State Representative Justin Jones, D-Nashville, represents a district that touches four school clusters with some of the highest performing public charter schools in Nashville.Those charters in east and southeast Nashville include a dozen that outscored the average grade district run public schools received in their cluster on the state’s School Letter Grades assessment. The remaining public charter schools scored equal to the cluster average and 40 percent of the Reward schools in these four clusters are charters.

LaKendra Butler moved to Nashville a decade ago with the goal of starting a public charter school.At the time Butler was the principal of a middle school in Dallas and she saw an opportunity to help put students in the Donelson and Hermitage communities of Davidson County on the path to become college-ready high school graduates.

Abby McLean’s children are among those who survived last March’s Covenant school shooting that claimed the lives of three children and three staff members.McLean read a letter from Erin Kinney, the mother of Covenant victim William Kinney, to members of the Senate Education Committee in support of Senator Ferrell Haile’s, R-Gallatin, bill to change fire alarm policies in schools.The bill would require each school district, public charter school, private school, and church-related school to create a policy for how students, teachers, faulty, staff, and substitute faculty should respond when a fire alarm is activated outside of scheduled drills.

Vanderbilt professor and researcher Jason Grissom told members of the Metro Nashville Board of Education that the nationwide recognition the district is getting for how students recovered from the pandemic didn’t come by accident.Grissom said thinking on two levels is what made it work. That includes the direct instructional intervention district leaders spearheaded, like investing in high-dosage tutoring, and the indirect building systems to support instruction, including mental health and family engagement.

A new report produced by Harvard and Stanford Universities known as the Education Recovery Scorecard, credits MNPS for surpassing national trends for pandemic recovery.The research found MNPS ranked third among the top 100 districts in math growth from 2022 to 2023 and the district is ranked sixth among the top 100 districts in reading (English language arts) growth during that same period. The district was one of just two large urban school districts to rank in the top ten for both subjects.

Victavia Walls says she made the wrong choice in middle school to temporarily leave LEAD Brick Church for her traditionally zoned Metro Nashville school. She's among the nearly half a dozen parents and students who shared their experiences to support LEAD Brick Church's effort to remain open as a public charter school.

The Tennessee Public Charter School Commission unanimously approved Nashville Collegiate Prep’s request to continue providing students its community classroom model into high school.The K-8 public charter school organizes each grade into a pod of 4 to 5 classes. Throughout the day students switch teachers within the pod based on their specific needs and strengths, providing teachers an opportunity to more directly focus lessons on the areas students might need help in.

Sara Vaneel says she chose to enroll her son in Rocketship Nashville Northeast Elementary School when he was entering kindergarten because she wanted him to have a different educational experience than she received.Vaneel says instead of staying with one teacher each day, her son has benefitted from the public charter school’s class rotation schedule, and he loves his coding and robotics classes.Vaneel’s son and his more than 500 classmates have all been at risk of losing what they enjoy about Rocketship since November when members of the Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) Board of Education voted against renewing the school’s charter. That decision threatened to close the school, but Rocketship appealed to the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission.Friday, commissioners unanimously voted to overturn the board’s decision and grant Rocketship another ten-year charter. It’s the latest in a series of decisions by commissioners to overturn MNPS board votes against public charter schools

Even under a best-case scenario, hundreds of Metro-Nashville Public School (MNPS) students will have to repeat the fourth-grade next year under a new state law.That’s according to district Executive Director of the Department of Research, Assessment, and Evaluation Christine Stenson, who updated members of the MNPS Board of Education Tuesday night on the potential impact Tennessee’s new Third-Grade Retention Law will have on district fourth-graders.

A key prediction that’s guiding Tennessee’s workforce development is the belief that the number of jobs requiring some form of credential or degree will grow at a higher rate than those requiring only a high school diploma.This could be especially true in Nashville and improving the pathways for students to earn those degrees and credentials is at the heart of the Nashville Chamber of Commerce’s four recommendations to improve K-12 education.

School boards in as many as six counties could vote on applications this year for new public charter schools.A diverse group of potential charter operators sent 21 charter application letters of intent to school districts across the state, the first step in this year’s new start charter application process. Those operators include an existing charter operator, prior applicants who failed to receive approval, along with a host of new organizations with no experience in Tennessee.A diverse group of potential charter operators sent 22 charter application letters of intent to school districts across the state, the first step in this year’s new start charter application process. Those operators include existing charter operators, prior applicants who failed to receive approval, along with a host of new organizations with no experience in Tennessee.

Faculty from Martin Luther King Jr. Magnet School pleaded with the Metro Nashville School Board Tuesday night to oppose a proposal to remove two middle school grades as part of the MNPS ReimaginED equity roadmap.That proposal would remove seventh and eighth-grade students from the school. One faculty member requested the district instead expand MLK to include sixth-grade.MLK school counselor Sarah Laos told school board told board members the building still has room to enroll more students and she worries phasing out the two grades means losing part of the faculty.

The majority of Nashville’s public charter schools received a better report card from the state than their traditional school counterparts in the Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) district.A Tennessee Firefly analysis of the recently released School Letter Grades found 62 percent of MNPS public charter schools scored a higher grade than similar traditional public schools averaged.

Darrell Grady says his child was at risk of retention in the second grade. That experience, combined with his own time as a former Metro Nashville Public School (MNPS) student who got caught up in the criminal justice system, convinced him to pull his child out of MNPS.Grady told members of the Metro Nashville School Board that even though he’s lost faith in the school system, he hopes the updated GoSchoolBox, Inc. tutoring vendor contract will actively engage with parents when children like his needs help.

A new report by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute found both Memphis-Shelby County Schools and Metro Nashville Public Schools are facing more competition for students than most other large school districts.The study ranked both districts 21 out of the top 125 school districts for the percentage of students in grades 1 through 8 that attend public charter, private, or home schools instead of district run schools.

When the founders of Nashville Classical proposed the new public charter school in 2013, acquiring facilities was a huge challenge.School leaders had to meet with future parents in church basements and parks.Addressing that charter facility gap is among the priorities the Tennessee State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE) announced it plans to advocate for in 2024. Tennessee SCORE unveiled its annual State of Education in Tennessee report Tuesday morning and made the case that charter facilities are one key area Tennessee needs to address to ensure school support meets student needs.

Jauana Luiz Cruz says the transition of moving to Nashville from Mexico was a huge challenge for her elementary school age son.Speaking through an interpreter at Tuesday's Metro School Board meeting, Cruz says language barriers were especially a problem and her son hated school so much she worried the family might have to make an emotionally difficult decision of moving him back to Mexico.

That changed after a coworker connected the family with Rocketship Nashville Northeast Elementary School.

Nashville and Shelby County governments have pulled out of their more than 3-year-old legal dispute with the state over a 2019 private school voucher law.The paperwork to withdraw their latest appeal was filed quietly on Aug. 25 with the Tennessee Court of Appeals, according to court documents.

State Senators Jon Lundbeg, R-Brisol, and Bill Powers, R-Clarksville, and Representative William Slater, R-Hendersonville, utilized their downtime in between federal education funding hearings Tuesday afternoon to learn more about a unique public charter school that’s about to expand into the suburbs.The three lawmakers toured the campus of the Nashville Collegiate Prep on Bell Road.