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With an eye to getting students to further their education, KA
exposes high schoolers to college life in a variety of ways. Students
and families go to specified game nights at local colleges to watch
basketball. In the classroom, Meharry Medical College graduate
students worked with KA students on a dentistry project, and Belmont
University’s Enactus student club taught business and entrepreneurship
principles to some 55 KA students who then examined the financial
ramifications of redevelopment projects using mathematics to
determine profitability.
“It really is very in tune with Nashville now,” said John S. Gonas,
associate professor of finance at Belmont. “These students are seeing
whole neighborhoods torn up before their eyes.”
To further drive home the real-world application, KA’s students and the
Belmont club piled into buses and visited a new investment property. The
students peppered the property’s representatives with questions. They’d
learned to apply all the financial considerations just as an investor would.
“We couldn’t get them back in the bus, they were so intrigued,” Gonas said.
Students also will engage the real world while producing their
magazine. They’ll learn to relate to an audience beyond the classroom.
Students will be encouraged to write about issues beyond the surface
and to consider alternative angles for stories and development. Each
week, a Connect Magazine representative will visit with students. While
production of a magazine is one goal, a broader-picture objective of the
program is that students will learn the value of magazines in modern
day society as a forum of debate and new ideas. They’ll become better
thinkers and communicators.
While the anecdotal evidence appears strong, KA does not yet have
statistical evidence that its way of teaching students leads to higher
participation in college and better outcomes. The first students who
started at the school at its inception don’t graduate until 2019. However,
Fuller said there is an early indicator that Knowledge Academies is on
track. The percentage of students enrolled in college AP classes is at
the national average, whereas students of the same socio-economic
background are typically below it, Fuller said. About a fourth of KA’s
eligible high school students are enrolled, and that is actually at a rate
higher than the state average.
“It’s very challenging work,” Fuller said, “but when you see that
kind of stuff, that helps make it all worthwhile.”
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