Peter Greene’s latest post offers hope that a failed experiment in Tennessee may finally come to an end:
Peter gives a quick history of this failed model. Here is some more insight:
“The state has failed miserably in running schools and the state should not be in the business of being a school district, period,” State Rep. Antonio Parkinson said. “The Achievement School District came in and aggressively divided these communities and took over these schools, and then they performed worse than the schools they actually took over.”
The latest data from the Department of Education shows each of the four schools report less than five percent of students performing at grade level. ASD as a whole reports just 4.5 percent of students performing at grade level.
Almost immediately, there were problems.
Some charter operators dropped out, and new operators swooped in. A series of directors attempted to run the rapidly sinking ship.
There were even Thunderdome-like contests early on to decide which schools would be handed over to charter operators, despite parent and community objections.
In 2020, New York City math teacher and popular blogger Gary Rubinstein, who tracked the ASD from its inception, reported the ASD’s “initial promise” to take over the bottom 5 percent of schools and “catapult them into the top 25 percent in five years” had “completely failed . . . . Chris Barbic resigned, Kevin Huffman resigned, Barbic’s replacement resigned. Of the thirty schools, they nearly all stayed in the bottom 5 percent except a few that catapulted into the bottom 10 percent.”
Interestingly, Ezra Howard has an analysis of ASD schools compared to Memphis iZone schools over at Bluff City Ed.
Howard has written about the ASD before, noting that when compared to the trajectory district schools were on before ASD takeover, the ASD schools are actually doing worse now.
The most recent analysis by Howard shows that by and large, district-led school turnarounds get better results than ASD efforts.
The closure of the ASD is long overdue.