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At the Memphis College Preparatory in the Greenlaw community, the 125 kindergartners and first graders at this charter school are not just students, but they are referred to as scholars with their eyes already focused on college.
Michael Whaley is the executive director. He says Memphis College Prep is built on the concept of making a difference in student learning.
Whaley said, "Scholarship is one of our core values and means they work hard all day long. They complete all of our their assignments and fundamentally we want to call them what they are. They're not just students."
The school uses two full-time teachers in the classroom. It allows students to have more individual attention and it appears to be working.
Whaley said, "We did an assessment and it showed upon entering they were only in the 15th national percentile. By the end of our first year our students left us with a 76th percentile overall and 83rd percentile in math after just one year of instruction."
Whaley came from Dallas, Texas to Memphis to train in a program called Teach for America. TFA is a national teacher corps of recent college graduates who commit two years to teach and impact change in under-resourced urban and rural schools.
Whaley decided to stay here and open Memphis College Preparatory.
Whaley said, "We have the opportunities in education and Memphis is a great place to be and we're excited to have some of the best educators in our school who aren't from Memphis, but they've chosen to make Memphis their home."
It's a belief shared by teachers and TFA alumni such as Ashley Foxx. She's a Memphian who lived in New York and Pennsylvania, but wanted to make an impact here at home .
Foxx said, "I wanted to come back home and I knew the best way that I could come back and make an impact on my city is to get involved with education."
Support groups such as Education Champions in Memphis say the work being done here will help ensure that kids growing up in poverty get an excellent education and set their sights on college.
Athena Turner is executive director of Teach For America, Memphis.
Turner said, "This is a solvable problem and this is something within our control and what it takes is really, really hard work to help our children and our communities."
Memphian and former NBA star Elliot Perry is a product of Memphis City Schools. He's also the spokesperson for Education Champions.
Perry said, "Parents I think have shown they want the best for their kids and that's why I think Memphis College Prep is here is to provide the very best for those kids and provide choice for parents."
