Remaking Memphis’ schools: Now that’s a REAL education reform!

Legalize School Choice

While Kentucky’s educators crawl along with hand-slap reforms that do little to fundamentally shake up our existing, school-choice and true-reform-hostile public schools, down river in Memphis, Tennessee, a true revolution is under way – a revolution that won Tennessee an enormous first round grant from the Race to the Top competition (Kentucky’s relative lack of innovation earned nothing in this round and others that followed).

Education Week just posted a huge article about the astonishing education renaissance in Memphis.

Says EdWeek:

“With a growing charter school sector, a new state-run district with plans to expand, and a reconfigured central office, Memphis is poised to become the next national center for New Orleans-style school governance.”

These changes are huge, and school choice, virtually non-existent in Kentucky, will play a major role.

Overall, it isn’t hard to see how those pesky orange men from down south outdid Kentucky for the big money in Race to the Top. While Tennessee’s hugely ambitious reform in Memphis certainly faces a lot of challenges, it also offers great opportunities for dramatic improvement in that state’s most educationally troubled city. If Kentucky doesn’t start waking up about important reforms like charter schools and new ideas about school staffing policies, our kids could really be left behind before very long.

For a short list of the dramatic changes coming in Memphis, click the “Read more” link.

Here are some of the education innovations already under way or coming soon in Memphis:

• The city school district and Shelby County district are being merged to form what could become a 140,000 student system – the largest such merger ever in the US (bigger than when Louisville and Jefferson County merged years ago).

• There will be a rapidly expanding array of charter schools. Ten years ago, there were just three in Memphis; currently the city has 41, and that number will go up more.

• A separate, state run school district, the Tennessee Achievement School District, will expand from its current 12 schools to control more than 50. This special state-run district takes over control in Memphis’ lowest-performing schools. This is similar to the Recovery School District concept in Louisiana, which helped to rebuild New Orleans’ hurricane-shattered school system after 2005.

• The regular district has created an “Innovation Zone” of 13 schools that have budget and hiring autonomy. That’s like putting Kentucky’s very limited Schools of Innovation program on steroids.

• School choice for parents and students will be a cornerstone. Again, this is something basically lacking with Kentucky’s Schools of Innovation.

• Lots more charter schools are coming, and there is no cap on how many more can be created. However, charter school creaming is banned. This charter-friendly climate is attracting some of the best charter school management groups in the nation.

• Collective bargaining for teachers is gone (something else left out of Kentucky’s Schools of Innovation). Teachers and the principal now collectively decide who comes to work at a school, and seniority isn’t a limitation on that selection.

• Teacher evaluations are tied to student performance (Kentucky is still fussing around with implementing this policy, with more delays likely).

• Alternative certification programs will expand.