This story was originally published by Chalkbeat.
A proposal to shift low-performing schools from Tennessee’s sputtering takeover and turnaround district to other state-approved but locally managed intervention models passed unanimously Monday in the full Senate.
The bill, which is awaiting action in the full House, seeks to phase out the Achievement School District, the state’s most ambitious and aggressive school improvement model, by the end of 202526 school year.
It also would strip the state education commissioner’s authority to take over neighborhood schools that are performing academically in the bottom 5%.
Under the ASD, the state typically assigned those schools to charter operators to run. In place of the ASD, the bill would create a school improvement model designed to foster more collaboration between the local district and the state education department.
Tennessee’s education chief would have authority to direct a local district to choose from three turnaround approaches — under a charter operator, a public university, or an independent turnaround expert — for each of its lowperforming “priority” schools.
The turnaround work would be locally managed, but with state oversight. For starters, the state would have to approve local districts’ turnaround choices.
“The ASD has not worked for some time, which we can all agree (on),” said Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Memphis Democrat who is co-sponsoring the legislation with Rep. Antonio Parkinson, also of Memphis. “This will put the control back in the hands of the locals,” she said on the Senate floor.
The bill is one of several legislative proposals seeking to address the failures of the ASD, created under a 2010 state law as part of a package that helped Tennessee win a $500 million federal grant in the Race to the Top competition.
Parkinson’s companion bill has similar goals. Meanwhile, GOP leaders in the House are pressing for a massive private-school voucher bill that includes a provision to phase out the ASD on July 1, 2026.
All three measures advanced this year after several top Republicans in the GOP-controlled legislature acknowledged that the state-run district isn’t working and should be replaced.
