Good news from the Knox County School System, they scored high marks in the recently released Tennessee school report cards.

“The state of Tennessee released its annual school report cards today, and the Knox County School System received an exceptional overall report.”

“In the extremely important area of value added performance, the school system posted an A in each of the four subject areas; math, reading, social studies, and science.”

Tennessee has also been able to reduce it’s high school dropout rate to 9.8%. That’s still too high in my opinion but at least the dropout rates are going down.

Although this is clearly an accomplishment to be proud of there’s still work to do.

In other good news for Knox County School System the International Association for Truancy and Dropout Prevention honored Project GRAD (Graduation Really Achieves Dreams) Knoxville as “Program of the Year” at its 96th Annual Conference held in Baltimore on October 8 – 12, 2006.

Project GRAD’s mission statement: “To help ensure a quality public school education for Heart of Knoxville students that equips and encourages youth to graduate from high school and to succeed in college or post-secondary vocational education.”

Kudos to both the Knox County School System & Project GRAD.