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 has 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 postsecondary, enlisting in the military, or gaining employment in a local high-wage, high-skill, and in-demand profession.

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 postsecondary institutions – 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, 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.

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 9^th-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 postsecondary and/or career pathway that are completed during the 10^th, 11^th, and 12^th grades. The progression of courses will be coupled with learning experiences that bring businesses and postsecondary partners into the school setting and send students out to postsecondary campuses and into the workplace to explore and apply what they are learning in high school at a deeper level.

Seven district high schools are included in the first cohort of participants. These high schools are developing plans to launch a Freshman Academy in the Fall of 2022. 

Schools in the first cohort are Austin-East, Bearden, Central, Farragut, Fulton, Hardin Valley and Karns. The remaining district high schools will be part of future cohorts that implement the program.

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 10^th-12^th grade years.

However, the program will be phased in over time at participating schools. In the Fall of 2022, seven schools in the first cohort 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.

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 postsecondary institutions.

These leaders participated in task forces focused on a variety of topics, and developed detailed plans for implementation. District leaders are now working to compile those plans into a final comprehensive document.

To this point, the master planning process has 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 will utilize 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 post-secondary 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 (CTE, art, world languages, etc.) 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.

More information will be shared in the coming weeks, and school administrators will provide updates about issues specific to their school.

Please fill out our interest form.