I wonder if several smaller schools (with different campuses, not the whole school split into academies thing) would help? Would smaller schools equal better outcomes?

I don't understand why you're insinuating that Knox Countians should feel shameful though. You cannot just throw money at a school and expect improvement. There are so many outside factors that determine if a child will have a successful academic career. I don't care if you spend 30K a child, if the student doesn't have a solid foundation at home that stresses scholarship he/she will likely fail. What could the resident do or what have we done to fail Austin-East?

the next step might be for the state - under the next governor, of course - to sell it off to a for-profit 'education' corporation. this may be the future model for public assets: run it down, then sell it off. it's potentially big business. and they'll quote margaret thatcher, tina. "there is no alternative."

So the quasi-privatization and public looting begins coupled with the loss of democratic control of one of our institutions here in Knoxville. And, of course, it begins in the community with the least power and social capital whose children will be the subjects of an un-controlled experiment.

Race to the Top indeed!

According to the 2009 TVAAS School Report linked from the State of TN Dept. of Education website, Austin-East has the highest rate of free/reduced price lunches at 81% and the highest rate of minorities at 91%. Maybe the school being located in one of the most, if not the most, low income sections of Knoxville/Knox County has something to do with the ability to teach and learn. Maybe the students have other things on their minds like eating and getting clothed. I don't know.

A wild and crazy thought, close the school and transfer the students to other schools, e.g. Fulton, Central, Carter, or West, or, hey, the school of their choice with transportation provided. The school is the smallest high school in the Knox County system. Thus, small schools aren't always the solution.

Maybe someone at Knox County Schools can explain why Austin-East is having such a problem. Maybe a little more money needs to be pushed toward helping the families in that area in a way that will result in helping the children.

and oh by the way, you might ask the school board why much balleyhooed Hardin Valley Academy didn't make the necessary annual yearly progress this year heading towards not meeting NCLB.

The only school in West Knoxville capable of accepting NCLB transfers right now is Farragut and that means Bearden, HVA, Karns, and West, by definition have NCLB issues they are struggling with.

The magnet school issues were used to resolve the Office of Civil Rights inquiry several years ago, which located all of our magnet school to the inner city all within the A-E high school zone. A monumental waste of resources in my humble opinion.

The Knox County School board has continued to throw piles of money at inner city schools with no appreciable return on the investment and if the circumstances within these communities are an impediment to education, we need to remove the educational facilities from these areas as we cannot create educational importance in families if there are other priorities or other immovable distractions.

I have some degree of faith in Dr. McIntyre, particularly as Timmy Burchette comes on line, as a product of nothing but public education, hopefully real difficult issues will be given a real hard look and we can address problems without throwing money at the problem.

Turn the school over to the state, today.

Unlike downtown, any TIFs on the S Waterfront would go towards public improvements, parks, roads, etc.

BTW, there's already affordable housing in the SW. Let's keep it that way. Many of us don't have mortgages, how much more affordable can you get?.

In Old North Knoxville you'll see shotgun houses a block away from the big mansions. Parkridge as well.

...it's a housing problem.

The Dude: "...if the student doesn't have a solid foundation at home that stresses scholarship..."

Stick: "...it begins in the community with the least power and social capital..."

bizgrrl: "Maybe the school being located in one of the most, if not the most, low income sections of Knoxville/Knox County has something to do with the ability to teach and learn."

Ragsdale2010: "The Knox County School board has continued to throw piles of money at inner city schools with no appreciable return on the investment..." and "Put a magnet school on Pellissipi Parkway and kids will come. But put a magnet school inner city, lower income, concentrated minority section of Knoxville, you don't attract the community's best or brightest..."

We can talk "alternate school models" all day long, but it's our communities that need reform.

Fix the disparity in our housing stock by making affordable housing widely available (as opposed to concentrating it in a single community) and in the process we fix the disparity in our schools.

(link...)

But if you fix the schools it will enable more families to feel comfortable in the inner city. There is a LOT of vacant real estate in the AE district. With roads, utilities, etc. already in place.

......I don't know that there's anything to "fix" with the school itself.

Only problem I see is an overabundance of kids there who can't recognize opportunity when it bites them in the butt.

They just haven't had enough occasions to rub elbows with kids who do--and who seize it.

Mixed income (aka "inclusive") housing. Make it so.

Aside from Indya, who else on this thread has ever even seen the inside of that building? Just curious

Why does that sound like a challenge? I can't say that i've seen the inside of any Knox High school besides South Doyle. It's not like they encourage strangers to wander the hallways.

I don't have time to list all j.f.m.'s requested citations re: school management practices but a good place to start is this interview of Diane Ravitch, a former proponent of private-public school partnerships who worked in the GW Bush administration.

(link...)

Read her book "The Death and Life of the Great American School System"

Also, this website:
(link...)

The students who are at highest risk for failure are not being served appropriately in charters.

(link...)

Maybe the City, County, and school system need to have a conversation with the parents, students, teachers, and local community to discuss what they think might help resolve the problem. Some of the conversation should probably be with anonymous input to lessen fears of retribution and ridicule.

Maybe someone needs to look into the feeder schools, Vine Magnet and South-Doyle Middle. Can anyone say how the students from each are doing once they enter Austin-East High School?

Update: There is a community forum scheduled for today, August 10, 2010, at 6 PM, at the high school.

Austin-East will host a community forum on Tuesday, Aug. 10 at 6 p.m. to discuss the school's academic achievement and progress, inform parents about school choice options, and to hear and discuss parent and community insights about Austin-East. The forum is open to the public.

Another, maybe. Maybe they should re-think the curriculum? What is most useful to get the kids attention, keep them in school and learning, and prepare them for life after high school?

On the Austin East website they have a link to a slide show for an "Attendance Summit 2009."

Attendance, or lack there of, appears to be an issue. In 2009, the average number of freshmen present (158) was twenty-one less than the number of enrolled freshmen (179). The attendance rate for the school was 88% in 2008 compared to the system rate of 91%. Something different must have been done in 2007 because the attendance rate was 98%, then dropped to the 88% in 2008 (or the chart is wrong). Reasons for not attending school, 26% reported sickness and 25% on suspension.

Sorry to chime in a little late here, but the community schools model is an example of a strategy that works well for at-risk children as well as high achievers. In a nutshell, the idea is that our school buildings should be the centers of the community and that more services and activities than just educating children from 8-3 should take place there. The advantages are many - it brings needed services such as after school enrichment in the form of athletics, music, art, computer learning, community service, etc. to the children as well as providing health care, family style meals, adult education, etc. It really gets the community involved in the school because the school is truly the center of the community and benefits more than just the children. Many of the services provided are being provided elsewhere anyway, they just get moved to the schools. Why should the school buildings sit empty after school, on weekends, and during the summer when they are one of the communities' largest investments?

Here's a link for more information about community schools and how it has worked in other communities. Dr. Bob Kronick at UT is a proponent of this idea and has been implementing it in a limited way in a couple of schools with high-risk children and has had some good success. I think he just got funding for an expansion of his work.

I think an approach like this could work well at Austin-East, but also at Farragut - it isn't just the child in poverty that needs these kind of services, it's also the single-parent career mom that would benefit from not having to rush to pick up Sally for violin. Instead, violin class is offered at the school in a safe environment and the bonus is that Sally gets a nutritious meal and help with her homework too.

there's been talk of these vouchers or so-called 'scholarships' for awhile. for example, check out chas sisk's blog from nashville on the subject.

One piece of leg­is­la­tion that wasn’t on Gov. Phil Bredesen’s docket — a bill estab­lish­ing a pilot pro­gram for school choice — has made its way onto the cal­en­dar for the spe­cial ses­sion on education.

The Sen­ate Edu­ca­tion Com­mit­tee approved the mea­sure spon­sored by Sen. Brian Kelsey that estab­lishes a pilot pro­gram whereby stu­dents in fail­ing schools would receive schol­ar­ships or vouch­ers to use for a pri­vate school edu­ca­tion. The bill is writ­ten so that the pilot pro­gram could only be launched in the Mem­phis school dis­trict, and it was amended so that stu­dents in only one school in that dis­trict would get the vouch­ers. (Kelsey had orig­i­nally pro­posed includ­ing stu­dents from the district’s 10 worst schools in the pilot program.)

Spattered in amidst the rhetoric of school reform in this discussion is the matter of community--that thing which is the sui generis of whether any public educational endeavor is effective.

j.f.m. wrote:

At some point, parents in some inner-city school system will just say, the hell with it, why not?

Indeed, if their experience demonstrates a lack of value for the product that schools deliver. Their children are not far behind and soon lead the charge when the general social dynamic of their community openly rejects the benefits of education in favor of something else that is culturally produced.

The facts of the matter state that it is irrelevant who provides the core educational content and administration--or to a great degree what that content is. What is critical is the perceived value of the experience being offered by those who are being asked to consume it. And for those of you who do not live in the immediate service area of Austin East--I can assure you that it is not a hell of a lot.

We can busily cite hundreds of historic social blunders, defective policies, and imposed limitations that have woven themselves together to create the dysfunctional communities that are the feeder to schools like this everywhere. The key is to introduce a "game changer" into the social equation--and it must be one that the community itself has ownership and investment in.

There has been much work to improve the housing stock within the areas served by AE. Much more must be done. Economic development is the next step--as visibility of success is required to contrast against "alternative" illegal economies, reliance on social safety nets, and providing proof that education has positive economic outcomes.

We will not even spend more than a moment considering the badly thought out and resulting failure of the Five Points project--except to recognize that it was something that the community was not ready for, not invested in, and the brainchild of social reformers from outside the community itself that seem to have been educated beyond their native intelligence. America is littered with such "progressive" failures.

Yes, turning the school into a community and social hub is a tremendous step in the right direction. Turning it into a hub of access to formal social services and activities determined by those outside the community is not. What happens must be the wishes of the community members, be operated by those community members, and have real value.

That changes attitudes, and changed attitudes result in more positive outcomes.