As of the 2022-23 school year, our Center For High School Success (CHSS) team is proud to announce that nine new partner schools joined the Freshman Success Network (FSN)! Partner schools consistently show greater numbers of freshmen who are on track to graduate than schools who are not part of the Memphis FSN, and we’re excited to welcome KIPP Collegiate, Central, Memphis Virtual, Carver, Mt. Pisgah, Oveton, Kingsbury, Southwind, and Cordova to our network.
CHSS has had a massive positive impact in Memphis. Before the program started in the 2018-19 school year, the freshman on-track rate was only 29%. Freshman on-track rates started growing in the partner schools during that first year, and then the second and third years of CHSS (2019-20 and 2020-21) were marked by COVID. Despite the education interruptions, freshman on-track rates in partner schools still kept climbing. Last school year (2021-22), 83% of freshman students in partner schools were on track to graduate on time.
Thanks to this huge growth, the Memphis FSN program is becoming a national leader for other states that participate in CHSS. Three of our schools (Oakhaven, Booker T. Washington, and Kirby), are now designated as demonstration schools, meaning that other states’ CHSS teams can look to these schools for how to successfully run the programs. In the coming year, our Memphis CHSS team will be working to expand across Tennessee and will advocate to add 9th grade success as a state-level accountability measure for our schools.
We’re proud of all we’ve achieved so far for our students, and we’re looking forward to another year of gains!
