Almost two-thirds of state assessments taken by Hamilton County students in 2021-22 showed a failure to reach proficiency in at least one subject or subsection of the overall test.
According to an analysis by the Chattanooga Times Free Press, 37% of submitted tests had passing proficiency scores across all subjects. This is what's more simply referred to as a success rate. The rest -- 63% of tests -- showed inadequate proficiency in one or more subject areas.
And some schools had even fewer tests with passing proficiency scores across all subjects. Forty-five schools showed success rates lower than 37%, with three schools as low as 5%. Out of 80 Hamilton County schools, 22 achieved a success rate of over 50%.
Chief Strategy Officer Shannon Moody said the district has been working to improve these numbers for years.
"It's about what structures and strategies do we have in place to best support our lowest-achieving schools," Moody said in a telephone interview. "I think that's things like, really making our resources available in a way that's equitable and around the needs of students. I think it's about making sure that we're coaching and getting the highest performing teachers in some of our highest needs areas."
This year's success rate is nearly the same as it was five years ago, which was 37.45%.
The rate dipped to 34% in 2021 due to COVID-19. It has since recovered from 2018 and 2019 success rates of 35% and 36.8% respectively.
But 20 months out from the onset of the pandemic after spending $142 million in pandemic relief funds, Hamilton County schools are doing no better than they were in 2017.
The district is outperforming some others across the state. Shelby County Schools showed a success rate of 18%. Davidson County fared slightly better at 23%. Rutherford County Schools, similar in size to Hamilton County, had a 43% success rate. Knox County Schools had the same success rate as Hamilton County. And the state's wealthiest county, Williamson, was far above all other districts, with 70% of tests showing passing scores in all subjects.
Rutherford County school officials said in an email they are pleased with their students' achievement.
"We are proud of our students and their performance with growth and achievement during the pandemic. Our strategy has been to focus on the Tennessee standards, support our teachers, protect instructional time and attempt to engage our parents as valuable partners," they said in a statement. "We use our results each year as one measurement to inform our school and district improvement plans. We're sure that Hamilton County Schools has similar strategies in place, and we support their efforts to improve opportunities for students."
ONE MEASURE
Success rate is just one way to view data on proficiency. However, it does offer a view into whether a school met state-determined proficiency levels across all subjects.
Hamilton County Board of Education member Tiffanie Robinson, a political independent from Chattanooga, said the success rate is one piece of the academic pie.
"It is unfortunate that we do have a high percentage of students who are not necessarily hitting the mark that we want them to hit in specific subject areas," Robinson said by phone. "If I'm just being very honest, and I'm speaking with my parent hat on and also my school board hat on, I think that testing is really difficult. And I think that it's not showing the whole child and what the whole child actually knows and experiences."
She said she questions how important proficiency across all subjects really is.
"As a district, we are so beholden to these results, and we spend so much energy and effort and time and money on trying to achieve the highest results," Robinson said. "But the reality is that it's not the only thing that we can go off of. There is so much more to a student's academic career than just the test scores."
Success rates may have implications for future test performance, especially tests like the ACT, which is used to determine college acceptance, retired Hamilton County educator Edna Varner said.
Varner has served in various education leadership roles for over 20 years and is senior adviser of Leading and Learning for the Public Education Foundation.
"The ACT measures the same things that are valued by the state of Tennessee," Varner said by phone. "What gets valued is going to always, I think, propel a student towards success."
A CLOSER LOOK
Overall, tests submitted by students in grades 3-8 showed higher success rates than in grades 9-12: 36% to 31%.
The top five performing schools:
--Nolan Elementary: 84.33%
--Thrasher Elementary: 84.23%
--Lookout Mountain Elementary: 83.30%
--Hamilton County Collegiate High at Chattanooga State: 74.87%
--Chattanooga School for The Liberal Arts: 68.17%
The schools struggling the most:
--Brainerd High School: 5.34%
--Orchard Knob Middle: 5.56%
--Dalewood Middle School: 5.73%
--Hardy Elementary School: 6.16%
--Chattanooga Charter School of Excellence Middle: 6.44%
Some schools showed both low success rates and low academic growth. Growth is measured by the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System, which evaluates student performance year over year and compares it to peers across the state. Schools are given a rating of one to five, with one showing low growth and five showing high growth.
(READ MORE: Hamilton County Schools' assessment scores best since 2017 for some subjects)
The district received a systemwide score of one.
Other major metro Tennessee school districts earned better overall composite scores while one metro district received the same score as Hamilton:
--Shelby County Schools: 5
--Davidson County Schools: 5
--Knox County Schools: 1
RACIAL DISPARITIES
The schools with the lowest success rates and lowest growth have one thing in common: they have large populations of minorities and economically disadvantaged students.
One such school is Clifton Hills Elementary, where a class of fifth graders recently stood elbow-to-elbow in a circle. It's how they start every morning, and on this day their teachers asked them to say their names and favorite food. Many children picked spaghetti or donuts.
The exercise, called "Crew," is about bringing students together.
"We're all a crew," said Dee Dee Womack, who co-teaches the class with her colleague, James Cunningham. "The whole school is your crew. And then it just goes down to these little microcosms in classrooms. So, it is meant to build community and establish this family in here."
Crew is one of several approaches by Hamilton County Schools to improve academic performance. Some schools, like Clifton Hills, implemented the practice last year. This year, the district is expanding the initiative in every school.
(READ MORE: How Hamilton County Schools is combating racial disparities in literacy)
And while standing in a circle talking about spaghetti may not seem academic, the theory is that deeper student connection leads to greater student success.
Following the exercise, Cunningham asked students why they did it. He pointed out that knowing another student's favorite food is one way to learn what they have in common.
"I think, for us, it's more morale-focused," Womack said. "But I do see, we both do see, it carries over into (academics)."
Students of color make up more than 95% of Clifton Hill's enrollment, and more than half of the students are economically disadvantaged.
For the 2021-22 school year, the school's success rate was 18%. In 2020-21, the success rate was 20%. This means a year after implementing Crew, the success rate decreased, but this does not mean it was the cause.
Like Clifton Hills, the five schools with the lowest success rates and lowest growth -- Brainerd High, Dalewood Middle, Chattanooga Charter School of Excellence Middle, The Howard School and Orchard Knob Elementary -- serve over 90% students of color. Those same schools also have high populations of economically disadvantaged students, with some as high as 80%.
In contrast, the five schools with the highest success rates and highest growth -- Lookout Mountain Elementary, Chattanooga High School Center For Creative Arts, Chattanooga School for Arts and Sciences Upper, East Hamilton High School and Ooltewah Middle School -- serve over 50% white students and have small populations of economically disadvantaged students. The exception is Ooltewah Middle, which serves 57% students of color and 37% economically disadvantaged students.
Moody said addressing these disparities is about providing schools with the right resources.
"What you'll notice about these schools is that their demographic is mostly students who are historically underserved," Moody said. "We recognize that that low achieving schools need time and extra resources to be able to help support our students. But we should want to be able to see them outpace their peers and move closer and closer to that finish line."
'NOT HELPING ENOUGH'
According to the analysis by the Times Free Press,
tests submitted by students who are not yet fluent in English had the lowest success rate, roughly 15%. They are followed by Black students and economically disadvantaged students, both with success rates of 17%.
The highest success rates were among tests submitted by white students, 52%, and Asian students, 67%. Asian students make up a small portion of Hamilton County's student population. Tests submitted by non-economically disadvantaged students showed a success rate of 45%.
"We've got to do something different," Varner said. "We cannot do more of the same, and do it harder and faster."
"(The district) is channeling more money, they're buying more things," Varner said. "They're doing things like that, hoping that they will make a difference. But it's not buying more materials, although more materials helps. When they buy more Chromebooks, that certainly helps. But it's not helping enough."
In her experience, Varner said the people making decisions for underserved children are often the ones who are most removed from them and do not understand the distractions that come with living in poverty.
"If kids are struggling because their families are constantly being evicted and they're moving from school to school, we can do something about that," Varner said. "If kids are being kept out of school, and when I was a principal I saw this, because parents couldn't afford day care, so they kept older children home, we can do something as a community about that."
There's no excuse for underperforming schools, she said, because there are schools that are performing well and the district already knows how to accomplish it.
"We could learn something from (affluent schools) to pull up failing schools," Varner said. "I'm not saying take anything away from those schools. But it is possible to do what you do in failing schools."
It takes a community, she said, and it should not be left up to the school system to solve. Sometimes that means incentivizing experienced educators, not only those fresh out of college, to work at impoverished schools, she said. And other times it means involving more affluent parents.
"When you've grown up in a high poverty school, and you've only taught in a high poverty school, you don't even know what to ask for," Varner said. "Affluent parents know what to ask for, what to demand, they get it, and their children thrive."
TESTING QUALMS
Kendra Young is a former Hamilton County educator who now serves as the executive director of the education advocacy group UnifiEd. She said teachers have been "shouting from the rooftops" for years that state testing data is invalid.
The reason, she said, is that oftentimes the tests are written one or two years above grade level.
"Let's say I'm a doctor and I need to know if you're running a fever," Young said by phone. "If the thermometer that I used to take your temperature is faulty, if it says '106 degrees,' it means nothing because the thermometer is faulty. If the test is faulty, and teachers have been saying for years that it is, (the data) means nothing.
"When you're giving a third grader a reading test with questions and reading passages that are above a third-grade reading level, why is anyone surprised that it says they can't read?" Young said.
She said the district's low success rate is more indicative of a problem with the way the state assesses students. Testing typically lasts for two weeks, and students are asked to sit and focus for hours. During testing time, they are not allowed to leave the classroom for any reason.
"The average attention span for your average 8-year-old should be 10 minutes, or age plus two," Young said. "These students are sitting for more hours taking these tests than your doctor or surgeon sat in to get his medical license."
She said, given her experience that students are being tested above grade level, a 37% success rate may be something to celebrate.
"Maybe we should be saying, 'Oh, my gosh, a test written this horribly and administered over hours beyond a child's comprehension and 37% (of tests) were proficient in every single subject area? Oh, my gosh, we're geniuses.'"
INTO THE FUTURE
With new personalization initiatives and individualized learning plans for every student, Robinson said she hopes those are the right tools to raise success rates.
"I think we've got a good plan in place, which is the individualized plan that each student's going to have, that should then start addressing this data and the performance," Robinson said.
She's also an advocate of parental involvement.
"Whenever we talk about testing, parent engagement around their child's test scores is very lost," Robinson said. "And I didn't realize that until being a parent and having a student that is now old enough to have TCAP scores."
Superintendent Justin Robertson said the district must provide academic remediation as early as possible.
"We've got to provide supports and remediation, the high dosage tutoring, summer learning opportunities so that when kids get to high school, they're catching up and better prepared," Robertson said in an interview. "From an equitable school system approach, it's looking at resources. It's looking at teacher supports, it's looking at classroom aids, it's looking at additional learning opportunities."
Time will tell if the district's efforts are effective.
"From the student that's performing at the highest level to the student that historically is struggling, to do the work well, (we've) got to address both ends," Robertson said. "It's just got to continue to help kids accelerate."
Methodology
The Tennessee Department of Education released school-level Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program data in August, providing a snapshot of achievement by subject, grade and school.
Using this data, the Chattanooga Times Free Press performed a series of calculations to determine the percent of tests with proficient scores across all subjects.
It’s important to note that the success rate is not equivalent to the percentage of students that were proficient in every subject. This is because the assessment program is an umbrella that encapsulates tests given at different grade levels. Those tests are further broken up into distinct subsections. This means that one student takes more than one test due to the number of subsections.
Third through eighth grade receives TNReady, which assesses proficiency in English language arts, math and science in subparts. Middle schoolers receive a fourth subpart for social studies and some test in geometry and Algebra I.
In high school, students receive the End-of-Course Evaluation. There are seven subparts: algebra I, algebra II, biology I, English I, English II, geometry and U.S. history.
Some schools serve grades K-12. In those instances, the Times Free Press combined TNReady and EOC test data to determine the school’s overall success rate.
The Times Free Press reviewed the methodology with state and county school officials, who confirmed that it is sound.
Contact Carmen Nesbitt at cnesbitt@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6327. Follow her on Twitter @carmen_nesbitt.