Two magnet high schools are making national lists

As Nashville’s public schools work hard to meet benchmarks required by federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) laws, and as the district as a whole adjusts to increased state involvement following years of repeated NCLB failures, two high schools — Hume-Fogg and Martin Luther King Jr. academic magnet high schools — are making national lists of top public high schools.Last fall, MLK and Hume-Fog were ranked 23 and 24, respectively, on Newsweek magazine’s list of 1,300 American schools. Leaders of the two schools are among the first to say that the criteria used in the ranking — a ratio that divides the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and/or Cambridge tests by the number of graduating seniors — doesn’t wholly represent what they believe make the schools what they are.Still, that hasn’t stopped civic leaders from repeatedly discussing the statistic, nor has it curbed community speculation that such successful schools must be receiving more financial resources than comparable other Metro high schools. The schools do not receive extra financial help from the district, according to Hume-Fogg Principal Paul Fleming. Despite the fact that the schools have significant populations of academically successful students with involved parents, school principals say that leading MLK and Hume-Fogg brings special challenges. Among them: NCLB laws require that students achieving the highest levels of success on academic benchmarks continue to advance, and instructing students with academic material at levels more advanced than state requirements demands increased teacher resources.But there’s little argument that the schools are successful.“I like to see the system respond to the desires and needs of people who are actually using the service,” said David Fox, chair of Nashville’s Board of Education. “Clearly there’s a high level of demand for the academic magnet high schools — a greater demand than we have supply.”
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If anything, according to school board member Karen Johnson, the work being done at academic magnet high schools should be studied and applied throughout the district.“Our goal is to elevate every other school,” Johnson said. “I would hope our goal is to replicate what is working in our magnet schools and increase the opportunities in our zoned schools.”