Nearly half of Nashville public charter schools, including LEAD Cameron, are outperforming comparable district run schools

Students at LEAD Cameron Middle School (Photo by LEAD Public Schools)

Members of the Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) Board of Education opened the district up for a lawsuit last month when they decided to rezone students away from attending LEAD Cameron Middle School.

The public charter school is unique in that it essentially operates like a normal zoned school that elementary students attending Fall-Hamilton, Glenview, and John B. Whitsitt in the district’s Glencliff cluster feed into when they advance to middle school. The arrangement is different from most other charter schools in Nashville that have open enrollment policies. Charter schools are free public schools operated by an independent contract or “charter” with an authorizing agency like a school district or the state.

The district’s plan moves Margaret Allen Middle School from the Antioch Cluster into the Glencliff Cluster, and feeds elementary students from Fall-Hamilton, Glenview, Napier, and John B. Whitsitt elementaries into that school instead of LEAD Cameron. The plan would additionally classify LEAD Cameron as an optional charter school, forcing families who want to attend it to apply.

LEAD Public Schools is now challenging the rezoning plan as a violation of its charter and the charter operator’s lawsuit took direct aim at what the change will mean for students.

“The rezoning plan removes the highest performing middle school in the cluster, LEAD Cameron, as the automatic zoned option for the mostly minority and low-income families in the Glencliff cluster, leaving them with a zoned school which has had significantly less academic success,” said LEAD Public Schools in its lawsuit.

A Tennessee Firefly analysis of the recently released State Report Card found the data backs up LEAD’s claim.

Students at LEAD Cameron outperformed students Margaret Allen and the Glencliff cluster’s other middle school in every subject on state testing and the charter school received a higher School Letter Grade. 

LEAD Cameron’s success is part of a larger trend in recent years of public charter school students in Davidson County outperforming their traditional and magnet school peers.  Firefly staff compared each MNPS charter school’s performance on the State Report Card to traditional and magnet schools serving the same age students in the same school cluster. Forty-four percent of those charters outperformed every comparable district run school in at least a majority of subjects.

The performance was especially noticeable in South Davidson County’s Overton school cluster where both Valor Flagship Academy and Valor Voyager Academy not only outperformed every district run school in every subject and received a higher School Letter Grade, both achieved proficiency rates in Math and English language arts between 20 to 47 percent higher.

Despite that performance, MNPS leaders have routinely been at odds with charters in recent years and the rezoning decision against LEAD Cameron is the latest in a series of moves charter supporters view as discriminatory.

MNPS board members have denied every application for a new charter school three years in a row and last November, board members denied a charter renewal request from Rocketship Nashville Northeast Elementary School, despite it being one of Northeast Nashville’s highest performing elementary schools.

MNPS leaders have also faced criticism for choosing not to invite district charters to its annual celebration of schools.