Knox County Schools has a long history of providing students with a high-quality, comprehensive high school experience. We have the advantage of being located in a diverse economic community offering our students a variety of high-skill, high-wage, and in-demand career pathways after high school graduation. Our high schools can and should play a significant role in helping each student explore these opportunities as they make decisions about their future. We are reimagining high school because:

• We believe we can do more to connect the opportunities in our community to the talents and strengths of our students.
• We want to expand our emphasis from “college access” to each student’s “future success” and the various postsecondary pathways that can help them achieve that goal.
• We want high school to be a place where each student is intentionally and individually supported to explore and even accelerate their plans for the future .

We believe that building a stronger network of community and industry partnerships can create high schools where students not only continue to reach their academic potential but also strategically explore and experience connections between their learning today and their opportunities for future education, training, employment, and success.

Knox County Schools partnered with Ford Next Generation Learning (Ford NGL) and Knox Education Foundation to foster a community conversation around college and career preparedness and the types of experiences, skills, and competencies our students need to truly be ready for success beyond high school graduation, whether that means enrolling in college or trade school, enlisting in service to their country, or gaining employment in a local high-wage, high-skill, and in-demand profession with an entrepreneurial mindset.

In early 2021, the Ford NGL team spent several months conducting virtual focus group conversations with a wide variety of stakeholders – including KCS teachers, students, parents, district leadership, high school leadership, business and community leaders, and colleges / trade schools – to examine our community’s desire and potential for transforming our high schools through more community-connected learning opportunities. In August 2021, after examining the results and recommendations from these focus groups, the Board of Education voted in favor of moving forward with the process to create a community-wide plan.

In October, 2021, more than 150 school and community stakeholders participated in an event at the Change Center to kick off the transformation project. As part of that meeting, participants began mapping out a vision for why the community would want to redesign the high school experience and began to draft a “profile of a graduate” to establish a standard for all students to be ready for success after graduation.

In November, December, and January, all-day sessions were held to begin developing a community-wide master plan, and in May 2022, KCS was officially designated as a Ford NGL community.

In the fall of 2022, the first cohort of participating high schools created Freshman Academies for 9^th-graders, and in January of 2023 those schools announced their academy offerings.

The primary strategy for achieving transformation will be the creation of career-themed academies in our local high schools. The academies will provide students with planned elective pathways within each high school beginning with an orientation experience or Freshman Academy during their 9th-grade year. 

Students will choose an academy pathway within one of the available career-themed academies at the end of their freshman year. The academy pathway is made up of a sequence of at least three elective courses aligned to a viable college, trade school and / or career pathway that are completed during the 10th, 11th, and 12th grades.

The progression of courses will be coupled with learning experiences that bring businesses and college / trade school partners into the school setting and send students out to college / trade school campuses and into the workplace to explore and apply what they are learning in high school at a deeper level.

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Eight district high schools – Austin-East, Bearden, Central, Farragut, Fulton, Hardin Valley, Karns, and L&N STEM – were included in the first cohort of participants. These high schools launched a Freshman Academy in the Fall of 2022.

The second cohort of participants – Carter and South-Doyle – will launch a Freshman Academy in the Fall of 2023.

The remaining district high schools – Gibbs, Halls, Powell, and West – will launch a Freshman Academy in the Fall of 2024.

When the program is fully implemented, incoming freshmen will participate in a “Freshman Academy,” which will provide them with guidance and support to choose an academy and career pathway for their 10th-12th grade years.

In the Fall of 2022, eight schools in the first cohort created a Freshman Academy for incoming 9^th-graders. Students in grades 10-12 continued to participate in the traditional high school scheduling process.

In the Fall of 2023, two schools in the second cohort – Carter and South-Doyle – will create a Freshman Academy for incoming 9^th-graders. Students in grades 10-12 will continue to participate in the traditional high school scheduling process for the remainder of their careers.

Schools that already offer an academy or small learning community structure – i.e., Fulton and Hardin Valley – will continue to move forward with their existing structures as we begin to implement the community-developed master plan. Over time, the master plan will establish more coherent structures across all high schools implementing the academy model.

After making their initial selection, students will have the opportunity to change their pathway one time during their high school career.

Elective classes in the arts, literature, social studies, and world languages will still be offered by district high schools, even if no career pathway is focused on those areas. These classes are available to all students regardless of the academy.

As a first step, students can contact their freshman counselor with questions about their pathway options.

We encourage families to keep in mind that this initiative does not lock students into a future career or college path. Instead, it is designed to provide a deep dive into a particular area that will help them make informed choices about their path after high school.

We believe that in most cases, students will be able to identify a career pathway at their zoned school that is beneficial for them. In some cases, these pathways may provide exposure to a career field that is a good fit for that student but was previously unfamiliar to them. In other cases, the chance to visit with industry leaders or participate in job shadowing may raise awareness about related career fields or opportunities.

In addition, a student who is interested in a particular career – such as becoming an attorney – may not have a pre-law pathway available at their school. However, they may have the opportunity to job-shadow, take a field trip, or participate in an internship with the legal department of an industry partner.

While many of the elective classes offered at our high schools will remain the same, we believe this initiative will significantly increase opportunities for students to connect their classroom learning to career success.

In particular, we are focused on building strong connections with industry partners to ensure that every high school offers robust job shadowing, college visits, career exploration and internship opportunities. While these activities did happen previously, The 865 Academies provide a framework to make sure they are a consistent part of every student’s high school experience in Knox County Schools. 

Resources, such as funding, staffing, and industry participation, are limited, and each school worked to offer pathways that would have broad interest and reach. Additionally, schools used a variety of data sources, including student interest surveys, a history of course requests, teacher certifications, available community resources, and state, regional, and local labor market data, to determine the pathways that embodied the broadest scope of student engagement.

The district is also focused on ensuring that career pathways offered in our Academies foster transferable skills that will provide career opportunities after graduation.

Ninth-grade celebrations will be held in the spring to announce pathway declarations, and each school will share details about the timing of those events.

Participating high schools will be matched with local industry partners who will provide training, internship and job-shadowing opportunities to students as well as support for teachers who work in specific career-themed academies.

A variety of stakeholders have worked together on the master plan, including teachers, students, parents, district leadership, high school leadership, business and community leaders and representatives of colleges and trade schools.

These leaders participated in task forces focused on a variety of topics, and developed detailed plans for implementation. 

Initially, the master planning process focused on high-level decisions, while recognizing that the implementation process must be flexible enough to accommodate the specific needs of each school.

Each school leadership team has utilized the master plan to make decisions that best support the needs of their students and maximize opportunities in the school community while strengthening the alignment between school programs and relevant postsecondary pathways. Students will continue to have access to a variety of electives within their academy and outside of their academy through global electives available to all students.

There will be some changes to the ways that educators are grouped to work with students in the academies. The academy structure is built upon the creation of smaller learning communities within the larger school. The academy team of educators will be comprised of an administrator, a counselor, and a team of teachers from academic and elective areas (such as CTE, art and world languages) who work primarily with a smaller group of 250-500 students within the school. This typically includes closer proximity between the teachers’ classrooms and will typically require some changes in classroom assignments and individual teaching assignments (courses taught). These are needs that will be addressed at each school, based upon their individual scenarios. Significant changes to facilities and building layouts would be driven by need, but they are not planned at this time.

School administrators will provide updates about issues specific to their school.