as the Innovation Zone, an initiative created in part to keep the ASD from taking over more schools.

As for remaining ASD campuses, the charter contracts for operators of seven schools are scheduled to expire this summer; two schools after the 2024-25 school year; and four schools at the conclusion of the 2025-26 school year.

But the pandemic complicated an already complex exit process by disrupting state testing. ASD leadership also turned over frequently and downsized staff in the summer of 2022. The chaotic unwinding has put thousands of students, families, and school staff in limbo.

Of the contracts expiring this year, for instance, only two charter schools are set to continue operating in Memphis. Journey Coleman will stay with Journey Community Schools through a new agreement with the Memphis district, while Cornerstone Lester Prep will continue to be run by Capstone Education Group through the state-run charter school commission.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools plans to close MLK College Prep High School, currently run by Frayser Community Schools, and those students are still deciding where they’ll attend school in the fall.

Fairley High School, which lost its bid to remain with Green Dot Public Schools, is expected to return to MSCS oversight. Green Dot has other schools still in the ASD, and the network’s executive director in Tennessee, Jocquell Rodgers, expects their charter contracts will be honored.

“Has it been emotional? Absolutely,” Rodgers said of the lengthy unraveling.

School turnaround work is a difficult and time-intensive process that requires constant engagement with families and the community, Rodgers said. Ideally, there should be collaboration with the local district, she added.

“It is extremely important to bring something to people that they really want, but at the same time, really help them understand what they need,” Rodgers said.

If not the ASD, then what?

Tennessee has doggedly stuck with the ASD, even as its performance has been mostly lackluster.

But January’s abrupt departure of Bren Elliott, Tennessee’s first statewide turnaround superintendent who was hired last August after a three-year search, cast doubts about the future of the state’s school improvement work, especially regarding its most intense intervention tool.

And GOP leaders such as Sexton, the speaker of the House, fueled speculation by hinting that a mechanism for closing the ASD could be part of upcoming legislation for creating a new statewide school voucher program.

There’s little consensus, however, on a replacement strategy for supporting struggling school communities — a requirement under federal ESSA law.

RELATED: School turnaround lessons from Memphis zero in on the need for collaboration at all levels

Rep. Antonio Parkinson and Sen. Raumesh Akbari, both Memphis Democrats, have proposed legislation to prevent the state-run district from taking over more low-performing schools. Instead, the ASD would become a resource hub for school improvement work across Tennessee.

Rep. Antonio Parkinson has been one of the ASD's most vocal critics.

But the measure, which has cleared two key House committees, may not meet ESSA’s standard for a comprehensive school turnaround strategy. Akbari said this week that she’s working on changes before introducing their proposal in Senate committees.

Sen. Ferrell Haile, a Republican from Gallatin, has pointed to Tennessee’s small school turnaround pilot project, approved by the legislature in 2021, as one possibility. Two private vendors, Georgia-based Cognia and Ed Direction of Salt Lake City, Utah, are working with two schools in Memphis, two in Nashville, and one in Chattanooga, as part of the five-year initiative.

But it’s uncertain whether that program can scale statewide. And while four of the schools have shown promise, Hamilton County lawmakers say it hasn’t gone well in Chattanooga. They are shepherding a bill to pull Orchard Knob Middle School before the pilot ends in 2025.

Tennessee Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds, who has the authority to take over more schools and place them in the ASD under current law, has not commented publicly about the district’s future, or a potential new strategy.

If the legislature lets the state-run district run its course through the 2025-26 school year, when charter contracts expire for its last four schools, her department would have more time to develop a plan. The agency would then work with the U.S. Education Department to revise Tennessee’s ESSA plan accordingly.

One important step, according to federal ESSA guidance, is to give the public opportunity to comment on the proposed revision. And educators who are doing turnaround work hope state leaders will take their observations to heart.

Bob Nardo was an early ASD staff member who left to operate Libertas School of Memphis, one of the state-run district’s few success stories.

Just because the ASD didn’t work, he said, doesn’t mean the state should walk away from trying to address persistent challenges that led to its creation. Nardo believes one question should be central to discussions when developing a new plan.

“Are the most vulnerable and at-risk children in our society getting the best opportunity to transform their lives?”

Nardo worries the state could shift to piecemeal interventions, such as grant programs aimed at small-scale improvements, that wouldn’t be as effective as a comprehensive, schoolwide turnaround strategy.

“We have to confront the paradox here that this is both a critically needed and indispensable type of work,” Nardo said, “with the sobering reality that most efforts have not been successful” in Tennessee and across the country.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach her at ltestino@chalkbeat.org.

Future of Tennessee school turnaround work uncertain with departure of first statewide leader

2024-01-31T00:17:47+00:00

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Six months after Tennessee hired its first leader to manage school improvement work statewide, the position is now vacant.

On Tuesday, the state education department confirmed the departure of school turnaround superintendent Bren Elliott, one of Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds’ first major hires. A spokesperson for the agency declined to comment further or answer questions about whether the vacancy will be filled.

When Elliott stepped into the powerful new position, which took multiple searches across three years to fill, she was tasked with overseeing school improvement work in hundreds of schools in urban, suburban, and rural districts as well as Tennessee’s high-profile Achievement School District, or ASD.

Her abrupt departure raises questions about the future of school improvement work in a state that was once considered a turnaround pioneer, thanks in part to a $500 million award in 2010 from the federal Race to the Top competition to implement various education reforms.

The ASD, the state’s most intensive intervention model, was launched in 2012 using mostly charter school operators, and its lackluster performance has dimmed Tennessee’s star considerably in school turnaround circles.

Elliott’s hiring, announced last August, had been viewed as a way to jumpstart the work.

Elliott had been the school improvement chief for District of Columbia Public Schools since 2017. She also worked as a school administrator in Nashville from 2001 to 2007.

In her new job, chief among Elliott’s responsibilities was overseeing the ASD, which at one time had more than 30 schools in its portfolio but has since dwindled to 13 campuses and 4,600 students, mostly in Memphis.

State officials informed ASD operators last week that Elliott was leaving and that Shannon Gordon, the department’s chief operating officer, will assume her responsibilities.

“They did not say anything about … reposting that same position by that name,” said Brett Lawson, executive director of Frayer Community Schools, a Memphis-based charter operator with three ASD schools.

Drew Sippel, chief executive officer of longtime ASD operator Capstone Education Group, was also on the call.

“[Gordon] took all the operators’ questions and committed to giving schools the support and resources needed to be successful,” he said.

Elliott also was responsible for supervising interventions for all of the state’s so-called priority schools — those that score in the state’s bottom 5% academically — as well as schools needing targeted support due large gaps in test scores among groups of historically underserved students, such as English language learners, students with disabilities, or those from low-income families. That encompasses nearly 300 schools.

ASD is at a crossroads

Rep. Antonio Parkinson, a Democrat from Memphis, said Tuesday that Elliott’s swift departure highlights “disarray” in the education department, especially regarding its oversight of the ASD.

Most ASD schools have performed no better than low-performing schools receiving no intervention, according to researchers.

“It’s incredibly alarming given that we’ve invested over a billion taxpayer dollars in a failed experiment,” he said. “We’ve had superintendent after superintendent after superintendent of the ASD. And yet, it has the highest teacher turnover rate and the lowest graduation rate of any district in our state.”

Last year, Parkinson sponsored a bill that would prevent the state-run district from taking over more low-performing schools. Instead, under his legislation that cleared two House education committees, the state would turn the initiative into a resource hub for school improvement work across Tennessee.

Parkinson said he hopes Elliott’s departure will garner more legislative support for his bill, which is co-sponsored by Sen. Raumesh Akbari, also of Memphis.

“What we’re doing now just isn’t working,” he said.

Rep. Mark White, a Memphis Republican who chairs a House education committee, declined to comment when asked about the personnel change and the future of Tennessee’s school improvement work. He said he wanted to confer with agency officials first.

The ASD hasn’t taken over new schools since 2016. Meanwhile, the district is expected to shrink by half later this year as schools reach the end of their 10-year charter agreements and either exit the ASD or close.

There have been at least five ASD superintendents in a decade. The district’s lack of steady leadership has complicated the complex exit process, creating uncertainty for students, staff, and families in ASD schools in Memphis and Nashville.

Another issue is whether or how the state-run district will grow in the future.

State law gives Reynolds, as education commissioner, the authority to identify schools for takeover and place them in the ASD. But since starting her job last July, Reynolds has not publicly discussed her plans for the turnaround district.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach her at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee hires leader to jump-start school turnaround efforts statewide

2023-09-01T01:00:09+00:00

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Tennessee has appointed a school improvement leader to manage all of its school turnaround work under a powerful new position that will touch urban, suburban, and rural districts.

Bren Elliott, who was a Nashville school administrator from 2001 to 2007 and has been school improvement chief for District of Columbia Public Schools since 2017, will begin her job as state turnaround superintendent on Tuesday.

The Tennessee Department of Education announced Elliott’s hire on Thursday, three years after launching its first search to fill the job. The position is considered key to jump-starting school improvement work in Tennessee, which has helped pioneer several turnaround models with limited success.

Bren Elliott, Tennessee’s new school turnaround leader, returns to the state from Washington, D.C., where she was a school improvement leader. Elliott has previously been a teacher, principal and administrator in Nashville.

She is among the first major hires for Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds, who started her job on July 1 with an early focus on school accountability.

Elliott’s experience in school improvement “will be an asset to the state and provide intentional support to these schools to ensure all students receive a high-quality education,” Reynolds said in a statement.

Chief among Elliott’s new responsibilities will be overseeing the Achievement School District, the state’s most aggressive lever for improving low-performing schools. The state-run district, which takes over schools and assigns them mostly to charter operators to manage, has itself struggled, with little to show so far for its turnaround efforts over the past decade.

Elliott also will be responsible for supervising interventions for all 95 of the state’s so-called priority schools — those that score academically in the bottom 5% — as well as schools that need targeted support due to large achievement gaps among groups of historically underserved students such as English language learners, students with disabilities, or those from low-income families.

In all, nearly 300 Tennessee schools fall in those categories.

She will also work closely with local leaders of district-level turnaround initiatives, from the Innovation Zone in Memphis and Nashville to the Partnership Network in Chattanooga.

“I look forward to working with our schools most in need of support and intervention, including the Achievement School District, to improve student achievement and help all students in these schools succeed,” said Elliott.

Turnaround efforts are at a crossroads

For many local school improvement leaders, the education department’s naming of a statewide turnaround chief came as a surprise. Under Gov. Bill Lee, the department launched multiple searches to fill the job, even naming three finalists in 2021. But those searches stalled due to the pandemic, budget issues, and uncertainties about what direction the state wanted to take its turnaround work.

Victoria Robinson, the department’s spokeswoman, said making the hire was a priority for Reynolds.

“Dr. Elliott was identified several months ago as a potential candidate, and since that time has completed the interview, hiring and other processes with the state, including with Commissioner Reynolds and TDOE leadership,” Robinson said.

Reynolds has not said what she has planned for the ASD and other turnaround work. State law gives the commissioner the authority to identify schools for state takeover and place them in the ASD.

Under Reynolds’ predecessor, Penny Schwinn, the department unveiled a new vision for the ASD that would have had a “smaller footprint” and new takeovers, but none of the updates materialized.

The ASD, which launched in 2012, has been mostly a disappointment. Under charter management, its schools typically performed no better than low-performing schools receiving no intervention. As a result, Tennessee has not taken control of a neighborhood school since taking over four in Memphis in 2016.

Most of the ASD’s schools are Memphis, with a few in Nashville, but the district has shrunk by more than half to just over a dozen schools in recent years. A few have closed, some have returned to their local districts, and many that have shown the most improvement have moved under the oversight of a new state commission for public charter schools.

A lack of steady leadership in the ASD has complicated the complex exit process for schools once their charter contracts expire. The district’s last leader, Lisa Settle, departed in summer 2022. Since then, other staff with the education department have managed it.

Elliott has Tennessee ties

Elliott, who is a member of Chiefs for Change, an influential national education leadership network, is a native of North Carolina and no stranger to Tennessee.

She was a teacher and administrator in Nashville public schools for 15 years, and spent her last year at the district as a director focused on priority schools. She earned her master’s degree from Tennessee State University.

In 2020, Elliott lost a bid to become director of Metro Nashville Public Schools to Adrienne Battle, who was the interim leader at the time. This summer, Elliott was a superintendent finalist for Huntsville City Schools in Alabama, which also picked its interim leader instead.

Before joining the Washington, D.C., school district, she spent eight years as an administrator for two school districts in North Carolina, where she focused on support services for students in Wake and Guilford counties.

As the state’s overarching turnaround leader, Elliott also will work with local officials who manage district-run turnaround models.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools operates the Innovation Zone with funding assistance from the state. The so-called iZone gives its schools autonomy over curricular, financial, scheduling, and staffing decisions, similar to charter schools.

State officials also have worked closely with Hamilton County Schools’ Partnership Network, a model that seeks greater collaboration between the state and the local district.

But the ASD is the state’s most scrutinized turnaround program.

This spring, state Rep. Antonio Parkinson received bipartisan support for a bill that would revamp the state’s turnaround model and halt school takeovers altogether.

On Thursday, the Memphis Democrat said the department needs a school turnaround leader, whether his legislation passes or not next year.

“We need to be utilizing and putting our efforts and resources behind those practices that actually work,” Parkinson said, “and stop feeding millions and millions of dollars into the practices that didn’t work.”

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

More Memphis charter schools could face closure after state’s failed turnaround effort

2023-07-17T16:37:46+00:00

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Several of Memphis’ lowest performing schools face an uncertain future — and possible closure — as their charter agreements with Tennessee’s turnaround district near expiration.

Five of them, including MLK College Prep High School, are seeking approval to return to Memphis-Shelby County Schools as charter schools after a decade in the state-run Achievement School District. But MSCS officials have recommended denying their charter applications, along with bids from four proposed new charter schools.

If the MSCS board votes to accept the district’s recommendations and deny the charters when it meets Tuesday, it would leave some 2,000 students with high academic needs in limbo, unsure of where they’ll attend classes in the 2024-25 school year.

Another web of decisions would determine what happens next to those students, and to the schools. So far, neither the district nor the board has articulated a comprehensive strategy for dealing with the fallout of the ASD’s collapse.

“We should have talked about this two years ago, since we all knew it was coming,” said Bobby White, head of the charter company that runs MLK College Prep.

MSCS officials have said they talk to operators and tailor individual decisions because “each school in the ASD is unique.”

Nine charter schools want to open in MSCS

Memphis-Shelby County Schools officials have recommended that the school board reject nine charter schools that submitted amended applications in a second-round process.

Five are existing schools in the Achievement School District:

Cornerstone Prep Lester Campus School, sponsored by Capstone Education Group
Fairley High School, sponsored by Green Dot Public Schools TN
Humes Middle School, sponsored by Frayser Community Schools
Journey Coleman, sponsored by Journey Community Schools
MLK College Prep High School, sponsored by Frayser Community Schools

The other four are proposed new charter schools:

Change Academy, sponsored by Trust God and Never Doubt Outreach
Empower Memphis Career & College Prep, sponsored by Empower Career and College Prep
Pathways In Education-Memphis, sponsored by Pathways Management Group
Tennessee Career Academy, sponsored by TN Career Academy Inc.

The board could defy the district recommendations and approve the charters, as it has done before. But the district argues that it’s not in its interest to bring poorly performing charter schools back into the district. This year, all five applicants bear the same low-performing “priority” designation that primed them for state takeover a decade ago.

“We want high quality seats for our students,” said Brittany Monda, MSCS’ assistant superintendent of charter schools.

ASD schools could close

When the state assigned its lowest-performing public schools — most of them in Memphis — to the Achievement School District, the idea was that charter operators would take them over, turn them around, and eventually return the schools to the home districts in better shape.

But the plan didn’t work. Many of the schools languished or continued to perform poorly under the charter operators. That means that despite 10 years of state oversight, most do not meet state and local performance standards used by local officials to evaluate charter applications.

Data presented by MSCS indicates that despite some gains over the years, each of the five schools has fewer than 12% of students on track in reading and math.

State law allows Tennessee school boards to close charter schools in their own portfolios that have priority designations, and that could happen in Memphis if the MSCS board accepts the ASD schools and they don’t make significant academic gains. Memphis policy favors new charter schools that would give other options to students who go to a low-performing school.

If the board turns down the ASD schools, MSCS could decide to resume operating them as traditional schools. Otherwise, the ASD schools would close when their charters expire at the end of the 2023-24 school year.

MSCS facilities plan complicates unraveling of ASD

It’s no surprise that MSCS is wary of assuming responsibility for more schools. District leaders have been trying over the past decade to align school capacity with shifts in enrollment, and to figure out how to improve the condition of decaying school buildings. Facility plans have been continually revised in recent years, but have never been fully executed.

Consolidating schools that are operating under capacity would offer better learning environments for students, officials say, and cut down on a costly list of building repair projects.

Interim Superintendent Toni Williams is poised to deliver a new facilities plan next month. The ASD charter schools — operating in buildings MSCS still owns — could be part of this plan.

Already, the district is planning for a new Frayser high school that would combine students at Trezevant High School and MLK College Prep. The district plans to build it at the MLK site.

White, the leader of MLK College Prep’s charter operator, Frayser Community Schools, has said that if the MSCS board approves the charter school, he would end the charter agreement early, when it’s time for students at MLK College Prep to move into the new building.

But if the school isn’t approved as a charter, the district will have to choose between operating it or letting it close. If it closes, students currently zoned to MLK College Prep would have to be reassigned to Trezevant or other schools until a new high school is built.

Stephanie Love, a school board member and longtime advocate for students in the ASD, peppered district officials with questions about school closures and consolidations during a committee meeting last week.

She pointed out that the district makes decisions to close and consolidate traditional schools based on academic performance, enrollment, and school building needs — criteria similar to the ones it uses to evaluate charter schools.

Many ASD schools have closed already without any MSCS school board vote.

If the five ASD schools seeking charter approvals eventually return to the district as traditional schools, they could become part of MSCS’ own turnaround model, called the Innovation Zone, or iZone. The model takes advantage of centralized resources and pays teachers more for working a longer day.

A handful of former ASD schools joined the iZone last year, as traditional MSCS schools, and another will join this school year. Monda, the charter office leader, said the returned schools have shown “promising results,” but did provide any data. (Charter schools cannot be part of the iZone.)

Charter operators may have a chance to appeal or reapply

Tuesday’s board vote on the five ASD schools — and the four new applicants — won’t be the end of the story for any of them.

If they lose their bids for charter approval, they could appeal the decision to the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission, or in some cases reapply next year.

White, the ASD charter operator, said that if the board turns down his applications, he doesn’t plan to appeal. He said he wants to support the district’s plan for Memphis students. But he said there should have been a more comprehensive plan for the schools serving the Memphis and Tennessee students who have struggled the most academically.

“Our contracts say our time is up after the 10th year,” he said. “And I’m hoping that we have an opportunity after this round … to really dig in on what’s going to happen to … all the other schools coming back in the years to follow.”

Another set of ASD schools serving about 2,000 more students have charters set to expire in coming school years.

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Key Tennessee education official Eve Carney resigns amid leadership transition

2023-06-05T23:30:24+00:00

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The leadership transition at the Tennessee Department of Education accelerated this week with the resignations of two high-level officials, including a veteran manager responsible for many of the state’s biggest education programs and initiatives.

Deputy Commissioner Eve Carney will step down on June 30, a department spokesperson confirmed Monday.

The departure of Meghan McLeroy, the department’s chief officer responsible for supporting schools and districts statewide, is effective Aug. 1, the spokesperson said.

A staff member with the department since 2008, Carney currently oversees state-level work involving federal programs, school choice, testing, accountability, school improvement, and the state-run Achievement School District for low-performing schools. She is among the deepest wells of institutional knowledge within the department.

Her resignation comes at a critical time as Lizzette Gonzalez Reynolds prepares to take the helm of the department on July 1 after Penny Schwinn ended her four-year tenure as commissioner last week.

Carney — who is one of four remaining members from Schwinn’s original cabinet — was expected to play a key role in helping Reynolds as the new commissioner from Texas faces myriad challenges.

Tennessee is shifting to a new education funding formula on July 1, enforcing a controversial new third-grade retention policy for struggling readers, operating large-scale tutoring and summer learning programs to help students catch up from the pandemic, expanding its private school voucher program to a third major city, and fortifying its school buildings after a Nashville school shooting left three students and three staff members dead on March 27.

The state also is scheduled to start giving A-to-F grades to its 1,700-plus public schools this fall after delaying the new accountability policy for five years because of testing and data disruptions, most recently caused by the pandemic.

A former Tennessee high school teacher and former chief of districts and schools for the department, Carney became Schwinn’s go-to manager to oversee high-level, high-profile programs.

She often stepped in to provide oversight amid employee turnover in Schwinn’s first months on the job. And last summer, when the Tennessee Supreme Court lifted a 2-year-old order to let the state resume work on its new private school voucher program, Schwinn turned to Carney to launch the rollout in a matter of weeks.

Carney was viewed as a possible successor to Schwinn, especially after Chiefs for Change, a national network of education leaders, named her in January to its latest cohort of “future chiefs,” considered a springboard for administrators seeking top jobs.

But in May, when Schwinn announced plans to step down at the end of the school year, Gov. Bill Lee went out of state to find his new education chief. Reynolds has political and policy experience in Texas and Washington, D.C., and most recently oversaw policy for the advocacy group ExcelinEd, founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

Lee also named Sam Pearcy, the department’s deputy commissioner of operations, to serve as interim education commissioner until Reynolds’ arrival. Pearcy was sworn in on June 2, after Schwinn’s last day on June 1, said department spokesperson Brian Blackley.

An alum of Teach for America, Pearcy joined the department in 2011 as part of the team overseeing school reform work under Tennessee’s $500 million award for the federal Race to the Top program.

McLeroy, another early member of Schwinn’s cabinet, has been with the department since 2011. She also initially helped to lead the state’s Race to the Top work.

The department plans to reassign Carney’s and McLeroy’s responsibilities to existing staff by the end of June, Blackley said.

Earlier this spring, Lisa Coons, the state’s chief academic officer, left Tennessee to become superintendent of public instruction for Virginia’s education department.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

MSCS board turns away 10 charter school applications

2023-04-26T05:09:42+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Sign up for Chalkbeat Tennessee’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the Shelby County public school system and statewide education policy.

The Memphis-Shelby County Schools board on Tuesday denied initial applications from 10 charter schools, including several low-performing schools that are seeking to return to the district as charters after a failed turnaround effort by the state.

It is typical for the district to recommend denials in the initial round of applications, and ask applicants to revise their proposals. The board will make final determinations on the charter school applications later this summer, after applicants have a chance to make requested revisions.

The board took up the 10 applications in two batches. One was a group of existing schools leaving the Achievement School District, the state turnaround program for low-performing schools. The other is a group of new proposed charters, primarily from operators that want to offer career and technical education programming, a new state priority.

The set of charter applications before the board show the impact in Memphis of two things happening at the state level: the chaotic unraveling of Tennessee’s charter-focused school turnaround effort, and this summer’s arrival of a new state education funding formula that provides extra money for career education programs.

The five schools from the ASD were once operated by the district. When the state designated them as low performers, it assigned them to charter operators to reform under 10-year contracts. State leaders have acknowledged for years that the turnaround effort failed.

Now, as the 10-year contracts near expiration, the school operators are applying to continue managing the schools as charters under the MSCS umbrella. That’s one of the possible exit routes outlined by the state for ASD schools, most of which are in Memphis.

Board member Stephanie Love appeared to suggest the ASD schools, which have high academic needs, should undergo a different process.

“I don’t think the ASD should be treated as a regular charter school,” said Love, whose district includes several of the schools.

MSCS, board forced to reckon with fallout of ASD

The five Achievement School District charters that sought approval from the MSCS board are Humes Middle School, Martin Luther King Jr. College Prep High School, Cornerstone Lester Prep Elementary, Journey Coleman School, and Fairley High School.

The ASD applicants lost points for lacking details in their proposed transition plans to the district. They were also dinged for remaining low-performing. Low academic performance regularly puts Memphis charter schools in jeopardy of closure.

“It appears to me that they’re still just floating money in a sinkhole,” board member Keith Williams said of the schools in a recent committee meeting.

The board has approved one ASD school to operate as a charter, but that school has not yet opened. Other former ASD schools have reentered the district’s own turnaround program called the iZone, which brings students at traditional public schools additional academic support. The program isn’t available for charter schools.

MSCS board members have started discussions about reabsorbing the other ASD schools as traditional public schools under the iZone. This could happen if the charter applications are rejected again by the MSCS board and by the state charter commission.

Dozens of Fairley High School students, families, and staff members urged the board on Tuesday to approve the bid by their charter operator, Green Dot Public Schools Tennessee, to continue running the school.

“Growth matters … . We are proud of the work we have done to support Fairley High School, and we look forward to continuing to support Fairley and the Lakeview community,” Jocquell Rodgers, the executive director of Green Dot, told board members.

Research has shown turnaround models like the iZone and the ASD are hard to sustain. Board member Amber Huett-Garcia requested data to compare the performance of ASD charters against MSCS’ lowest-performing schools in the iZone.

During a committee meeting, Huett-Garcia said she was unsure how the ASD charters offered something “different than what we do” at MSCS.

The board’s ultimate decisions about the ASD schools are likely to intersect with its upcoming facilities plan. State law says that MSCS regains control of the physical school building once a school exits the ASD, and MSCS has indicated its facilities plan could include decisions about the ASD school buildings. A new Frayser high school, for instance, would mean MLK College Prep closes.

New career and tech applicants part of ‘next wave’ of charters

The five new charter schools seeking approval from MSCS are Memphis Grizzlies Prep STEAM School for Girls, Empower Memphis Career and College Prep, Change Academy, Pathways in Education-Memphis, and Tennessee Career Academy.

Three of the five have a career and technical education focus.

Career and technical education “is kind of this next wave” of charters across the state, Brittany Monda, the district’s assistant superintendent of charter schools, told board members recently. Previous waves have been college prep-focused or STEM-focused, she said.

Tennessee’s new school funding formula uses a per-pupil funding model, with direct funding allocations for career and technical education.

MSCS officials said approving the new charter schools would cost the district’s traditional operations $60 million in revenue.

Monda praised the applicants’ ideas, but said they needed to return with more detail. Board member Sheleah Harris requested more information from the district about what academic needs charter schools could fill districtwide to help the board decide.

Of the remaining two schools, one is a returning applicant that was denied last year. The second is a former alternative high school that closed after its charter contract expired with the ASD.

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Hanley School in Tennessee’s turnaround district will return to MSCS control

2023-04-01T00:07:19+00:00

For the first time, a charter school in Tennessee’s turnaround district will exit the state program and return to the Memphis district’s management, Memphis-Shelby County Schools announced this week.

Hanley School, a K-8 school in Orange Mound, was taken over by the state and placed in the Achievement School District a decade ago to be run by a charter operator. This fall, it will be part of the Memphis district’s turnaround model, known as the iZone.

The move marks a setback for the school’s charter operator, and another twist in the chaotic unwinding of the Achievement School District, which has been rocked by leadership turnover and turmoil.

The state district began operating in 2012 and was designed to elevate some of Tennessee’s lowest performing schools by turning them over to charter operators under 10-year management contracts. The schools were to exit the ASD once their performance improved and return to their home districts — either Memphis, home to all but two of the schools, or Nashville.

But state leaders have acknowledged for years that the turnaround effort had failed in its mission. And as some of the 10-year management contracts near expiration, they have scrambled in recent years to figure out how to move schools out of the faltering ASD and get them on a path to improvement.

The current state policy describes several pathways for an ASD school to leave the district, including some options to stay open as a charter. The policy stresses “school specific” plans to account for each school’s “unique” situations.

In the case of Hanley, the policy resulted in the current operator, Journey Community Schools, not being able to keep the school under its network, and the transition to MSCS began over the last few months.

As other ASD schools creep up on their final years, Memphis could see a wave of school closures if MSCS doesn’t bring those schools back into the district.

Charter operator decries the decision on Hanley

Nickalous Manning, executive director of Journey Community Schools, denounced the way Hanley’s transition is being handled.

“The children and families in Orange Mound and at Hanley deserve a voice and a say in their children’s education,” Manning told Chalkbeat Wednesday, echoing a common complaint in Memphis that state leaders make decisions and policies affecting local families — like creating the ASD — without their input.

Manning accused state officials of not communicating an impending deadline for Hanley to apply to remain open as a charter school, and faulted them for not holding more public meetings with families. The exit process was unclear, Journey wrote in a letter to the state asking for a waiver of laws that prevent Journey from continuing to operate the school.

The state’s education commissioner, Penny Schwinn, cited state law and rules in denying the waiver. MSCS shared copies of the letters between Manning and the state with Chalkbeat to explain why the district won’t consider Journey’s charter application for Hanley.

The Tennessee Department of Education, where the ASD is housed, told Chalkbeat that all ASD charter operators received information about transition plans in 2020. ASD leaders meet monthly with the charter operators to review school status, department spokesperson Victoria Robinson said.

Robinson supplied a list of meetings scheduled over the last academic year with Hanley officials about the transition. Parents received a letter about the plans in January, Robinson said, and were invited to a meeting earlier this week.

Manning, who grew up in Orange Mound, said Journey plans to keep trying to hang on to Hanley.

Hanley will be the first charter school in the ASD to return to MSCS as a traditional public school. Four other ASD schools in Memphis were never operated as charter schools, and transitioned to MSCS operations this school year, also as part of the district’s iZone program.

Others have followed different pathways as dictated by the state policy, which takes into account the school’s test scores, the local district’s test scores, and how many years are left in the charter contract.

In most of the exits, schools where students showed high growth on state tests have swapped from the ASD to the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission’s oversight.

That option wasn’t available for Hanley. Available school testing data shows Hanley’s students haven’t noticeably improved during the state takeover, much like other schools in the ASD.

Hanley’s reading scores, for instance, are nearly on par with the ASD average this year, and lower than a nearby MSCS elementary school, Dunbar. Neither school had more than 12% of students meeting reading benchmarks.

Only one Memphis ASD school has applied to join MSCS as a charter. The board approved it against the recommendation of the district. In April, MSCS board members will have a slate of five ASD schools to consider reabsorbing as charter schools, including Coleman School, another Journey school in its ninth operating year.

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Two charter schools in Memphis and Nashville to move from one state-run district to another

2023-01-27T23:44:22+00:00

Two charter schools exiting Tennessee’s school turnaround district will pivot to the oversight of another state-run district operated by a new charter school entity.

The Tennessee Public Charter School Commission approved applications Friday from Promise Academy Spring Hill, which serves kindergartners through fifth graders in Memphis’ Raleigh community, and LEAD Neely’s Bend, which serves grades 5-8 in the Madison area of Nashville.

Their transition from the state’s Achievement School District will occur this fall.

Both schools were academically in the state’s bottom 5% when the state moved them into its turnaround district, which mostly used charter operators as its improvement strategy. The so-called ASD has had mixed results but did not deliver on its early promises to transform schools within five years.

Both Promise Academy and Neely’s Bend became eligible to leave the ASD last fall based on improved academic performance under new exit criteria established by a 2021 state law. The law, signed by Gov. Bill Lee, requires schools to exit the ASD after 10 years — or sooner if they’ve stayed off Tennessee’s priority list of the lowest-performing schools for two cycles.

“What we’ve seen with these schools is what we want — helping students achieve better outcomes,” said Commissioner Eddie Smith after the panel unanimously approved the applications from Promise Academy and LEAD.

The ASD exit law also allows higher-performing ASD schools to bypass their home districts and move to the new state-run district overseen by the charter commission. Lower-performing schools exiting the ASD can still seek to return to their home school districts, as four ASD schools in Memphis did last fall.

When the state launched the ASD in 2012 with six schools, the plan was to return all the schools to their hometown districts. The district eventually grew to 30 schools.

Parents, teachers, and community members packed a 2014 meeting at Neely’s Bend Middle Prep School to discuss the state’s proposal to take the Nashville school over.

At public hearings in December, officials with Memphis-Shelby County Schools and Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools told commission staff that they wanted Promise Academy and Neely’s Bend to become part of their local charter school portfolios.

Created under a 2019 law and with members appointed by the governor, the commission took over the charter appellate duties of the State Board of Education, as well as four state-authorized charter schools in Memphis and Nashville.

With Friday’s votes, the commission’s portfolio grows to 16 schools, including three other former ASD schools in Memphis whose applications were approved last school year: Cornerstone Prep Denver, Lester Prep, and Libertas School of Memphis.

In other business, the commission reelected Tom Griscom of Chattanooga as chairman and Chris Richards of Memphis as vice chairman.

Griscom is a retired newspaper publisher who served as director of White House communications under President Ronald Reagan. Richards is a lawyer and retired executive of FedEx.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee’s list of lowest-performing schools is out. Is yours on it?

2022-09-12T23:58:18+00:00

Memphis-Shelby County Schools more than doubled its number of schools on Tennessee’s list of bottom-performing schools, while schools from several rural districts made the list for the first time.

The state education department on Monday flagged 101 schools in 12 districts as so-called priority schools, meaning they were deemed academically in the bottom 5% in the 2021-22 school year.

The priority list is the state’s highest-stakes designation for holding low-performing schools accountable. But this year’s roster will be used only to identify schools eligible for additional federal funding and state support — not for takeover by Tennessee’s Achievement School District.

Last month, after telling district leaders that Tennessee won’t grade its schools A-F this fall as planned, education department officials said the state also will pause from moving any schools into the ASD, which has logged mostly disappointing results at improving the schools it took over beginning in 2012.

The accountability reprieve comes amid challenges in gathering reliable student achievement and growth data during the pandemic, beginning in 2020 when state tests were canceled nationwide.

In an Aug. 24 letter to superintendents, Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn said test participation in 2021 was inconsistent across Tennessee, making it difficult to compare results year to year. And in the most recent school year, school leaders grappled with chronic student absenteeism, COVID-related quarantines, and challenges with online learning.

But the accountability pause is coming to a close, Schwinn has promised. The state is scheduled to issue a new priority school list in the fall of 2023, likely making 2024 the earliest that new schools could enter the ASD.

Tennessee’s school accountability system relies on achievement and growth results from state tests under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP. “Priority” status denotes a school that’s consistently low-performing over multiple years, or a high school that has less than a 67% graduation rate during the most recent school year.

For 2022, Memphis-Shelby County Schools, the state’s largest district, had 36 priority schools, including seven charter schools, up from a total of 16 in 2021.

Nashville’s school district went from 16 to 19 priority schools; Hamilton County from seven to eight; and Knox County had four schools. Districts in Cumberland, Fayette, Haywood, Henry, and Sevier counties had one priority school each, while Madison County had three and Maury County had two.

Tennessee’s school turnaround district, the ASD, had 24 schools on the list.

Meanwhile, 19 schools came off the state’s list of priority schools, according to the department’s latest reports.

The rosters were among several reports released Monday by the state showing school and district designations for last school year, some of which are federally required. Those included high-performing “reward” schools, district ratings based on six performance indicators, and a list of schools needing targeted support to close disparities in student achievement based on race, poverty, disabilities, and language.

Districts in Memphis and Nashville were designated as “advancing” school districts — the second-highest achievement — although the state’s two largest districts also had double-digit numbers of priority schools.

“The district will be working with these schools to ensure that evidence-based turnaround and success strategies are being implemented to support their students and faculty,” said a statement from Nashville school leaders.

In Memphis, district officials said they will target their priority schools by incentivizing attendance, providing extra coaching for school leaders, reviewing data regularly to provide targeted support, and helping families understand and track their child’s performance.

“I think it’s going to take some time as we recover from the pandemic and transition the schools that are coming back from the ASD,” said Michelle McKissack, who chairs the school board there. “We have to absorb all that — the good, the bad — and move forward.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org. Chalkbeat reporter Samantha West contributed to this report.

KIPP Memphis leader discusses his vision for the city’s oldest charter network

2022-08-18T19:20:31+00:00

KIPP, a national nonprofit network of tuition-free, public charter schools, opened its first Memphis school in 2002, promising families a new, “joyful, academically excellent” educational option.

KIPP Memphis now serves nearly 1,800 students across five North Memphis area schools — and has become known as the city’s oldest and longest-standing charter network.

But in recent years, it has faced numerous challenges, from school closures and low academic performance to high turnover among leadership and teaching staff.

KIPP Memphis grew to seven schools by the beginning of 2020, only to close two schools in South Memphis later that year, citing financial hardships and unsatisfactory academic progress.

Earlier this year, the network narrowly avoided having to shutter two other schools due to low academic performance. Memphis-Shelby County Schools board members said they wanted to give the network “an opportunity to prove themselves” under new leadership.

For 2021-22, three of five KIPP Memphis schools received the state’s highest rating for academic growth as measured by year-end testing under the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System.

As KIPP Memphis celebrates its 20th anniversary, CEO Antonio Burt thinks the charter network is on its way to “finding our sweet spot” in Memphis’ changing educational landscape after the pandemic.

“I think it’s a time of great opportunity for us — a time for us to say, 20 years later, we’re now stronger than ever,” said Burt, who is beginning his first full school year after becoming CEO in November. “We look forward to taking that momentum and furthering and continuing to bolster our plan.”

Burt came to KIPP after serving as Memphis-Shelby County Schools’ chief of schools. Before that, he oversaw all the district’s lowest performing and struggling schools as an assistant superintendent, and earned national acclaim for turning two low-performing Memphis schools into models of student achievement.

He sat down with Chalkbeat for a one-on-one interview earlier this summer to reflect on his first partial year heading KIPP Memphis, share the network’s new “Back to Basics” theme, and discuss his vision for this school year and beyond.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Q: Tell me about your first school year at the helm of KIPP. What did you learn, and how has that impacted your focus this school year?

“Those first 90 days were a lot of listening and learning ...”

A: It was very informative coming into the organization in November and spending roughly the first 90 days really learning the ins and outs of the network — from human capital to the priorities that were already laid out — and then considering what are the areas that we need to strengthen.

Those first 90 days were a lot of listening and learning … while also identifying those strategic priorities that we need to really strengthen … We identified what we call the Seven Pillars of Change. Those seven areas range from getting grounded with our KIPP values, addressing the human capital challenge — which is a challenge across the country — as well as focusing on improving our infrastructure, literacy, and making sure we bring our parents along while we’re doing this.

We’re strongly committed to (community) engagement, while also addressing the needs of our KIPPsters and also future employers. We’re focused on ensuring that our kids are really truly college and career ready when they leave our doors … while also strengthening and ensuring that we have long term financial sustainability.

Q: What is KIPP Memphis doing specifically to boost college and career readiness?

A: We’re expanding our course offerings to ensure that we have more dual enrollment course offerings, and more (Advanced Placement) course offerings.

And then we’re embarking upon a three-year process to ensure that all of our campuses are STEM certified … by the Tennessee Department of (Education). So this will be year one of that.

“We’re focused on ensuring that our kids are really truly college and career ready when they leave our doors.”

But we also want to ensure that with those dual enrollment courses and with providing certain industry certification courses, that we’re aligning with what those high-impact areas or fields … that want graduates with specialized skills when they leave high school … like advanced manufacturing, coding, and robotics. We want our students to be able to walk into the workforce in those fields that pay a very high livable wage.

Q: How have you worked on recruiting and retaining staff since joining KIPP?

A: Early in the new year … we really rolled out the long-term plan (which included having all teaching staff reapply for their positions). And with that plan, we talked about how we will be posting positions, what we were looking for in individuals that apply and that will be selected for those roles. So it was very transparent. Internal applicants knew months in advance before that went live in March. We gave people a two-month notice around “Hey, this is the direction of the network going forward. We would love to have those people that feel that they meet the new set of standards and requirements.”

We did have a lot of internal applicants that applied; quite a few were rehired. But we also did job fairs beginning in March on a rolling basis every month. At the first hiring fair, we had over 200 applicants that came from charter and traditional schools in Memphis, Mississippi, Arkansas, and all over. …

And we utilize other resources — we utilized Teach 901, we utilized a pre-screening platform that we have as part of the (national) KIPP Foundation, we marketed on Chalkbeat, we utilized our social media platforms. And we continue to utilize those outlets to make sure we’re casting a wide net.

“... The pandemic showed us that you really don’t understand what a person might be going through, in some instances, until it’s too late.”

We also offered a $10,000 signing and retention bonus for teachers, administrators, and additional building-level staffers … Employees want to feel a sense of value belonging, and that goes with the financial aspect, but it also goes with the social-emotional aspect … We’re trying to be really creative … thinking about how we really incentivize our employees in other areas, whether that’s time off, recognizing certain holidays — just really doing things from a morale perspective. …

We brought in wellness sessions last school year, which offered massages and different things, because we wanted to just meet people where they are — because the pandemic showed us that you really don’t understand what a person might be going through, in some instances, until it’s too late.

KIPP Memphis CEO Antonio Burt chats with students in a hallway.

Q: KIPP Memphis predominantly serves students of color and children from low-income families — groups that were hit hardest by the pandemic. How has KIPP been striving to meet their needs at this moment?

A: Starting last year, we opened our doors up on Saturdays, to say, “Hey, we’re here. We want to still provide instructional support. Let’s do it in a less stressful environment.” So students come for a few hours, we learn, we also have engagement activities.

And then we did a lot of things toward the tail end of the school year. We celebrated our KIPPsters with a lot of different events, and we brought our parents in. This upcoming school year, with our Back to Basics theme, we have a heavy focus around the essence of basic standards for supporting the whole child. We believe in doing that through different programs that we bring into the schools. …

We’ll be bringing Junior Achievement to each of the campuses, and that’s really to meet needs around financial literacy, but also giving kids learning experiences in a non-traditional manner and method.

We’ll be increasing field trips, and we’ll also be doing a lot of Parent University (sessions) to make sure we’re meeting the needs of our parents, who are also supporting our kids while they’re at home.

I’ll also be implementing something where I just talk directly to our KIPPsters, so they have an opportunity to have lunch with the CEO in a structured form … I want to hear straight from them (about) things that we can improve upon, things we’re doing well … It’s really about us being grounded and staying connected to each of our core audience, meaning our teachers, our KIPPsters, and our families.

Q: What kinds of topics does your Parent University touch on?

A: Parent University will focus on career advancement and career readiness. Also, it’ll be around social-emotional and health well-being strategies. Topics will also range from childcare tips to how to connect with agencies that can support kids, whether they’re 4 or up to 16. Also career readiness strategies — resumes and applications in certain industries that are looking for certain types of individuals.

Also, it’ll be conversational topics around resources that are being utilized inside schools, because we know a lot of the new curricula that’s being utilized in schools are much different from what our parents learned. … We want to show parents how to best support their child at home.

Q: Reflecting on your first partial school year, what are you most proud of?

A: What I’m most proud of is coming into a new network in the middle of a year that was truly the first full year back post-pandemic … and withstanding any challenges that were in place by entering in but also getting … all of our KIPPsters — educators, students and families — sort of level-set around a new way of work, a new level of expectations. …

We did a lot of great listening and learning sessions with our parents. We heard from them; we connected with them. We feel that due to that foundational level work, we’re set up to really run really fast in regard to implementing a lot of the different strategies that we have designed for this upcoming year. …

We ended the school year at a different place than where we started … with a 95% staff rate. When I entered the role, we had vacancies, virtual teachers, so on and so forth. So I feel that’s a huge accomplishment to begin this school year being fully staffed in all areas, across all campuses.

Two students pose for a photo outside KIPP Memphis Collegiate Elementary on the first day of school Aug. 8.

Q: What do you see as the biggest challenge ahead of you and KIPP Memphis as a whole?

A: I would say the biggest challenge … is to maintain (that staffing level), and ensuring that we have the best of the best across the board in every area and every role.

The next challenge will be “Hey, parents, we’re full speed ahead. We’re back to bell-to-bell instruction, each and every day. Can you support us in ensuring that our KIPPsters are at school each and every day?” …

I think there’s also still a level of uneasiness and uncertainty for certain communities. … There is still some skepticism in regard to the vaccine, the safety, and the pandemic. So our challenges in upcoming years will be really nipping that uncertainty in the bud, ensuring that our parents understand that we’re going to exhaust all measures to ensure our kids are safe, but we need them at school each and every day.

“Coming up on a 20 year anniversary, I thought we needed a theme. We need something that drives and guides our work daily.”

Q: How did you land on this year’s Back to Basics theme, and what does it mean to you?

A: Coming in over the first 90 days, we did an in-depth analysis around what are those larger gaps that I see that we could be stronger in. Coming up on a 20 year anniversary, I thought we needed a theme. We need something that drives and guides our work daily. …

So what does basics mean? So when we think of “B,” for basics, that’s breaking the educational barriers. We know educational barriers have plagued certain communities year after year. … The “A” is getting back to our core business of achieving academic excellence. “S” stands for supporting the whole child … more so now than any other time before, considering kids are coming out of a pandemic. The “I” is inspiring a joyful learning environment. … “C” is connecting with the community. We know that we can’t do this work alone, we have to do it right, and to do that, we have to work alongside our constituents and alongside our parents. … And “S” is at all times, at every layer, every individual is a part of the KIPP network and must strive for excellence.

We feel that if we get back to basics and we really hit those core areas, we will be headed in the right direction, and will be further fulfilling the promise that we made to families 20 years ago.

Samantha West is a reporter for Chalkbeat Tennessee, where she covers K-12 education in Memphis. Connect with Samantha at swest@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools sells former Brookmeade Elementary to Libertas charter school

2022-07-01T13:00:00+00:00

After operating as a guest in a former Frayser elementary school building for seven years, Libertas School of Memphis will soon own the place — and officials are planning to renovate and expand the school.

The Memphis-Shelby County Schools board on Tuesday agreed to sell the former Brookmeade Elementary School building, located at 3777 Edenburg Drive, to the charter school for $725,000.

As the official owner of the building, Libertas can finally take the lead on raising funds to address millions of dollars of deferred maintenance and deal with space constraints. The purchase will also help solidify Libertas’ long-term vision — chiefly, its commitment to Frayser, a predominantly poor, Black neighborhood.

“We always have been — and always will be — first and foremost a neighborhood school,” said Bob Nardo, executive director of Libertas. “We want to stay in Frayser forever. We don’t want to move.”

Libertas stands out as one of the few success stories in the decade since Tennessee launched its Achievement School District to oversee and fix dozens of chronically underperforming schools across the state, mostly in Memphis and Nashville.

Many of those schools have failed to make significant progress, and are being returned to their home districts anyway, including four Frayser schools that are shifting back to MSCS in the fall. But under a new state law enacted last spring, higher-performing charters are now allowed to leave the ASD, bypass their local districts, and apply directly to the state Public Charter School Commission for authorization. Libertas is among three Memphis schools that are now making that transition.

Nardo opened Libertas — the first public Montessori charter school in Tennessee — in 2015 with the charge of turning around Brookmeade, which was at the time the second-lowest-achieving elementary school in the state, as measured by state standardized test scores.

Libertas has since built a reputation for its strong academic performance — despite serving a student population that faces heightened obstacles to learning. Of Libertas’ over 400 students in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade, nearly 90% are Black, Hispanic, or Native American, over half come from low-income families, and nearly a quarter receive special education services.

Libertas has set itself apart from most other Memphis schools, reaching the state’s 25th percentile in proficiency and earning the highest possible composite scores on the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System, which measures academic growth — even last year, as the pandemic hurt learning across the nation. In addition, Libertas’ Black students are achieving in the top half of the state, and students with disabilities are performing in the top 15% in the state, according to TVAAS scores.

That record is one of many reasons Glen Hancox’s three grandchildren attend Libertas, though they live in Whitehaven. His grandson, Elijah Campbell, started there in kindergarten.

Hancox credits the small, tight-knit charter school and the individualized attention from teachers with preparing Elijah for middle school.

While Elijah is now a seventh grader at University Middle School, his Libertas music teachers continue to offer him private piano and drum lessons, and his basketball coach plans to “give him some pointers” sometime over the summer, Hancox said.

“It’s been a good experience for all of my grandchildren,” Hancox said. “It’s sort of a family tradition at this point.”

As Libertas begins planning renovations and an expansion, Hancox is eager to see how his two younger granddaughters benefit — one who is moving into first grade and the other preparing for age-3 pre-kindergarten.

Libertas officials are still working on a master plan, Nardo said, but the top priority is tackling critical deferred maintenance, such as replacing the school’s roof and HVAC system.

Nardo’s next priority is creating additional space for Libertas’ large special education program — the school serves the largest concentration of students with disabilities of any operator in the ASD — as well as its music program.

Currently, the building is full and completely utilized, and Nardo says extra space for special education and designated chorus and band areas is badly needed.

Nardo expects construction will begin next summer and last about a year.

Samantha West is a reporter for Chalkbeat Tennessee, where she covers K-12 education in Memphis. Connect with Samantha at swest@chalkbeat.org.

Three Memphis ASD schools move to state-run charter district after academic gains

2022-01-28T22:42:06+00:00

Three Memphis charter schools will move from the state’s Achievement School District to a state-run charter district after improved academic performance.

On Friday, the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission unanimously voted to move Lester Prep, Libertas School, and Cornerstone Prep Denver — schools that serve hundreds of high-need students in Memphis Frayser and Binghampton neighborhoods — from the state’s ASD to operate in the commission’s state-run charter district.

Launched in 2012, the ASD was meant to turn around dozens of chronically underperforming schools across Tennessee, mostly in Memphis and Nashville. Nearly a decade later, many of those schools have failed to make significant progress. Rather than returning the schools to their home districts, as the state had originally promised, a new state law enacted last spring lets higher-performing charters leave the ASD, bypass their local districts, and apply directly to the state public charter school commission for authorization.

Public Charter School Commission members’ Friday morning vote followed the recommendations of commission executive director Tess Stovall, based on criteria such as a clear and compelling mission, a quality education program, community support, a solvent and sustainable budget, and a clear demonstration of effectiveness, among other metrics. Stovall found all three schools met the standards.

In the applications for Cornerstone Prep Denver and Lester Prep, administrators touted significant progress toward the schools’ mission to “equip all students with the wisdom and knowledge necessary to succeed in college and to become leaders in the community.” Both charters are operated by Capstone Education Group, a charter management organization created to serve under-resourced children in Memphis.

Cornerstone Prep Denver, located in the Frayser neighborhood, serves nearly 600 students in pre-K through fifth grade, and Lester Prep, in Binghampton, serves nearly 300 sixth through eighth graders. At both schools, over 95% of students are Black and considered economically disadvantaged by the state, and most students enter the school below grade level, administrators said.

Despite their student body’s high needs, administrators highlighted pre-pandemic TN Ready scores showing notable academic growth.

At Cornerstone Prep Denver, officials said math scores increased from 10% mastery in the 2017-18 school year to 27% mastery the next school year, and English-language arts proficiency rose from 5% in 2017-18 to 10%. At Lester Prep, the school earned an overall composite Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS) score of five for three consecutive years, meaning student achievement grew year over year.

Administrators recognized that there’s more work to be done at both schools. At Cornerstone Prep Denver, English-language arts results lag behind math, and at Lester, the high level of student mobility in Binghampton makes it difficult for students to reach grade-level mastery. And, over the last two years, the pandemic hurt academic achievement at both schools.

Still, officials highlighted survey results that showed the majority of parents — 93% at Cornerstone Prep Denver and 85% at Lester — were satisfied with their child’s school.

Libertas School also touted significant gains in academic performance and growth, as well as the school’s strong culture among students, families, and faculty since the building was transformed in 2015 from Brookemeade Elementary — then the second-lowest achieving elementary school in the state — to Tennessee’s first Montessori charter school with a mission for “human flourishing” by “cultivating the minds, hands, and hearts of children in Memphis.”

The Frayser charter school now serves nearly 400 students in pre-K through fifth grade, and like Lester and Denver, the vast majority of students face heightened obstacles to learning. Nearly 90% of Libertas students are Black, Hispanic, or Native American, over half are considered economically disadvantaged, and nearly a quarter are eligible for special education services — the highest overall percentage of students with disabilities of any operator in the ASD, according to Libertas officials.

Still, Libertas has earned an overall composite TVAAS score of five for several years, including during the most recent school year, indicating students continued to grow academically despite the pandemic. In addition, Black students are achieving in the top half of the state, and students with disabilities are performing in the top 15% in the state.

That’s not to say that Libertas is without ongoing challenges. In the school’s application, Executive Director Bob Nardo said Libertas has had a difficult time recruiting enough teachers and teaching assistants, and has since created its own Montessori teacher training program to address the issue. The school has had to emphasize special education in its training program due to the high number of students with disabilities, Nardo said.

Those efforts have paid off, according to Demetria Barber, whose grandson has autism and is a Libertas student. Barber was one of several community members to appeal to the commission on Libertas’ behalf before their vote.

Barber’s grandson has encountered many challenges to learning, but she applauded Libertas’ caring culture and flexibility in meeting his needs. Barber said her grandson’s therapists come and go from the school Monday through Friday every week, his teachers call and text frequently about the boy’s progress and needs, and in turn, “his growth has been wonderful,” she said.

She knows her grandson is not the only one who has benefitted from Libertas.

“We need this for our community,” she said.

Four Memphis schools to return to local control after a 10-year state takeover

2021-12-13T22:21:05+00:00

Four low-performing Memphis schools taken over by Tennessee almost a decade ago will return to their local school district by next fall without achieving the massive improvements promised under the oversight of the state-run Achievement School District.

The schools rejoining Shelby County Schools generally have continued to languish academically in or near the state’s bottom 5% — the threshold that made them eligible in the first place for takeover as part of the ambitious school turnaround program created in 2011.

In a joint announcement Monday, Tennessee Education Commissioner and Shelby County Schools Superintendent Joris Ray said the transition will include Frayser Achievement Elementary, Corning Achievement Elementary, Georgian Hills Achievement Elementary, and Whitney Achievement Elementary.

More than 800 students and their families and 120 faculty and staff will be affected.

The announcement marks a seminal moment for the Achievement School District, which did not deliver on early promises to transform schools that the state took over in Memphis and Nashville beginning in 2012. With 27 schools and about 9,000 students, the so-called ASD remains Tennessee’s most intensive school improvement model, and Gov. Bill Lee’s administration has promised to revamp it.

Community leaders who saw their neighborhood schools taken over said the takeaway should be that takeovers don’t work. Collaboration between state and local leaders is best, they say.

“I’m happy these schools are moving back to Shelby County but, of course, disappointed that these schools are in no better shape despite all these drastic measures,” said Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Memphis Democrat who has worked closely on ASD legislation. “I just hope we’ve learned some lessons and are moving away from this [takeover] model.”

Regenia Dowell, another community leader, was concerned about another transition without a clear plan.

“Just batting them back and forth between school systems isn’t the answer,” said Dowell, president of the Frayser community organization for parents, teachers, and students.

“Shelby County Schools is still a failing district, so you’re just taking them from one failing district to another failing district. If you’re giving them back to Shelby County, there should be a plan in place with accountability metrics for the public to see whether they’re being met,” she said.

The charter-heavy ASD was never intended as a forever home for low-performing schools, and a new state law charts pathways for their exit within 10 years of takeover. The paths include letting higher-performing charter schools apply to exit and move to another state-run district operated by Tennessee’s new charter school commission. This week, the commission is reviewing applications from three ASD charter schools in Memphis — Lester Prep, Libertas School of Memphis, and Cornerstone Prep’s Denver campus.

Schwinn acknowledged the state has fallen short of its school turnaround goals with the ASD, which mostly assigned schools to charter operators to do the work.

“Growth and achievement and progress is not anywhere close to what would be acceptable to a family,” she told reporters during a morning conference call. “It is not acceptable to me as a parent. And we have to be honest about that.”

Schwinn said the state is looking at a “very different strategy and approach” for the ASD moving forward. She also pledged to use one-time federal pandemic relief funds to give Shelby County Schools more resources and support for the four exiting ASD schools.

“Our commitment is to ensure we are learning the lessons, looking at best practices, and most importantly putting our best possible resources in place” to help students, she said.

Both the Frayser and Corning schools were part of the first six schools taken over in 2012, so their decade in the ASD will soon end.

Georgian Hills, which entered the ASD in 2013, has earned priority status to exit the state-run district by achieving top levels of academic growth on state tests for two consecutive years. However, the school remains in Tennessee’s bottom quartile for academic performance.

Whitney Elementary entered the ASD in 2013 too. The district’s interim superintendent, Lisa Settles, said the state decided to return that school to local control early since it’s part of the four Memphis schools run directly by the ASD. The ASD’s other 23 schools are operated by charter networks.

Ray called it “an exciting day” and said he looked forward to working with the state on a transition plan, which Tennessee officials said has been under development for about six months.

Neither state nor local leaders provided details about the plan except that the transition will be led by Thomas Rogers, assistant superintendent of Shelby County Schools’ Innovation Zone, a locally run school turnaround initiative that launched the same year as the ASD.

“Definitely, we are leaning on his expertise to support us in that work around supporting families, around supporting students, around wraparound services,” said Angela Whitelaw, deputy superintendent of schools and academic support for Shelby County Schools.

The iZone achieved stronger academic outcomes than the ASD in its early years but has struggled to maintain funding to do expensive turnaround work. The program operated under a more traditional district structure but gave their school leaders charter-like autonomy to choose their own curriculum, give bonuses to lure highly effective educators, and extend the school day.

Community advocates in Memphis’ Frayser neighborhood, which is home to the affected schools, said they want to know more about the transition plan.

“The key is wraparound services,” said Charlie Caswell, outreach pastor at Impact Church. “You can’t just look at the problems through the lens of education. It’s about children and families impacted by trauma and a history of racism that has affected our community.”

Dowell, who leads the Frayser PTSA, added that the four schools being returned need a more consistent roster of faculty and staff.

“What I’ve seen is that it’s just a flux of in-and-out teachers and administrators and no stability for the schools,” she said. “Until you get stability, I don’t think you can get anywhere. I don’t care who runs it.”

Shelby County and ASD leaders will host several meetings for affected families and staff to learn about the transition and ask questions. The first is set for Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. at Trezevant High School. The second will be held sometime in January.

Chalkbeat reporter Samantha West contributed to this story.

Memphian among three finalists to become Tennessee’s first-ever school turnaround chief

2021-11-17T20:27:22+00:00

Tennessee has chosen three finalists, including one longtime Memphis educator, in a national search for the state’s first-ever school turnaround superintendent.

Cedrick Gray, a former school principal and current education adviser to Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, made the short list out of 54 applications submitted to the Tennessee Department of Education.

The other finalists are Tamekia Brown, who most recently was chief academics officer for public schools in El Paso, Texas, and Lateshia Woodley, assistant superintendent for Kansas City Public Schools.

Tennessee’s hire is considered key to jump-starting school improvement work in a state that has pioneered multiple turnaround models with limited success.

Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn rebooted the search this summer after two delays — once in 2020 when the pandemic began and again in January due partly to budget uncertainties.

Tennessee aims to select its top candidate by the end of the year to start the job by February 1, 2022, said Brian Blackley, a spokesman for the department.

The superintendent will supervise state interventions in schools in the bottom 5% across Tennessee, including the state-run Achievement School District, known as the ASD. The charter-based model is at a crossroads after yielding sluggish and uneven results for almost a decade in schools in Memphis and Nashville.

The turnaround chief also will work with non-ASD schools that have large achievement gaps among groups of historically underserved students such as English language learners, students with disabilities, or those from racial and ethnic groups or economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

All three finalists have overseen school turnaround initiatives in multiple states.

A native Memphian, Gray is a former principal of several Memphis schools including Craigmont Middle. He had short stints as a school superintendent in Fayette County, Tennessee, and Jackson, Mississippi, and joined the Harris administration in 2019.

Brown has been a school administrator in Arkansas and Texas, while Woodley has been a school turnaround leader in Georgia and Missouri.

The finalists were interviewed in person in early November by staff at the education department, plus separate virtual interviews with up to 14 invited education advocacy and community groups that provided feedback to the department.

Participants in the virtual interviews — which were led by the Iowa-based search firm of Ray and Associates Inc. — included representatives of Shelby County Schools, Achievement School District, Memphis Lift parents group, State Collaborative on Reforming Education, Tennessee Public Charter School Commission, TennesseeCAN, Hamilton County’s Partnership Network Advisory Board, Hyde Family Foundation, and Capstone Education Group.

Seven schools, including three in Memphis, exit Tennessee’s toughest school improvement list

2021-09-14T22:18:47+00:00

Seven of 79 Tennessee schools flagged for poor academic performance in 2018 dropped off the state’s “priority list” of bottom-performing schools this year when the Tennessee Department of Education unveiled its 2020-21 school accountability lists Tuesday.

Three of the exiting schools are in Memphis, the epicenter of the state’s school improvement work for the last decade.

Sheffield Elementary, part of Shelby County Schools, and two charter schools in the state-run Achievement School District, Libertas and Cornerstone Prep Denver Campus, moved off of the priority list of schools that rank academically in the state’s bottom 5%.

The list is usually met with trepidation from school leaders of struggling schools. But because the legislature voted in January to remove any potentially negative consequences from test scores during a second pandemic year, schools can’t be added — only removed.

Priority status makes schools eligible for the state’s most intense interventions, including possible takeover by the Achievement School District, or ASD, which has mostly assigned struggling schools to charter networks since its launch in 2012.

Priority schools could come off of the list this year if their test scores were good enough. Those schools had to rank in the state’s 15th percentile for the recent academic year or the state’s 10th percentile for two straight testing years. They also could exit by earning one of two top designations for academic growth in math and reading for two straight years.

“These schools have shown how Tennessee districts and schools can overcome a variety of challenges including a global pandemic that impacted the past several months, including the majority of the 2020-21 school year,” Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn said in a statement.

Tennessee’s first pandemic test scores, released last month, showed a proficiency decline of 5 percentage points since 2019, the last time that public school students took standardized tests under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP.

But while the state’s overall scores went down, some schools did well — or well enough to improve their state proficiency ranking by percentile. Others showed a high level of growth from 2019 to 2021 under the state’s accountability model known as TVAAS, which is short for the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System.

Libertas School in Memphis was able to leave the priority list because of its performance in both proficiency and growth. The former Brookemeade Elementary School was in the state’s bottom 1% when the ASD took it over in 2015 from Shelby County Schools. Now called Libertas, the Montessori school reached the state’s 25th percentile in proficiency on the most recent tests. Libertas, which serves 485 students from the Memphis Frayser community, also ranked at the top level for student growth.

“What this means is that children in marginalized neighborhoods like Frayser can, in fact, achieve at incredibly high levels and grow extraordinarily to achieve their dreams,” said Bob Nardo, the school’s founder.

Sheffield Elementary, which is part of Shelby County Schools Innovation Zone turnaround program, exited the priority list by exceeding the 10th percentile in proficiency for two consecutive testing years.

Tennessee released its first list of 83 priority schools in 2012, with 69 of those in Memphis. Only 43 Memphis schools made the state’s last priority list in 2018, which added more schools in Nashville, Chattanooga, and Jackson. High schools with a graduation rate of less than 67% also could be placed on priority status.

Pending new state or federal accountability waivers or actions, Tennessee’s next priority list is scheduled to be released in the fall of 2022, following state testing next spring.

Exits from this year’s list include two schools in Chattanooga, one in Nashville, and one in Campbell County.

District	School
Campbell County	Jellico Elementary
Davidson County	Rosebank Elementary
Hamilton County	Clifton Hills Elementary
Hamilton County	Woodmore Elementary
Shelby County	Sheffield Elementary
Achievement School District	Libertas School
Achievement School District	Cornerstone Prep Denver Campus

Schools Exiting the Priority and Comprehensive Support and Improvement List

Source: Tennessee Department of Education

Annie Fu, Chalkbeat

In response to a 2015 federal education law, Tennessee added two other designations aimed at holding schools accountable. Both lists also had exits this year.

State officials said 108 of 145 schools from 57 districts met the criteria to move off of the state’s list of schools needing targeted support and resources to close achievement gaps among student groups based on race, poverty, disabilities, and language.

District	School
Anderson County	Clinton Middle School
Bedford County	Harris Middle School
Bedford County	South Side Elementary
Benton County	Big Sandy School
Bledsoe County	Cecil B Rigsby Elementary
Blount County	Eagleton Middle School
Blount County	Heritage Middle School
Bradley County	Taylor Elementary School
Cannon County	West Side Elementary
Huntingdon Special School District	Huntingdon Primary
Carter County	Hampton High School
Claiborne County	Ellen Myers Primary
Clay County	Celina K-8
Cocke County	Centerview Elementary
Cocke County	Cosby Elementary
Cocke County	Cosby High School
Cocke County	Northwest Elementary
Cocke County	Parrottsville Elementary
Manchester	Westwood Middle School
Tullahoma	Bel Aire Elementary
Tullahoma	West Middle School
Davidson County	Glencliff High School
Davidson County	Haywood Elementary
Davidson County	Hull-Jackson Elementary
Davidson County	Inglewood Elementary
Davidson County	Jones Elementary
Davidson County	Knowledge Academy
DeKalb County	Northside Elementary
Humboldt City Schools	Humboldt Junior/Senior High School
Humboldt City Schools	East Elementary School
Trenton	Trenton Middle School
Giles County	Richland Elementary
Greene County	Mosheim Elementary
Greeneville	C Hal Henard Elementary
Hamblen County	Meadowview Middle School
Hamilton County	Brown Middle School
Hamilton County	Ooltewah Middle School
Hardin County	Parris South Elementary
Hawkins County	Church Hill Intermediate School
Hawkins County	Hawkins Elementary
Hawkins County	Rogersville Middle School
Henry County	Henry Elementary
Hickman County	Centerville Intermediate School
Houston County	Erin Elementary
Houston County	Houston Co Middle School
Jackson County	Jackson County Middle School
Jefferson County	Jefferson Middle School
Knox County	Belle Morris Elementary
Knox County	Cedar Bluff Elementary
Knox County	Cedar Bluff Middle School
Knox County	Chilhowee Intermediate
Knox County	A L Lotts Elementary
Knox County	Inskip Elementary
Knox County	Karns Elementary
Knox County	Norwood Elementary
Knox County	West Haven Elementary
Knox County	Emerald Academy
Lawrence County	E O Coffman Middle School
Lewis County	Lewis Co High School
Fayetteville	Fayetteville High School
Madison County	Jackson Central-Merry Early College High
Marion County	Monteagle Elementary
Marion County	South Pittsburg Elementary
Marion County	Whitwell Middle School
Marshall County	Lewisburg Middle School
Maury County	Highland Park Elementary
Maury County	Mt. Pleasant Middle Visual Perform. Arts
Maury County	Spring Hill Middle School
Montgomery County	Pisgah Elementary
Morgan County	Petros Joyner Elementary
Obion County	Ridgemont Elementary
Union City	Union City Elementary School
Perry County	Linden Elementary
Perry County	Linden Middle School
Pickett County	Pickett County Elementary
Putnam County	Jere Whitson Elementary
Putnam County	Avery Trace Middle School
Roane County	Harriman Middle School
Rutherford County	Blackman High School
Rutherford County	Whitworth-Buchanan Middle School
Rutherford County	Riverdale High School
Rutherford County	Smyrna High School
Sequatchie County	Sequatchie Co Middle School
Sequatchie County	Griffith Elementary
Sevier County	Northview Intermediate School
Sevier County	Pigeon Forge Primary
Sevier County	Sevierville Middle School
Shelby County	Highland Oaks Middle
Shelby County	Chimneyrock Elementary School
Shelby County	William Herbert Brewster Elementary School
Shelby County	Egypt Elementary
Shelby County	Gardenview Elementary
Shelby County	Hickory Ridge Middle
Shelby County	Oakhaven Elementary
Shelby County	Shady Grove Elementary
Shelby County	Treadwell Elementary
Shelby County	Whitehaven Elementary
Shelby County	Winridge Elementary
Shelby County	Southern Avenue Charter School Of Academic Excellence Creat
Sullivan County	Colonial Heights Middle
Kingsport	Ross N. Robinson Middle School
Union County	Maynardville Elementary
Union County	Paulette Elementary School
Warren County	Dibrell Elementary
Warren County	Bobby Ray Memorial
Washington County	South Central Elementary
Franklin SSD	Freedom Middle School
Wilson County	Watertown Middle School

Schools Exiting the Targeted Support and Improvement List

Source: Tennessee Department of Education

Annie Fu, Chalkbeat

Federal law also requires Tennessee to use test data to identify schools needing additional support to improve the performance of similar student groups based on federal criteria. The following 18 schools from 12 districts met criteria to leave that list.

District	School
Bledsoe County	Bledsoe County Middle School
Coffee County	Coffee County Middle School
Davidson County	John Overton High
Davidson County	Margaret Allen Middle
Davidson County	Knowledge Academies High School
Davidson County	RePublic High School
Hancock County	Hancock County Elementary
Hickman County	East Hickman Middle School
McMinn County	Niota Elementary
Madison County	North Parkway Middle School
Montgomery County	Kenwood Middle
Robertson County	Springfield High School
Shelby County	Craigmont High
Shelby County	Kingsbury High
Shelby County	Overton High
Shelby County	Snowden Elementary/Middle
Sumner County	Joe Shafer Middle School
Unicoi County	Unicoi Co Middle School

Schools Exiting the Additional Targeted Support and Improvement List

Source: Tennessee Department of Education

Annie Fu, Chalkbeat

The department is scheduled to publish test results online for all Tennessee schools on the state report card by late September.

Chalkbeat data journalist Annie Fu contributed to this report.

Tennessee will reboot search for school turnaround superintendent amid leadership churn in Achievement School District

2021-07-07T19:57:28+00:00

Tennessee is preparing to launch its third search in two years for its first superintendent over statewide school turnaround work.

Meanwhile, Yolanda Dandridge, a key school turnaround leader in Memphis, submitted her resignation from the Achievement School District, the state’s most prominent school improvement initiative, with 27 schools serving more than 9,000 students in Memphis and Nashville.

The developments come as Gov. Bill Lee’s administration seeks to jumpstart school turnaround work that was supposed to deliver quick and dramatic outcomes but instead has yielded sluggish and uneven results for almost 10 years.

Schools are also grappling with pandemic-related learning disruptions, which have put many struggling students even further behind, based on early data. In addition, the state is rolling out new phonics-based reading instruction techniques for the early grades, viewed as critical for school improvement.

“School turnaround work is difficult and arduous, and no time is more critical than any other,” said state spokesman Brian Blackley, who confirmed the developments on Tuesday.

The education department will hire an outside firm to search nationally for candidates for turnaround superintendent. The goal is to conduct interviews in the fall and fill the job by year’s end, Blackley said.

The turnaround chief will supervise state interventions within the ASD and other “priority” schools performing in Tennessee’s bottom 5%. The superintendent also will oversee schools with large achievement gaps among groups of historically underserved students, such as English language learners, students with disabilities, or those from racial and ethnic groups or economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn has put the superintendent search on hold twice — once in 2020 when the pandemic began and again in January due to budget uncertainties and pending ASD legislation. Schwinn says those matters are now settled, including the legislature’s passage of a plan for schools to leave the Achievement School District after 10 years in the program.

In an interview, Schwinn said she’ll task the turnaround chief with collaborating closely with local school, district, and community leaders to improve struggling schools — a departure from the ASD’s early approach, when the state mostly took over neighborhood schools and assigned them to charter operators.

“What we’ve heard over and over is the need for community engagement” at all stages of school improvement work, she said, calling it “one of the big lessons learned” from the ASD.

Dandridge is the ASD’s highest-profile departure this year and will exit her job as chief of school accountability and compliance on July 15.

Before joining the district’s central office, she was a principal, assistant principal, and teacher at Georgian Hills Achievement Elementary School, one of the state-run district’s highest-performing schools in Memphis, and also worked for the Memphis Scholars charter group. She served briefly as ASD interim co-superintendent in 2020 before Lisa Settle took on that role full-time.

Blackley said the state plans to replace Dandridge and Jacob Hardy, who last month left his position as manager of operations for three of the ASD’s non-charter Achievement Schools in Memphis.

The ASD’s central office, which is operating remotely due to the pandemic, has 29 employees, compared to 31 in January 2020.

School turnaround lessons from Memphis zero in on the need for collaboration at all levels

2021-06-17T01:02:52+00:00

When Tennessee and its largest school district launched separate school turnaround programs in Memphis in 2012, they adopted markedly different models but shared one similar philosophy: Recruit talented educators and get out of their way.

Turns out, that common approach didn’t work well for either the state-run Achievement School District or Shelby County Schools’ Innovation Zone, which also have produced mixed academic results that remain far below the state average.

Not only were teachers and principals in both models working with students with extreme academic and social needs, but they also had to abide by Tennessee’s tougher new academic standards and a stringent accountability system that measured academic growth from year to year.

“For many teachers and leaders, autonomy actually meant isolation,” said Joshua Glazer, a researcher who introduced a two-day school turnaround conference that wrapped up Wednesday. “Autonomy went from being a really great idea to just a really bad idea as that strategy started to unravel.”

Limiting autonomy in an education setting with multiple challenges is one of the lessons learned in Memphis, a national hub of school turnaround work that has at times looked good, bad, and outright ugly. Other takeaways include the importance of giving families an early seat at the table when making changes and seeking more collaboration among state and local officials throughout the process.

Unlike incremental academic gains associated with school improvement, school turnaround calls for dramatic gains in a short period of time.

“Ultimately, this is heavy, hard heart work that won’t result in magical outcomes,” said Terence Patterson, CEO of the Memphis Education Fund, which convened the virtual conference to inform future school improvement work, as well as education strategies generally in a post-pandemic world.

Tennessee’s Achievement School District grew out of its federal Race to the Top award and initially gave itself five years to transform chronically underperforming schools taken over by the state. The so-called ASD had a lean central office and mostly assigned the schools to charter operators to do the work. But overall, the district has not improved student outcomes, has struggled to retain teachers, and failed to catapult schools out of Tennessee’s bottom 5% as promised.

With its heavy-handed takeover of neighborhood schools and broken promises on performance, the ASD also hasn’t endeared itself to a city with a highly charged racial history.

The Innovation Zone operates in Memphis under a more traditional district structure. Known as the iZone, the program launched through Shelby County Schools and gave their school leaders charter-like autonomy to choose their own curriculum, give bonuses to lure highly effective educators, or extend the school day. The iZone achieved stronger academic outcomes than the ASD in its early years but has struggled to maintain funding to do expensive turnaround work.

Glazer, an associate professor of education policy at George Washington University, described the two governance models as “apples and oranges” but noted they faced common challenges in Memphis and shared an early belief in talent-based autonomy. Within three years, however, both initiatives backed off their autonomy mindset and provided their educators with common curriculums, lesson plans, and instructional practices.

Panelists participate in the “Tipping the Scale” virtual conference on school turnaround work in Memphis.

“Everybody’s got a plan until they get punched in the mouth,” said founding ASD superintendent Chris Barbic, quoting former professional boxing champ Mike Tyson.

For Barbic, that punch came 18 months in as he sat in a classroom and saw the ASD’s systems weren’t working.

“We still believed in autonomy, but the autonomy needed to live at the operator level, not at the school level. If we just give every school autonomy, you’re going to create the wild wild west,” he said.

Leaders of Shelby County Schools had a similar revelation.

“It sounds great, but it really needs to be sort of earned autonomy,” said Dorsey Hopson, a former superintendent who led Shelby County Schools during most of the iZone’s existence.

Hopson said educators need turnaround experience before gaining the freedom to innovate. In the meantime, they should lean on common tools and coaching, which foster collaboration and reduce burnout in a highly stressful environment.

“The burnout is real,” said Roderick Richmond, an architect of the iZone. “You’re not going to have educators who can do this 25 and 30 years the way people in the past used to,” partly because of the pressure to raise test scores quickly of students who are significantly behind.

Other takeaways are the importance of engaging authentically with the community that’s being served — and considering all of the pathways for achieving goals, even if it means slowing down the process and changing tactics.

“The way the ASD was set up, it had a lot more sticks than carrots,” Barbic said about wielding state authority vs. providing incentives.

While the state-run district was positioned to act quickly, Barbic acknowledged “we were probably too aggressive on the sticks and not thinking about what other options there were besides doing nothing, using charters, or running the schools ourselves.”

Richmond said local distrust and power struggles between the ASD and Shelby County Schools distracted from the overarching goal of equipping Memphis students for the future.

“If I had to do it all over again, I think the communities, the school board, and the state department probably should have sat down and agreed on a common set of goals,” he said. “Goals alignment helps you to truly collaborate around the work, and you can always defer back to goals whenever people go off on their own agenda.”

Most Memphis leaders credit the ASD for creating a sense of urgency to address underperforming schools that had languished for decades with inadequate resources and attention. But urgency has a double-edged sword when community voices are muffled, said Janet Thompson, a retired leader with Shelby County Schools.

“The cornerstones of our community are traditionally black high schools, which have been traumatized [by the ASD],” Thompson said, citing attendance, morale, and school climate, including athletics and the arts.

“I think we’re not better for it,” she added.

Barbic said quick structural changes to large government-run entities aren’t possible without making people angry. “That’s why most districts don’t do it,” he said. “They add programs instead.”

But he acknowledged that building grassroots support and collaborating with partners over time is ultimately more effective — an approach that has since shown promise in states like Massachusetts and Indiana, as well as Tennessee in Hamilton County.

“We’re in a world today where top-down just doesn’t work,” Barbic said. “Top-down can open a window, but it can’t sustain a window. You need on-the-ground support for a window to stay open.”

The ASD is at a crossroads as it oversees about 9,000 students in 25 schools in Memphis and two in Nashville. Under a transition plan the legislature approved in May, some schools will exit after being part of the state-run district for a decade.

Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn also has said the ASD likely will be revamped and will remain the state’s most intensive intervention for its lowest-performing schools.

Now with 10,800 students in 23 schools, the iZone has shown more promise but remains “fragile,” according to the most recent report from researchers who cited shifts in leadership and state and federal policy.

Memphis has school turnaround lessons for the nation, say organizers of virtual conference

2021-06-14T23:22:52+00:00

After 10 years as a hub of some of America’s most intense school turnaround work, Memphis is stepping back to assess lessons learned through a two-day virtual conference beginning Tuesday.

The Memphis Education Fund’s Tipping the Scales conference will convene an all-star lineup of educators, administrators, researchers, and philanthropic leaders connected to Tennessee’s two most prominent school improvement models: the state-run Achievement School District, which operates mostly in Memphis and relies generally on charter operators, and the locally run Innovation Zone, which gives its schools charter-like autonomy but remains under the governance of Shelby County Schools.

School turnaround is often called the hardest work in education. Organizers hope the conference will inform local, state, and national efforts to boost chronically low-performing schools in order to improve outcomes for America’s most vulnerable students.

“Now feels like the right time to have this conversation,” said Terence Patterson, CEO of the fund that coordinates education-related philanthropic investments in Memphis.

Terence Patterson is CEO of the Memphis Education Fund.

In an interview Monday, he cited nearly a decade of high-profile school improvement work and a pandemic year that has “shaken up a lot of things in education.”

“We want to keep innovation and school improvement at the forefront of our conversations,” Patterson said. “We also still have students in failing schools here in Memphis and we don’t want to forget about them.”

Panelists for the opening session, moderated by former Memphis school board chairperson Tomeka Hart-Wigginton, include Dorsey Hopson, former superintendent of Shelby County Schools; Antonio Burt, chief academic officer for Shelby County Schools; Chris Barbic, founding superintendent of the Achievement School District, also known as the ASD; Lisa Settle, current ASD superintendent; Tosha Downey, senior program officer for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has invested millions of dollars in Memphis schools; and Joshua Glazer, associate professor of education policy at George Washington University.

The ASD and iZone adopted different strategies when they launched in Memphis in 2012 to try to address the city’s enormous challenges of intergenerational poverty and low-performing schools.

Both initiatives have been tracked by researchers and, in many ways, are at a crossroads as Tennessee and Shelby County Schools look to tweak their models for effectiveness and sustainability.

The charter-reliant ASD did not deliver on early promises to transform schools taken over by the state but remains Tennessee’s most intensive turnaround approach and likely will be revamped under Gov. Bill Lee’s administration. It has about 9,000 students in 27 schools, some of which will exit the state-run district in the next few years under a transition plan approved by the legislature in May.

The iZone, which now has 10,800 students in 23 schools, achieved stronger academic outcomes in its early years but has struggled to maintain funding and intensity. Researchers’ latest report on the model — which invests extra money to extend the school day and attract the city’s most effective teachers — said “the likeliest path to reforming most of the country’s most under-performing schools goes through traditional urban districts like Shelby County.”

The virtual conference will include Memphis school turnaround leaders such as Tim Ware, a former ASD official who now leads the Grizzlies charter network; Lionel Cable, who was a principal at one of the iZone’s first schools; and Bob Nardo, founding leader of the ASD’s Libertas School of Memphis, the state’s only charter school offering a Montessori education.

Missing from the event will be Sharon Griffin, long-time regional superintendent of the iZone who later briefly led the ASD and now serves as innovation chief for Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools. Patterson said Griffin had a scheduling conflict.

“It is really important that Memphians tell this story because, all too often, there are other folks who talk about what they heard the ASD or the iZone was or wasn’t,” said Patterson.

And the story is a challenging one that includes community pushback to school takeovers, mixed academic results, and bickering between Shelby County Schools and ASD leaders.

In 2012, Memphis was home to 69 of the state’s 83 priority schools identified as eligible for intervention by the ASD or iZone. The number of Memphis schools on the state’s latest list has been cut by more than half, although many of those have closed or consolidated with other schools.

Now, as the state increasingly has shifted to a more collaborative turnaround approach, Patterson is both optimistic and realistic about the work ahead.

“This work is tough. It’s not clean or neat, and it’s not going to happen overnight,” he said. “We’ve had some early missteps in the context of community engagement but I really do believe that, if we can get that right in the next iterations, we can win on behalf of all of our children.”

Plan for exiting schools from Tennessee turnaround district will head to governor’s desk

2021-05-04T19:57:42+00:00

Higher-performing charter schools in Tennessee’s turnaround district could have an opportunity to pivot from one state-run district to another under a plan approved by the legislature.

The Senate voted 25-4 Monday for a bill that charts several ways for schools to leave the Achievement School District after 10 years with the charter-reliant program.

Most controversial is the path that lets higher-performing schools bypass their local districts and apply directly to the new Tennessee Public Charter School Commission for authorization to operate in a separate state-run charter district.

The plan, crafted by Gov. Bill Lee’s administration and approved last week by the House, marks a significant change from the 2010 law that created the so-called ASD to improve chronically underperforming schools. The state began taking over dozens of low-performing schools in Memphis and Nashville and promised to return them to their home districts in better shape than when they left.

But not only have the schools generally strugged to post significant gains, they’ve stayed in the state-run district longer than expected.

“I think most of us are disappointed in the results that we’ve had with the ASD,” said Sen. Farrell Haile, a Gallatin Republican who has carried the bill for the governor.

Even so, Haile and other Republicans said ASD schools that have improved should not have to return to Shelby County Schools or Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools.

“It would be outrageous to take our successful schools in the Achievement School District and send them back to an environment in which they could quickly turn into failures,” said Sen. Brian Kelsey, a Germantown Republican who chairs the Senate Education Committee.

Sen. Raumesh Akbari said the plan is a departure from the original intent, though. “I do believe we have to have a plan, but I would prefer that the [local district] have a right of refusal,” said the Memphis Democrat.

Research shows that Shelby County Schools actually outpaced the state-run ASD academically from 2012 to 2015 through its own school turnaround initiative known as the Innovation Zone. However, the local initiative’s gains stalled after it grew quickly without adequate resources to sustain the expensive school improvement work overseen by Sharon Griffin, the Memphis district’s previous turnaround leader.

The exit plan will expand the new Charter School Commission’s role beyond that of hearing appeals from charter applicants rejected by local school boards.

As schools gradually leave the ASD over the next five years, the commission’s portfolio is likely to grow by up to eight more charter schools. Currently, the commission and its predecessor, the Tennessee State Board of Education, oversee three schools in Nashville and one in Memphis. The State Board authorized those schools under Tennessee’s charter appeals process.

“It will create a new bureaucracy,” warned Senate Finance Chairman Bo Watson, a Republican from Hixson. “And there will be others who will come before this General Assembly in the future who will ask to be part of that pathway — that is, rather than applying for their charter with the local education agency, they will ask to be chartered by the state charter commission.”

Even so, Watson, who voted against the bill in committee, announced on the Senate floor that he would support the plan after receiving assurances that it was consistent with recommendations from last year’s ASD advisory council.

The Achievement School District oversees 27 schools serving more than 9,000 students in Memphis and Nashville.

In addition to the pathway to the charter commission, the exit plan lets lower-performing schools seek to return to their original districts. A third option allows schools to remain in the ASD if at least 60% of their families want to stay.

Senate Minority Leader Jeff Yarbro noted the irony of the plan’s practical application for school improvement work.

“The ones that we managed to right the ship on, we’re giving them a pathway to be state schools for the long run,” said the Nashville Democrat. “The ones that, after a decade, we can’t do anything to improve, we’re sending them back to the district.”

To determine which ASD schools will have the option of directly applying to the Charter Commission, the state will judge them using a performance framework that includes academics, finances, and student and family rights.

Tennessee governor wants ways to keep some turnaround schools under state oversight after 10 years

2021-03-26T22:24:36+00:00

When Tennessee started taking over low-performing schools and matching most with charter operators in 2012, the plan was to return the schools to their home districts when they improved in an estimated five years.

Now Gov. Bill Lee is proposing other options for schools that have remained in the state’s turnaround program for nearly 10 years — most notably to let some of the higher-performing ones move from one state-run district to another.

Under legislation introduced this week, Lee proposed letting some charter schools bypass their original district when leaving Tennessee’s Achievement School District, also known as the ASD. Instead, they could apply to move directly to the state’s new charter school commission, which the governor helped to create.

The bill also would let charter operators seek to return schools to their original districts and apply for new charter contracts, which school boards could accept or reject.

A third option allows the schools to remain in the ASD, if at least 60% of their families want to stay.

The legislation gives the most detailed blueprint yet for the future of 27 schools and more than 9,000 students in Tennessee’s turnaround district. The initiative is the state’s most intense model for intervening in chronically underperforming schools, but academic gains have been spotty since it launched using a portfolio of charter operators.

Except for schools where most families support staying, the proposal would require schools to exit the ASD after 10 years — or sooner if they’ve stayed off Tennessee’s list of its 5% of lowest-performing schools for two three-year cycles. Tennessee’s education commissioner also could OK an early exit based on various performance data.

The Achievement School District, which so far has only taken over schools in Memphis and Nashville, was never intended to keep the schools longer than 10 years.

“When the ASD began, the focus was on taking over schools — not on how those schools should transition out of the district someday. This bill offers clarity,” Rep. Mark White said after the measure cleared its first hurdle in the House on Tuesday.

White, a Memphis Republican, is shepherding the proposal for the governor, a charter advocate who championed a 2019 state law creating the charter commission with the charge of strengthening Tennessee’s sector of the independently operated and taxpayer-financed public schools.

If the ASD bill passes, the commission’s role will expand, and its portfolio of charter schools is likely to grow. (The entity currently oversees three schools in Nashville and one in Memphis.) For now, the commission’s authority is limited as an appellate authorizer of charter organizations deemed to be high quality but rejected by local school boards.

But whether the new commission has the capacity to take on turnaround schools is a big concern for Gini Pupo-Walker, board member for Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools and leader of The Education Trust in Tennessee.

“It’s one thing to be an appellate authorizer. It’s quite another to oversee a portfolio of schools that have been chronically underperforming for possibly generations,” she said.

Tess Stovall, the commission’s executive director, said the nine-member board and her staff “will be prepared to take on that additional responsibility” if the legislature decides to expand the body’s role.

Tennessee leaders have been talking for years about how to exit ASD schools that haven’t met early improvement goals acknowledged now as too lofty. But because the transition involves everything from people and property to finances and governance, the state has found it almost as hard to transition schools out of the ASD as it was to take them over.

Last summer, after the pandemic sidelined the state education department’s first proposal, the legislature demanded a more detailed transition plan to consider this year before ASD charter contracts begin to expire in 2022.

Early reviews of the resulting legislation are mixed. Several charter operators and advocates said they were pleased overall, while local district officials had more questions than comments.

“I think the structure and the vision of the transition is exactly right,” said Bob Nardo, founder and executive director of Libertas School in Memphis, whose contract with the ASD expires in 2025. “It creates options for exiting, but it ties those options to performance.”

White said the proposal gives higher-performing schools the option of transitioning directly to the new state commission if their application is approved by that body.

“Some of them are doing well and don’t want to go back to the [local district], White said. “They’re afraid they’ll get closed down.”

A spokeswoman for Shelby County Schools did not respond to questions about the bill, while a spokesman for Metro Nashville’s district declined to comment. But multiple sources said district leaders have serious concerns about provisions that appear to chip away at local control of neighborhood schools.

Much of the bill aims to address the thorny issue of property if a charter school moves from the ASD to the new state commission. Operators that have been leasing county-owned school buildings for free could pay to lease the campus for at least three more years or purchase it at or below fair market value, minus whatever they’ve invested to repair or improve the property.

“For schools to transition, obviously having a short-term period by which facilities could continue to be leased or sold to them by the school district is important for the stability for students and families,” said Charlie Bufalino, assistant commissioner of policy and legislative affairs for the state education department.

But it’s uncertain if that plan would run contrary to local government requirements for selling property.

The bill is scheduled to go before two more legislative committees next week.

Changes in KIPP Memphis prompt calls from staff to remove executive director

2021-01-15T23:49:17+00:00

A group of educators at KIPP Memphis charter school network want to replace their executive director, citing a lack of transparency in personnel decisions, low teacher retention, and unexpected school closures.

Nineteen KIPP Memphis Academy Middle staff members sent a letter to the board of directors last week asking them to remove Kendra Ferguson, who has led the charter network of five schools since 2016 and reports to the board.

The group, Cypress Coalition, worries Ferguson’s decisions will affect student learning, which already lagged behind KIPP schools nationally. The group is named after the former Memphis middle school building that closed in 2014 and is now used by KIPP.

In April, KIPP’s board members announced, without community discussion, that they would close two schools. Then in December, Ferguson removed principals at two other schools. The staff letter demands an explanation for removing the award-winning principals, whom staff called “titans” of the charter network.

“The continual flux in leadership has eroded staff’s trust in Dr. Ferguson’s efficacy as the executive director of KIPP Memphis,” said the letter dated Jan. 8.

Coalition member Cartavius Black, who grew up in Memphis, said, “I know students strive the best when they have consistent faces in front of them. In Memphis, that’s half the battle.”

He added attempts to understand Ferguson’s decisions have been “completely shut down and glossed over.”

Cartavius Black is a sixth grade social studies teacher at KIPP Memphis Academy Middle.

Ryan Gibbs, the KIPP Memphis board chairman, defended Ferguson on Thursday and said he plans to send a full response to the letter next week.

“The board feels right now that Dr. Ferguson and her team have our full support,” he said. “If she didn’t, she wouldn’t be in that role.”

Staff retention has declined since Ferguson came to Memphis. In her first year, 66% of staff stayed with KIPP the next year; by 2018, that number fell to 55%. Nationally, that year, 72% of staff in KIPP schools across the country stayed on at their school.

According to a KIPP Memphis staff survey in October, about 80% of the 150 teachers across the network said they would return next school year, a spokesman said. In December, after KIPP leaders announced they were removing two principals, a survey of 47 staff done by the coalition at those schools showed about two dozen staff changed their minds and plan to leave.

Ferguson said Thursday she has not been able to pinpoint the reasons behind the low staff retention. National research shows that if effective teachers leave, student learning suffers. But keeping the same teachers by itself is not always good. If schools can accurately identify ineffective teachers and replace them with better ones, the changes can actually help students.

The call to remove Ferguson comes as the city’s chapter of the nation’s largest charter network is undergoing significant changes to boost academics, incorporate more community input, and hire more native Memphians. The charter network was one of the first to open in Memphis in 2002 and one of the first to help take over low-performing schools on behalf of the state.

“We just have not held to our promise to make sure that our kids were ready to go to and through college at the rates we promised,” Ferguson said. “And with that, we’re doing some changing.”

The staff letter said the decision to close the two schools this spring was “devoid of transparency and community voice,” which they said characterized Ferguson’s leadership. Parents and staff were surprised because unlike most school closures, there was no warning they might be coming. That surprise prompted board members to reflect on how they communicate their vision to improve schools, Gibbs said.

“They feel things are happening behind their back and they don’t know what to expect, so that causes tension and anxiety,” he said. “So, trying to assure them of the direction we’re going, what we’re doing, is important.”

Gibbs said closing the two schools in South Memphis brought KIPP “back to our roots” in North Memphis where the network opened its first school in the city in 2002. He said the charter network grew “really fast” and came with growing pains. The network now educates about 2,100 students across five schools.

The letter also called for leaders to explain why they removed principals Andrea Criollo Echetebu of KIPP Memphis Academy Middle and Andrew Bobowski from KIPP Memphis Collegiate High. The staff letter said their removals “will cause unnecessary and significant harm” to the schools.

A KIPP spokesman said Echetebu and Bobowski were eligible to apply for other positions in the network and could stay on to help in the transition. Echetebu and Bobowski declined to comment Friday.

Black, the middle school teacher, said when KIPP leadership held a virtual staff meeting last week following the announcement, he came with a list of questions to learn more about why Echetebu was removed. But when he joined the video call, everyone was muted and the chat box was closed. He never got answers to his questions.

Ferguson and Gibbs declined to share details of the decision about the principals, but said they are slated to finish out the school year. Ferguson said her team is currently reviewing candidates to replace Echetebu and Bobowski.

“Teachers go so long being undervalued, they expect when they make a decision, for teachers to rock with it or get out of the way,” Black said. “This is not even a plea to get our old people back. We just want some transparency. We want to know why.”

Tennessee again delays hiring its first statewide school turnaround superintendent

2021-01-08T23:34:57+00:00

The new job that’s considered key to advancing Tennessee’s school turnaround work won’t be filled any time soon after state officials abruptly halted the search for a superintendent to shepherd the state’s lowest-performing schools.

“While we had a strong candidate pool, we will not be filling this position at this time due to budget and other uncertainties,” said Victoria Robinson, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Education.

The department plans to resume its search in August “when we expect to have a clearer path forward,” Robinson said this week when asked about the position.

The decision marks the second delay in hiring Tennessee’s first-ever statewide school turnaround superintendent in a state that has sought to be a leader in school improvement work. The pause suggests the education department won’t move quickly to restructure its Achievement School District, its initiative for trying to turn around Tennessee’s lowest-performing schools, since the new superintendent was to play a key role in the overhaul.

Last spring, the department paused its first search for a turnaround superintendent after the coronavirus pandemic hit, then picked it up again in the fall. Tennessee planned to present finalists in December to key stakeholders in the state’s school turnaround work, then make the hire soon after.

On Tuesday, the department relayed its decision to suspend its search to those stakeholders, including policymakers and charter leaders under the ASD initiative.

Bobby White, CEO of Frayser Community Schools, with three Memphis schools under the ASD, said his charter network’s day-to-day operations won’t be affected. “Nothing really changes for us because we’re professionals about getting the work done and doing what’s best for students and families,” he said.

Tennessee became a pioneer in turnaround efforts beginning in 2011 after winning a major competitive grant from the U.S. Department of Education that required a focus on improving chronically low-achieving schools.

The new superintendent is to play a pivotal role in deciding how to begin returning 27 ASD schools and 9,000 students to their districts in Memphis and Nashville. After nearly a decade of generally disappointing results in taking over struggling neighborhood schools and mostly assigning them to charter operators, Tennessee officials acknowledged last year that their most ambitious school turnaround model had fallen far short of its goals. They’ve promised a reboot under a revised model.

The superintendent also is to begin working closely with local districts statewide to support struggling schools at risk of state takeover.

Tennessee identified finalists out of 69 applicants for the job, but Robinson could not provide details. She said the decision to suspend the search stems from “uncertainties” ahead as the legislature prepares to take up numerous proposals related to K-12 education — not the quality of candidates.

“We are entering new budget and legislative sessions, and we need to have a clearer understanding of the budgetary or legislative impacts,” she said. “This is a big decision. We want to get this right.”

Lisa Settle

In the meantime, Lisa Settle will continue as the ASD’s interim superintendent, while the department has hired Robin Copp as assistant commissioner of school improvement.

A former Memphis charter school principal and founder, Settle has been an ASD administrator for five years and became interim leader last year. Copp has worked most recently as the state’s regional director of school improvement in East Tennessee.

Tennessee unveils plan to move struggling schools out of its failed program to rescue them

2020-12-08T00:05:28+00:00

After nearly a decade of lackluster results from its highest-profile school improvement initiative, Tennessee has unveiled its proposal for releasing 27 schools from the failed Achievement School District.

The options could include entering new charter school agreements, closing schools, or moving some of its 9,000 students to higher-performing schools.

The state education department published details of its long-awaited proposal over the weekend and circulated them to education leaders on Monday. A final plan is due to the legislature’s education committees by Jan. 1 after reviewing public feedback.

The plan outlines the options, process, and conditions for transitioning schools out of the state-run district and returning students to their local school systems in Memphis and Nashville beginning in the 2024-25 school year.

The blueprint marks the end of a significant chapter for the so-called ASD, Tennessee’s most intensive lever for trying to turn around its lowest-performing schools. The charter-centric reform model, which has been closely watched nationally, never really worked. Other states like Nevada, Mississippi, and North Carolina tried it too, but without much success.

Beginning in 2011, Tennessee began taking control of schools in its bottom 5% and mostly farmed them out to charter networks. But its heavy-handed takeover tactics angered school communities in Memphis and Nashville, and its turnaround model fell short of its ambitious goal of catapulting schools to the top quarter academically in five years. The ASD had difficulty attracting high-quality charter partners, partly because of funding and enrollment challenges, while its schools struggled to recruit top-notch educators.

Still, the state’s transition proposal skews heavily toward entering into new charter agreements for 23 charter schools that are nearing the end of their 10-year contracts with the ASD. The local district or the state’s new charter school commission would forge those contracts, and there’s one scenario in which the ASD’s highest-achieving schools could even remain with the state-run district.

“Because each ASD school is unique, each will have a [School Exit Plan] that is school-specific and structured to detail the key areas and decision points needed to facilitate a smooth exit out of the ASD ...,” the proposal says.

Two options could include closing the school altogether and moving students to higher-performing local or state-run schools.

Another option appears to open the door to revoking a charter and returning the school to the home district to operate as local leaders see fit. In Memphis, Shelby County Schools operates its own turnaround program known as the Innovation Zone, where schools outpaced ASD schools academically before losing critical funding in recent years.

For four non-charter schools run directly by the ASD in Memphis, the proposal cites the possibility of transitioning students to higher-performing schools, “depending on the academic achievement of the school.”

The decisions will be guided by a transition team to be appointed by the state as soon as a school has been identified for exit. That team — including ASD leaders and representatives of the school, the charter operator if applicable, and the local district — will recommend an exit plan. Criteria will include the school’s academic achievement, the charter operator’s compliance with its current agreement, local district readiness and capacity, and the availability of higher-performing schools within the home district. Tennessee’s education commissioner would have to sign off.

Tennessee has been trying to figure out a clear exit plan for its schools for years. But because the transition involves everything from people and property to finances and governance, state officials have found it almost as hard to return schools as it was to take them away.

The department stepped up the work in June after the legislature ordered a transition plan by Jan. 1. An advisory group of 18 state and community education leaders has helped to work through the issues.

Several of those members said they were mostly pleased with the blueprint, but also have questions.

“The process is clear in this document, but the outcomes are much less clear,” said Gini Pupo-Walker, a Nashville school board member who also leads the Education Trust advocacy group in Tennessee.

“At the end of the day, I think it’s going to be about resources,” she added.

Vinessa Brown, who chairs the board at Libertas School of Memphis, was cautiously optimistic but expects the plan will need tweaking.

“We just need for the focus to stay on helping students succeed,” said Brown, who has a child at Libertas.

Tennessee mulls how to exit schools from its turnaround district

2020-11-18T22:45:26+00:00

Tennessee has had nearly a decade to figure out an exit plan for schools in its embattled turnaround district. It has six weeks left, and a final draft appears to be imminent.

Last summer, the legislature gave the state education department until Jan. 1 to come up with its blueprint for 27 schools and about 8,000 students to leave the Achievement School District and return to their local systems in Memphis and Nashville.

Because the transition involves everything from people and property to finances and governance, state officials have found it almost as hard — and complicated — to return schools as it was to take them away.

The department will present some of its proposals this week in three community meetings. The gatherings, held online due to the pandemic, will also collect feedback from families and neighborhoods that will be most affected when their schools depart from the state-run district.

The handoff will begin with a handful of schools in the 2024-25 academic year, but lawmakers could decide to speed up that timeline.

Either way, the changes will mark a new chapter in the so-called ASD, the state’s lever for trying to turn around Tennessee’s lowest-performing schools.

After nine years of generally disappointing results in taking over struggling neighborhood schools and mostly handing them off to charter networks, Tennessee officials acknowledged this year that their most ambitious school turnaround model failed miserably. But instead of chucking the whole thing, Gov. Bill Lee and his education commissioner, Penny Schwinn, plan to reboot the program and launch “ASD 2.0.”

“First and foremost, the state is committed to the ASD as the highest form of intervention for our schools that have been consistently low-performing,” Schwinn said earlier this year. “That has been a strong position of our state, and we are not wavering there.”

Tennessee has yet to unveil its revamped turnaround structure. First, the state must decide what to do with schools languishing in its current ASD model. They’ll need a place to land as 10-year contracts with charter management organizations expire, beginning with the first schools that entered the district in 2011.

“The ASD was not intended to be any school’s forever home, and we still believe it should not be,” said Eve Carney, who is leading the transition work on behalf of the department. “As such, there is a need for a thoughtful transition plan for schools that are ready to exit.”

But lots of unanswered questions remain. Will the schools stay with charter management organizations? Will their local districts want schools back if they’ve not improved? What if a charter group wants to continue managing a school but not move under the authority of the home district?

Since August, Carney has convened an advisory group of 18 state and community education leaders to work through the issues. They include school board members from Memphis and Nashville.

Recently, she presented some of their ideas to the state’s newly formed Public Charter School Commission, which will adjudicate any disagreements over exiting schools.

“This is really not a one-size-fits-all type of plan, and should not be,” said Carney, the department’s chief districts and schools officer. “We acknowledge and want to respect the fact that every school is unique.”

Eve Carney, chief districts and schools officer for the Tennessee Department of Education, speaks at a community meeting in Memphis in March 2020.

Carney pledged that each school’s exit plan will be developed collaboratively by leaders of the school, the originating district, and the ASD — not exclusively from state offices in Nashville.

“It really is about not forgetting about the families and communities that these schools belong to,” she said. “I’d like to believe we’ve learned lots of lessons in this past decade and that we are going to move forward differently because of those.”

One of the biggest lessons: Listen to the people who know the schools and their communities the best.

The ASD launched in 2011 in an era of school reform. Mostly beginning in Memphis, the state took control of schools that were chronically low performing but also served as important community hubs. While the interventions inspired an urgency to improve other local schools, many Memphians haven’t forgiven the state for its heavy-handed takeover tactics ordered from Nashville.

Tennessee’s education department is trying now to do a better job of engaging with communities on what comes next. State officials hope for a good turnout at this week’s meetings, although the pandemic presents new challenges to already challenging engagement work.

“Families sometimes feel like these kinds of meetings are just to check the box – that their feedback won’t really be taken into account,” said Bobby White, CEO of Frayser Community Schools, a Memphis-based charter network that includes three ASD schools and a total of 1,200 students.

“I’m hopeful this isn’t just lip service. Our parents are tired of feeling like people talk at them,” he said.

Ultimately, the exit plan should look at each individual school for ways to continue successes and improve shortcomings, said Bob Nardo, founder and executive director of Libertas School of Memphis.

Also part of the ASD, Libertas is Tennessee’s only Montessori charter school and has shown growth in both student performance and enrollment.

“I think most of our families don’t know much about big abstractions like the ASD or Shelby County Schools,” Nardo said. “They’re mostly just concerned about their child’s school. The last thing they need now is to destabilize any trajectory of success.”

Schools in Tennessee’s Achievement School District won’t start returning to local control until 2024

2020-10-01T15:36:18+00:00

Struggling Memphis and Nashville schools currently under state control won’t begin to return to their local districts until 2024 instead of 2022 as proposed earlier this year.

A group of 20 state and local education leaders began meeting in August to help the state education department craft specifics of the long-awaited transition plan for schools to exit the Achievement School District. Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn will present the plan to lawmakers in January as required by a law passed in June. That gives the department about four months to nail down the details that many education leaders in Memphis and Nashville asked for soon after the state launched the turnaround district in 2012 to take over Tennessee’s lowest-performing schools.

The ASD’s initial task was to take control of the schools, improve them within five years, and return them to their local districts. That didn’t happen. Even today, most of the early schools pulled into the ASD remain in the state’s bottom 5% academically. All but two of the 26 ASD schools are in Memphis and all but three are now run by independent charter school organizations. (Two additional schools were created to help high school students graduate.)

“The ASD was not intended to be any school’s forever home, and we still believe it should not be,” said Eve Carney, the state’s chief districts and schools officer, who is leading the advisory group and spearheading the transition plans. “As such, there is a need for a thoughtful transition plan for schools that are ready to exit.”

Eve Carney represented the Tennessee Department of Education during a school listening tour in Memphis in January.

Among the many questions about how the district’s 9,000 students will be educated: What criteria must a charter network meet in order to continue operating the school? Would the school still serve the neighborhood — as ASD schools were designed to — or open enrollment to students across the city like other charter schools? Would teachers have to re-apply for their jobs if the local districts reject the charter operator? Would students stay in the same building, many of which have a backlog of maintenance needs, or move? All those decisions could lead to large-scale changes in leadership and classrooms.

Once those questions are answered, the state will develop criteria and a template from which ASD operators can make recommendations in partnership with their neighborhoods and local districts.

Under a proposal the department unveiled in January, the schools were to return to their local districts in 2022. But lawmakers voted in June to delay the handoff by another two years after charter and philanthropic leaders balked at a timeline they said lacked a clear plan.

“We were getting pushback saying, ‘We’ve put too much time, money, and effort into this. Now you’re going to throw us back and it’s over?’ ” explained Rep. Mark White, the Memphis Republican who co-sponsored the legislation.

The turnaround initiative, which cost the state millions of dollars, continues to have its detractors.

“Now the intervention needs an intervention,” said Rep. Antonio Parkinson, a Memphis Democrat and frequent critic of the ASD.

State Rep. Mark White (R-Memphis), left, and Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn visit Libertas School of Memphis, a charter school in the state-run Achievement School District on Sept. 1, 2020.

The coronavirus pandemic was another factor for delaying the timeline. Not only did the virus disrupt ASD schools, as it did all schools, but the subsequent economic slowdown led Gov. Bill Lee to eliminate $25 million proposed to support ASD schools in their transition.

Sticking with the 2022 exit would have created a “panic in the middle of a panic,” said Bobby White, the CEO of Frayser Community Schools, a charter network that includes three ASD schools. “It’s criminal in my mind to be talking about revocation, closures, transitions during this pandemic. We’re so challenged with having schools in this unique format,” he said.

The state plans to hold several virtual town halls in November to talk with affected communities about some of those challenges, including recommendations coming out of the advisory group. A lack of parent and community input has been a sore point from when the state began taking over schools. State officials say they’re committed to making the transition process transparent.

“For some, it was a hostile takeover,” recalls Stephanie Love, a Memphis school board member who serves on the advisory group and whose children have attended both state-run and locally run schools. “We most definitely do not want to repeat any of the mistakes the ASD made during that time. So parents should most definitely be involved.”

Gini Pupo-Walker, a Nashville school board member on the advisory group, says it’s important for the state to show that it’s learned lessons from the heavy-handed way it took over neighborhood schools in its early days.

Shelby County Schools board member Stephanie Love reads to students at Newberry Elementary School in Oct. 2019.

“There’s a lot of monumental decisions to make here,” said Pupo-Walker, who also leads The Education Trust in Tennessee. “The stakes are high. A lot of kids and communities have been poorly served for many years.”

Pupo-Walker said the diverse advisory group is a good start. The list of members (which can be found at the bottom of this story) has representatives from Memphis and Nashville, including three people who have had children or grandchildren in the state-run district. Three members have ties to philanthropic organizations that have contributed money to schools in the turnaround effort. Two — Love and Angela Whitelaw — are leaders in Shelby County Schools, the district that’s due to absorb most of the ASD schools.

“Whatever impact that it will have, we are in on it from the beginning and we will be able to share with our stakeholders, with our parents, with our teachers and our principals,” said Whitelaw, deputy superintendent of schools and academic support.

Bobby White, the charter leader, noted his network has not received an evaluation from the state in three years, and the state skipped what should have been his midterm review of the organization’s 10-year contract.

Shelby County Commissioner Michael Whaley, who sits on the governmental body responsible for nearly half of funding for Shelby County Schools, said a longer runway for transitioning schools to their local districts gives leaders time to digest what the criteria will be. But “one of the challenges is that you keep kicking the can down the road and in the meantime, parents and families are left in limbo in choosing where to go to school and if it’s stable,” he said.

The state district has fallen woefully short of its goal to propel the lowest performing schools to the top 25% in the state within 5 years. Eight years later, the district’s average test scores are still below the average for Shelby County Schools, where most of the schools came from. One state school beats out the local district average in math and one school matches the district’s social studies average.

Bobby White, who founded Frayser Community Schools in 2014, said he would rather operate his schools under the local district as neighborhood schools when they exit the Achievement School District.

“We’re failing those kids,” said Parkinson. “This can’t possibly be what they imagined with an intervention.”

Mark White, the Republican state representative who also chairs the House Education Committee, said complaining about the state’s results is not enough.

Before the ASD, “we continued to have decade after decade of low-performing schools. It’s a shame it’s not any better in all cases. But it’s also a shame that there was no plan for decades. At least the state came up with a plan.”

Love, the Memphis school board member, agreed that more is needed than bringing the schools back under their local district.

“We have to make sure that we can provide parents a better education option,” she said. “That’s going to take funds, that’s going to take the ASD providing data and being intentional about what we want with the transition and what we need when it comes to the education.”

Members of the Achievement School District advisory group are:

Michelle Armstrong, coordinator of instructional support at Pyramid Peak Foundation and KIPP Memphis board member
Jay Brown, head of schools at LEAD Public Schools in Nashville
Vinessa Brown, chairwoman of Libertas School of Memphis board of directors and co-founder of Lifeline to Success
Maya Bugg, CEO of Tennessee Charter School Center
Eve Carney, advisory group chairwoman and Tennessee Department of Education chief of districts and schools
Sarah Carpenter, executive director of Memphis Lift parent advocacy group
Victor Evans, executive director of TennesseeCAN
Sharon Griffin, chief of innovation schools for Metro Nashville Public Schools and former superintendent of Achievement School District
Aleah Guthrie, director of policy and government relations for SCORE and former director of policy at the Tennessee Department of Education
State Sen. Ferrell Haile (R-Gallatin), member of Senate education committee
Stephanie Love, Shelby County Schools board member
Terence Patterson, CEO of Memphis Education Fund and board member of Tennessee Public Charter School Commission
Gini Pupo-Walker, Metro Nashville Public Schools board member and Education Trust Tennessee director
Lisa Settle, interim superintendent of the Achievement School District
Tara Scarlett, CEO and president of Scarlett Family Foundation
Sonia Stewart, executive officer of organizational development at Metro Nashville Public Schools
Michael Whaley, Shelby County Commissioner
State Rep. Mark White (R-Memphis), chair of House of Representatives education committee
Angela Whitelaw, deputy superintendent of schools and academic support for Shelby County Schools
Marian Williams, principal of Kirby Middle School, Green Dot Public Schools

Former school turnaround chief Chris Barbic joins Tennessee charter center board

2020-09-01T22:02:13+00:00

Chris Barbic, the founding superintendent of Tennessee’s Achievement School District and now a partner in a national charter school investment group, has joined the board of the state’s leading nonprofit charter advocacy organization.

The Tennessee Charter School Center announced the appointment of Barbic to its 10-member board on Friday.

Barbic, who founded a successful charter network in Houston in the 1990s, was a highly visible education leader in Tennessee from 2012 to 2015 as the first superintendent of the state-run turnaround initiative known as the Achievement School District. In that role, he shaped Tennessee’s most intense model for improving schools, in which the state takes over low-performing schools and assigns them mostly to charter operators. Tennessee is now revamping that model, which was applied mostly in Memphis and has achieved limited success in meeting its goals.

A resident of Nashville, Barbic is now a partner with The City Fund, created in 2018 by a group of high-profile education reformers including former Tennessee Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman. The fund seeks to expand charter and charter-like schools and has invested millions of dollars in organizations in more than a dozen cities, including Memphis and Nashville.

“Chris is dedicated to students and good schools and he’s not afraid to try new things and to innovate,” said Maya Bugg, CEO of the Tennessee Charter School Center. “He also brings a national perspective and has insights into state-level education work here in Tennessee.”

Formed in 2013 through a merger of two charter groups, the charter school center is a research, resource, and advocacy group that aims to support and develop high-quality public charter schools.

“Our larger vision is that all students across Tennessee have access to a high-quality public education, and we think we can leverage public charter schools to help that along,” Bugg said of the publicly funded, independently operated schools.

Others who joined the center’s board this year are Terence Patterson, CEO of the Memphis Education Fund and past president and CEO of the Downtown Memphis Commission; and Lydia Hoffman, a partner with the Charter School Growth Fund, a national nonprofit organization that invests in charter school work.

Patterson is also a member of the new Tennessee Public Charter School Commission, which in 2021 takes over responsibility for hearing appeals from operators whose applications to start, renew, or amend charters are denied by local school boards. That responsibility currently rests with the state Board of Education, but is shifting to the commission under a 2019 state law backed by Gov. Bill Lee.

Lawmakers demand plan on future of schools in Tennessee’s Achievement School District

2020-06-10T23:17:48+00:00

State lawmakers want to see the plan for returning 27 schools and about 8,000 students in Tennessee’s Achievement School District to their local districts in Memphis and Nashville by the fall of 2022.

The Senate passed a bill Wednesday requiring the Department of Education to submit its transition plan to the legislature’s education committees by Jan. 1. The measure is expected to be approved by the House as well.

The legislation does not, however, eliminate the embattled school improvement district, which is home to chronically low-performing schools taken over by the state and mostly converted to charter schools. That model remains among the state’s school improvement strategies under Tennessee’s federally approved education plan.

The proposal seeks to address confusion around the 25 schools in Memphis and two in Nashville that are still part of the so-called ASD. In January, the department announced all of the schools would exit the state-run district by 2022, but has not revealed specifics on how that will happen.

“What the bill does is just say, ‘Give us a plan!’” said Sen. Dolores Gresham of Somerville, who is co-sponsoring the legislation with Rep. Mark White of Memphis.

Since its creation in 2012, the district has fallen woefully short of its original goal of turning around the state’s lowest-performing schools in five years. Most remaining ASD schools are still in the state’s bottom 5% and haven’t performed measurably better than other struggling schools still under local purview. A handful of the schools were closed due to low enrollment.

“It’s OK for us in government to realize … something’s not working. I think that’s what we’ve seen,” Sen. Raumesh Akbari said during last week’s Senate Education Committee.

“But there are many schools within the ASD that are doing some really great work,” said the Memphis Democrat, who voted for the bill. “I think having a plan will allow the schools that are [showing gains] to continue doing what they’re doing and the ones that can’t quite get there to be able to have a different option for those students and parents.”

Akbari urged state education officials to be in conversation with the neighborhoods affected.

“I hope that as the department develops the plan, they will also get community feedback because I know a lot of parents who have students in these ASD schools are eager to have their voices heard,” she said.

A statement from the education department said state officials are happy to comply.

“The Achievement School District will remain the state’s most intensive intervention according to Tennessee’s Every State Succeeds Act (ESSA) plan, and the department has been holding conversations with stakeholders to determine a thoughtful approach to right-size and reset the ASD,” the statement said.

Department officials have said the current ASD grew too quickly to meet its goals. They promised that the next iteration will look different.

“First and foremost, the state is committed to the ASD as the highest form of intervention for our schools that have been consistently low-performing,” Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn said earlier this year. “That has been a strong position of our state, and we are not wavering there.”

But the department’s strategy is being affected by the financial crisis caused by the coronavirus. In March, Gov. Bill Lee eliminated $25 million proposed for school improvement work in an emergency state budget passed by the legislature. The funds were to provide more resources and supports for ASD schools. Currently, the state receives about $20 million in federal grants to support all of its “priority” schools in the state’s bottom 5%. Department officials have not said how they plan to adjust.

The state has paused, for now, its search for a superintendent to oversee all of the state’s school turnaround work for about 90 schools, including those in the ASD, due to a state government hiring freeze, a spokeswoman said Wednesday. The new leader was to be hired this summer.

Lisa Settle continues to serve as interim superintendent. Yolanda Dandridge, who previously shared that role with Settle, has been reassigned to be the ASD’s chief of school accountability and compliance.

You can see the list of ASD schools here.

Once in danger of state takeover, these Memphis schools are showing results from strategies learned from the Innovation Zone

2020-02-18T22:53:34+00:00

At first glance, the three Memphis elementary schools that improved test scores enough to come off the state’s list of lowest performing schools have little in common.

Dunbar Elementary is a small school in Orange Mound, one of the city’s oldest and proudest black neighborhoods. Getwell Elementary is a mid-size school in Parkway Village that has a growing Hispanic population, with many of the parents there having only limited English. Robert R. Church Elementary, by far the largest of the three with 700 students, sits on the edge of Whitehaven, a predominately African-American community which was once a suburb of Memphis 50 years ago.

What binds them, though, is that all three schools have been using lessons from the Innovation Zone, Shelby County Schools’ flagship improvement program — even if they aren’t directly a part of that expensive program.

“There was similar practice for data-driven instruction inside the classroom,” Antonio Burt, the district’s chief academic officer, said of the three schools. “Even though it wasn’t a school in the iZone, the school still implemented some of those same similar strategies.”

Following the iZone’s lead, some of these schools have added instruction time, increased collaboration among teachers and administrators, hired academic coaches, and sought new ways to engage parents with job fairs and meetings on topics such as establishing credit. The schools use the same curriculum that schools across the district do, but leaders say these various strategies make the difference.

Seventeen out of the iZone’s 25 schools that entered the program before this school year have exited the state’s priority list of schools scoring in the bottom 5% on state tests, and results have been similarly positive for other schools that have adopted some of the iZone’s tried-and-true approaches, now in its eighth year. Each iZone school gets an extra $700,000 a year, on average, which researchers say is crucial to maintaining making the program’s gains sustainable.

And even without the extra funding that comes with the iZone participation, the district has been able to funnel more money to struggling schools because of its switch to student-based budgeting, a process that shuffles funds to schools based on student needs, not just the number of students it enrolls. The district’s formula this year prioritizes students living in poverty, elementary schools to boost early literacy, and students who often move from school to school.

Getwell Elementary

At Getwell, improvement efforts focused on the entire family — evidenced by its recent job fair for parents, an idea that came from a suggestion box the principal set up in the front office.

“They’re not just looking at the students, but the parents and the community,” Cecilia Mitchell, who has two grandchildren at the school, said of Getwell’s staff. “It starts with the leader.”

Left, Tina Smith, the principal of Getwell Elementary School in Memphis.

That leader, Tina Smith, started at Getwell in 2018 after two years as assistant principal at Treadwell Middle School, which escaped the state’s priority list in 2014. Getwell was one of seven low-performing schools that year that Shelby County Schools did not place in any sort of school improvement program. (All seven entered the iZone this school year.)

Several months before the 2018-19 school year started, she set up one-on-one meetings with teachers to find out what the school needed. The overwhelming response was more parent involvement, she said.

So Smith hired back a bilingual mentor to help build relationships with Hispanic parents who spoke limited English. She set up a “Popsicles with the Principal” meetings for parents of pre-kindergarten students at the school, whom she learned often feel isolated from the rest of the elementary school community. And when it came time for parent meetings, she sent out robo calls and text reminders, assuring parents there would be dinner to ease the nighttime routine interruption.

She attributes these efforts to a jump in enrollment — in one year, the school had 100 additional students, including an additional pre-K class. “OK, now I got the kids here, I got the parents here. Now let’s get to the instruction,” Smith said.

Smith and her team visited several higher-performing schools in the area to observe how they conducted staff meetings and lesson planning — collaboration that is key in the iZone. To start, she picked out one or two things to implement so as not to “overwhelm the staff,” she said.

Getwell leaders then started modeling lessons for teachers at weekly meetings and giving them time to provide feedback to their peers, also a tenet of the iZone.

“That was important because the teachers were like, ‘Wow, you know what we’re teaching. You know what lesson we’re supposed to be on,’” Smith said. “So, I think that gave me a little buy-in with them to really, really trust the process of what we needed to do.”

Getwell, which entered the iZone this year, is still well behind the district average in both English and math, but improved enough to escape possible state takeover. About 19% of students meet state requirements in math, while about 12% are proficient in English.

Districtwide, about 21% of elementary students are proficient in English, while 27% of elementary students meet the same standard in math.

Robert R. Church Elementary

Change at Robert R. Church Elementary came so fast that Shelby County Schools promoted Principal Janice Tankston to coach other principals after just one year. Tankson had just spent 10 years leading Levi Elementary where nearly half of students are proficient in math — about twice the district average. At Robert R. Church, she was the third principal in five years and staff were aching for a breakthrough.

Janice Tankson, the former principal of Robert R. Church Elementary in Memphis.

“When you’re at the bottom you have to think outside of the box,” Tankson said.

That year, under her leadership, the school entered the Whitehaven Empowerment Zone, which was introduced in 2016 as a smaller, neighborhood-focused version of the iZone to prevent low-performing schools from showing up on the state’s priority list. Each school receives about $325,000 — or about half of what iZone schools receive. Tankson used those funds to hire an additional school counselor, family engagement specialist, assistant principal, and small group instructor.

“We really had a large amount of people to support our students,” she said.

Tankson also built an entirely new administration team and only kept one out of every three teachers, a strategy borrowed from the iZone. One of her assistant principals came from Nashville, while another came from Detroit. The teachers she hired had evaluation scores rated 3 or higher on the state’s 5-point scale, which is a Empowerment Zone requirement.

Every certified staff member had a group of students to tutor before or after school, including Tankson. The sessions, with up to seven students, lasted 45 minutes, four days a week, from February until the first day of state testing in April.

A classroom at Robert R. Church Elementary, in Memphis.

Robert R. Church’s test scores in both English Language Arts and math now exceed the district average, after lagging behind in recent years. In 2018, just 9% of students were proficient in English. Last year, it was about 24%. In math, the share of students scoring proficient increased from 16% to 37%.

Now, the new principal, Marqui Fifer, looks to maintain the school’s momentum. He noted the collaboration between schools in the neighborhood is key to the Empowerment Zone’s success, a strategy adapted for the neighborhood from the iZone. Before starting at Robert R. Church, Fifer was the principal at Colonial Middle, a popular fine arts school in a wealthier neighborhood, near the University of Memphis.

“We actually collaborate. We talk about trends. We talk instruction-wise about things students need to know here so we’re planning with the end in mind,” Fifer said. “This is strategically done so that everybody in this community is doing and seeing the same things.”

Dunbar Elementary

At Dunbar Elementary, change was more of a slow burn. Principal Anniece Gentry came to the Orange Mound school in 2013 to a chorus of parents and students concerned about bullying, which “overshadowed” academics, she said.

“I had to meet with students to assure them that this place is a safe place and that your issues will not go unaddressed,” Gentry said. Sometimes that meant Gentry and teachers would walk students home and talk to parents about their concerns. The school counselor focused on school-wide culture and building positive relationships.

Anniece Gentry, former principal of Dunbar Elementary School, now shares her successes with two other schools.

But feelings of “family” at the school were hard to reach, she acknowledged. The school’s parent-teacher organization had fits and starts despite holding sessions on topics, from navigating the city’s utility company to establishing credit.

That all changed when then-Superintendent Dorsey Hopson briefly considered closing Dunbar during the 2016-17 school year and community members came out in force. Hopson later rescinded his closure recommendation and instead created a new school improvement program called “critical focus” that would pump $300,000 into Dunbar’s budget and that of 10 other schools.

From the archives: How one Memphis school in the ‘critical focus’ program put its extra cash to work

“That was such an eye-opener to me as a leader because of the fact I saw for myself that the community believed in our scholars,” Gentry said. “That was a turning point for me.”

Wanda Oliver, who teaches students with special needs at Dunbar Elementary, asks students to point to the emotion they are feeling at the beginning of the day so she knows how to follow up with them during class.

Joyce Dorse-Coleman, whose seven children and five of her grandchildren have attended Dunbar, was the president of the school’s PTO at the time and helped organize pushback against closing the school.

“After all this, the parents knew that if we don’t continue to improve our test scores and we don’t continue to be involved, talk about closing the school could come back,” Dorse-Coleman said, who went on to run successfully for school board in 2018. “And we don’t want to go through that every three or four years.”

Gentry said from then on, students wanted to “prove everybody wrong,” about the school’s lagging academic performance.

“Students began to ask teachers, ‘What did I make on my test?’ or ‘Dr. Gentry! Do you know how I did?’ Their focus was on the academics. It shifted,” she said, noting all teachers stayed on the next year after the closure threat to carry out the improvement plan.

The $300,000 afforded the school reading and math teacher coaches that spent all their time at Dunbar rather than split between several schools, which is common in iZone schools. Teachers were paid for one hour of after-school tutoring and some Saturdays.

Dunbar students now score better in math than the district’s average — which saw a significant jump last year — and are gaining ground in English.

“And one thing I think helped us: We were not afraid to let the parents know the status of the school. No matter how good or how bad the data was,” Gentry said.

A row of boarded up houses sit across from Dunbar Elementary School in Memphis.

Now, the school’s new principal, Brian Ingram, is rebuilding trust with parents after an almost complete staff turnover because Dunbar was one of 11 schools to enter the iZone this year. One of the requirements of the iZone is to replace the principal if they have been there for more than three years and that all staff must reapply for their jobs. The school still has a long way to go — just 13% of students meet state requirements in English.

Ingram hosted several introductory events for parents and Orange Mound community leaders to get to know him and the new staff, including a block party with giveaways, and has been making his rounds at neighborhood meetings. Ingram also spruced up the front lobby and regularly plays music as students enter school in the morning as a way to counter the view of houses falling apart directly across from the school.

“I want them to forget about what they just saw and know that they’re in a safe space and that they can do anything when they come in here,” he said.

With state approval, Journey Community Schools takes charge of students as Aspire leaves Memphis

2020-01-24T21:34:19+00:00

Parents, community leaders, and students gathered for the Journey Community Schools launch party.

At an event that felt like a school pride rally, Aspire Public Schools announced Friday that the state department of education approved turning over its four schools to a new Memphis charter operator.

Journey Community Schools will take charge of educating all 1,600 Aspire students by July 1. Aspire is a California-based charter network.

The event included a DJ, student cheerleaders, and a dance party. The crowd of students and community leaders responded to school Superintendent Nickalous Manning by cheering and waving pom-poms when he asked them: “Are you ready to find out who we are? We are Journey Community Schools!”

This means the four schools will stay open under the new charter operator, wrapping up a year-long journey for Aspire. The state said it approved Aspire’s transition proposal after an extensive application and interview process that focused on the network’s financial and academic plans for its Memphis schools.

Students and teachers will see little change over the next few months. Journey is retaining Manning — a Memphis native — as its leader. And all 18 Memphis-based staff now working for Aspire will join the new organization, according to a transition application obtained through a public information request from Chalkbeat.

But Manning said a new local board of directors has been named, there will be new measures of student success, and the network will be branded differently. His team met with teachers, parents, and students several times over the last year to get their input.

“What we consistently heard was that there is more than just being about college,” Manning said. “We want it to be more than that – there are multiple pathways to success.”

Genessia Boyd, a parent of four Aspire Memphis students, got to weigh in on the change in vision and called the new focus a welcome development.

The move means walking away from Aspire’s tagline, “College for Certain” and adding opportunities for students to think about vocational and technical opportunities in addition to a traditional college track. Nationally, other charter schools have pulled back on college-centric messaging. Texas-based KIPP leaders discussed last summer how the charter network, one of the largest in the country, is easing back on its college focus.

The new charter network is moving away from the motto: “College for Certain.”

Journey hopes to gain more local support as a Memphis-based operation. The newly created network also hopes parents will participate more often in board meetings, which was difficult for them to do when they were held in California.

Boyd said she was excited to have more input and that she’s enjoyed being involved in the transition process. She added that a local board might help get more parents involved, as well.

“A lot of parents from what I have heard are hesitant on reaching out to the school system,” she said, adding she hopes to start a parent-teacher organization for the charter network. “But I want them to know they don’t have to sit on the sidelines.”

Journey Community Schools will take over Aspire East Academy, Aspire Coleman Middle School, Aspire Hanley Elementary School, and Aspire Hanley Middle School. The schools will lose the name “Aspire” next year. East Academy is the only Aspire school under Shelby County Schools jurisdiction, the other three are under the state-run Achievement School District.

The Aspire network was one of the first outside charter groups recruited to join the state-run district, launched in 2012 to vault Tennessee’s lowest-performing schools academically to top performers by giving control of the schools to charter organizations. But the district has faced lagging academic growth and high leader turnover.

This transition announcement comes at a time when the state is proposing that all 30 schools within the Achievement Schools District transition to either local control or a new state charter commission. This means Journey’s three achievement district schools will eventually have to apply for new charters to continue.

“This is not a surprise,” Manning said of the state’s plan, adding that it doesn’t change Journey’s vision of running the schools. He added that he expects Journey to continue operating the schools after 2022, the state’s proposed deadline of moving schools out of the achievement district.

Aspire’s national board voted unanimously last January to pull out of its Memphis schools, following a meeting where board members highlighted a $2 million operating deficit and slow academic growth as reasons for the change.

Shelby County Schools board member Joyce Dorse-Coleman – who doesn’t represent Aspire’s Orange Mound schools but does represent the neighborhood – said she hopes the new vision translates into higher academic growth.

“I’m a supporter of any ways to increase a child’s academic learning, and I came to offer my support today,” Dorse-Coleman added.

None of Aspire’s three achievement schools had more than 15% of its students on grade level in the last round of state test scores. Aspire East Academy High School, under Shelby County Schools, had 22.9% of students on grade level in math and 11.4% in English.

Aspire will continue to work with Journey into the start of the school year, according to the application, and could even delay separation if the new entity isn’t yet financially sustainable.

Genessia Boyd, a parent of four Aspire Memphis students, spoke at the kick-off for Journey Community Schools.

The Journey network has secured $3 million from an anonymous donor to support the transition over the next three years, according to the application, adding that the new organization plans to decrease its annual funding deficit by $2.4 million over the next two years.

“These cost savings are largely due to the elimination of national office fees, resulting in more funding remaining in the Memphis region to support students, families and the community,” according to the documents.

Here are the board members overseeing the new charter organization, which includes a current Aspire national board member:

Karen Hartridge, assistant U.S. attorney;
Beth Hunkapiller, current chair of the national Aspire board and an educator;
Kevin Leslie, director of grants & operations at the City Fund & Public School Allies;
Amanda Montgomery, instructional coach at Memphis Teacher Residency and former Aspire teacher;
Cyrus Purnell, financial planner at Financial Finesse;
Zakiya Woods, staff pediatrician at Christ Community Health Services.

Aspire isn’t the first national charter organization to spin off its turnaround Memphis schools. Memphis Scholars, which runs three schools in the state district, previously was part of national charter network Scholar Academies. Project GRAD USA pulled out of Tennessee’s turnaround district and closed its school.

Nationally, Aspire will continue to oversee 36 schools in California.

You can read the group’s transition plan to become Journey Community Schools in full below:

Tennessee unveils draft plan for lowest performing schools and promises more community input

2020-01-08T05:05:15+00:00

A new state vision for Tennessee’s lowest-performing schools would give schools making gains more freedom to see through their own turnaround efforts and provide greater state oversight in schools that aren’t improving enough. But schools that show little or no progress could still be taken over by the state.

State leaders say that means they can concentrate more money on schools with greater needs and give local districts more say in improving schools that are closer to escaping the state’s list of “priority schools,” which score in the bottom 5% on annual state tests.

The Tennessee Department of Education’s draft plan for its 82 priority schools was presented at a community meeting Tuesday evening in Memphis. Department staff also publicly unveiled a proposal to transition the 30 schools already taken over by the state out of the Achievement School District in two years, which Chalkbeat reported Monday.

The proposal is the first under Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn to lay out how the state thinks its lowest performing schools should better serve students.

Eve Carney, the state’s chief districts and schools officer, said the state would consider more than just test scores and academic growth when placing schools on three levels of intervention, or “tiers.” The state would also take into consideration a school’s student discipline rates, how often students are absent from school, and how many students are prepared for college or a job.

“Just to be frank, we will be in your schools, we will be in your business,” Carney said. “But this to me feels like we are trying really hard to give you what you need so your school doesn’t go into the ASD.”

Below is a brief description of each of the department’s proposed tiers, which would go into effect during the 2021-22 school year:

Tier I, Improvement: Each school would receive $50,000 in state support, which districts could pool together to fund identified needs. The state deems schools in this category to have effective improvement plans in place and simply need more time. The schools would remain in district control, but the state would evaluate their curriculums and programs, and require regular reports on progress. State officials estimated about half of priority schools would fit into this category.
Tier II, Turnaround: Each school would receive $300,000 to $500,000 in state money and have a substantially longer list of state requirements including regular teacher observations, a community advisory board at each school, and overhauling student discipline. The state would also require a school resource officer and a nurse at each school.
Tier III, ASD: This level is reserved for the state’s most extreme action of taking over a school through the Achievement School District. Department staff promised to return in the coming months to gather feedback on how the district will change, but gave few specifics Tuesday.

When schools are not on the state’s priority list, but its English language learners, students of color, or students with disabilities test among the bottom 5% statewide, the state will require improvement plans and monitor it for up to three years before designating it a priority school. The state calls these “focus schools.”

The state’s forthcoming hire for a “turnaround superintendent” would oversee schools in the last two levels of intervention, rather than focus solely on the Achievement School District.

“I thought it was really important to have a leader who was invested in getting it right in tier two, not just in the Achievement School District,” Carney told the audience. “So if that step becomes necessary, that leader has been in those schools, has already engaged those communities, so there’s more of a connection.”

The meeting attracted about 100 people and was held at Trezevant High, which sits in the Memphis neighborhood that has experienced the most state takeovers since 2012.

Memphis is home to 40 priority schools: 22 in Shelby County Schools and 18 in the state-run Achievement School District. The next priority list is expected to be released in 2021. Under the state’s proposal, the state would place all priority schools in one of the tiers effective during the 2021-22 school year.

Some of those priority schools are already in a district-run school improvement program, known as the Innovation Zone or iZone, and they could continue in the program under the state’s proposal. The iZone has shown more academic gains than the state’s turnaround district, which researchers said posted about the same scores as schools that received no additional help.

“I’m encouraged that some of the supports they talked about are things we are already doing,” said Angela Brown, an instructional leadership director for the iZone.

About 100 people came to the Tennessee Department of Education’s community meeting in Memphis.

Some educators at the meeting asked for more state training or resources to address chronic absenteeism and student discipline — especially since those measures could be a deciding factor in the state’s assessment of schools.

“What I would really want to see funded at my school is an incentive program to deter negative attendance or poor behavior and academics,” said Willie Johnson, a family engagement specialist at Southwind High School.

Others hoped the state would put more money on the front end before schools need highly prescriptive state involvement or eliminate the Achievement School District altogether.

“They didn’t do our children right,” said Rebecca Murray, whose grandchildren has attended state-run schools. “I don’t see the improvement. They’re still at the bottom of the barrel.”

Commissioner Schwinn was not at Tuesday’s meeting, but is scheduled to be in Memphis on Wednesday for a meeting with Shelby County Schools’ top leader, Superintendent Joris Ray, to discuss the proposal.

“With the legislative season here, the commissioner attending the events wasn’t possible,” Carney told Chalkbeat.

The department vowed to schedule more community meetings to gather feedback on the draft as state legislators weigh options in the upcoming session in Nashville — a marked departure from the previous administration. Memphians have clamored for more say in how the state approaches low-performing schools, and some were still cautious Tuesday.

“I’m trying to wait and see instead of assuming anything,” said Shelby County Schools board member Stephanie Love, whose children were zoned to three schools the state district took over in its early years. “I hope the people at the table have the heart to say we messed up. We need to make sure we don’t continue the same mistakes.”

State officials said this time will be different.

“We want schools to be rooted in their community,” said Robert Lundin, the state’s assistant commissioner of school models and programs. “Nobody at my office, myself included, ever presumes that somebody in a bureaucratic office in Nashville knows better what’s needed for schools than people in their community.”

Reporter Caroline Bauman contributed to this story.

All 30 schools in Tennessee’s turnaround district would exit by 2022 in a massive restructuring proposal

2020-01-06T23:59:22+00:00

Tennessee wants to return 30 state-run schools to local districts in Memphis and Nashville no later than the fall of 2022, but also wants to retain its state-run district to possibly take over other chronically low-performing schools, says a proposal being unveiled this week.

Exactly how that transition would happen is unclear as the state education department seeks to revamp turnaround work for Tennessee’s lowest performing schools.

According to a copy of the proposal obtained by Chalkbeat, the transition is part of a massive reset for the embattled turnaround model known as the Achievement School District – made up mostly of charter organizations – which has fallen woefully short of its goal to improve student performance since launching in 2012.

The department wants the proposed reforms, which would affect other struggling schools outside of the achievement district, to start by next fall. But before other schools could be absorbed by the achievement district, they would have a year to nine years to improve with the help of local interventions and additional state funding and support.

The overhaul would require approval by the state legislature and the U.S. Department of Education, since school improvement is part of the state’s plan under a 2015 federal law.

The Achievement School District has taken over dozens of underperforming schools in Tennessee’s two largest cities and assigned most to charter operators charged with moving the schools’ academic performance into Tennessee’s top 25 percent in five years.

That didn’t work. Most remain in the bottom 5%, and several schools have closed due to low enrollment. Teacher retention has been another major challenge. Similar turnaround models in other states haven’t fared better. Nevada closed its achievement district, while North Carolina and Mississippi have struggled to get theirs off the ground.

“Despite good intentions, the ASD was implemented (or grew) too quickly,” the state’s presentation says in recapping some of the lessons learned in Tennessee. “Demand outpaced supply and capacity.”

Penny Schwinn visits Georgian Hills Achievement Elementary School as part of her March 2019 tour of Memphis’ state-run schools.

Even so, the district wouldn’t go away under the state’s proposal.

“The Achievement School District remains a necessary intervention in Tennessee’s school framework when other local interventions have proven to be unsuccessful in improving outcomes for students,” the presentation says.

The state’s proposal will be unveiled this week by Chief Districts and Schools Officer Eve Carney during four community meetings beginning Monday night in Jackson. Other meetings are set for Memphis, Chattanooga, and Nashville.

“Sustainable school turnaround happens over time and in collaboration with dedicated partners,” Carney said in a statement. “The department is committed to investing the time and resources necessary to create lasting change in our high-opportunity schools.”

The 41-page presentation outlines how the state wants to restructure all of its school improvement work, placing priority schools along three tiers requiring interventions that range from locally led initiatives to takeover by the state-run district. The next priority list will be issued in 2021, and placement would be based on several factors, including the number of times a school has made the priority list, its discipline rates, and measures of school accountability.

Commissioner Penny Schwinn has hinted for months that changes are coming to the achievement district, and her department’s proposal creates an uncertain future for the 30 schools now in it.

“The question is what happens to ASD schools that are effectively serving communities,” said charter leader Bob Nardo, whose Libertas School of Memphis is one of only five schools to score at the highest level of academic growth. “We have been told that schools doing a great job won’t be punished for success, and we’re eager for more details on what the future will look like.”

High on the list of questions from ASD operators: How would schools transition back to their local districts? And will the achievement district continue to use charter management organizations?

Bob Nardo, right, works with a Libertas student.

“We are pushing for details,” said Maya Bugg, executive director of the Tennessee Charter School Center, a nonprofit group advocating for quality charter schools.

“We assume that the ASD will continue to be a charter-centric model. We believe and support all levels of state intervention,” she said, adding that charter schools need more resources around special education and facilities to be successful.

As for schools that are returned to local districts, state officials said both parties will have more than two years to work together on a transition plan. And if a charter operator’s application is rejected by the school board, it can appeal to the state’s new charter commission. This means that some charter schools eventually could return to state control and be overseen by the commission, rather than by the local districts.

Any changes are sure to spark debate, especially in Memphis, home to 28 ASD schools.

“My hope is that they do what’s best for kids, and returning [schools] to the district doesn’t mean it’s going to work either,” said Sarah Carpenter, leader of parent advocacy group Memphis Lift. “Shelby County couldn’t turn those schools around at first. What will they do now?”

Shuffling schools and students among districts also creates a level of chaos that can be harmful to kids and teachers, said Regenia Dowell, president of a parent-teacher-student organization in Frayser, a Memphis community with eight achievement schools.

“Now, we are in a difficult situation where teachers and parents are able to say, will we still be at this school in five years?” Dowell said. “They don’t know what’s going to happen before 2022. If Shelby County doesn’t take them back, what’s the plan?”

Charter leaders have long said that the modest academic gains made by some operators were hard-fought, and that massive changes to the district should include input from them and their parents.

The district, which started with six schools, has had three superintendents and several central offices restructures. The proposal says a new superintendent would be hired by July to replace Memphis school turnaround specialist Sharon Griffin, who resigned from the department last year. The new leader will oversee both the ASD and less intensive state interventions for other priority schools.

You can read the plan for the achievement school district below, and the state’s broader plan for turnaround further down:

State-run district adds to list of Memphis school buildings with high lead levels, but most of its schools still need to test

2019-12-12T20:52:24+00:00

Three Memphis schools in the Achievement School District have joined a growing list of buildings with water sources that contain unsafe lead levels, but the vast majority of schools in the district have yet to be tested.

One source at Frayser-Corning Achievement Elementary school had six times the state’s threshold for safe water, which is 20 parts of lead per billion parts of water. In addition, one source at Georgian Hills Achievement Elementary, and three sources at Whitney Achievement Elementary tested higher than the threshold. A water source could be a water fountain or a sink.

For children, ingesting even low levels of lead can interfere with brain development, cause aggressiveness or inattentiveness, and impede academic achievement, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

So far, the three schools in the achievement district are the only ones that have reported testing results to the state environment and conservation department. The three elementary schools are run by the state education department as part of the Achievement School District, Tennessee’s turnaround district for struggling schools.

But 26 schools in the district run by independent charter school organizations also have to complete testing, and state education officials encouraged them to test over the upcoming winter break.

For its three direct-run elementary schools, the state education department decided to replace any water source that tested higher than 5 parts of lead per billion parts of water – 20 sources across the three campuses.

“The department has gone above and beyond the minimum requirements to remedy the issue,” said spokeswoman Morgan Taylor, adding that the department also distributed more than 3,000 bottles of water to supply the schools until the water sources were replaced.

Renee Smith, who had grandchildren in the state-run district, said although she was encouraged the state had replaced more water sources than required, she was also concerned that most schools in the district had yet to be tested.

“Those schools are so old, I don’t understand why this is a surprise that lead is in them,” said Smith, who also works for parent advocacy group Memphis Lift. “This should have been fixed years ago. Passing out hundreds of water bottles to the children so they can drink without hurting their bodies, come on now. It’s so sad.”

The first round of results from the achievement district comes after Shelby County Schools reported 39 of its buildings had water sources with high levels of lead, representing about 2% of water sources in the district’s 165 school buildings and facilities.

Students and staff in Shelby County Schools have the option of free, in-school blood testing provided by the county’s health department to determine if any have 5 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood or higher — the level of concern for federal agencies.

But that testing option is not currently available for Memphis students in the achievement district, said Joan Carr, spokeswoman for the Shelby County Health Department.

So far, more than 100 schools in 31 districts across Tennessee found at least one water source above 20 parts per billion.

The testing was prompted by a new state law requiring districts to test all water sources for lead and remove them if they have more than 20 parts of lead per billion parts of water.

Here’s what some school leaders are doing to stop the yearly teacher shuffle in state-run schools

2019-11-22T17:11:48+00:00

Teacher turnover is so common among local schools that it’s regularly referred to as the “Memphis shuffle,” says recruiter David Makita.

The constant churn of educators is especially felt at Makita’s charter organization, Memphis Scholars, where he leads teacher recruitment and retention efforts. The network runs three schools and serves some of the city’s most vulnerable students in the state’s Achievement School District.

Almost half the teachers at Memphis Scholars left three years ago, and about 43% last school year. This year, the charter school network aims to retain 80% of its teachers and created Makita’s job to help achieve that goal.

“For me growing up, when I was a fifth-grader, I could walk down the hall and visit my old kindergarten teacher,” said Makita, director of recruitment and engagement. “There were a core set of adults that were constant in your life and cared about your success. I’d argue our students need that the most.”

Over the past six years, half the teachers on average were new to the 30 schools in the Achievement School District, created to turn around the state’s lowest-performing schools. But the district – with three-quarters of its students coming from poverty – has struggled to make academic gains.

Retention of effective teachers is critical for the district, which is struggling to improve student achievement for students who are furthest behind. Research is clear that effective teachers are an important factor contributing to student achievement. And while high teacher turnover is a national problem, a study has found students of color and students from low-income families are affected the most in Tennessee.

“The thing about teacher turnover, it feels like you’re starting over every year,” said Memphis Scholars Executive Director James Dennis, now in his second year leading the 921-student network. “It makes it hard to sustain a turnaround program when you’re doing that.”

In addition to creating Makita’s new role, Dennis said, every two months, he and Makita meet with school staff as part of a “listening tour,” where they can get feedback on what’s working and what’s not.

“I think people are willing to kind of go with you a little bit further if they know you at least really try to listen and really try to do things differently than what you’ve done in the past,” Dennis said.

Other charter organizations in the district have found success in retaining teachers in part by offering $5,000 bonuses for teachers who stay. While Memphis Scholars hasn’t gone that route, Dennis said, they are focused on a more rigorous hiring process.

David Makita checks on students’ work while visiting a classroom.

Memphis Scholars has seven resident teachers across its three schools that receive extra mentorship and support through a new partnership with Relay Graduate School of Education, an alternative teacher licensure program.

“Part of high turnover is just not finding folks who are the right fit or have had the necessary training,” Dennis said. “So, we launched a teacher residency program [with Relay] this year to really focus on growing the teachers we need.”

Andrew Fields, one of the Relay resident teachers, said the extra training and the support of a mentor have helped him feel less overwhelmed in the classroom.

“Anything I’ve had to do, I’ve never had to guess how to do it,” said Fields, who teaches second- and third-grade math. “This is hard work. I can see why it would be easy to leave a school with high needs like this after a year if you didn’t feel supported or have people celebrating the small victories.”

One of those victories for Fields was watching a student go from only being able to count and multiply by drawing sticks on his paper to being able to do math through formulas and multipliers.

He works down the hallway from Epiphany Henry, who after three years with Memphis Scholars, is one of the veteran teachers.

Henry has taught in Memphis for eight years. She said respect for work/life balance from her bosses has kept her at Memphis Scholars, and that she has felt a shift in culture at the school this year toward greater teacher appreciation.

Andrew Fields, one of the Relay resident teachers at Memphis Scholars, is in his first year of teaching.

Smaller classes also help. She said she has 17 students this year, compared with almost 30 at a previous district elementary school. But Henry acknowledged that teaching at a school with large numbers of students living in poverty is extremely difficult work, even with smaller classes.

“I think that’s why you see so many teachers leave – they don’t understand what it really takes to serve students in this community,” said Henry, who was born in Memphis. “Some of the life skills we think are obvious or a child should know, some children just don’t have those skills. And we teachers are going to have to take a bigger role other than just teaching.”

Memphis Scholars is seeking to boost its teacher retention at a time when state officials are calling for greater accountability for the district’s charters, which operate the schools in the state district. Under Commissioner Penny Schwinn, state officials just wrapped up its own listening tour to get public input on the district’s future. Schwinn has said major reforms are needed for the district, which has struggled to boost student test scores.

Yolanda Dandridge, one of the interim superintendents for the achievement district, said teacher retention “always stays at the top of our minds.”

“We know one of the things that make sure students are learning: The number of years a high-performing teacher is in front of them,” Dandridge said.

Charter leaders call special education funding for state-run schools a ‘Band-Aid solution,’ worry about future

2019-11-19T19:04:04+00:00

Faith Dowell, a small kindergarten student for her age, pushes her round glasses further up her nose as she starts to trace lowercase letters in a sunlit Memphis classroom. She traces a lowercase “D” with her finger before sounding out the letter. “Deeeeeeee,” she says loudly.

What looks like a simple lesson would have been a monumental task for Faith a year ago when she started as a preschooler at Libertas School of Memphis, said father Jack Channing Dowell. Faith was born very premature and has developmental delays and trouble forming sounds that form words as a result.

“When we first came to this school, I was shocked at the diligence, how quiet the classrooms were,” Dowell said. “I thought, my daughter is going to destroy this place… But today, she’s grown so much in how to control her body, in how to pronounce words and letters.”

Libertas founder and leader Bob Nardo said students like Faith progress at his Montessori school because of supports in place totaling $500,000, some of which could be in jeopardy due to shifts in state funding. These supports include smaller classes, like Faith’s classroom – which has a ratio of three teachers to about 11 students – as well as two full-time speech therapists and part-time occupational and physical therapists.

Nardo’s school is one of 30 in the Achievement School District, a district of charter schools that took over historically low-performing schools. He is among charter leaders in the achievement district that fear further state cuts would seriously affect special education programs in the state’s district of students with some of the highest needs.

Bob Nardo, right, works with a Libertas student.

Many states struggle with how to create and provide adequate special education funding, leaving districts and individual schools with the task of trying to find alternative sources of money. Texas has recently drawn scrutiny for illegally pushing its districts to keep thousands of students out of special education, saving the state billions.

This school year the state halved a $10 million grant for low-performing schools. Charter operators, who voluntarily pooled their grant money to make paying for special education services more manageable, now fear they must discontinue the services or look for money elsewhere.

Nardo said Libertas still received a one-time $250,000 state grant this year, making it possible to continue providing some of the expensive services to his students with disabilities. But Nardo said the state doesn’t yet know if the grants will renew next year, meaning he could lose the funding.

State officials have said that the grant was never meant to be permanent, and Nardo called it a “Band-Aid solution” that doesn’t heal the more serious problem of inadequate funding for students with higher needs.

“We haven’t had any movement on the underlying issue, which is simply this: The state created a district constituted exclusively of high poverty schools, which have a tremendously high concentration of severe special needs,” Nardo said. “They did that for the purposes of school turnaround, which was the right thing to do. But the level of funding we need to do this work has not been there.”

About a quarter of the 364 students at Libertas have a disability. About 13 percent of students in the achievement district have disabilities, which is right at the state average for all Tennessee districts. Libertas, which has a larger number of programs and supports for disabled students, has been receiving a larger share of the pooled grant money.

Charter school leaders said that they are pushing Tennessee’s governor, Bill Lee, to explore student-based funding. Funding would be determined by each student’s needs, taking into account factors such as family income and student disabilities. Shelby County Schools recently adopted such a model, but Tennessee uses a funding formula that doesn’t weigh such outside factors. (The state’s two largest school districts are currently suing the state over claims of inadequate funding due to issues like poverty).

But Nardo acknowledged that a new funding model for the state would be a massive project and he called for state officials to more quickly address the funding gaps in special education for schools in the achievement district.

This comes at a time when the turnaround district’s future is murkier than ever. Under Commissioner Penny Schwinn, state officials just wrapped up a listening tour to get public input on the district’s future but have provided few specifics. Schwinn has said major reforms are needed for the district, which has struggled to boost students’ test scores.

A Libertas teacher works with a student.

Nardo said his school’s low teacher-to-student ratio and hands-on approach has allowed students with disabilities to increase their math and reading scores on national tests at a faster rate than Libertas students without disabilities. And his school was one of only five in the Achievement School District to score a level 5 on state exams, or in the top level of student growth.

“In the meantime, we’re committed to serving children in our community well, but it leaves a very gray area if we can’t sustain some of these programs, because we can’t send these children away,” Nardo said. “But it creates a bait-and-switch situation where we have had the funding for these robust programs, and if some of that funding goes away, where does that leave us in serving families well?”

Jamilyn Cole, a Libertas fourth- and fifth-grade special education teacher, said smaller classroom environments and the school’s contracts with Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital to provide therapists have resulted in improvements for students with disabilities.

“This is the first time as a teacher where I feel like kids are truly getting what they need, which is hard to say,” said Cole, who herself was once a special education student and has been a longtime Memphis teacher.

Roblin Webb, leader of charter organization Freedom Prep, serves a smaller special education population within the achievement district but agreed that state funding and the structure of the district don’t set schools up to serve well.

Webb said that because the achievement district is made up of separate charter operators, it is unable to cluster students with disabilities together like a traditional district does. For example, children who have motor skill delays might be grouped at one school.

“I can’t afford to serve one blind child, for example, and serve them well,” Webb said. “It would take my entire program to be able to do that…I know that no one has perfect funding to educate students, but special education needs and deserves so much more. It’s unfair to ask institutions to do it under our current system, because people will just do it poorly.”

Many Libertas classrooms with special education students feature soft light and classical music playing while students work.

Libertas parent Vinessa Brown knows both the benefits of the extra funding and the precariousness of that money. She is the charter school’s board chair, as well as a mother of two students – one of whom has autism.

“These are the kinds of changes and challenges we don’t want parents to see,” Brown told Dowel, Faith’s father. “We don’t want children to see these battles we have to fight for money behind the scenes. We want them to see that we care and that we promise they will get what they need.”

Dowell was surprised when Brown explained that some of the funding is insecure for the supports that they love. They talked about the academic and social growth they have seen in their children while at Libertas as a result of the funding.

“Used to be, he’d only be in the corners” of the classroom, Brown said of her son. “He needed to be away from everyone. Now, he works in the middle of everything, he wants to be around others. I want that for every kid like him who walks in the door next year. I want a system that makes paying for that possible.”

Tennessee considers tweaking school turnaround process to add more support and regional superintendents

2019-11-07T22:38:41+00:00

UPDATE: The state Department of Education released its takeaways from its listening tour, survey, and calls with charter operators here. The state plans to release a new school turnaround framework in the new year and will get more community input on the proposed changes at the following meetings:

Jackson: Jan. 6, 5:30 p.m., at Isaac Lane Elementary
Memphis: Jan. 7, 5:30 p.m. at Trezevant High School
Chattanooga: Jan. 8, 5:30 p.m. at The Howard School
Nashville: Jan. 9, 5:30 p.m., at Neely’s Bend Middle School

State officials have been hinting for months that they might make changes to spark improvements in Tennessee’s lowest-performing schools. During a four-city listening tour that ended in Nashville this week, state Department of Education leaders revealed one facet of that plan: a new format for school turnaround in which schools would go through three levels of support before they could be taken over by the Achievement School District.

Any big changes would most affect the 11 charter school organizations that make up the achievement district, and the 9,700 students at those schools. The potential shifts under new Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn come at a time when many charter leaders are asking for consistency, not upheaval, after the district’s third leader in seven years left last summer.

A pyramid chart shown during the meetings illustrates how the new structure would work.

There would be more defined state support for struggling schools and greater intervention before the possibility of takeover. District officials have also floated the idea of regional superintendents who would oversee the achievement schools and priority schools, creating a more decentralized approach to school turnaround.

The new pyramid format doesn’t look wildly different from the state’s school improvement plan developed under former education chief Candice McQueen. It was also a tiered model of support that emphasized collaboration with local districts and kept the achievement district’s threat of school takeover as a tool of last resort. However, the district hasn’t taken over any schools since 2016.

The state hasn’t said yet what intervention would look like in the levels before state takeover and how long a school would remain in each level if improvements aren’t made.

The new model is meant to provide clarity and detail exactly what assistance would be offered during each level of intervention, said Jennifer Johnson, spokeswoman for the state department.

“Stakeholders requested a simplified, more streamlined model of support that provides more detail on the types of support that would be offered and more clarity on how and when schools move between the tiers, including entrance and exit from ASD,” Johnson said.

On a call with charter operators last week, achievement district leaders also floated the idea of moving to a decentralized regional structure for turnaround work and more oversight, according to three charter leaders on the call.This could include creating regional superintendents at the state level in East, Middle, and West Tennessee that would oversee schools in the achievement district, as well as priority schools.

Bob Nardo, leader of Libertas School of Memphis, said the regional superintendent approach could make sense, given the achievement district’s history of Nashville-based leaders struggling to gain trust in Memphis, where 28 of the 30 schools are housed.

“I mean, from the very beginning, it’s been difficult if not impossible, for one person to try to sufficiently understand the local conditions in Memphis and Chattanooga, Nashville, etc.,” Nardo said.

Nardo added that district officials also suggested moving toward having a governing board oversee the achievement district. The district was designed so that each charter organization has its own board, but there isn’t one governing entity overseeing the district.

“It’s clearly the case that it’s not obvious for people where to go when they have questions or concerns or input,” Nardo said. “On the other hand, the premise of the ASD from the very beginning is that control should lie with individual schools and their board, and that those people have a greater understanding of their schools than some statewide entity.”

During the state’s listening tour, no mention was made of the regionalized approach. Felicia Everson-Tuggle, assistant commissioner of school improvement, emphasized during the meetings that changes will not be finalized until spring 2020 and one of the tour’s goals was to get community input on the plan.

While state officials highlighted the pyramid structure during the public meetings, they did not ask parents questions about the suggested changes. They asked more general questions, such as “What would you like to be true at your child’s school?”

Johnson said the state is still seeking input through an online survey.

Schwinn, who is still in her first year on the job, said in July that she hasn’t been satisfied with progress in the achievement district. Seven years after its creation, a study found the program has not improved student achievement, and Schwinn announced that no new schools will join the district this year school year.

And while Schwinn has said some schools will exit the achievement district, there’s no clear plan yet for what would be required for a school to return to local control.

Megan Quaile, leader of Green Dot Public Schools in the achievement district, said she was encouraged to see many of her parents attend the state listening tour, but discouraged that there weren’t a lot of specifics for parents to weigh in on regarding the new model.

“It’s a concern to me that decisions are being made without full understanding,” Quaile said. “I’ve said that to everyone I can at the state.”

Quaile added that communication has been lacking and her team only found out about the listening tour meetings in Memphis through Chalkbeat reporting.

Charles Scott, former leader of a countywide parent, teacher and student association, told Chalkbeat he believes changes are needed for the achievement district, and that he hopes the state asks parents “the hard questions” on any major decisions.

“I think it’d be great honestly if the commissioner did a reboot of the district and just the overall state approach to schools struggling,” Scott said. “I’m glad to see them listening to people in the community, but I hope it’s not the only time they hear from us. Parents and students are the most affected by any big changes, and their voices should be heard all the way through.”

You can view the state’s listening tour presentation in full below:

More funding, stronger accountability, better engagement: Memphians give input on the Achievement School District

2019-10-23T02:13:06+00:00

About 60 Memphians gathered in a Frayser gym Tuesday night for the first event on the State Department of Education’s six-stop listening tour to address what’s working in the Achievement School District and what needs improvement.

Lisa Settle, one of the district’s two interim superintendents, told the audience of about 60 people that state officials were there “because we are looking to make changes.”

“We’re not seeing the growth we would expect to see in schools across the state,” she said.

The achievement district was created seven years ago, and has struggled to turn its schools around. Its third leader left last summer, a study found the program has not improved student achievement, and no new schools will join the district this year school year.

Memphis is home to 28 of the 30 schools in the Achievement School District and would be most impacted by any changes the state decides to make.

During the hour-and-a-half meeting, parents, educators, and school leaders answered questions like, “What should the state’s role be in supporting schools?” and “What should change at your school?”

Answers included “trauma-informed training,” “stronger accountability,” “more funding for facilities,” “better parent engagement,” and a “governing body that includes parents and has input on what happens to the district.”

While state officials didn’t offer specifics about potential changes, they did say they are looking at moving to a four-step model for school turnaround work. That would mean there would be three stages of support for an academically struggling school before it could be taken over by the state as part of the Achievement School District.

“We need input from you, what needs to be true for your students and how we better support students, family, and community,” said Felicia Everson-Tuggle, assistant commissioner of school improvement. She emphasized that the plan won’t be finalized until spring 2020.

Marshaye Smith, a parent of five students at a state-run high school in Frayser, said it felt good to have a space to talk, but she was more interested in what the state does with the feedback.

“We’ve been hearing all this for years, and we’re saying our schools need more,” Smith said. “Are they actually going to use what they write down on paper?”

Vinessa Brown, who’s on the board of the state-run charter school Libertas, said she also wants to see how the state incorporates the input from these meetings into its final plan for the achievement district and school turnaround work in general.

“I want to see more support for our school leaders,” Brown said. “The state needs to visit our schools and understand. We’re out in the ocean on our own.”

Felicia Everson-Tuggle, assistant commissioner of school improvement, addresses the crowd.

Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn wasn’t present Tuesday night but said she will use community input from the meetings to determine how to change the district, which has struggled to turn its low-performing schools around. Schwinn told Chalkbeat before the meetings that she is focused on the district’s structure and whether keeping it an independent district of charter schools is the best strategy.

“We know we need strong teachers and principals, good instructional materials, wraparound supports for kids. But what is the right structure?” Schwinn asked, before referencing a possible move to a more collaborative model with local districts.

The original vision of the achievement district was to remove long-struggling schools from district control. Schwinn’s predecessor started moving toward more collaborative models, namely the Hamilton County Partnership Zone, when the achievement district didn’t show initial academic success.

State leaders will also travel to Nashville, home to two state-run schools, and Jackson and Chattanooga, cities that have schools on the state’s list of struggling schools. (For dates and times, including Wednesday’s second Memphis session, go here).

Holding the first meeting in Frayser was significant, as the northwest Memphis neighborhood is also home to four of the six original schools taken over by the Achievement School District in 2012.

Bobby White, who runs Frayser Community Schools under the district, called the neighborhood “ground zero” for state school reform and said the state needs to consider measuring schools’ successes and failures beyond test scores.

“What we don’t want is for the community to be duped again,” White said. “They need to have true input. Our schools don’t need more change. We need support and consistency.”

Statehouse reporter Marta Aldrich contributed to this report.

From creating ‘strong accountability’ to ending the district, here’s what Tennesseans propose for the Achievement School District’s future

2019-10-21T20:07:52+00:00

Ahead of what education officials say is a pivotal moment for state turnaround efforts, Chalkbeat asked Tennesseans to share ideas about the Achievement School District’s future. All but one respondent said the district should no longer exist in its current form.

“End the Achievement School District, it was always a bad idea,” Marcus Pohlmann wrote in response to a Chalkbeat questionnaire, adding that the district never addressed the “main problem of poverty.” Pohlmann is an emeritus professor of political science at Rhodes College who has written extensively on Memphis schools.

State Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn’s team is coming to Memphis on Tuesday and Wednesday to seek feedback from people in and around the Achievement District, the state’s takeover district for low-performing schools. (She will also be traveling to Chattanooga, Jackson, and Nashville. For dates and times, go here).

Schwinn told Chalkbeat that she’s holding the listening tour because something has to change. “The data is clear. The current strategy isn’t leading to better outcomes from kids. So we want to hear from communities.”

While Schwinn has said the district will continue to exist, she also has warned that it may drastically change form. Seven years after its creation, the district’s third leader left last summer, and a study found the program has not improved student achievement. Schwinn has said no new schools will join the district this year school year.

Regina Dowell, who leads the Parent-Teacher-Student Association in Frayser, told Chalkbeat she feels the conversations will be important. She wants district schools that have had some success to continue to educate children.

“For the schools that are struggling … allow the schools to submit a plan of action that they think will be successful,” Dowell wrote. “The state should provide the resources stated in the plan and assign someone to closely follow the progress.”

After the listening tour, the state plans to finalize a list of metrics to hold Achievement School District charter schools accountable. That framework was supposed to be in place all along, but has been implemented inconsistently because of the district’s leadership changes.

The state is also working to answer this question: What happens to schools after they leave the Achievement School District? The 30 schools in the district were originally meant to return to local control after improving, and the charter schools that run them were given 10-year contracts.

K. Phillips, a Memphis parent, said she would “like to see a stronger accountability system” for state-run schools.

“If schools are not meeting the benchmarks, they should not be given 10 years,” Phillips said. “That is essentially crippling an entire generation of students in a community.”

Charles Seaton, a longtime Memphis educator who said he has followed the district from the beginning, said little can improve at the district without more funding from the state.

“Place more money in the targeted schools and stop expansion until you have the schools improving,” he said. “The district had a plan but changed because of bureaucracy.”

What would you tell education leaders about the Achievement School District? We want to hear from you.

2019-10-16T21:52:42+00:00

Tennessee’s district for its most struggling schools is at a critical juncture – and state education officials are asking for input.

State Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn will start a listening tour next week intended to get feedback from people in and around schools in the Achievement School District. The first two meetings will be held on Tuesday and Wednesday in Memphis before traveling to Chattanooga, Jackson, and Nashville (for more information on dates and times, go here).

Schwinn has said that these meetings will be a crucial step as she looks at reshaping the struggling district and the state’s turnaround efforts more broadly. Seven years after its creation, the achievement district’s third leader left last summer; a study found the program has not improved student achievement, and no new schools will join the district this year school year.

But, so far, Schwinn has offered little insight into what any major changes could look like, outside of calling for greater accountability for the charter schools that make up the achievement district. She has told Chalkbeat that the listening tour will be key before making any final decisions.

That’s why we want to hear from you.

Chalkbeat wants to know ahead of next week – what are your thoughts on the future of the district, which is now in its eighth school year? What would you recommend to Schwinn? Fill out the form below, and we’ll aim to publish select responses.

Some schools may exit Tennessee’s struggling turnaround district next year. But who will run them?

2019-10-07T20:59:02+00:00

For the first time, three schools in Tennessee’s turnaround district have shown enough improvement to be eligible to leave next school year.

But because schools have never exited the eight-year-old district for a return to local control, no one is exactly sure how that should happen — not even state officials or lawmakers.

The Memphis schools, Cornerstone Prep Denver Elementary School, Cornerstone Lester Prep, and Georgian Hills Achievement Elementary School, were taken over by the state between 2013-2015, and over the last three years have been rated highly by the state for student growth, even while their achievement scores have remained low. If the three schools continue to have success, they could be eligible to leave during the 2020-21 school year, state officials said.

The Achievement School District was created in 2012 to improve the academic performance of struggling schools by putting them under the supervision of independent charter companies. No schools were supposed to remain in the district for more than 10 years. The goal was to move the schools back to the Shelby County or Metro Nashville Public schools districts after they improved.

But it’s not clear how they will return or who will operate them to ensure their continued success. With few details from state officials and no precedent, the three schools eligible for a return now face an uncertain future. At stake is the educational future of about 1,000 students who could have very different experiences depending on who manages the schools.

Jennifer Johnson, a state department spokeswoman, said the official exit and transition plan for the state-run schools is still in the works, although she added that state law gives education Commissioner Penny Schwinn the authority to release a school from the achievement district at any time.

Meanwhile, charter operators do not want to turn over schools that they have worked to improve. And the law is not clear on whether or not they can continue to operate the schools once they are under district control again.

“We would agree, and we believe that the state would agree, that when schools are being successful, they should continue to run the schools school and not hand them back to someone else,” said Drew Sippel, executive director of Capstone Education Group, which operates two Cornerstone schools in the state-run district that could be up for return.

But Sippel added that the “law is unclear” on whether or not charter operators would remain in charge of a school if it transitions to local control, and that state leaders are talking through the issue with charter network leaders, district officials, and lawmakers this fall.

Shelby County Schools currently oversees 54 charter schools in Memphis, the most in the state. All three achievement schools potentially eligible for a return are in Memphis, as are the vast majority of the district’s 30 schools.

Johnson said Cornerstone Prep Denver Elementary School, Cornerstone Lester Prep, and Georgian Hills Elementary School have met the state’s priority exit criteria. The schools have had some of the highest growth scores in this district, and Cornerstone Prep Denver had the highest percentage of students achieving on grade level last year.

If these schools do exit next year, the milestone will come at a time when the Achievement School District is trying to figure out its new identity. The district is leaderless after losing its third superintendent, an academic study found it had not boosted student achievement in its first six years, and the state education commissioner says major structural changes are coming.

When the Achievement School District was first created, the local school districts in Nashville and Memphis wanted the option to run an improved school as a traditional school if it returned, not as a charter, said Rep. Mark White, R-Memphis, who chairs the House Education Committee and has played a big role in shaping the achievement district.

“That was the original intention, but as time went along especially in Shelby County, there was movement to the idea that maybe the charter school could come back under [the local district] and Shelby County Schools could become the operator, not the state,” White said.

Johnson said the state’s interpretation of the law is that an improved charter school would need to submit a charter agreement to the local district and be approved – meaning a local district’s school board could reject the charter school. State law is unclear on what happens if a charter agreement is not accepted by the district. The school could appeal to the State Board of Education, which operates three charter schools that are not part of the achievement district.

White said that the uncertainties in the law aren’t helpful for anyone, but that he’s awaiting the state’s plan before suggesting any changes.

“I do want the state to keep a strong hand in it, but we’re going to have to put more money in these schools if we’re going to move the needle,” White said. “So, my wish is that we all work together, state and local districts, to find the answers. We’re going on year eight now, but we know we’re still struggling like we’re on day one.”

Schwinn has warned that big structural changes could be coming to the district, but details have been sparse. The state said it’s waiting to make decisions until its fall listening tour to hear from communities affected by the achievement district.

Johnson added that following the listening tour, the state plans to have conversations with the Shelby County and Nashville districts about what returning to local control will look like.

A spokeswoman for the Shelby County district said Superintendent Joris Ray spoke with Schwinn about the achievement schools over the summer, but that the district looks forward “to more in-depth conversations about the work and how it will unfold in Shelby County.”

Before making big changes, Tennessee plans six community hearings on the future of school turnaround

2019-09-19T23:13:20+00:00

As the future of Tennessee’s state-run turnaround district hangs in question, the State Department of Education is planning six meetings to get feedback on its work with struggling schools from parents, teachers, and their communities.

The state’s top education leaders will make two stops in Memphis and two in Nashville – the cities that are home to the 30 schools in the Achievement School District. They also will take their listening tour to Jackson and Chattanooga – cities that have schools on the state’s list of struggling schools.

Here are the dates and locations.

In Memphis:

Oct. 22, 5:30 p.m. at the Ed Rice Frayser Community Center, 2907 N. Watkins Street
Oct. 23, 5:30 p.m. at Wooddale High School, 5151 Scottsdale Avenue

In Nashville:

Oct. 29, 5:30 p.m. at the American Red Cross, 2201 Charlotte Ave.
Nov. 4, 5:30 p.m. at the American Red Cross, 2201 Charlotte Ave.

In Chattanooga:

Oct. 28, 6 p.m. at Brainerd High School, 1020 N. Moore Road

In Jackson:

Oct. 30 at Liberty Technology Magnet High School, 3470 Ridgecrest Road

Tennessee tackles improving academic performance through its state-run district and is trying to improve the oversight of its charter schools, whose students have continued to lag on state exams. The state also gives extra attention to struggling schools outside of the district.

“As we rethink, we want to hear from communities and families what they want to be true for their child,” said Eve Carney, who oversees all the state’s school improvement efforts. “We expect that from the tour, we will make adjustments to support the structure of school turnaround and the ASD.”

The community meetings are a critical step for state education chief Penny Schwinn, who is still in her first year on the job. Schwinn said in July that major structural changes are ahead for the achievement district, which has struggled to turn its low-performing schools around.

Seven years after its creation, the achievement district’s third leader left last summer; a study found the program has not improved student achievement; and no new schools will join the district this year school year.

But, so far, Schwinn has offered little insight into what any major changes could look like, outside of calling for greater accountability for the charter schools that make up the achievement district, which takes over schools and gives them more autonomy than traditional public schools. Schwinn’s office said the state is waiting to hear first from communities who live near and work in the schools.

Third-grader Kenyari Harmon, 8, writes a story about her favorite athlete, Serena Williams, during the Read to be Ready literacy camp held at Cornerstone Prep in Memphis’ Frayser neighborhood.

Drew Sippel, who leads a charter organization under the achievement district, said he and other leaders have been anticipating the state releasing its plan this fall for the district’s future.

“What we do feel from [the state] is a belief that the ASD should continue, a belief that it is possible that some schools are having success even though the district data across all the schools is not where we want it,” said Sippel, executive director of Capstone Education Group, which runs Cornerstone Prep Denver and two other schools in the Achievement School District.

A national search for a new leader of the Achievement School District also won’t begin until after these sessions and any subsequent changes to the district, according to the state. Currently, two interims based in Memphis are sharing the load of leading the district.

“The listening tour is a major step in the process as it is essential that we get feedback from the impacted stakeholders and districts to ensure that the plan sets schools and students up for success,” state spokeswoman Jennifer Johnson said in an email.

After these sessions, the state plans to submit an update to Tennessee’s current accountability plan, crafted in response to the 2015 federal Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA. The plan currently calls the achievement district the state’s “most intensive intervention.”

Johnson said that the state has started to develop a list of metrics to hold achievement district charter schools accountable – a framework that was supposed to be in place all along, but has been implemented inconsistently because of district’s leadership changes.

Also on the list of changes coming for the district: A new position dedicated solely to improving academic performance. The state is hiring for a director of accountability for the district, who would compare academic achievement in district charter schools with the metrics developed by the state, replace charter operators that aren’t cutting it, and help schools that are performing well exit the district.

The state has never replaced a charter operator that has performed poorly, though that was a part of the original vision for the district. A school has also never exited the district due to high academic gains, though Schwinn said that could happen this school year.

Carney said the state is looking at candidates for the director position now, but the job could change as the district changes.

“If we make adjustments, we didn’t want to get out in front of it too much before giving the community the chance to give input,” she said.

Regina Dowell is one Memphis community member excited about the listening sessions, though she said she hopes the state gives parents plenty of notice so they can make arrangements to attend. Dowell leads the Parent-Teacher-Student Association in Frayser, a north Memphis neighborhood that houses several achievement district schools.

“The vision is not clear at all for the ASD, if it’s going to continue,” Dowell said “How long before you phase it out, if you phase out, and what are you going to phase in? There always needs to be a treatment for low performing schools.”

How a Memphis state-run school improved math scores 9 percentage points in one year

2019-09-05T21:07:54+00:00

In the lobby of a Frayser elementary school, the first thing that greets parents, teachers, and students is a huge wall of testing data.

Six charts show how each classroom performed last year on school mathematics and reading tests. There’s a line across each image, showing the level of expected growth. Each classroom surpassed expectations.

But where Cornerstone Prep Denver Elementary School students really grew last year was in math. Almost one-third of the school’s third- through fifth-graders scored proficient on state math exams, an increase of 9 percentage points. This is the second year scores have increased significantly.

Still, two-thirds of its students aren’t scoring on grade level in math. And only 10% of its third- through fifth-graders scored proficient in English, on par with student scores the previous year.

Six charts show how each classroom performed last year on school mathematics and reading tests

But in math, Cornerstone Prep Denver’s student achievement is the highest of all 30 schools in the Achievement School District, the district of charter schools tasked with turning around Tennessee’s lowest-performing schools. Districtwide, 12% of students scored proficient in math last year, an increase of 3.6 percentage points, leaving them far below the statewide average.

Nationally, achievement districts like Tennessee’s have struggled to significantly boost their academics. Researchers have said that for the Achievement School District to continue “it needs its charter school providers to get the results that will give the system of school takeovers legitimacy,” and while the district as a whole hasn’t achieved this, Cornerstone’s progress is noteworthy.

This is the third year Catherine Holt’s two children have been at Cornerstone Prep Denver, which educates around 600 students. While she said she was a little overwhelmed at first by the amount of data provided to parents – like all the charts on the walls and in classrooms – she’s now used to it. And she likes it.

“I always know how my boys are doing, whether its behavior or schoolwork,” Holt said of her fourth-grader and fifth-grader. “That’s really comforting as a parent, especially seeing the boys go from really behind in school to making As and Bs in every class. I wasn’t surprised when they started doing well, I had seen it coming.”

Measuring student growth through weekly assessments – and using the results to focus on what students need – has been a huge priority for Cornerstone Prep Denver principal Michelle Lyons. This is Lyons’ third year of leading the elementary school and her 23rd year in Memphis education.

“I can say that my boss sent me an email in January highlighting that our math weekly assessments were not showing the growth and kids were not performing at the level we thought they should,” Lyons said. “So we created an action plan that focused on what we were going to do about getting the math scores up and making sure our students are where they are supposed to be.”

Principal Michelle Lyons greets one of Cornerstone Prep Denver’s students.

Part of that action plan included a greater focus on re-teaching certain math lessons in the last hour of every school day – an extra hour of school that was already devoted to math and reading intervention.

Ben Holloway, in his third year of teaching at the school said this extra hour has been instrumental in moving students forward.

“That extra hour is difficult because teachers and students are tired, but that hour really helps us hone in on specific student needs, and I believe it really helped our math scores,” Holloway said. “It’s difficult but necessary for schools like ours that historically have been underperforming.”

Holloway added that he thinks Lyons and her leadership team are good at helping teachers and other educators understand their student data. They also provide feedback often.

“I could likely teach less hours and maybe even make more money elsewhere, but there is something about this leadership team that I want to stay for,” he said.

Cornerstone Prep Denver’s progress, while encouraging, has to be maintained until all students are at or above grade level in every subject, said Drew Sippel, executive director of Capstone Education Group, which runs Cornerstone Prep Denver and two other schools in the Achievement School District.

“We’re trying to prove that for the city of Memphis, every kid can do it,” Sippel said. “We’re having success in math, and that’s great. We want to continue to have that success, but we also believe we can have more success in English language arts and reading. So across the network, we’re focused on that.”

But as the district settles into its seventh year, districtwide results show student progress remains woefully short of the original goal.

Cornerstone Prep Denver was taken over by the state in 2015, and in three years has increased student achievement at greater rates than its peers. For the second year in a row, the district as a whole scored at the lowest level of student growth, 1 on a scale of 1 to 5.

Only five schools in the district scored a 5, or in the top level of student growth – and Capstone’s Cornerstone Prep Denver and Lester Prep were two of them. This is the second year in a row both schools have received the highest rating.

Sippel credited Lyons and her leadership team as the biggest factors leading to the school’s growth but added that consistency in teaching staff and curriculum have also been key. This is Cornerstone Prep Denver’s third year using the Engage New York curriculum, which Capstone has now spread to all its schools.

“It’s a heavy load when you make a shift to a new curriculum,” Sippel said. “And so you want to make sure you’re all in helping your teachers. There’s so many things a teacher can’t control. So, the more we can be consistent in curriculum and assessments, the more successful I think our teachers can be.”

Now, the charter network is zeroing in on improving literacy scores in a district where only 7.5% of third- through eighth-graders scored on grade level in English compared with 34% statewide.

Lyons launched Accelerated Reader, software for monitoring the practice of reading, at the school in November. She said while implementation of the software “started a little shaky,” they are starting to see results.

“We were able to look at some data and see the kids who did most of the assessments and read more books in their independent reading time are the ones who made the biggest gains,” Lyons said. “We want that joy of reading to come alive in the school, versus kids just reading when they have to.”

Sippel said Capstone has increased the amount of time students read independently at all of its schools – and he has also hired three new people who will work with students who are furthest behind in reading. Two are based at Cornerstone Prep Denver.

“As soon as they get our first round of assessment data, they will create a caseload of students and provide extra support throughout the day to those students,” he said.

When Holt bought a house near Cornerstone Prep Denver and started sending her boys there, she said their reading skills were “OK,” but at the end of last year, she was told her boys are reading above grade level.

“We went from helping them with homework most nights, to when we ask now, they say, ‘Nah, I’ve got it,’” she said. “To me, that shows the teachers are doing what they are supposed to in the classroom. Ms. Lyons is constantly pushing my boys in a good way. She will tell them what they are doing well, but she won’t let them stop there.”

Lyons calls this her not “yet” strategy, a phrase laminated and plastered on many of the school’s walls.

“I tell students and parents, your children may not be on grade level yet, but we’ll get them there,” Lyons said. “We’re trying to change the mindset of what’s possible. A 10% jump in math scores shouldn’t be impressive. When are students are starting behind, it should be expected every year.”

State denies Memphis appeal to take Geeter K-8 off watchlist, but the school will remain under local control for now

2019-09-03T21:33:10+00:00

A low-performing Memphis school, flagged for possible takeover by the state-run Achievement School District, will remain under district control for now.

But the state Department of Education denied an appeal from Shelby County Schools to take Geeter K-8 off the state’s list of low-performing schools, saying the recent test scores at the Whitehaven school weren’t good enough to warrant less scrutiny from the state.

Superintendent Joris Ray said because the school added elementary grades last year, “the population the school served significantly changed.”

In an email to Ray dated Aug. 14, Mike Hardy, the state’s chief strategy and data officer said: “These schools still have the opportunity to exit based on their performance… Even if we considered the school for Priority Exit, it would not meet the exit criteria.”

Fewer than 5% of Geeter students scored proficient or higher in English this past spring on the state’s annual exam known as TNReady. In math, 6% of students scored proficient or higher.

Vincent Hunter, principal of Whitehaven High School and leader of the Empowerment Zone, addressed Manor Lake Elementary parents in March 2018 about upcoming changes.

Because of the languishing test results, the school was moved last year from the district’s turnaround effort, known as the Innovation Zone, into a neighborhood-specific program known as the Whitehaven Empowerment Zone.

At the same time, students from nearby Manor Lake Elementary merged into the former middle school after a group of neighborhood parent leaders suggested the idea to head off a potential closure that would scatter the elementary students.

Beverly Davis, one of the parents who suggested the merger, said the state’s denial worries her. The Whitehaven turnaround program was created to stave off more state takeovers in Memphis, where the state has concentrated its school improvement efforts with little success. Recent research has shown schools in the state-run district are no better off than schools that received no intervention. Test results in the Empowerment Zone have improved faster than the local district average, especially in math and high school English.

The state is making some concessions during the school’s transition. But this year’s scores were still not high enough to catapult Geeter K-8 off the priority list.

“I don’t know what else they want from us,” Davis told Chalkbeat. “They’re doing better in the Empowerment Zone than they have in a long, long time.”

Tequilia Taylor has a daughter at Geeter in first grade. She said she was “well aware” the state has been putting pressure on the district to improve the school. She thinks Shelby County Schools is “disorganized and needs a bit of work,” but is satisfied with her daughter’s academic progress at Geeter.

“It’s the second year. I think there should be more observation before a state takeover,” she said, adding she hopes the elementary students will not have to endure another change because of test scores from the middle school.

Here’s how two Nashville state-run schools are tackling teacher turnover, low student performance

2019-08-27T22:30:28+00:00

Educator Francie Brooks has seen a huge amount of staff turnover at her school, one of only two schools in Nashville that is part of the state’s Achievement School District.

Brooks is starting her third year at Neely’s Bend Middle School with LEAD Public Schools, but this year, she said that things are different. The school saw another year of solid academic growth, and it retained 75% of its teaching staff, compared to 50% the year before.

“Watching a community go through big changes at their school is hard,” said Brooks, who coordinates the middle school’s English Language Learners program. “The consistency piece and getting teachers to come back, that creates trust. This year, kids are so excited to see teachers from before. It sets us up for even more growth.”

LEAD has significantly changed the way it runs its Achievement School District schools over the last two years. The organization is now offering $5,000 teacher retention bonuses, has reshuffled its school leaders, and restructured to build more support around its low-performing schools.

Part of LEAD CEO Dwayne Tucker’s motive for the changes is to grow the charter organization – he said he would be open to taking on more schools as part of the Achievement School District and even explore expanding to Memphis, where the district runs 28 schools.

But the future of the district, and whether or not such growth would be possible, is in the hands of Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn, who came on board in February. Schwinn had warned that major changes are likely coming to the turnaround district, and that no new schools will enter this year. The district’s fourth leader in seven years left in June.

LEAD also took over Brick Church Middle School under the Achievement School District, which retained 68% of its teachers compared to 52% the year prior. The district was created in 2012 to turn around the state’s lowest-performing schools by handing them over to charter school organizations, who have more independence to make decisions than district principals. Though the district promised to raise the state’s lowest-performing schools into the top quarter academically within five years, it’s struggled to retain teachers — half are new to their schools each year — and its overall academics remain very low.

Retention of effective teachers is critical for the district, which is struggling to better the academics of students that are the most behind. Research is clear that effective teachers are an important factor contributing to student achievement.

Fewer than 15% of students in LEAD’s state-run schools — like most in the achievement district — scored on grade level on the latest state tests. But while the achievement district averaged the lowest score possible in student growth, LEAD’s two schools both scored a 5, the highest level of student growth.

Tucker said the two main factors leading to that growth was retaining teachers and moving high-performing principals into LEAD’s achievement schools. The Nashville-based charter organization also runs four schools under Metro Nashville Public Schools. Tucker became the organization’s leader in 2017 after LEAD’s founder resigned.

“We had to make strategic changes in how we run our charter network because we weren’t getting the results we wanted to see in our ASD schools,” Tucker said. “What was inhibiting our ability to be successful there? We weren’t putting our best people in those schools. We almost started over every year instead of having a core group of teachers come back.”

This school year, LEAD began offering $5,000 bonuses for teachers who have stayed at their school for at least two years. Eight teachers at LEAD qualified for the bonuses.

For educators like Brooks, this was a big deal. But she added that higher pay alone won’t keep teachers.

Dwayne Tucker became the organization’s leader in 2017.

“Everyone is really excited about this,” Brooks said. “There’s a sense of valuing our hard work, but there’s also an understanding that people have lives outside of school. You hear teachers all the time say, ‘I don’t have a life.’ I think here, that culture is improving.”

The organization also uses a merit-based pay scale that offers its highest-performing teachers up to 10% raise. This year, LEAD created an “advanced teacher” band, which starts at $65,000 and puts teachers on the same pay scale as school administrators. The annual salary for a teacher starting out in Metro Nashville Public Schools is $43,363, and the school district recently announced its own $5,000 bonuses for teachers in low-performing schools.

“We saw our higher-performing teachers want to make more money, and so they would become teacher coaches or join school administration,” said Chris Elliott, LEAD’s head of academics. “But we need to keep our best teachers in the classroom if we’re going to see sustained gains.”

Tucker said that he not only wants to maintain higher teacher pay and retention bonuses, but he wants to create a system where his charter organization runs solely on state dollars and not with help from outside philanthropy.

“If we can challenge ourselves to be sustainable, and create a repeatable process, then taking on additional schools is just a matter of how fast you want to do it,” Tucker said. “The challenge is to take a look at how we operate and figure out how to optimize processes and costs.”

Tucker’s background is in business; he was formerly in corporate leadership positions with Northwest Airlines and Alliance Data. He said he has tried to run schools more like a traditional business – where there is always money that could be spent more efficiently.

For example, he moved some schools to staggered start times, reducing the number of buses needed and saving the organization $400,000 in transportation costs annually. Tucker said $200,000 of those savings went into teacher salaries.

Beyond teacher pay, Tucker also has restructured the organization. The two principals at the organization’s state-run schools now report to a head of schools in charge of coaching them and aiding with operational tasks.

Tucker said the two main factors leading to that growth was retaining teachers and moving high-performing principals into LEAD’s achievement schools.

One of those principals is Tait Danhausen, who became principal of Neely’s Bend two years ago. He was formerly the founding principal at LEAD’s Cameron Middle School. Cameron isn’t a part of the Achievement School District, as it was converted before the district even existed, but it is considered Tennessee’s first turnaround charter school. Cameron saw sustained academic growth under Danhausen, and Tucker said he hopes he can do the same thing at Neely’s Bend.

Danhausen said that when he first came to Neely’s Bend, there was a 50% turnover in his staff. He credits this year’s higher retention to getting the right people in place and building up the school’s culture.

Elliott, the organization’s head of academics, said he wasn’t surprised to see sustained academic growth last year in LEAD’s achievement schools considering the retention of school leaders and staff. But he also acknowledged that student growth and student achievement are two different things.

On average, 10% of LEAD students in its two state-run schools were proficient in math, while 12% were proficient in English. This is slightly above district averages, but far below the state average of 41% proficiency in math and 34% in English.

“I’ve been rethinking this piece of turnaround work,” Elliott said. “We know we can do growth. We’ve had to redistribute resources, but we’re there. The achievement piece, that’s taking longer because our kids are so behind. I’m not leery now to say that this can be done in short stints.

As Tennessee’s turnaround district enters its eighth school year, scores remain stubbornly low

2019-08-15T13:04:54+00:00

At a make-or-break moment for Tennessee’s turnaround school district, its 30 schools have collectively delivered another round of low test scores.

Only 3.4% of high schoolers in the Achievement School District met the state’s proficiency standards on this year’s math and English exams, while 12.6% of elementary students reached that benchmark, according to data released by the state education department Thursday.

The news is not surprising: The Achievement School District oversees 30 of the state’s lowest-performing schools, the majority of which are in Memphis.

Still, the scores deliver another blow to the credibility of the turnaround effort once heralded as a national exemplar. This year, the district — whose low-performing schools are taken over by charter school organizations tasked with improving them — lost its third leader, had its poor performance analyzed by an academic study, and came under scrutiny from the state’s new education chief. Commissioner Penny Schwinn says she plans to announce major changes to the district soon.

Those changes will target a district where only a handful of students meet the state’s standards in reading and math.

Search for a school within the Achievement School District below. You can compare TNReady scores to see the percent of students scoring at/above grade level for multiple schools. If a score is marked as redacted, that is because there were not enough valid samples or the overall average is less than 1% or greater than 99%, according to the state department.

Only 7.5% of the achievement district’s elementary and middle school students scored on grade level in English, down slightly from last year. In math, 12% of students scored at grade level or higher, which represented an increase. Both remain well below state averages.

In the district’s five high schools, scores in Algebra I, Geometry, and English rose but remained very low, while U.S. History scores slightly dipped.

About 3% of high schoolers in Algebra 1 and 4% in English 1 scored on grade level. (Two of the five high schools are alternative schools that serve students who have already fallen behind in high school).

A searchable database of last year’s scores for schools in the achievement school district is available here.

This year’s scores reflect the first normal testing season for Tennessee in years. Public trust in the test’s reliability was at an all-time low after three straight years of technical glitches, scoring errors, and score delivery issues. But this spring, TNReady’s administration went the smoothest ever, building back at least some credibility in the results.

While the state exam, known as TNReady, measures academic performance with a battery of tests, the state uses a different system to capture how much a student grows academically over a school year. That system is designed to recognize improvements in districts and schools that serve many students from low-income families, who tend to score lower on state tests. That includes the Achievement School District, where three-quarters of students live in poverty.

For the second year in a row, the district as a whole scored at the lowest level of student growth, 1 on a scale of 1 to 5.

The achievement district wasn’t the only turnaround effort in Tennessee to struggle with boosting scores. Of 10 turnaround schools that are currently still a part of the Shelby County Schools’ Innovation Zone and took state exams last year, seven ranked a 1 in student growth.

Only five schools in the Achievement School District scored a 5, or in the top level of student growth, compared to eight schools last year. The four schools are Brick Church Middle School, Neely’s Bend Middle School, Libertas School of Memphis, Cornerstone Prep Denver, and Cornerstone Lester Prep.

LEAD Public Schools in Nashville runs both Brick Church and Neely’s Bend, the only two schools in the achievement district not in Memphis. LEAD Public Schools CEO Dwayne Tucker credited consistency in the principals and teaching staff at both schools for the growth.

But while LEAD’s two schools gained the highest growth scores, less than 15% of their students scored on grade level in math and English.

“There’s very little chance of changing a student’s trajectory without the retention of our school leaders and the overwhelming majority of our high-performing teachers,” Tucker said. “That’s been our focus, and that’s why you see the growth. But, academically, we are far from where we want to be and where we believe our students should be.”

Schwinn said she is rethinking the state’s approach to improving struggling schools, but exactly how that will work is unclear.

She told Chalkbeat last month that she plans to shift the state’s turnaround strategy “aggressively towards local partnerships.”

That could look like expanding Tennessee’s Partnership Network model, currently in Hamilton County, where the state and local district are trying to work together to improve a handful of low-performing schools. Those schools along with others in the southeastern country saw their test scores improve after a year under the model, district officials said this week in advance of the state’s official test score release.

Schwinn told Chalkbeat in late July that she will announce major changes to the Achievement School District soon – and before that will take her meetings on the road to Memphis.

NOTE: The state department said it did not administer elementary social studies and English III exams this year.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story left off Cornerstone Lester Prep from the list of achievement schools that scored a 5 on student growth.

In a reversal, Memphis charter network to stay with Tennessee’s state district (for now)

2019-07-29T22:17:39+00:00

Three weeks after a Memphis charter network announced it would pull its school from the state-run Achievement School District, officials say they’ve reached a temporary agreement and are staying put.

Freedom Preparatory Academy will continue operating its Westwood neighborhood elementary school as part of the state turnaround district instead of moving the school to Shelby County Schools oversight.

Roblin Webb, the charter network’s founder and CEO, said she changed her mind after finding common ground with state leaders of the Achievement School District. Webb had originally told Chalkbeat she wanted to move the school because of costs and the difficulties of operating schools in two different school districts with different protocols.

Webb had considered not only moving to district oversight but moving the students and staff from the school’s Westwood neighborhood to its campus 2½ miles away, where the charter operator already houses a high school.

“We found a way to make it work for a year, and the benefit is that we get to stay in the building for at least a year, hopefully, longer term than that,” Webb said. “We hate to have to backtrack, but we’re also grateful that we don’t have to move and deal with the complications with transportation.”

This means earlier plans by Freedom Prep to run a charter school in this new location under Shelby County Schools will be deferred for a year. It also means that achievement district leaders won’t open a new school in the Westwood building this fall, as previously announced.

Webb said a big incentive for staying with the achievement district another year was the possibility of keeping the Westwood building even after it transitions to Shelby County School oversight.

Freedom Prep would have been the first charter network to leave the state district for oversight under the local district. But Webb is hopeful the school will become a part of a different historic moment: Becoming one of the first schools to transition from state to local oversight because of improved academic performance.

Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn said last week, based on an early look at test scores, that it is “entirely possible” state-run schools could return to local districts at the end of the upcoming school year. She did not mention any schools by name.

Since the achievement district was created in 2012, no schools have left state control. The district promised to raise the state’s lowest-performing schools into the top quarter academically within five years by assigning them to charter organizations, whose leaders have more control over daily operations than district principals.

State law says charter operator can return to local district oversight if it improves test scores and remains off the state’s list of troubled schools for two consecutive years, but the process for leaving is unclear. This is the first school year many achievement schools will have two consecutive years of solid testing data because Tennessee has struggled with its testing vendors.

Katie Poulos, chief schools officer for the education department, said the state “looks forward” to continuing to partner with Freedom Prep.

“We are hopeful that we will see academic results that enable us to transition schools back to their school districts in a manner that protects the interests of the students and their communities,” Poulos added.

Freedom Prep runs four other campuses under Shelby County Schools. Webb told Chalkbeat operating in two districts with different protocols has become overly complex, and that the state-run district charges charter operators an administrative fee that is about 3½ times what Shelby County Schools charges.

The issues Webb previously raised still stand, but she added that the state education department has allocated more funds for state-run school facilities this year, making it more financially feasible to do another school year under state control.

“We went back and forth with the ASD for a number of reasons,” Webb said. “They didn’t want us to leave that building and the community, and we understood that and don’t want to leave, either. But we can’t figure out ways to make this happen long term.”

Correction: A previous version of this article stated that Freedom Prep’s other schools are not relocating, which is incorrect. The high school is moving to 817 Brownlee, the Millbranch middle school is also moving to 817 BrownLee, and the Fields Road Middle school is moving to 5132 Jonetta Street.

Tennessee asked national education leaders how the state should fix its turnaround district. Here’s what they said.

2019-07-25T19:30:54+00:00

Education leaders from across the country – whose work is driven by the belief that low-performing schools can be turned around – had some advice for Tennessee schools chief Penny Schwinn: If you want to improve state-run schools, set clear expectations, provide additional funding, and don’t put everything on educators’ shoulders.

More than a dozen people from organizations that operate or support turnaround efforts in other states convened at Schwinn’s request Tuesday in Nashville, for the latest in a series of conversations about the future of the Achievement School District.

They included someone from Louisiana’s well known state-run school district; consultants who coach districts on improving struggling schools; and nonprofits that advocate for equity and teacher quality.

The conversation came at a difficult moment for the district, once heralded as a national exemplar in school turnaround. Seven years after its creation, the district’s third leader recently left; a study found the program has not improved student achievement during any year of its existence; and Schwinn told Chalkbeat this week that no new schools will join this year.

“We’re now in a moment in time — potentially a couple of years too late — to say what we have been doing was a really important first step, it’s not enough, and it has not been working,” Schwinn told the group.

Then she asked for advice. “What have you seen that’s worked in school turnaround?” Schwinn asked. “What are the context and conditions that needed to be in place for it to work?”

The answers she got offered a window into the wide-ranging lessons that states and organizations have amassed over a decade of testing different turnaround approaches.

Kunjan Narechania offered insights from the Louisiana Department of Education, which she said is working with 500 schools to create improvement plans. Narechania was a leader in developing Louisiana’s Recovery School District in New Orleans, an inspiration for Tennessee’s Achievement School District.

“The story we’re telling our districts is this: We believe you can build a plan that will improve student outcomes,” Narechania said. “But if you don’t improve, the state will engage in with you… and we have the ultimate hammer: the state can take over the school if you don’t improve.”

Patricia Levesque of the Foundation for Excellence in Education, a pro-voucher think tank started in 2008 by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, also argued for tough accountability. She urged Tennessee to use an A-F rating system for schools and districts.

“Getting that accountability system strong aligns leaders’ interests to what’s best for kids,” she said. “No superintendent likes getting a D or F schools. It motivates change.”

Memphis Scholars Caldwell-Guthrie Elementary School entered the state-run Achievement School District in 2016.

Tennessee moved away from grading schools after issues with its online testing. But Schwinn later told Chalkbeat: “What resonated with me is that we’ve got to have an accountability system that our schools and parents and districts understand.”

Karen Hawley Miles of Education Resource Strategies emphasized that turnaround work is unsustainable without changes to how schools are funded. Her Massachusetts-based consulting organization recently worked with Shelby County Schools, Tennessee’s largest district, in a move to student-based budgeting, in which schools receive funding based on individual students’ characteristics and needs.

“Schools often fall into this bucket because the needs of their students are so huge and the funding levels are too low,” Miles said. “Teacher and leader turnover catches up with us because we haven’t changed what it’s like to work in those schools. We have to pay teachers to be in this role, and we have to not expect the principal to be the hero.”

Schools in the Achievement School District have experienced high teacher turnover, and recent research found that in each of the district’s first six years, just over half of teachers were new to their school.

Schwinn later said she agreed that a turnaround setting where a teacher “has 30 kids in their class, and no prep time, and makes $40,000-$50,000 a year is not realistic.”

Desmond Blackburn of the New Teacher Center also emphasized recruiting and paying for high-quality educators, saying “better people make for better schools.” But he added that the state should not view turning around these schools, which often exist in neighborhoods of poverty, as separate from their broader communities.

“There’s kinship between school turnaround and community turnaround,” he said. “[States] haven’t done a good enough job of calling to task other factors.”

Penny Schwinn visits a Nashville school in February on her first day as Tennessee’s education commissioner. Schwinn was named as a new member of Chiefs for Change, a national network of state and district school leaders.

Blackburn and several other attendees also emphasized to Schwinn that it is important to give local communities a say in their turnaround efforts.

“Allowing decisions to be made locally was key,” Blackburn said of his time in Florida turnaround work. “There’s a notion of the state being able to fly in at scale, that you can bring in enough people from other places to do the work. But that’s not a model that can get rooted or sustain itself.”

Schwinn later told Chalkbeat she plans to shift the state’s turnaround strategy “aggressively towards local partnerships.”

This could look like expanding Tennessee’s Partnership Network model, currently in Hamilton County, where the state and local district are trying to work together to improve a handful of low-performing schools.

Schwinn told Chalkbeat on Tuesday that she will announce big changes to the district soon – and before that will take her meetings on the road to Memphis, where 28 of the Achievement School District’s 30 schools are located.

“I think you will see over the next couple of weeks some pretty clear indicators that we are serious about having stronger partnerships with our local districts, communities, and local boards,” she said.

Schwinn: No new schools will enter Tennessee’s turnaround district this year, but some may leave

2019-07-23T21:56:07+00:00

Big changes will be coming to Tennessee’s Achievement School District within the next few months, the state’s education chief told Chalkbeat on Tuesday.

While Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn said the department is still determining what exactly those changes will be, two things are certain for the upcoming school year: No new schools will enter Tennessee’s troubled turnaround district, and there’s a likelihood some will exit and return to their local districts.

“That is entirely possible looking at the early data,” Schwinn said. “And that’s the point. We’re excited about that because it means that our schools have grown to the point where they can return to local communities and local control.”

This is significant because since the district was created in 2012, no schools have exited from state control. The district promised to raise the state’s lowest-performing schools into the top quarter academically within five years by giving them to charter organizations, whose leaders have more control over daily operations than district principals.

While the 30 schools in the district have not seen huge academic gains, some have improved enough to be moved off of the state’s list of troubled schools. The charter operator can return to local oversight if it remains off the list for two consecutive years. This is the first school year many achievement schools will have two consecutive years of solid testing data because Tennessee has struggled with its testing vendors.

While the achievement district was once the cornerstone of Tennessee’s turnaround strategy, no new schools have been added to the district since 2016. Schwinn said that trend will continue this year because the state is in “the process of redesigning and building” the district.

“So, now isn’t the time,” Schwinn said. “There will be schools [added] in the future.”

Schwinn’s comments came during a daylong forum Schwinn convened in Nashville on turnaround efforts, which Chalkbeat was invited to attend. The closed-door meeting was a fact-finding mission for Schwinn, who asked education leaders from around the nation what practices worked best to turn around a school’s performance.

Tuesday’s conversation comes about a month after heralded turnaround leader Sharon Griffin left her role as superintendent of the district, which she held for about a year. It also follows a recent research brief by the Tennessee Education Research Alliance that found Tennessee’s turnaround district has not improved student achievement during its first six years.

“The report that just came out is serious, because we’re talking about the lives of children and the education of children,” Schwinn said. “And so we have a responsibility to look at the data, look at the information, look at the findings and say we can and must do better. And it is my full intention to do.”

Schwinn said more conversations will be coming to Memphis, which houses 28 of the schools in the achievement district.

“Over the next six to eight weeks, we’re going to have some frank and honest conversations about the direction of the ASD,” Schwinn said. “We want to make sure that we’re soliciting feedback from families of students who are currently enrolled at ASD schools, because they are the most important voice.”

Schwinn did say the state would increasingly work alongside districts to intervene in struggling schools, but that doesn’t mean the state-run achievement district will disappear. She credited the state takeover model for motivating local districts to create their own school improvement strategies.

The most well known is the Shelby County Innovation Zone – which touted student gains in its early years, but more recent research said its gains have been hard to sustain over time.

Schwinn said the continued existence of the achievement district “sends a signal of importance in improving and growing our highest opportunity schools.” But she added that there should be “really strong models that districts can explore before we get to that ultimate intervention.”

“And if that ultimate intervention does occur, it occurs with local partnership, it cannot be a state-only intervention anymore,” Schwinn said. The original vision of the achievement district was to remove schools from district control. Schwinn’s predecessor started moving toward more collaborative models, namely the Hamilton County Partnership Zone, when the achievement district didn’t show initial academic success.

“It has got to be something that the state and the community are coming together and saying we can do better… or else as soon as those schools are out of the ASD, there’s no investment or ownership. So, I think that’s what you will see in whatever the state-run district looks like in a year or two years.”

Tennessee school turnaround models either haven’t worked or are stalling out, new research finds

2019-07-16T17:00:09+00:00

Tennessee’s state-run model for school turnaround hasn’t worked, according to new research, which also casts doubt on another locally run school-improvement program in Memphis.

The Achievement School District, or ASD, created to turn around Tennessee’s lowest-performing schools, has not generated improvements to student achievement during any of the district’s first six years, a research brief released Tuesday by the Tennessee Education Research Alliance shows.

The study also found that students in Shelby County Schools’ Innovation Zone stopped showing academic gains after the program’s first three years — a surprise to many followers who have become accustomed to hearing mostly rave reviews about the so-called iZone.

“We feel confident at this point saying that the strategy followed for the ASD hasn’t produced positive results for students we’d hoped to see,” said Gary Henry, a Vanderbilt University professor and one of the study’s researchers. “In the latter years, we see that the iZone hasn’t been as effective, which leads us to conclude these are very difficult improvements to sustain over time.”

The findings are yet another blow to the credibility of the Achievement School District, the most radical reform strategy in a state that has pioneered school turnaround work — but is at a crossroads under new Gov. Bill Lee.

“The study confirms the need to rethink the approach of the Achievement School District,” said Lee’s education commissioner, Penny Schwinn, calling for more collaborative work between the state and districts that have schools in crisis.

The state-run district took over low-performing schools in Memphis and Nashville to either operate directly or, more typically, assign to charter operators to turn them around. The initial goal was to vault struggling schools out of the state’s bottom 5% and into the top 25% academically within five years. But overall, the schools, which now number 28 in Memphis and two in Nashville, have performed no better or worse than comparable struggling schools outside of the district.

Perhaps more surprising is the faltering of the iZone, whose schools have more autonomy than others in the Memphis district, and use state dollars to extend the school day and attract the city’s most effective teachers. Early on, researchers touted student gains and successes in retaining top teachers in the iZone. But the latest research says that those promising positive impacts have slowed as more schools have been moved into the program, possibly due to high teacher turnover and the struggle to recruit top teachers as replacements.

“These results suggest that turnaround efforts which rely on restaffing schools with more effective educators may not be sustainable after multiple years, which raises the possibility that there is a limited supply of teachers who are willing to transfer to low-performing schools,” the report said.

Henry said it would be a mistake to conclude that the iZone model stopped working, however. The program’s success depends on recruiting highly effective teachers and growing funding for the schools, he said, suggesting that the district “expand its recruitment areas and consider perhaps larger financial incentives.”

Shelby County Schools Superintendent Joris Ray said the latest research reflects the challenge of scaling up a model that launched with eight schools and now numbers 23.

“Overall success is often threatened due to the amount of resources and tools not matching the expansion initiative,” said Ray, adding that “it takes intentional and sustained efforts over time by people deeply committed to children to turn around schools.”

Students walk to class at Douglass High School, part of the Innovation Zone, a school turnaround program in Memphis and Shelby County Schools.

Both initiatives launched in 2012 and continue to operate, providing researchers with ample time to track both models.

“Previous research on school reform suggests that positive effects can take up to five years to appear, elevating the importance of our six-year evaluation,” Henry said.

If iZone schools, with their bonuses meant to lure effective teachers, have struggled to sustain recruitment of high-quality teachers over time, then the Achievement School District has struggled even more when it comes to teacher talent. Over the past six years, an average of 51% of teachers in achievement schools were new to their school that year, compared to 36% of iZone teachers.

“High levels of teacher turnover may be part of the reason ASD schools have not improved student achievement,” the researchers conclude.

Other mammoth challenges for the state-run district are low student enrollment and high superintendent turnover, having just lost its third leader in four years.

But the recent departure of ASD Superintendent Sharon Griffin, a known turnaround specialist, might also present the state with an opportunity to “revisit” the original ASD model, said Lam Pham, the brief’s lead author.

The Tennessee Education Research Alliance is a partnership between Vanderbilt’s Peabody College and the Tennessee Department of Education.

You can read the latest report in full here, and the five-year brief is available here.

As Tennessee gives its turnaround district a hard look, fates of other takeover districts show struggles aren’t unique

2019-07-12T19:23:08+00:00

Tennessee’s achievement district came out of the gates strong in 2012 with support from national charter networks and state leadership.

Taking its cues from the successful turnaround of schools in New Orleans, Tennessee’s Achievement School District was a model for other districts, including in Nevada, North Carolina, and Mississippi.

But seven years later, Tennessee’s low-performing students have not seen large gains. Nevada has closed its turnaround district, and the other two states are struggling to get off the ground.

The difficulties faced by turnaround districts are complex and often not obvious. Districts are at the mercy of changing political and policy forces. The public is not always happy to see outside companies take over their local schools. Also, experts say turnaround districts have not closed underperforming charter schools.

In contrast, New Orleans closed charter schools that weren’t rising to the challenge of transforming underperforming schools and brought in new operators – which the Tennessee district and others have yet to do, said Douglas Harris, Tulane Professor of Economics and founder of the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans.

“Other districts aren’t doing that from what I’ve seen, and are missing a key piece of this work as a result,” Harris said.

Penny Schwinn, Tennessee’s new education commissioner, has so far offered few details on what she would want out of the 30-school district other than saying she would hold charter schools more accountable to reaching goals. She has called the district’s lagging results a “cause for concern.”

The achievement district in Tennessee started with high hopes after it garnered national attention and high-profile hires when it first launched in 2012. National charter operators Green Dot Public Schools and KIPP were early sign-ons.

GRAD Academy students work on a writing assignment during an African-American history class. The South Memphis charter school shuttered in 2018.

But Texas-based YES Prep Public Schools pulled out of running a school in 2015. Within the last year, Project Grad USA, also based in Texas, closed its school, and Aspire Public Schools, out of California, announced it would hand over its operations to a new, local charter organization.

Nevada’s district also struggled to attract outside charter operators and faced intense pushback from the communities it sought to serve. Even though Nevada closed its turnaround district, its four charter schools will continue operating under a state charter school authority.

“There was not a significant number of restart operators who were interested,” said Rebecca Feiden who was the executive director of Nevada’s achievement district. She now runs the state’s charter school authority, which oversees 53 schools.

North Carolina’s district had a similar problem when only two charter operators applied to run its first school. The state’s Innovative School District, which took over an elementary school in 2018, was designed to turn around chronically low-performing schools by allowing an outside organization to operate the school for five years.

Harris said Louisiana, which established its recovery district after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, was the first to focus on recruiting national charter operators and gained an advantage as a result.

“The school reform community nationally rallied around this and it became a big deal to be here,” Harris said of New Orleans. “It was like the Silicon Valley of school reform.”

Harris said that what the New Orleans and Tennessee districts did have going for them was rare bipartisan support, despite turnover in the governor’s offices and state legislatures.

But the political support for the Tennessee achievement district could be waning. After the district’s high profile leader Sharon Griffin left this month, some state lawmakers are calling for hearings on its future.

Nevada’s story shows how quickly political forces can shift on state-run education programs.

Earlier this year, Nevada lawmakers voted to shut down their state’s Achievement School District, which was only 2 years old and made up of four charter schools.

“School turnaround is really hard work,” said Feiden. “Ultimately, legislators decided … charter restarts were not an avenue they wanted an option for. They wanted to preserve existing schools.”

Similarly, North Carolina’s achievement district was set to take over its second school, but state lawmakers passed legislation allowing the school to be revived by its own district instead. Mississippi’s initial plan was to explore a model that looked like Tennessee’s. But instead, lawmakers created a district in 2016 that looks little like it. Mississippi takes over entire districts, not individual schools, and tasks a state agency with running them, not charter operators.

Increasingly, it is getting more difficult for politicians and education leaders in Tennessee and other states to support turnaround districts that haven’t lived up to academic promises, said Joshua Glazer, a professor at George Washington University who has studied charter takeovers in Tennessee.

“For the ASD to survive politically, it needs its charter school providers to get the results that will give the system of school takeovers legitimacy,” Glazer said. “The district becomes politically very vulnerable if they don’t achieve those results – and they haven’t yet.”

Since 2016, the Tennessee district hasn’t recruited a new outside charter organization or taken over a new school. Community pushback meant districts like Tennessee struggled to recruit national charter operators.

“It was scary for a lot of folks I think when the ASD first came to Memphis,” said Eligah Sledge, a parent of students enrolled in schools in Tennessee’s achievement district.

“It was like, who are these people coming in? Do they understand Memphis? Will they care enough to stay? There was so much pushback at first, because your school down the block is so important to you and you don’t know these people,” Sledge said.

North Carolina’s district was also met with skepticism from some community members.

Memphis Lift advocates talk about their mission in 2015 against the backdrop of signs protesting the state’s Achievement School District.

In a 2018 column in the Charlotte Observer, local teacher Kay McSpadden wrote: “It didn’t work in Louisiana, Tennessee, or Michigan – taking local control from low-performing school districts and creating special ‘turnaround’ districts operated by charter companies.”

McSpadden went on to argue that fixing North Carolina’s failing schools shouldn’t be a change in governance, but rather a change in resources to address the effects on students living in poverty, such as high absenteeism rates and trauma experienced outside of the classroom.

“Good luck to Southside-Ashpole Elementary, but unless ISD makes poverty a focus of its efforts, the iceberg will sink that ship,” McSpadden said in her column titled, “Education’s newest ‘innovation’ in poor schools is just moving chairs on the Titanic.”

Other districts also have seen strong community pushback to state control and to bringing in outside organizations to run local schools. In Tennessee, all of the state-run schools are in Memphis and Nashville, which is typical of achievement districts that usually take over schools in high-poverty neighborhoods with a majority of black and brown students

Glazer said some states are moving to more collaborative models with local districts, such as the Partnership Zone in Tennessee’s Hamilton County, in part to avoid the perception of an aggressive takeover of communities with complex racial and political pasts.

“The racial dynamics are also very complicated and often not talked about as much as they should be,” Glazer said. “States know they need to do something, yet they need to intervene in a way that’s not perceived as a hostile takeover, because the tremendous backlash when that happens is not helpful.”

For the first time, a Memphis charter network leaves state district for local oversight

2019-07-03T21:29:31+00:00

Citing costs and differing regulations, a Memphis charter school network will become the first school to leave the state-run Achievement School District while trying to keep its elementary school running under the local district.

Freedom Preparatory Academy, a 10-year-old charter network, will move its Westwood neighborhood elementary school to Shelby County Schools oversight — rolling back the 2014 state takeover of the school.

But in a twist, the state’s Achievement School District declared that it will open a new school in the building being vacated by Freedom Prep geared toward the same students. The Memphis charter operator is banking on Westwood families following it to a building the network owns 2½ miles away, but the neighborhood students would still be zoned to the state-run school.

“The building is an ASD school and the ASD will continue to operate a school there next year per our commitment to the community and students,” said Jennifer Johnson, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Education, in an email. “We have a plan in place regardless of what Freedom Prep elects to do.”

The network’s charter only requires a 30-day notice before terminating its 10-year contract with the state to run the school, she said. The state chose Freedom Prep to take over the school five years ago because of low test scores, but so far the charter has failed to lift it out of Tennessee’s bottom 5% of schools.

The charter network would be the fourth operator to pull out of the state-run district completely since its inception in 2012, but the first to try to keep its students in the process.

Roblin Webb, CEO of Freedom Preparatory Academy

The Memphis charter network’s exit would leave 10 charter operators and 29 schools in the district that has drawn sharp criticism from researchers and Memphians frustrated with slow progress.

Tennessee’s Chief Schools Officer Katie Poulos told Roblin Webb, the charter network’s founder and CEO, that the organization had not fulfilled its mission.

“Freedom Prep made a commitment to the families and students in Westwood Elementary when it entered the ASD to intervene to move the school out of the lowest-performing 5% of schools,” Poulos said in a June 5 email. “And we are hopeful you will honor the original commitment.” But the state has no power to stop Freedom Prep from leaving.

Webb told Chalkbeat that operating in two districts with different protocols became overly complex. It runs four other campuses under Shelby County Schools. In addition, she said, moving to their own building avoids paying high maintenance costs to others. Also, the state-run district charges charter operators an administrative fee that is about 3½ times what Shelby County Schools charges, Webb said.

In emails between Webb and the state-run district’s former superintendent Sharon Griffin in late May, the two also discussed the state’s higher charges for educating students with disabilities compared with the local district’s fees. That difference costs Freedom Prep more than $300,000 annually, according to figures in emails Chalkbeat obtained in an open records request.

“That’s money I could put back in the classroom,” she said. “All of these moves that we’re doing now, we’ll only have one school that is not in a permanent home, which makes me really excited. … We can make it a state-of-the-art facility for all of our kids.”

Freedom Preparatory Academy bought the former Lakeview Elementary School from Shelby County Schools. The charter network expects families from the Westwood elementary school to follow them here.

Cardell Orrin, the charter network’s board chairman, said the move will allow Freedom Prep to whittle down its waitlist of more than 100 students across the network. Freedom Prep’s high school will move into the former Lanier Middle School and the elementary school formerly under the state will move into the high school’s previous space.

The Westwood school will operate under a charter that Shelby County Schools approved last summer. Last week the school board approved moving that school to a Westwood location — the last hurdle for the switch.

“We have had, over the years, more students who want to come to Freedom Prep than we can accommodate,” he said.

One local and two national charter networks also have exited the Achievement School District: Gestalt Community Schools and Project GRAD USA in Memphis, and Rocketship in Nashville. A fourth charter operator, KIPP Memphis, closed one of its state-run schools in 2017, but still operates three other schools in the district.

Other schools in the state-run district have simply closed, due to low enrollment and financial strain. But in Freedom Prep’s case, enrollment has increased.

When the charter operator took over the elementary school five years ago, it had around 350 students. Last year, the school had about 560 students, an increase of about 60%. Griffin visited the school in the fall to learn how the school keeps up its enrollment.

Webb pointed to its reputation in the community because the charter network already operated several schools under the local district and separate network staff that focused on recruitment. Freedom Prep’s other schools include some of the highest-performing charter schools in the district.

If Freedom Prep had not decided to shed state control, the school would likely be taken from the charter network and handed back to Shelby County Schools, under the state’s plan for its lowest-performing schools. The plan requires that local districts regain control of schools after 10 years or after the school has exited the bottom 5% of schools — whichever comes first.

Shelby County Schools Superintendent Joris Ray directed questions to the state but said in a statement he has discussed Freedom Preparatory with state authorities.

“During a visit last Friday, I discussed the request with Commissioner Penny Schwinn and we look forward to partnering to ultimately do what is best to educate all students in Shelby County,” he said in a statement.

Chalkbeat reporter Caroline Bauman contributed to this report.

‘We have to get this right’: With Sharon Griffin out, achievement district seeks consistency, communication

2019-06-19T00:06:06+00:00

With yet another superintendent leaving Tennessee’s turnaround district, parents, school staff, and community members are asking for a leader who will stay the course.

Sharon Griffin

The district tasked with improving Tennessee’s lowest-performing schools confirmed Monday that Sharon Griffin, the superintendent of the Achievement School District, had resigned a year after she was named its fourth leader in seven years. Katie Poulos, the state’s new chief of schools overseeing turnaround efforts, said there will be a national search for a permanent replacement.

In the meantime, two Memphians will share the role on an interim basis: Yolanda Dandridge, formerly the principal of the district’s highest performing school, and Lisa Settle, a longtime director of operations. (Dandridge will no longer transition to a principalship with a charter school in the achievement district, as previously reported.)

Griffin’s resignation, effective June 28, came as Gov. Bill Lee and Penny Schwinn, his education commissioner, look closely at the state-run district’s charter-centric turnaround model and its failure to deliver on promises to significantly improve low-performing schools taken over by the state. The achievement district comprises 30 charters schools, 28 of which are in Memphis.

When Griffin was named superintendent by former Governor Bill Haslam, there was a lot of excitement based on her extensive background in turnaround work, but also in the fact she was from Memphis. When she leaves the district, she’ll work for Metro Nashville Public Schools as the chief of innovation.

In her absence, “It will be interesting to see what the Department of Education does next,” said Mendell Grinter, the executive director of Campaign for School Equity, which works with achievement district students. “The ASD has shifted its focus a number of times. At some point, we have to get this thing right and get a leader who sticks around. Or do you say now that it’s time to invest in a completely different strategy? I don’t have an answer to that, but I think we need one.”

Tennessee’s turnaround district started in 2012 as the cornerstone of the state’s strategy to improve schools performing in the bottom 5 percent statewide. The district promised to raise the state’s lowest performing schools into the top quarter academically within five years by putting charter organizations in control of the schools. But achievement schools haven’t produced large academic gains, and it has struggled to attract students and retain high-quality teachers.

Griffin’s departure comes amid growing tensions between Griffin — a hands-on leader who wanted to play a bigger role in day-to-day school operations — and charter operators who were promised autonomy to take on those schools.

Bobby White, leader of Memphis-based charter organization Frayser Community Schools, whenever a new leader comes in, “tension is expected.”

“I felt the resignation came before we really figured out our new rhythm,” said White, who wished Griffin well and called her interim replacements “steadying forces.”

But when it comes to naming permanent leadership for the district, White said, “We have to get this right this time … the turnover has not afforded us the ability to gain traction. We need a leader to be in place for a minute.”

Roblin Webb, who runs Memphis-based charter network Freedom Prep, said the district needs consistency in leadership, in addition to a new roadmap for how the achievement district will better schools and how it will hold charter organizations accountable to improvements.

“I would love to see a commitment to the longevity of the organization, and I would love for that commitment to look like the state saying, ‘OK, this is our 5-10 year revised mission statement, vision, and strategic plan,” said Webb, who runs an elementary school under the achievement district that has bucked the district’s trend of low-enrollment. “That’s what we need.”

Part of Griffin’s focus this past year was on revamping a report card to hold charter schools accountable to certain measures and potentially replace operators that are falling short.

Webb said clear messaging about what is expected of charter organizations is needed, as the leadership turnover has made it difficult to know what success looks like.

“[When the district started], we were really aspirational but internally not as realistic,” Webb said. “We need an internal set of metrics that helps us know if we’re moving toward goals set forth by the state, and we need consistency in those goals.”

For the parents, students, and teachers in district schools, the turnover can be exhausting, said Regenia Dowell, president of the Frayser Community Parent-Teacher-Student Association.

Lisa Settle

“We have to continue to meet new people, get them acclimated to the community, so then they can start the work,” Dowell said. “This may be why things haven’t moved like they should have if someone was in place in a continuous manner. We’re wanting leaders to support our children to the best of their ability. And if there’s no accountability from that leader to the schools under them, I don’t know if that will happen.”

During the transition, Dandridge and Settle were chosen to communicate “stability,” Poulos, the state’s new turnaround chief, told Chalkbeat. Settle has been with the district since it launched in 2012, and Dandridge is known for moving Georgian Hills Achievement Elementary School from the bottom 2% of schools to the bottom 15%.

“We believe Yolanda has built the relationships with the community needed and has the ability to support everyone in ASD to move it forward and making sure the students are put first,” Poulos said of Dandridge.

Dandridge and Settle are now tasked with the messaging and with smoothing out relationships with charter organizations and the community. In the short term, they are expected to focus on the three elementary schools directly run by the district, two of which, Georgian Hills and Whitney elementary schools, need new principals.

“Often, in situations like this, kids get caught in the crossfire,” Dandridge told Chalkbeat. “Every time there’s turnover, children actually lose in the process. Our goal is to try to move forward, to work with what we’ve already built so at the end of the day, when it’s time for schools to start, we hit the ground running.”

Under growing tension, heralded turnaround leader Sharon Griffin resigns as head of achievement district

2019-06-17T21:11:14+00:00

A year after Sharon Griffin’s rise to chief of Tennessee’s embattled turnaround district drew widespread praise – and months of tension – Griffin has resigned effective June 28, state officials confirmed Monday.

Griffin resigned on Friday after disagreement with the state on what Griffin’s central office should look like, said Amity Schuyler, the Department of Education’s deputy commissioner.

She will become chief of innovation for Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools on July 1, the district announced later in the day.

Griffin will be replaced by two interims: One to-be-named who will oversee the Achievement School District’s academics, and Lisa Settle, a longtime district official who will supervise school operations. Schuyler said the state will conduct a national superintendent search with the goal of filling that position by January.

Griffin’s resignation came as new Gov. Bill Lee and Penny Schwinn, his education commissioner, look closely at the state-run district’s charter-centric turnaround model and its failure to deliver on promises to significantly improve low-performing schools taken over by the state beginning in 2012. It also reflects the growing tension between Griffin — a hands-on leader who wanted to play a bigger role in day-to-day school operations — and charter operators who were promised autonomy to take on those schools.

This is Schwinn’s first major leadership change in the achievement district. Griffin was named superintendent, the district’s fourth leader in seven years, under Schwinn’s predecessor, Candice McQueen, in April 2018.

While Griffin’s appointment was initially heralded as a huge win for the state-run district, her short tenure dissolved into fraught relationships with most of the charter school leaders who run the majority of the district’s schools.

“Working for the TDOE, and the awesome and amazing students/families in the Achievement School District, has been a wonderful experience that has afforded me the valuable opportunity to learn and grow, and I am very grateful to have been a part of this organization,” Griffin said in her resignation letter to the state. She did not respond to multiple attempts for comment.

Schuyler said the state department was grateful for Griffin’s work but ultimately diverged in visions for how to move the district forward.

Prior to the resignation, there were “tension points around the philosophy of how big the ASD district office should be and what the district office’s interaction was in terms of support with the charters,” Schuyler told Chalkbeat.

Earlier this month, Schwinn released her top priorities as part of the department’s proposed five-year strategic plan. For school improvement work, the draft calls for “restructuring school turnaround so that there is more shared ownership between the state and local districts.” It didn’t offer specifics on the Achievement School District, but it does suggest that Tennessee could choose to rely less on the district and more on “Partnership Zones,” a collaborative state-district approach that just finished its first year in Chattanooga.

Schuyler said the state is thinking deeply about what the future of the district will look like, adding, “it probably could look more like the Partnership Zones in some ways.”

In her time, Griffin doubled down on accountability, saying that charter operators could be replaced if they didn’t show improvements. Schwinn agreed with Griffin on increasing accountability, but didn’t agree with Griffin’s approach of getting results through increased central office supports.

Penny Schwinn visits Georgian Hills Achievement Elementary School as part of her March tour of Memphis’ state-run schools.

Schuyler said that Griffin wanted to expand her growing central office staff, which was already a source of tension with the charter operators who said the central office took away resources and duplicated some of their school-based efforts.

“It had gotten to the extent where I felt like the central office was too big and charter schools were not being well-served,” Schuyler said. “I think Dr. Griffin would disagree and say the opposite … But when charters are not collaborative with the district, resources don’t end up close to students.”

Griffin’s resignation came days after Schuyler and Katie Poulos, the state’s new chief of schools, and other Department of Education officials met in a closed-door meeting Thursday with district charter school leaders in Memphis. Griffin was not present at that meeting, and her upcoming resignation was not mentioned, one participant said.

Griffin went from reporting directly to the education commissioner to reporting to Poulos under a revised chain of command Schwinn launched in April. Poulos oversees the state’s efforts to improve schools and reports to Schuyler.

Bob Nardo, who leads Libertas School of Memphis under the district, told Chalkbeat that at the Thursday meeting, state officials reiterated their commitment to charter schools as a pillar of state turnaround work.

“We heard at that meeting that we still have a hard mission ahead of us, but they are committed to giving us the most resources possible,” Nardo said. “They said unequivocally that the ASD and charter schools are a part of the state’s mission…and anything they’re doing now is to reinforce that and sustain the ASD on its original vision.”

But the state-run district’s status quo wasn’t working, said Sarah Carpenter, the executive director for parent advocacy organization Memphis Lift.

“I’m devastated… People that want things to change, they always get kicked to the curb,” Carpenter told Chalkbeat. “And the people who don’t want to comply are the failing schools.”

Tennessee’s turnaround district started out as the cornerstone of the state’s strategy to improve low performing schools in 2012. The district promised to raise the state’s lowest performing schools into the top quarter academically within five years by putting charter organizations in control of the schools. But the district, which now runs 30 schools under 11 charter organizations, hasn’t produced large academic gains.

When Griffin took the job with the Achievement School District, she left a successful 25-year career with Shelby County Schools where she had spearheaded the district’s own turnaround work, the Innovation Zone, known as the iZone.

Gini Pupo-Walker, a board member with Nashville schools, said it’s the work Griffin did at the iZone that makes her a perfect fit for the job with the state’s second largest district, which has seen an increase in schools on the state’s list of lowest-performing schools, known as the priority list.

“She’s done the work in the trenches year after year,” Pupo-Walker said. “It’s no secret we have more priority schools in Nashville than we did three years ago. When I heard we’d hired Dr. Griffin, I was thrilled.”

At the Achievement School District, Griffin brought with her a new vision for how to make big changes within the achievement district. After spending her first year talking to and listening to charter leaders, Griffin said she wanted to play a bigger role in the daily operations of schools than past leaders, and asked charter and school leaders to improve test scores, to bolster teacher recruitment and training, and to add strong educators in the early grades.

Teacher Marva Bell checks a student’s work at Libertas School of Memphis, a charter school run by a Tennessee-based operator in the Achievement School District.

High profile district employees also left during her tenure. Longtime Memphian and political operative Bobby White said he was forced to step down in April as the chief of external affairs. For the last three years, White has been one of the most public faces of the district as he communicated with parents, the media, and charter networks. Yolanda Dandridge announced earlier this month that she was leaving her longtime school, where she reported directly to Griffin. She now runs a different school within the achievement district and reports to Memphis Scholars.

Growing tension between Griffin and longtime charter leaders centered on what Griffin had the power and authority to do. The achievement district wasn’t designed for a leader to make significant changes. It was designed to allow the superintendent some oversight but very little academic or operational control over charter leaders.

Over the last four months, Chalkbeat talked with six charter school leaders in the district who asked not to be named because they were afraid of damaging relationships with the district. They spoke to a growing divide between school leaders and Griffin.

Charter leaders said that Griffin wanted to take away some of the autonomy promised to them. Griffin told Chalkbeat in early May that she would stand by her direction.

“Change is never easy,” Griffin said then. “There were a lot of conversations with [charter leaders] and me in helping me understand before we started to move the pieces in this puzzle. … But now, I mean we have to produce not only for children, but because the life of the model depends upon it.”

Nardo said the state now needs to hire someone who can offer “the best of both worlds.”

“We need people who understand the day-to-day reality of running schools in Memphis,” Nardo said. “At the same time, we need folks who can work really seamlessly with the state to ensure the whole policy environment is supported.”

Reporters Laura Faith Kebede and Kathryn Palmer contributed to this report.

High-profile principal is among reshuffling at the Achievement School District

2019-06-05T17:31:15+00:00

The leader of Tennessee’s turnaround district’s highest-performing school is heading to a new position this summer, a year after the fourth superintendent change in five years.

In three years, Yolanda Dandridge has lifted Georgian Hills Achievement Elementary School out of the bottom 2% of all schools in the state. The school still struggles academically, but it is now in the bottom 15% of districts.

Georgian Hills is one of 26 schools that make up the Achievement School District. The school and three others are directly managed by the state; the rest are run by outside charter organizations. Created in 2012, the achievement district was designed to take over low-performing schools and boost them academically. According to the state, nine of the schools it oversees have moved out of the bottom 5 percent.

Dandridge’s departure comes as the district is also trying to hire a new leader for another of the schools it runs, Whitney Achievement Elementary School.

This means district leader Sharon Griffin must replace two of the three principals who directly report to her, as Corning and Frayser elementary schools share a leader. The departures are a window into some of the chaos resulting from changes under Griffin, who was named district leader last year.

The superintendent turnover, and the turmoil that brings, have taken a toll on educators.

“I felt like it was that time to move from Georgian Hills,” Dandridge said. “After going through four different ASD leadership teams, timing is everything. At this moment at this time, I felt like it was the right decision.”

Meanwhile, three miles away from Georgian Hills, Whitney Elementary had a challenging year, after its principal was fired in October and an assistant principal stepped in for the rest of the school year.

For both elementary schools, Griffin told Chalkbeat she expects to name new leaders soon.

Griffin acknowledged that losing its principal created anxiety at Whitney, adding: “Turnaround work is difficult, and leaders need a unique skill set. We’re finding leaders that can have the relationship with parents and the community needed, and also not lower expectations for students.”

Griffin praised the work Dandridge did at Georgian Hills, calling her one of the district’s most effective leaders.

“She brought a wealth of knowledge,” Griffin said. “We will continue leaning on Yolanda in her new role.”

Dandridge is leaving for charter operator Memphis Scholars. She will take charge of the Memphis-based charter organization’s Caldwell Guthrie Elementary School. This means she will still work for the Achievement School District, but for Memphis Scholars, rather than directly for Griffin.

She’s been at Georgian Hills as a teacher, assistant principal, and principal since 2013, and told Chalkbeat that she felt the timing was right to move on to a new role. Griffin was the fourth superintendent since the district was founded, replacing interim Kathleen Airhart.

“I have families where I taught them as students, and their siblings came through the school when I was principal,” Dandridge said. “I love this community, and I’m most proud of us for improving the school out of the bottom 5% and maintaining that.”

Tennessee’s turnaround district started out as the cornerstone of the state’s strategy to improve low-performing schools in 2012. It was launched with the belief that if the state took over those schools and gave them to charter organizations to run, the schools would improve under the new management.

But for the most part, the district hasn’t produced large academic gains – making Dandridge’s success with Georgian Hills starker. Although the elementary school is in the bottom 15% of schools in the state, it is the top academic performer in the district.

Dandridge said her first job at her new school will be to listen and create a plan of action, but she will carry over lessons learned from Georgian Hills, such as how to best support teachers and parents.

“I’m really excited about the move,” she said. “Of course I am going to miss my babies and my families. That’s the hardest part about this for me.”

17 schools in Tennessee’s turnaround district remain priority schools 6 years after first takeovers

2018-09-26T19:35:22+00:00

Most of the schools that were taken over by Tennessee’s turnaround district remain on the state’s priority list six years after the intervention efforts began.

Four of the six original Memphis schools that were taken over by the state in 2012 are on the newest priority list released last week. And more than a dozen schools that were added to the district later also remain on the list.

For years, the district has fallen short of its ambitious promise to dramatically raise test scores at the schools by handing them over to charter operators — a goal that the district’s founder later acknowledged was too lofty. And researchers with the Tennessee Education Research Alliance recently concluded that schools in the state district are doing no better than other low-performing schools that received no state help.

Read our deep dive into how the original six schools in the Achievement School District performed on recent state tests.

Still, the new list offers yet another troubling data point as the turnaround effort enters a new and uncertain phase. And it quickly drew attention from critics of district, including Diane Ravitch, an education historian who has long been critical of school reform models like the Achievement School District and picked up the story on her blog earlier this week.

Of the 34 schools that have ever been part of the Achievement School District, 17 are on the new priority list, and four have closed. Thirteen schools are not on the new list.

In contrast, Memphis’ Innovation Zone, an improvement initiative from the local district, saw more of its schools move upward: 16 out of 25 schools absorbed into the iZone improved enough to exit the list.

State officials are counting on Sharon Griffin, the architect of the Innovation Zone, to right the ship at the Achievement School District. They hired her to lead the district in April, and she now oversees its 30 schools, all but two of which are in Memphis.

The district was originally designed as the linchpin of the state’s intervention into low-performing schools. But the state hasn’t taken over a school since 2016 and has put more effort into collaborative efforts, like a Partnership Zone in Hamilton County.

Still, the state says the Achievement School District has had a positive influence that might not be reflected in its own school’s scores. Education Commissioner Candice McQueen recently praised Shelby County Schools’ progress, giving partial credit to the state’s own Achievement School District for creating a sense of urgency in Memphis.

But the latest priority list offers ample ammunition if the state’s next governor chooses to make serious changes to the initiative a priority. Both gubernatorial candidates, Democrat Karl Dean and Republican Bill Lee, have said they would take a hard look at the district’s strengths and challenges before deciding how the state should use its energy to improve struggling schools.

Here’s a breakdown of state-run schools, listed by the year they were taken into the state-run district. In parentheses, we note the year that school made the state’s priority list.

2012

Brick Church College Prep (2018, 2014, 2012)
Cornerstone Prep – Lester Elementary (2014, 2012)
Humes Prep Academy (2012)
Corning Achievement (2018, 2014, 2012)
Frayser Achievement (2018, 2014, 2012)
Westside Achievement (2018, 2014, 2012)

2013

KIPP Memphis Academy Elementary (formerly Shannon Elementary) (2014, 2012)
KIPP Memphis Prep Middle (formerly Corry Middle) (2012)
Aspire Hanley #1 (2014, 2012)
Aspire Hanley #2 (2018, 2014, 2012)
Klondike Prep Academy (2012)*
Grad Academy High School (2018)*
Georgian Hills Achievement (2014, 2012)
Whitney Achievement (2018, 2014, 2012)

2014

Fairley High School – Green Dot (2018, 2014, 2012)
KIPP Memphis University Middle School*
Aspire Coleman Elementary (2014, 2012)
MLK College Prep High School (2018, 2014, 2012)
Freedom Prep Westwood (2018, 2014, 2012)
Pathways in Education – Frayser
Pathways in Education – Whitehaven
Lester Prep Middle School
Promise Spring Hill Elementary (2014, 2012)

2015

Neelys Bend College Prep (2018, 2014)
Wooddale Middle School – Green Dot (2018, 2014, 2012)
KIPP Memphis Prep Elementary
Libertas School (formerly Brookmeade Elementary) (2014, 2012)
Memphis Scholars – Florida Kansas (2018, 2014)
Cornerstone Prep Denver (2018, 2014, 2012)

2016

Memphis Scholars Caldwell-Guthrie (2018, 2014, 2012)
Memphis Scholars Raleigh-Egypt (2018, 2014, 2012)
Hillcrest High School (2018, 2014, 2012)
Kirby Middle School (2018, 2014, 2012)
Rocketship Partners Community Prep*

*This school has closed.

Tennessee’s struggling state-run district just hired the ‘LeBron James’ of school turnaround work

2018-04-25T21:40:13+00:00

In hiring a Memphis native to save its most vulnerable schools, Tennessee is hedging its bets that she can finally get the job done.

Sharon Griffin’s new job is to fix the state’s struggling Achievement School District and use her experience to strengthen the relationships with local districts across the state.

But can she right the ship and make everyone happy?

“I know through my experience and the relationships I’ve built that we cannot only focus and prioritize our work, but strengthen the relationship [between local districts and the state] so all of our schools can be great places of learning,” Griffin said during a conference call this week.

Tennessee’s achievement district started out as the cornerstone of the state’s strategy to improve low performing schools in 2012. It promised to vault the state’s 5 percent of lowest-achieving schools to the top 25 percent within five years. But the district hasn’t produced large academic gains. It’s struggling to attract students and retain high-quality teachers. And local districts don’t like it because the state moved in and took over schools without input.

But as Tennessee works to make its state the national model of school achievement, naming a revered, longtime home-grown leader as point person for school turnaround is seen by many as a jolt of badly needed energy, and a savvy move in a state education system divided into many factions.

“I think it is a game-changer,” said Rep. Raumesh Akbari, D-Memphis, who has championed legislation to refine the achievement district. “The ASD badly needs a strong leader…. She definitely could be the bridge to bring us over troubled water in Tennessee.”

Education Commissioner Candice McQueen stressed during the call that Griffin’s appointment does not mean state-run schools will return to local control, even as she acknowledged that the district is at a turning point. It’s now the state’s tool of last resort.

“Whether that is transitioning a school back into the district when it is ready or whether it’s to intervene and move a school into the Achievement School District,” McQueen said. “This particular moment is about a person who can lead all of the state interventions as well as the specificity of the ASD.”

For Bobby White, the founder and CEO of a Memphis charter organization in the achievement district, the appointment signals a new chapter ahead. Griffin will directly oversee the district’s 30 charter schools in her new role.

He has been around for the highs and lows of Tennessee’s six-year experiment in state-run turnaround work.

“It feels like we got LeBron James, you know?” said White, who runs Frayser Community Schools. “It feels like she will have a vision and take us where we have been needing to go.”

Frayser Community Schools CEO Bobby White has seen the highs and lows of the turnaround district.

Part of that vision will be finding new ways for charter schools and local districts to work together. In her roles as assistant commissioner of School Turnaround and chief of the Achievement School District, Griffin will oversee more than just the state-run district. She will have a hand in turnaround efforts across the state, such as a new partnership zone in Chattanooga. In the partnership zone, state and local leaders will work together to create mini-districts that are freed from many local rules.

Griffin stressed earlier this week that building relationships and fostering collaboration are among her top strengths — efforts that the state has failed in as local districts have sparred with state-runs schools over enrollment, facilities, and sharing student contact information.

“We have a level playing field now,” Griffin said. “I want to be clear, it’s not us against them. It’s a chance to learn not only from what ASD has been able to do alongside charter schools, but a chance to learn from each other as we move forward.”

Marcus Robinson, a former Indianapolis charter leader, said Griffin’s dynamic personality will be enough to get the job done.

“Dr. Griffin is magnetic,” said Robinson, who is leaving the Memphis Education Fund next month for a new job with The Opportunity Trust in St. Louis.

“She is the type of person who disarms people because she’s so authentic and genuine,” he said. “But she’s also experienced and wise and she knows school turnaround work.”

Griffin leaves behind a 25-year award-winning career with Shelby County Schools, the local district in Memphis. She has been a teacher and principal. She spearheaded the district’s turnaround work, and now serves as chief of schools. She will start her new role in May and will stay based in Memphis — something community members have long asked for.

A student walks through the hall of Frayser Achievement Elementary School, a state-run school.

Steve Lockwood has watched the state’s reform play out in his Memphis neighborhood of Frayser, whose schools were home to some of the first state takeovers.

When the state first started running schools in Frayser, it was with the promise that the academics and culture would improve, said Lockwood, who runs the Frayser Community Development Corporation.

“The ASD has struggled to deliver on their mission,” Lockwood said. “But the last few months have been modestly encouraging. The ASD has seemed willing to admit mistakes and shortcomings.”

Lockwood said he sees Griffin’s appointment as a commitment by the state to bettering relationships in Memphis — and added that he was surprised she signed up.

“It’s a tribute to the ASD that they have enough juice left to attract someone like Dr. Griffin,” Lockwood said.

Editor’s note: We updated this story with Marcus Robinson’s current job title.

‘I can’t wait to get started,’ says Sharon Griffin on leading Tennessee’s Achievement School District

2018-04-24T17:00:05+00:00

Sharon Griffin, a longtime leader at Shelby County Schools, will be the next leader of the state’s turnaround district.

Griffin will take the helm of the Achievement School District in late May under the titles of Assistant Commissioner of School Turnaround and Chief of the Achievement School District. She will remain based in Memphis.

During a conference call Tuesday, Griffin said she felt the time was right to join the state-run district and broaden her focus to all low-performing schools, not just those in Memphis.

“My work has always been granting access to great education for all children,” Griffin said. “The outcomes in all priority schools, not just here in [Memphis] but across the state, is not acceptable for any of us. I want to find real ways to collaborate more and share all of the best practices in turnaround work.”

Griffin has been the chief of schools for Shelby County Schools since January 2017 and has been a teacher and leader in Memphis education for more than 25 years.

“The ASD is an important lever in turning around some of the state’s lowest performing schools,” Gov. Bill Haslam said. “Dr. Griffin has proven herself to be a strong leader, and I look forward to having her in this state-wide role.”

Griffin’s appointment follows the September resignation of Malika Anderson, the district’s second superintendent since it launched in 2012. Its vision is to transform Tennessee’s lowest-performing schools by taking over district schools and replacing them with charter organizations.

Griffin will make $180,000 a year in her new role — $10,000 less than Anderson did and about $12,000 more than what she was making with the Memphis district.

Griffin was not among the four superintendent candidates identified last month — though she was being considered by the state at that time, said Education Commissioner Candice McQueen during the Tuesday call. Griffin was selected, in part, due to her deep local credibility — something that people in Memphis had emphasized during one finalist visit.

“We needed someone with a unique background that would have knowledge of Memphis and the ability to look at statewide work,” McQueen said. “We ultimately decided Dr. Griffin is a person who embodies all of this — she’s the right leader at the right time.”

Griffin, a graduate of LeMoyne-Owen College and University of Memphis, has spent her entire career in Memphis schools. In 2012, after starting a turnaround program at Airways Middle School that had some success, she was promoted to lead the Innovation Zone, the district’s home-grown solution to low-performing schools.

The program has grown to more than 20 schools and has often been seen in contrast with the state’s turnaround schools.

Now, as leader of the state’s turnaround district, Griffin will oversee 30 schools — most run by charter organizations in Memphis — at a time when the achievement district has much less authority than when it launched in 2012.

The Achievement School District is considered a tool of last resort under the state’s new education plan unveiled last year. Under-enrollment continues to plague many of its schools and was a big factor in the decisions of four charter operators to close their schools or leave the district.

Assistant Superintendent Angela Whitelaw will replace Griffin at Shelby County Schools as the district looks for her replacement. The Memphis district has also been searching for a chief academic officer ever since Heidi Ramirez resigned in February 2017.

“The outstanding innovative turnaround work in our district continues to garner regional and national attention, so it’s no surprise that our team members are often sought after,” Shelby County Schools leaders said in a statement. “While we don’t want to lose her, we are supportive of her desire to reach her personal and professional goals of supporting students across our state.”

The Achievement School District has had very tenuous relationships with the local districts in Memphis and Nashville — sparring over enrollment, facilities, and sharing student contact information. Griffin said she has the right background to soften these relationships.

“I’m excited about the partnership and collaboration,” Griffin said. “It’s a critical role for us to bridge gaps that are happening across state and in Memphis. I can’t wait to get started.”

The decision was welcome news to Sarah Carpenter, the executive director of parent advocacy organization Memphis Lift.

“Her being a native Memphian, and already here, and already holding people accountable, I think she brings a lot to the table,” said Carpenter, who has students in the Achievement School District.

The state skirted its promised community input process for selecting Griffin as the next leader of the state-run district — due to Griffin’s high-profile district role — but that didn’t bother Carpenter.

“She believes that parents should be involved in every decision they make. Even in Shelby County she wanted parents at the table,” Carpenter said.

Mendell Grinter, the executive director of student advocacy training organization Campaign for School Equity, said the state-run district has been an “integral part of school transformation work in Memphis” and welcomed Griffin’s hiring.

“Dr. Griffin is a proven leader who no doubt has what it takes to lead our schools forward,” he said, adding she can build on the hard lessons the state has learned on the importance of community buy-in to improve schools.

Reporter Laura Faith Kebede contributed to this report.

Back in Memphis, founding superintendent of Tennessee’s turnaround district says the effort needs more time

2018-03-08T22:50:45+00:00

The founding superintendent of Tennessee’s Achievement School District says the next few years will tell whether the school turnaround initiative is on track to succeed.

In Memphis this week for a philanthropic event, Chris Barbic told Chalkbeat that he expects low-performing schools absorbed by the ASD to see more progress in the next two to three years.

That’s significantly slower than he envisioned when the charter school leader was recruited from Houston to lead the school turnaround program that launched in 2012 with federal money from Tennessee’s Race to the Top award. At the time, Barbic set the goal of moving schools in the state’s bottom 5 percent to the top 25 percent within five years. Most of those schools continue to struggle academically, however.

When he left the ASD in 2015, Barbic acknowledged that the goal was overly ambitious and said the extent of poverty in Memphis impeded change. However, he’s now hopeful that gains will come as ASD educators become more familiar with teaching to Tennessee’s new academic standards and standardized test.

“I have all the belief in the world in folks that are running schools,” said Barbic, now a senior education fellow with the Houston-based Laura and John Arnold Foundation, which supports the portfolio model of school governance.

Barbic was in Memphis for a two-day forum of the Philanthropy Roundtable, a network of charitable donors meeting with grantmakers to discuss strategies in education-related giving. Memphis is also home to the bulk of the ASD’s work, and Barbic was a frequent visitor during his tenure as superintendent from 2011 to 2015.

The state-run district is markedly different from those years when its charter-driven model was Tennessee’s highest-profile school turnaround tool. Now the district — which takes over low-performing schools and assigns them to charter operators to turn them around — is considered a tool of last resort under the state’s new education plan unveiled last year. Under-enrollment continues to plague many of its schools and was a big factor in the decisions of four charter operators to close their schools or exit the district.

The state is also seeking new leadership for the district, naming four candidates this week. Barbic’s successor, Malika Anderson, stepped down last fall after the state restructured the district’s central office.

“I hope to see someone hired who believes in the vision,” said Barbic, adding that the state’s role is “less about directly operating [schools] and more about finding great operators and giving them the opportunity.”

Barbic said a change in state standards and tests made it difficult for the ASD to track academic progress early on. After Tennessee shifted to new tests aligned with the standards, the first batch of results for the ASD were not promising. Students in its schools scored below the state averages in both elementary- and middle-school and high-school.

“It feels like to be fair, we’ve got to give folks to give a few years and rounds with new assessment,” he said. “We’ll see what happens over the next two to three years, and at that point, the schools that are doing well should get the opportunity to grow.”

Barbic spoke at the forum about the ASD, as well as his work with the Arnold Foundation to invest in cities pursuing strategies like common enrollment systems, expanded school options for families, and improved systems of accountability.

Memphis is among seven cities reaping some of those investments, Barbic said. The foundation has been working with the Memphis Education Fund, the city’s primary philanthropic organization to improve schools. (The Memphis fund receives support from several local philanthropies, including the Hyde Foundation. Chalkbeat also receives support from Hyde; read about our funding here.)

“It’s great to see how different communities have approached school quality and talent — things people are working on here in Memphis,” Barbic said. “Folks in other cities are looking here to both what we got right and where we learned some lessons.”

State turnaround district ready to hand off Memphis middle school to charter

2018-02-01T21:04:18+00:00

Tennessee’s turnaround district announced plans Thursday to relinquish its operation of a Memphis middle school to a local charter network that already operates two state-run schools.

Westside Achievement Middle School has been run directly by the Achievement School District but would be operated by Frayser Community Schools beginning next school year. After the handoff, the school will remain under the oversight of the state-run district.

The announcement comes just a week after ASD leaders floated the idea to parents, students, and community members during a meeting at the Frayser school. The decision to move forward comes after “receiving tremendous community and stakeholder support” of the proposed transition, according to the district’s press release.

But the change isn’t a done deal. Frayser Community Schools still must submit an application by Feb. 28 that would have to be approved by the Tennessee Department of Education. The application must outline its operation plans, including its plan to “strengthen and build the academic success of the school, to recruit and develop teachers, and to establish the climate and culture of the school,” according to the release.

Kathleen Airhart, the ASD’s interim superintendent, shared the state’s intentions Thursday while speaking to the Frayser Exchange Club. Having a new operator for Westside Middle makes sense, she told the group, because Frayser Community Schools’ portfolio already includes a high school and a middle school, while the ASD’s four other direct-run schools are all elementary schools.

“This development allows us the chance to refine our focus at the elementary level for the schools we directly manage while giving FCS a chance to lead a middle school in Frayser that can feed into its existing high school in Frayser,” she said.

Frayser Community Schools was founded in 2014 by Bobby White, a former Memphis principal who started with one high school: Martin Luther King Jr. College Preparatory High School. Last fall, the homegrown charter network took control of Humes Middle School when Gestalt Community Schools, another Memphis-based network, exited the state-run district.

“We are excited by this opportunity and grateful for the chance to serve at this level,” said White, who was principal of Westside nine years ago under when the former Memphis City Schools.

Bobby White, who founded Frayser Community Schools in 2014, wants his charter organization to be the next leader of Westside Middle School.

Since Westside was taken over by the state in 2013, the school has struggled with lagging enrollment, low test scores, and high teacher and principal turnover. Enrollment has fallen by half since 2012, and the school lost 18 percent of students just this year.

White has grown the Frayser network in part because of his ability to increase enrollment. MLK Prep has grown from 550 students in 2014 to 625 students this year. But its academics have been slower to improve. Last school year, 65 percent of its students scored below grade level in English and 78 percent in math, according to state data.

White acknowledged that growing from one to three schools in two years is a big lift, but he told the community last month that his organization is up for the challenge.

“I wanted us to be a turnaround organization, to take over existing schools and truly turn them around,” White said. “That takes time and a lot of work, but we’re here for it.”

Clarification: Feb. 1, 2018: This story has been updated to clarify that Westside Middle would remain under the oversight of the Achievement School District if operations are transferred to Frayser Community Schools.

Hopson weighs charters as school turnaround tool for Shelby County Schools

2018-01-19T00:32:53+00:00

Shelby County Schools Superintendent Dorsey Hopson has opened a crack in the door to charter school partnerships that might help his district avoid losing more schools to Tennessee’s turnaround district.

Hopson emailed his principals this week to clarify his recent comments to the editorial board of The Commercial Appeal about possibly recruiting charter organizations for turnaround work. The report’s original headline read: “Hopson says he’s willing to hand schools over to charters, if they have a plan for improvement.”

The superintendent quickly turned to Twitter to label the headline “misleading and inaccurate” and, as he sought to regain control of dialogue on the thorny matter, dispatched an email to his school principals.

“It is my top priority to ensure all of our schools have the necessary resources to provide students with the high-quality education they deserve,” he wrote on Tuesday. “If the Tennessee Department of Education offers us the opportunity to select a charter operator that is willing to collaborate closely with District leaders to improve a school instead of losing it to the (Achievement School District), then I believe it is our responsibility to explore the option.”

Hopson’s comments hint at a potentially significant shift for a district that has battled openly with the charter sector over students being absorbed by the state’s 6-year-old turnaround initiative known as the ASD.

They also point to the tough spot that the superintendent is in.

On the one hand, the growth of the city’s charter turnaround sector has been a thorn in the side of local school leaders since 2012 when the state-run district began taking control of low-performing schools and assigning them to charter operators. Now with 29 Memphis schools, the ASD has siphoned off thousands of students and millions of dollars in an already under-enrolled and under-funded school environment — and made mostly anemic academic gains. (The local district also oversees about 50 charter schools that it’s authorized.)

On the other hand, Shelby County Schools has its hands full trying to improve a substantial number of struggling schools. It’s made some important headway through its Innovation Zone, which adds resources, extends the school day, and pays more to top principals and teachers who are willing to do some of the toughest education work in America. But the iZone is an expensive model, and few of its schools have exited the state’s priority school list.

In addition, some education reform advocates are lobbying to shift Memphis to a “portfolio model,” in which districts actively turn over schools to charter operators and manage them more like stocks in a portfolio. In other words, successful ones are expanded and failing ones are closed. Indianapolis has a robust portfolio model and, last fall, the philanthropic group known as the Memphis Education Fund took several Memphis school board members there for a tour. (The Memphis Education Fund receives support from several local philanthropies, including The Pyramid Peak Foundation and the Hyde Foundation. Chalkbeat also receives support from Hyde; read about our funding here.)

In his email to principals, Hopson said the school board ultimately would decide whether to authorize charter schools for the district’s turnaround work, and that he expects to discuss the matter with members in the coming weeks.

“All that said, I want to be very clear that my preference would always be to keep schools under the governance of (Shelby County Schools),” the superintendent added.

Hopson has been in discussions with the state Department of Education about several school improvement avenues available in Tennessee’s education plan under a new federal law. Among them is an option for Shelby County Schools to voluntarily convert priority schools to a charter, according to department spokeswoman Sara Gast.

One school board member told Chalkbeat he needs more information from the district and state before he would support any move forward. Chris Caldwell added that he thinks the board isn’t up to speed on options under the state’s new education plan.

“At this point, there’s so little information that I’ve been given,” Caldwell said. “I don’t want to conjecture what (a charter conversion) would actually will be like, but I have reservations with any kind of collaboration with the state.”

What would it take for such a shift to be successful?

One Memphis charter advocate says the ground rules are already in place because of a charter compact developed in recent years to address turf issues such as facilities, funding, and accountability.

“In order for a charter to manage a district school that’s underperforming and for it to be successful, that charter needs to have supports from the district to be successful,” said Luther Mercer, the Memphis advocacy director for the Tennessee Charter School Center.

The next school board work session is scheduled for Jan. 23.

Chris Barbic, founding superintendent of state-run Achievement School District, to exit

2015-07-17T09:56:47+00:00

Chris Barbic, the hard-charging superintendent of Tennessee’s school turnaround district, is resigning at the end of the year.

Now that the Achievement School District is no longer new, it needs a different leader, Barbic told senior officials on Thursday, according to multiple people who were informed about his departure plans. They said he also cited health reasons, including the 2014 heart attack that kept him out of work for weeks, for deciding to move on.

Barbic shared his news during a series of meetings and phone calls with ASD staff members on Thursday afternoon and evening, according to multiple people who said they were told not to discuss the change publicly before the district made an official announcement.

Barbic announced the news in an email to supporters early Friday morning.

Barbic’s impending departure comes at a time of transition for the district, which was formed with the ambitious goal of vaulting the state’s weakest schools into the top tier in just a few years. The state is just two weeks away from releasing test scores that he has said would be the first meaningful measure of whether the district is achieving that goal.

State education officials appointed Barbic to lead the ASD on the strength of his record as a charter operator in Texas when they formed the special district in 2012. Under his leadership, the state recruited charter operators to assume management of 22 schools, almost all in Memphis, that had been among the lowest-performing 5 percent in the state.

Unusually, the ASD asks charter operators to improve existing schools, rather than start new ones. The approach has drawn national attention because efforts to make low-performing schools better have stymied many districts.

In his email early Friday, Barbic offered a dim prognosis on that pioneering approach. “As a charter school founder, I did my fair share of chest pounding over great results,” he wrote. “I’ve learned that getting these same results in a zoned neighborhood school environment is much harder.”

Indeed, as the ASD has matured, it has experienced significant growing pains, including ones related to its student population — and its already formidable task is on the verge of growing more challenging.

Public protest contributed to several charter operators — including YES Prep, the network that Barbic founded in Houston — pulling out of agreements to take over schools under the ASD last year. (Last week, Barbic announced that the district is overhauling the way it involves communities in deciding how their schools should change.)

Meanwhile, test scores in year two suggested that dramatic gains were not underway, although Barbic said it was too soon to tell whether the school overhauls were working and that the extent of poverty in Memphis impeded change. “I think that the depth of the generational poverty and what our kids bring into school every day makes it even harder than we initially expected,” he told Chalkbeat last spring. “We underestimated that.”

The district faced a barrage of legislation designed to curb its growth last year from lawmakers unhappy about its tactics and sluggish academic results. “There’s 22 bills that have been filed right now to either try to kill this thing or pull it apart,” Barbic told lawmakers in February, “and this thing hasn’t even gotten out of the Petri dish.”

Most of those bills died, but two that passed benefited the district by expanding the number of students eligible to attend its schools and by allowing it to charge charter operators to run its schools.

A third bill that passed prohibits the ASD from intervening in low-performing schools where test scores are on the rise. That means the district could face greater challenges in showing test score gains at its schools in the future.

The pressure intensifies amid a looming budget crunch and shifting priorities among state education officials.

Tennessee used more than 10 percent of its $500 million windfall in federal education funds to launch the ASD. Those funds, which arrived through the Race to the Top competition to spur education policy changes, have now disappeared.

So has the commissioner who spearheaded the ASD’s creation and hired Barbic, Kevin Huffman, who resigned late last year. His replacement, Candice McQueen, has said she supports the initiative but wants it to become financially sustainable.

Dramatic test score gains and improved community relations would go farthest in justifying shifting the ASD’s management costs to taxpayers, which could be necessary in the future if its significant philanthropic support wanes. But both of those things have proved difficult to elicit so far.

By exiting the district, Barbic is clearing the way for someone else to take a stab at those persistent challenges. He told ASD officials that he hoped Malika Anderson, the district’s chief portfolio officer, would take over after he leaves, according to people who were part of the information rollout.

McQueen will appoint Barbic’s replacement. She declined to comment on Thursday.

Barbic — whose tenure will slightly exceed the average length for urban superintendents — is not the first ASD official to exit in recent months. Ash Solar, who ran the district’s schools in Memphis, and founding chief of staff Elliot Smalley have also recently moved on.

News of Barbic’s impending departure stirred anxiety about the future of the district on Thursday.

Stephanie Love, a Shelby County school board member and community activist who has publicly criticized the ASD, said she worried that his departure would erode already tenuous community relations.

“Even though I don’t agree with a lot of things the ASD has done, I will say Barbic made himself available for me to talk to him,” said Love, whose son attends an ASD school. “I was always able to let him know exactly how I felt and exactly how the community felt.”

This story has been updated to clarify aspects of the Achievement School District’s finances and to include additional details about recent legislation related to the ASD.

Memphis school improvement efforts in spotlight as Duncan finishes back-to-school tour

2014-09-10T23:22:17+00:00

Efforts to improve historically low-scoring schools in Memphis were in the national spotlight Wednesday as U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan ended his back-to-school bus tour of southern states with a pep rally and town hall meeting at Cornerstone Prep, a charter school that’s part of the state-run Achievement School District.

Duncan said he chose to end his tour in Memphis in order to “look at the turnaround work that’s happening there and the overall improvement in schools.”

At the town hall at Cornerstone Prep, Duncan told a crowd, “I want you to understand the possibility here… If you can, for all the challenges of poverty and history—if Memphis can break through, what kind of message does that send to the country? I want people to seize the moment, seize the collaboration. Keep your eyes on the prize. If you stay the course, you’ll stun the world.”

After the meeting, Shelby County superintendent Dorsey Hopson II said he hoped some of the national attention being paid to education in Memphis would be echoed in town. “I can’t go anywhere without hearing about Memphis and education,” he said.

Duncan, Hopson, ASD superintendent Chris Barbic, principal Lionel Cable of Shelby County school Douglass K-8, Cornerstone teacher Brittany Ordue, and Cornerstone parent Yolanda George participated in a question-and-answer session led by Reggie White, the director of Streets Ministries, a local nonprofit.

A student at Cornerstone Prep holds a sign as event-goers move from the pep rally to an indoor town hall.

Both Barbic and Hopson specifically emphasized collaborative efforts between the ASD and Shelby County Schools. They also raised concerns about finding and retaining enough teachers to work in low-performing schools and about scaling up successful efforts.

The districts were touting results from last school year’s state standardized test: While scores within each district were mixed, there are 4,500 fewer students in Memphis attending schools ranked in the bottom 5 percent in the state based on their test scores this year than in 2012. And while low-scoring schools’ scores had hovered around 16 percent proficient on state tests in 2012, they are now closer to 25 percent proficient. Tennessee also was rated the fastest-growing state in the country on the National Assessment of Educational Process last year.

Hopson said the district has been focusing on teacher effectiveness, early childhood education, and literacy. He also singled out “our relationship with Mr. Barbic and his team…as he likes to say, we’re in ‘co-opetition.’ When you bring people together where the agenda is what’s best for kids, you see the successes we’ll talk about today.”

Barbic echoed the sentiment. “There’s not a city I can think of when you can pack a room like this where you don’t have people lobbing bombs…charter and non-charter, we have to come together to get this done,” he said.

“We have one common enemy—academic failure. We all have to work together to eliminate failure,” Duncan said.

When asked what led to improvements in test scores at his school, Cable, the principal at Douglass K-8, a school in Shelby County’s Innovation Zone, pushed back against a common buzzword: “There’s no innovation there, just really rich, very strong teaching. If you introduce innovation—people put it out there but they don’t talk about sustainability,” he said. Innovation Zone schools received federal School Improvement Grant funds, longer school days, and more flexibility in hiring staff.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan addresses the crowd outside Cornerstone, formerly Lester Elementary, in Binghamton.

“We’re supposed to race to the top. But sometimes it’s okay to come in last as long as we’re doing what’s right by the children,” Cable said. A 2011 Race to the Top grant—one of Duncan’s education department’s signature programs—funded the creation of the ASD. Several changes prompted by the grant, including tying teachers’ evaluations to test scores, have drawn the ire of the state’s teachers’ union and some district leaders.

Duncan said that while Race to the Top had been significant, his department had spent more on school turnaround programs such as the Innovation Zone schools. The federal School Improvement Grant program has had mixed results nationally; Duncan recently expanded the options for districts seeking to use federal dollars to turn around schools.

The panelists fielded questions about how to expand successful school turnarounds.

“That’s the million-dollar question,” Barbic said. “How do you take pockets of excellence and scale them?…That comes down to how Dorsey and I work together to be strategic with our resources.”

“What we’ve found, particularly in turnaround schools, is that the most important thing is to have a strong leader, a strong group of teachers who beieve all kids can learn,” Hopson said.

Cable said that in his experience, “it’s certainly not the money…The important thing is for principals to have the autonomy to make decisions in the best interest of kids. I think that can be duplicated, but the handcuffs have to come off.” He said he had used the extra funds his school received to hire quality teachers rather than on new technology.

Keith Williams, the president of the Memphis Shelby County Education Association, asked Barbic whether the ASD, which aims to turn around schools in the bottom 5 percent in the state, would always exist. Barbic said that while the legislation that created the district did not specify, he thought the ASD would be around until the bottom 5 percent was scoring well above where it was when the district was created.

Duncan said that he was concerned that most districts were not sending their best teachers to the neediest schools. Barbic pointed out that Shelby County’s I-Zone schools only hire teachers who have earned high scores on evaluations. “But the question is then how do you backfill to other schools?” Board members and administrators in the district have echoed this concern.

A former teacher raises a sign contesting some of Duncan’s favored policies.

He said that districts and schools need to figure out “how to make sure teaching doesn’t feel like a two-three year thing on the way to something else. How can teachers feel like they can grow?”

The panelists were near-unanimous on the last question: When White asked what gave them hope for the city’s future, each said the city’s students inspired them.

“I moved to Memphis thinking I’d change lots of lives every year. But really, my life has been drastically changed,” said Ordue.

Green Dot prepares to “transform” first school in Memphis

2014-01-14T23:44:31+00:00

Green Dot, a charter management organization that runs 19 schools in Los Angeles, is planning to begin running its first school outside of California next year, right here in Memphis.

Green Dot is one of a number of national charter organizations that have been recruited to come to Tennessee as part of the Achievement School District, or ASD, a state-run district that sets out to improve the bottom 5 percent of schools in the state. Most of those schools are in Memphis. Schools taken over by the ASD have school-level autonomy over hiring, curriculum, and scheduling decisions, and most are being run by independent charter management organizations like Green Dot.

Green Dot will begin running Fairley High School, which is currently part of Shelby County Schools, next fall. The ASD “matched” Green Dot to Fairley in December, and the school will become part of the ASD in 2014-15. Students who attend Fairley now will still be zoned to the school, while teachers will need to apply to Green Dot to continue to work at Fairley.

Green Dot started out running an independent charter school, but has since “turned around” several low-performing schools in Los Angeles. (Green Dot described a day in the life of a student and a teacher on the ASD’s website.)

Green Dot’s Megan Quaile.

Right now, Green Dot has exactly two employees in Memphis: Megan Quaile, a former principal who’s now Green Dot’s vice president of national expansion, and Miska Clay Bibbs, a former employee of Memphis City Schools who’s now Green Dot’s director of community engagement. But Green Dot is in the process of hiring a full school’s worth of employees and a Memphis-based administrative team, and could eventually run as many as 10 schools in the city.

Chalkbeat spoke with Quaile about why Green Dot chose Memphis, about finding the right people to turn around a high school, and on why Green Dot prefers to talk about “transforming” rather than “taking over” a school.

On expanding to Memphis:

We have 19 schools currently in L.A.. We felt ready to expand our mission. We’ve been in conversation with a significant number of cities, and created a process – a rubric [to help determine where to go]. Can we create a financially stable model? Is the law conducive to turnaround schools? Is there political will and community engagement? Is there a system in place and willingness for students to do that? Are there facilities? Human capital? Memphis came out strong… We didn’t want to make whimsical decisions about growth.

On human capital in Memphis and in L.A.:

We can put systems in place, but if we don’t have right people at the table it’s not going to matter. My biggest concern is, are we going to get the right people? [In Los Angeles], we live in a city where we have a huge set of university systems. There’s an attractiveness to L.A. We just don’t know it here as well. It’s not that it’s not going to happen – we just don’t know. But there’s groups like …Funding is better in Tennessee [than in California]. We used that to hire more supports, more coaches. We will be hiring a principal very soon. We’re not hiring a Memphian just to hire a Memphian, but our final candidates are from here. … We’re starting teacher interviews soon, too. We will interview anyone from the school who applies. I’m not naive enough to think we’ll hear from every teacher, but we have talked to some who are interested.

One difference: As part of the ASD, teachers won’t be unionized, whereas in L.A., Quaile says, “Green Dot’s teachers are purposely unionized.”

On collaboration between Green Dot schools:

We don’t want to be an organization that offers one-off schools. One of the things we value is collaboration. Our 19 campuses work well together – our principals meet every month, we do a lot of shared teacher PD (Professional Development). The hope was to build enough of a network in Tennessee to have similar collaboration, too.

For now, Quaile said, some leadership and administrative staff will fly in from L.A. occasionally to run trainings and get things up and running in Memphis.

On collaboration between Green Dot and other charter schools within the ASD:

The attitude around collaboration [in the ASD] is 100% different [than in Los Angeles]. Here it’s very purposeful. [Charter leaders] meet on discipline, communications – all of us are up against confusion and misinformation- teachers. Those kinds of things are the most important for us to collaborate on. If one of our organizations fails, it looks bad for the ASD in general.

On perceptions of Green Dot and the ASD:

People know what the ASD is by now. They don’t know how an individual operator and the ASD work together. I think we’re all figuring that out. I can tell you the rumors I’ve heard about Fairley. I’ve had students say, oh, you’re not going to have a football team, not going to have band, you’re not going to take special education students. That’s not true. The one that shocked me was a student came in and said, I hear we’re not going to be allowed to graduate on a stage. That’s sad. …[At Fairley], from what we could gather, they were a little surprised [that the school’s scores were low enough for it to become part of the ASD.] There was a bit of disbelief.

On dealing with community unease:

Once you build a relationship with parents, those kinds of conversations tamper down a bit. It’s fair for parents to be concerned about what happens – they should be, we want them to be invested and protective. Those conversations tend to happen less frequently as the school builds relationships in the community.

How they’re planning for the transition:

We’re making a Fairley Transition Advisory Team, with four community members and community partners, four parents, four teachers. [That team will visit the LA office and talk through various decisions that still need to be made before school starts in the Fall.]

On turnarounds and hard work.

People need to understand that the first few months will be very tough. We know this. It’s about getting people who are a unified front. It falls apart if it’s not.

On using the word transformation rather than takeover.

We don’t don’t ever want students to feel it’s their fault their school’s being taken over, which can happen when that language is used. We say “transformation.”

On preparations:

Green Dot hasn’t spent much time in the school yet. Quaile and her team have visited several times since they were “matched.” For now, she’s still hoping to learn more about the school and its students – for instance, the school still needs to get transcripts so it can begin planning schedules and courses.

On opening enrollment in ASD schools up to any student:

If you live in Memphis and want to go to the school, I don’t know why we’d not allow you.

Tennessee earns mixed reviews on national education report card

2014-01-13T18:14:58+00:00

Tennessee schools ranked low in academic achievement and school finance, but high in other policy areas in Education Week‘s annual Quality Counts report, released last week.

Meanwhile, Memphis was pulled out as an example of a urban district seeking to improve its schools.

This year’s “state report cards” section ranks states on their policies in six categories:

School finance, including indicators of equity and spending;
“Chance for success,” which includes how strong the state’s early foundation programs and adult outcomes are;
Transitions and alignment, which includes indicators for early childhood education, economy and workforce, and college-ready indicators;
K-12 achievement, including indicators for change and equity;
The teaching profession, which includes indicators for professional development and incentives; and
Standards, assessments, and accountability, which includes measures for, standards, assessments and accountability.

You can read more about those indicators here.

The report gives Tennessee a D+ in K-12 achievement and a D in school finance analysis, but an A in transitions and alignment between schools and an A- in standards and accountability. Readers can manipulate the weighting of the various factors to determine their own ranking for states.

Tennessee ranked below the national average in school finance (47th out of 50 states and the District of Columbia) and chance for success (39th). It scored near the top in transitions and alignment (4th) and in the teaching profession (9th), and was in the middle of the pack (21st) for standards, assessments, and accountability and overall K-12 achievement (29th).

This is the 18th annual publication of a report that includes a survey of administrators and a set of articles on a theme – this year, District Disruption and Revival – alongside a report on key education indicators in the states.

Quality Counts also includes a “state highlights report” for each state, which includes a more in-depth breakdown of the state-specific rankings and the results of a survey of school administrators across the country about school governance and improvement. Here’s Tennessee’s state highlights report.

The 450 survey respondents, who come from all over the country, answered questions about several policy ideas related to Memphis schools: For instance, while 62 percent of respondents thought merging high- and low-poverty districts would increase equity in school funding, only 31 percent thought mergers would raise student achievement and just 34 percent thought mergers would reduce achievement gaps.

State-led turnaround, a category that would include Tennessee’s Achievement School District, was generally not viewed favorably, with fewer than 1 in 5 respondents saying they thought it would reduce achievement gaps or improve student achievement.

Memphis was also a focus of the journalistic portion of the report. Here’s a piece on the changing leadership in Memphis schools in recent years, with a new focus on multiple pathways; and here’s a video gallery that features a Memphis principal, charter school leader, the ASD superintendent, a parent, a student, and the leader of the NAACP in town reflecting on schools.

There are plenty more interesting tidbits for Tennessee education nerds within the report.