By Jane Roberts - The Commercial Appeal -

A Texas charter school founder who received $1 million from Oprah Winfrey last fall to expand the network is taking on Tennessee's lowest performing schools, including four in Memphis.

As superintendent of the new Achievement School District, Chris Barbic of Houston initially will be responsible for turning around Chattanooga's Howard High and Memphis' Frayser, Northside and Hamilton high schools and Raleigh-Egypt Middle.

The number is likely to grow as more schools fail to make progress under rising state academic standards.

Barbic, 40, will be paid $215,000 per year, from the $501 million in federal Race to the Top funds the state received last year to categorically improve K-12 public schools. He starts Aug. 1.

The ASD is budgeted to receive $49 million over four years.

"I've been in education for 19 years, I taught for six years and have been serving as superintendent for eight, going on 10 schools," said Barbic, founder of Yes Prep Public Schools, a conglomerate of charters that serves 4,200 students, 80 percent of them economically deprived. Every member of the senior class is accepted to a four-year college or university.

Like Kevin Huffman, Gov. Bill Haslam's commissioner of education, Barbic started with Teach for America, the highly touted nonprofit organization that places high-achieving college graduates in inner-city classrooms for two years.

He graduated from Vanderbilt and is the youngest graduate to receive its Distinguished Alumni Award.

The ASD, which helped make Tennessee one of the two early Race to the Top winners, effectively groups chronically poor schools statewide under one umbrella and gives the ASD superintendent authority to hire, fire and partner with charter companies and other reformers, including Teach for America.

In theory, the ASD is based on the innovation that swept New Orleans schools post-Katrina, when charters by the dozens rolled in to reopen the schools.

In reality, it is vague in terms of how it will work and how much authority local school boards will have over the schools in their districts.

"This entire process is being developed as it is being implemented," said Dr. Jeff Warren, city school board member, who says very little is clear.

In the application, the state set "an aggressive timeline for launching the ASD."

The money was awarded in 2010. Barbic and Huffman expect to make few changes next year, largely because they are both new. Huffman was hired in April.

Haslam's charter school legislation would allow the ASD to authorize new charters, a responsibility now reserved only for local school boards, and oversee conversion of existing schools to charters.

Barbic is on the board of Lead Academy, the Nashville charter school in charge of converting failing Cameron Middle School into a charter next fall.

"Don't expect him to go on a firing rampage and tell superintendents what they are doing wrong," said Jeremy Kane, Lead Academy founder. "He doesn't care about a name or a label; he cares about what works," he said, adding that if Teach for America and charter companies get the job done, "he will use them."

The funding period expires in the 2013-14 school year.

-- Jane Roberts: 529-2512