State report card shows high marks for Knox County Schools

November 11, 2006:

The state of Tennessee released its annual school report cards today, and the Knox County School System received an exceptional overall report.

The Knox County School System posted an A in student academic achievement for mathematics, a B in both reading and social studies and a C in science. In the extremely important area of value added performance, the school system posted an A in each of the four subject areas.

“Much of the information contained on the report card was released this summer as federal No Child Left Behind performance data, but the report card carries some additional performance data and value added scores along with letter grades in most areas,” said Dr. Charles Lindsey, Superintendent of Knox County schools. “I think our valued added gains for the last year or two really foretold our achievement improvement in both math and social studies. The value added scores indicate how our teachers are advancing students academically.”

The scores from the Tennessee Value Added Assessment System indicate a student’s individual educational growth over the course of a school year. A grade of C means students grew academically one full grade level. Grades of A and B indicate that students grew significantly more than one year.

“While we did not see a letter grade improvement in science achievement, we did see significant improvement in that achievement area,” said Dr. Mike Winstead the school system’s director of evaluation and accountability. “What is more telling is that fact that we moved from a B to an A in the science value added grade. This means that as a group our students around the county grew well over one year academically in that area for the last school year. With this trend in academic gain, I would expect to see a leap in the science, as well as social studies and reading achievement scores in the near future.”

“The improvement in value added performance in our traditionally underperforming schools has been exceptional,” said Winstead. “The large majority of these schools are now making straight As in value added. I would also expect to see their achievement scores start to move more dramatically in the future. They should begin to improve in a manner similar to how the system’s achievement grades have shown improvement.”

“At the high school level, our ACT scores are significantly higher than projections, and that is with about 85% of our students taking the test,” said Lindsey. “We made some real improvement in the college readiness of our high school graduates in recent years. So much so, that the ACT organization is looking at our system for information to help other systems emulate that improvement.”

“While we have a lot of good news in this report that shows us we are on the right track, we still have some challenges,” said Lindsey. “Specifically, I am concerned about our high school graduation rates. These are still under review by the state, but I know they are not where they should be. While we are performing better than most large school systems, we need to make some great strides in this area.”

“Our strategy for improving our high school graduation rate is two fold,” said Dr. Donna Wright, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction. “First, for the long term, we have initiated some very successful teaching and measurement methods in our elementary level that we are expanding to our middle schools and high schools. Second, for the short term, we are trying some extraordinary methods at the high school level to make sure our freshmen are successful,” she said. “Data shows that if a student does not earn enough credits as a freshman to progress to the sophomore level, they most likely will never graduate. We are working hard to address this issue, and I expect we will begin to see success in this area."

“I think we are on the cusp of something great,” said Lindsey. “I am excited about what the future holds and the great strides we are making as a school system. We are outperforming similar schools systems with far more funding. The difference is our people,” he said. “None of this would be possible without the hard work of great teachers, administrators, parents and students.”