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Austin-East High School shows great strides in educational growth
By Jeaneane Payne
Austin-East High School principal Benny Perry talks about the great strides the school has made during the past year.
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Austin-East High School, one of Knoxville’s five magnet schools, is showing better than average student development growth. “Students grew far above what they were supposed to grow in 2013 — beyond normal expectations for great growth due to quality teach instructional tailored for their students,” said Austin-East principal Benny Perry.
The magnet school focuses on performing arts instruction, theatre, chorus, art, and cosmetology.
Austin-East has been participating in a teacher-student advancement system through TAP™: The System for Teacher and Student Advancement, a bold new strategy to attract, retain, develop and motivate talented people to the teaching profession. Each week teachers at Austin-East have to attend a cluster meeting. All teachers gather to work on instructional strategies which they are expected to implement with their students. Teachers have master and mentor teachers through the TAP system. All teachers at Austin-East receive ongoing imbedded professional development on a weekly basis. TAP is designed to help teachers become the best they can be by giving them opportunities to learn better teaching strategies and holding them accountable for their performance.
“Students grew far above what they were supposed to grow in 2013,” said assistant principal Chris Caruthers. “They grew beyond normal expectations for great growth due to quality teaching instruction tailored for our students.”
According to Caruthers, the average graduation rate for Austin-East in the last five years has been 82-86%.
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Austin-East High School assistant principal Chris Caruthers discusses the school's new audio production program. |
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“We are a school that has demonstrated that through teamwork and innovations that you can make a difference. If you give the kids solid support with concrete ways you can do things,” said Austin-East principal Benny Perry.” “Eighty percent are willing to put forth effort to do what they’re supposed to do. The twenty percent that don’t do what they are supposed to do are the ones that give the school a bad name.”
The discipline statistics run lower at Austin-East than at most schools in Knox County.
Caruthers attended a national magnet convention in 2013 and discovered a new program — an audio production class. He brought that program to Austin-East so that students could learn how to develop skills to produce live and studio music and to design sound for a full range of media, including the web. The school will soon have two large recording studios which will be open to the community for recordings. Students will also produce the CD for those recordings.
Caruthers is currently working with Pellissippi State to gain student accreditation to enable Austin-East students an opportunity to work in the community. “The audio production course gives students an exciting career that offers them an opportunity to merge creativity with cutting edge technology,” said Caruthers. Austin-East is the only school in Knox County that is offering an audio production class.
Austin-East has 525 to 600 students in the course of a year. “Bring your kids here. We will educate them and do it well.” said principal Perry.
Published March 24, 2014
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