KNOXVILLE, Tenn — Newly released state performance data showed multiple East Tennessee school systems found themselves among the lowest-performing districts in the state in the last academic year.
The Tennessee Department of Education released its 2021-2022 School and District Accountability reports on Monday, which assesses districts based on performance in several areas, including grade band success rates, rates of students chronically out of school, performance on the English Language Proficiency Assessment, and graduation rates.
Districts can receive one of five rankings: Exemplary, Advancing, Satisfactory, Marginal, and In Need of Improvement.
Knox, Anderson, Claiborne and Sevier counties were among the seven districts in the state that found themselves in the lowest tier of "In Need of Improvement," which means those districts had scored in the bottom 5% of all Tennessee districts last school year.
However, this data should be taken with a grain of salt -- because some of the performance areas were affected by COVID-19, particularly chronically absent students.
On Wednesday, KCS held a news conference to discuss the state's report.
KCS said absenteeism and academic growth were two areas that significantly impacted the district's overall score despite better base TCAP achievement scores.
Academic growth scores in particular were a large reason for KCS' poor ranking. The district said it fell from the highest level (Level 5) to the lowest level (Level 1) in this year's report, and that metric makes up 25% of a school's grade.
"This is a moment of reflection and opportunity," KCS Superintendent Jon Rysewyk said. "To put it simply: our growth scores were not what we want, or expect, them to be."
Rysewyk said on top of the district's poor academic growth -- chronic absenteeism in the district soared to 27% due to COVID, which meant roughly one in three kids missed 18 days or more of school instruction.
Despite the poor overall report, Rysewyk said he was proud to see academic scores improving to pre-pandemic levels. KCS said English Language Arts scores improved at elementary, middle and high schools. Math scores also improved at the elementary and middle school levels, but KCS said there is still work to be done to get those scores back up to pre-pandemic levels.
"These improving student results should address any recent comments concerning the preparedness of teachers and confirm what I already know -- the teachers of Knox County Schools are fully capable and second to none," Rysewyk said. "Today, we celebrate the amazing progress of our students, the support of our families, and the stellar commitment, hard work, and expertise of our educators."
Rysewyk said KCS will be working this school year to improve across the board by bringing in parents, businesses and local leaders to develop a greater level of community engagement in schools. He said his plan is to increase engagement at the school, regional and district levels by forming comittees and councils to create targeted strategies at each level.
"We have an opportunity to redouble our efforts to serve every child in Knox County and ensure they receive the highest quality education. I ask educators, parents and community members to join this mission," Rysewyk said.
The state uses this performance data to determine if it needs to intervene and place low-performing schools under the state's Achievement School District to accelerate improvement, but this year's report is being used just to identify schools in need of extra state and federal funding.
The state said it will not produce letter grades to schools during this accountability cycle due to the continued impact COVID had on schools.
Most schools in the state were either "advancing" or "satisfactory." Some East Tennessee schools found themselves in the highest performing districts in the state, including Athens, Etowah, Newport and Greeneville city schools, Greene and Meigs county schools, and the Tennessee Schools for the Deaf.
When broken down by individual schools, nine Knox County schools and several others across East Tennessee were ranked as "Reward Schools," which are schools that demonstrate the highest levels of performance and growth. A total of 29 schools in Knox County received designations that reflected a need for additional support, including four schools that were listed as "Priority Schools" in need of comprehensive support.
You can find the full list at this link.