Despite the learning loss that students faced after losing about a year of in-classroom instruction, the Tennessee Department of Education’s school report cards have designated six schools in the Memphis area as reward schools.

Reward schools are those that would receive an A letter grade in the state’s accountability measure. 

Five of the six schools are elementary schools in the suburban municipalities. 

TSU presents scholarships to senior class at Middle College High School

In Germantown Municipal School District, reward schools are Farmington and Dogwood elementary. Collierville Schools has three with the reward designation: Bailey Station Elementary, Collierville Elementary and Tara Oaks Elementary. 

Middle College High School was the sole Shelby County Schools school – and the sole high school – in the area that made the reward list, which measures student achievement and growth. Last week, the school’s senior class received the fruits of their labor: full-ride scholarships to Tennessee State University for 93% of the class and partial scholarships for the remaining three students. 

“I do not take this lightly. We should not take this lightly,” SCS Board Chair Miska Clay Bibbs said in a Sept. 21 board meeting after acknowledging the school’s reward status.

Clay Bibbs was instrumental to the partnership that brought the students TSU scholarships. 

The state’s accountability scores are calculated using measures of achievement, growth and other factors such as ready graduate scores on the high school level. 

Though the high school’s overall success rate has fallen nearly 10 percentage points since students were last tested before the pandemic, the school’s English Language Arts proficiency made up a loss of about 12 percentage points, reaching its previous level of about 52% in 2018. Proficiency in social studies also increased 8 percentage points, though its current proficiency level is less than half of what it was in 2018. 

According to the state’s school report card, 85.7% of Middle College’s class of 2020 were ready for college and careers after high school. Data for the class of 2021 is not yet available, as ready graduate scores lag by one year, according to the state.

At the other end of the spectrum, Sheffield Elementary, which was previously in the bottom 5% of schools statewide, showed enough progress to be removed from the priority list. 

While schools were eligible to make the reward list and leave the low-performing designations, the state declared that schools and districts would be held harmless for learning loss. As long as districts had an 80% or more participation rate in TCAP testing, they would not be assigned a letter grade, added to the priority list nor assigned to the Achievement School District. 

“I am encouraged by the determination of our teachers and students to continue to raise the bar, despite many uncertainties,” SCS Superintendent Joris M. Ray said. “These results will help initiate transformation in real-time to support students.”