Understanding the State Rankings: Lewis County Schools and Stride K12 Partnership

Lewis County Schools would like to address the information published in The Tennessean regarding the recent state rankings released by the Tennessee Department of Education and the factors that influenced these results.

Lewis County Schools has partnered with a private corporation that provides free virtual public education to students across the state of Tennessee… from Memphis to Johnson City. It is Stride K12, and the three schools associated with Lewis County are Volunteer State Virtual Elementary, Volunteer State Virtual Middle School and Volunteer State Virtual High School.

There are some benefits and some drawbacks to this partnership. A benefit is that Lewis County Schools gets a substantial amount of funding by hosting Stride K12. This funding can be used for remodeling buildings, purchasing new buses, adding new programs of study, etc. The major drawback to the partnership is that their scores are listed with Lewis County even though they are run by the Stride K12 corporation. Two of their schools had low test scores… and those scores were listed under Lewis County. This is why Lewis County ranked much lower in the state this year. Our four Lewis County brick and mortar schools performed well, some better than previous years.

So, when you see reports about test scores, make sure you go to the location that lists the individual school. You will be able to select Lewis County Middle School for example and see how well it performed. You can also select Volunteer State Virtual Middle School and see how it scored.

We at Lewis County Schools want to explain to our community that we appreciate the partnership that we have with Stride K12 and the funding that it provides our district. We also feel an obligation to let our community know that the four Lewis County Schools are performing at a high level.

This past year was Stride K12s first year operating in middle Tennessee and we believe that those students will get better scores in the years to come.