You won’t find the information on the Hamilton County Department of Education’s website under “Latest News.”
It’s probably not the news the district wants to share too widely.
The composite district score for high school seniors taking the American College Test (ACT) in the 2021-2022 school year was 18.8, according to information recently released by the Tennessee Department of Education. That marks a drop from last year’s district score of 18.9 and is the same composite ACT score seniors achieved in the district — in 2012.
Ten years, no change.
We would sell the district short if we said the district itself hadn’t changed in 10 years. Good things are happening in Hamilton County Schools, and students can get an excellent education in many of the county’s public schools. But test scores, like those on the standard college readiness test that is free for every Tennessee student to take, have been stubborn to improve, especially in majority minority schools.
In year-over-year scores, from the 2020-2021 year to the 2021-2022 year, nine Hamilton County high schools scored lower on their ACTs, eight scored higher and four remained the same.
The top composite score was achieved by Hamilton County Collegiate High with a 25 (36 being a perfect score), followed by Signal Mountain Middle/High with a 24.5 and Chattanooga Center for Creative Arts (CCA) with a 23.4.
Of those three high achieving schools, though, their ACT scores fell by 1.1 at Hamilton County Collegiate, stayed the same at Signal Mountain and fell by .2 at CCA.
Only eight of the county’s 21 high schools exceeded the state’s composite score of 19.1, which remained unchanged from a year ago.
The county’s biggest improvement was made by Chattanooga Girls Leadership Academy (CGLA). The charter school’s seniors moved up 1.1 points to a composite score of 19.3, exceeding the state average. The next biggest jump was .7 by Lookout Valley Middle/High.
Another county charter school, Ivy Academy, experienced the biggest decline, falling from 20.4, which exceeded the state average, to 18.4, below the state average.
State and district officials could point to the COVID-19 pandemic that caused such learning losses late in the 2019-2020 school year and in the first half of the 2020-2021 school year for the lack of improvement. But the farther the schools get away from the virtual classes forced by the pandemic, the more difficult it will be to blame the virus.
In the 2018-2019 school year, the last one before the pandemic, Hamilton County’s composite ACT score was 19.6, which bettered the state’s composite score of 19.4.
Of the 20 high schools for which complete information is available, only one school — Ivy Academy — had a better composite score (18.5) in 2021-2022 than it did in 2018-2019 (18.3). And that’s taking into account its aforementioned decline since 2020-2021.
Two other schools, Soddy-Daisy and CGLA, equaled their 2018-2019 composite scores this past year. All others declined, the biggest fall (1.6) coming at Lookout Valley Middle/High, which, as mentioned above, nevertheless had a big jump since last year.
Since the 2012-2013 school year, of the 19 schools for which there is complete information, only 10 recorded better scores in 2021-2022. Eight were worse, and one was the same.
The biggest jumps, not surprisingly, came at the two charter schools, CGLA and Ivy Academy. Ten years ago, they were fairly newly established, so there was plenty of room to improve. Over the period, CGLA’s ACT scores have improved 4 points, and Ivy Academy’s have climbed 2.2 points.
The biggest decline over the past decade came at Sale Creek, which fell from 20.5 to 18.8.
Other than CGLA, the district’s majority minority schools, Brainerd, Central, East Ridge, Red Bank, The Howard School and Tyner, have either declined in their ACT scores over the last decade or improved little. Red Bank and Central have improved .2 and .1, respectively, while Brainerd (-.5), East Ridge (-.8), The Howard School (-1.2) and Tyner (-1.3) all have declined.
As we have written previously, the same has been true for the majority minority schools on standardized tests such as TNReady.
We don’t have any doubts that Hamilton County Department of Education personnel are aware of the lack of progress in these schools and are attempting a variety of fixes. But the continued low scores will have an effect on the students’ futures, on their desire for higher education, and on their future earning capacity.
It will take the students, their parents and guardians, district administrators and the community at large working together to change things. We hope such changes are in the works.