Did Tennessee Learn Any Lessons From Its Failed School Reform Plan?
Tennessee’s Achievement School District, a plan to rescue the state’s worst schools, is not yet a decade old. But according to a proposal obtained by Chalkbeat, the ASD will not live to see the ten-year mark— at least not in its present form.
Kevin Huffman was a lawyer who had spent a couple of years in a Teach for America classroom placement pre-law school, then came back to TFA on the management side. In 2011, Governor Bill Haslam brought him on as Tennessee state Commissioner of Education. It was the most high-profile example of someone parleying TFA experience into a high-level leadership role in education. He quickly fell in step with the Duncan-Obama reform program, signed Tennessee on for Race to the Top, and in 2011, he launched the Achievement School District.
The ASD concept was simple; the state would pluck schools from those ranked in the bottom 5% of the state and lump them into a separate school district that would be overseen by state officials rather than a local school board. Focus resources on your most challenging cases and try to learn some turnaround techniques that CONTINUE READING: Did Tennessee Learn Any Lessons From Its Failed School Reform Plan?
