SCS-ASD rivalry is fine as long as schools advance

CompetitionbetweenShelbyCountySchoolsandthe Achievement School District can give birth to creative initiatives on both sides. It can also produce frustration, even a little trash talk, which is understandable.

Who could fault SCS board member Stephanie Love for asking that a conversation on “the board’s position on the ASD” be added to the agenda?

Or chairwoman Teresa Jones for wondering out loud if stopping communication with the ASD would prove a point, as The Commercial Appeal’s Jennifer Pignolet put it, that SCS does not condone the ASD’s role in the county?

As they and other members of the board are aware, however, it doesn’t make any difference what local educators condone or don’t condone regarding the state’s willingness to assert itself into local affairs, regarding education or anything else.

What has become obvious is that policymakers need to put their heads down and work to produce the best public education system they can with the resources made available to them by the state and other funding sources.

As board member Chris Caldwell put it, “The best thing we can do is improve the schools that are in Shelby County and get them off that list (of low-performing schools).”

Mounting a coordinated attack on low performance is not easy, though.

The ASD is the borderless district created by the state of Tennessee to raise achievement levels among schools in the bottom 5 percent statewide in terms of performance.

What ASD takeover means to a school is that the designation opens another funding tap from which to pour extra resources into an enhanced effort to raise achievement. The local district has access to additional resources, too, by assigning low-performing schools to its Innovation Zone.

But the ASD makes its decisions year by year on which schools it will absorb, SCS Supt. Dorsey Hopson pointed out, which complicates the process of long-range planning at SCS.

A more specific example: Right now it’s unclear what the status of Hillcrest High School will be next fall.

SCS wants to merge Hillcrest students with neighboring Whitehaven High, turning Hillcrest into a ninth-grade academy and putting 10th- through 12thgraders at Whitehaven.

The proposal also would put a career and technology program on the Hillcrest campus with several professional certification options.

SCS won’t be able to carry out that plan, however, unless the ASD fails in its ongoing effort to match Hillcrest with a charter network.

For their part, ASD officials have acknowledged the need to communicate better with SCS and develop a spirit of cooperation with residents of neighborhoods affected by proposed school takeovers.

ASD Supt. Chris Barbic considers the competition healthy for both sides, touting gains in such subjects as science and math.

If the progress continues, a bit of trash talk is not a problem.