Fail that physics class? Can't get your head around Spanish II? Need a passing grade in that last math class to graduate high school?
Nashville Academy can help.
For $360, a student can buy four workbooks and work on them independently. In exchange, Metro Nashville Public Schools will add a full credit to their transcript. Half credits? $180 a pop.
Not many know about the niche private-school business. But teachers who do know tell the Scene they're insulted that filling out workbooks without supervision carries students the same academic weight as a year in their classes.
It's a practice the MNPS Central Office is aware of but distances itself from. The district offers the tepid endorsement that it accepts these credits just as it would from any other school. Those credits, however, help carry students across the stage toward their diploma. That lends a needed hand to high school graduation rates that last year hovered just above 76 percent district wide.
"It's so great that Metro feels we're credible enough to work with us," says Nancy Warrion, a longtime director and teacher at Nashville Academy who says she has "great" relationships with MNPS school counselors and the district.
The 70-year-old Warrion, known in the district by her former name, Nancy Toy, launched the religiously affiliated Nashville Academy nearly 30 years ago. Back then, it was a day school plus summer school.
But by 2012, enrollment had dwindled, she says. More students were experimenting with online classes at other programs, so the academy switched to independent study. The shift meant assigning students roughly 75-page workbooks to work on alone, plus optional two-hour windows to meet with a teacher Monday afternoons at a church or community center.
With their school counselor's permission, students can take any of the state's mandated courses, although math is the most popular. Others run the gamut from English to Spanish, science to health.
"It would be easy over the summer, so I can take the stuff that I really want to learn about over the school year," says Katherine Trubee, a freckle-faced incoming senior at Hume Fogg Academic Magnet, about paying for half of a PE credit to make way for an AP government course. Other students take the classes to make up for ones they failed for one reason or another.
The school relies on the honor system. Nothing stops students from using search engines to find answers online or copying from someone else's workbook, assuming they know anyone taking the same course. In Trubee's case, she must log the time she spends swimming, playing tennis or other physical activities, then return the sheet with a parent's signature.
The workbooks appear to scratch the surface of the state's ever-changing educational standards. Warrion knows the workbooks are not aligned with Common Core state standards, a set of new educational benchmarks the state is using to move away from rote memorization toward critical thinking.
Nashville Academy is a private school that can set its own standards and is accredited by a Christian organization called the Tennessee Association of Non-Public Academic Schools. But setting its own standards doesn't mean the school gives away credits to students, Warrion says.
"They will say to me, 'Can I buy a credit?' Oh, absolutely not. That really hurts me when I hear that, because that's not true. I don't know how something like that gets around," says Warrion. "I guess it's a misunderstanding, because I've seen people turn in books less than what they should be."
Warrion originally told the reporter that she and the two other retired teachers who grade papers for the school use the Metro Nashville grading scale. But later she said that she and a teacher together decide what grade the student should receive. There is no state-given end-of-course exam.
Not a single class can be taken at the academy without the OK from a school counselor. Her students come from all over Nashville — Glencliff, Overton, Hume Fogg and Hillsboro high schools, just to name a few, Warrion says.
When the school opened its spring registration in April — just in time to recover credits before graduation — some 50 kids signed up, says Warrion. Summer registration is still in the works, then the school will hibernate until next spring.
MNPS has its own way to recover missing credits, like allowing students to read and take tests on computers while supervised by a teacher in a lab. Even there, though, educators familiar with the program say students can slyly search for answers on the Internet. The district also offers Virtual School for students to take full courses facilitated by a teacher online.
District officials say they'd rather students take a MNPS-run recovery course. But when asked why the district would accept credits that fall short of their own standards, officials gave two answers: They take all credits, and they leave that decision up to principals.
If a student transfers here from Wyoming or El Salvador, the district doesn't know what's going on in that school system, but it accepts those credits, says district spokesman Joe Bass.
"It's the same for Nashville Academy. Just transfer credits," he said. "I will add, the credits we take from Nashville Academy are way down, and it is a principal-level decision."
Bass could not provide a total number of students who were awarded credits from the academy or other credit recovery programs before the Scene's deadline. Asked to address criticism that accepting weaker credits leads to an inflated graduation rate, Bass says, "We make every effort for students to recover credit from our own system."
Nashville Academy teachers say they've taught "not hundreds but thousands" of students over the years, and point to numerous letters of praise from former pupils. They've had a positive impact, says math, science and French teacher and grader Steve Brown.
"Hundreds of kids wouldn't have graduated if not for this over the years," he said.
Email editor@nashvillescene.com.
