The top reported proficiency rate is 6% in English language arts. The lowest is 5% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Journey Hanley School
Journey Hanley School is no longer open. The school’s operational status is listed as closed, which means any discussion of its day-to-day reality is retrospective. For a family researching current options in Memphis, this is the primary fact: the school does not enroll students.
When it was operating, Journey Hanley was a charter school within Tennessee’s Achievement School District, a state-run turnaround district created to take over low-performing schools. The school served a single grade level, listed as “M through M,” a designation that in Tennessee typically refers to a middle school grade band. The school’s charter status meant it was publicly funded but operated independently of the local Memphis-Shelby County Schools system, at least initially.
The test results from the 2022-23 school year, its last year of available data before closure, paint a stark picture. In English language arts, about five percent of students scored at the proficient or above level on the state’s TNReady assessment. In science, about five percent scored proficient or above. The math proficiency rate was suppressed in state reporting, meaning the number was too low to be publicly reported, though several hundred students were tested. Social studies results were also suppressed. The school had high participation rates on the tests, at or near full turnout, so these scores reflect near-universal student participation. For any family assessing the school’s academic track record, these were very low proficiency rates, far below typical state averages.
The school sits within a broader district context that has since been dismantled. Publicly reported research from Brown University found that the Achievement School District did not significantly improve student test scores or graduation rates, and a 2025 Tennessee House of Representatives vote effectively ended the district, transitioning remaining schools back to local control. Journey Hanley, however, did not transition; it closed outright. The district’s enrollment had contracted sharply over a short span of years, going from a sizable number of schools down to a handful, and Journey Hanley was among the schools that did not survive that contraction.
The surrounding community, Memphis, offers a wide array of cultural and civic resources, from Tom Lee Park and Shelby Farms Park to the National Civil Rights Museum and the FedExForum, but those are city-level amenities that would apply to any school in the area. The school’s own immediate neighborhood along Hanley Street is in an area of Memphis where housing values are well below the national median, and rents have been rising.
For a parent reading this now, the key takeaway is straightforward: Journey Hanley School is closed and no longer an option. If you are looking at the Achievement School District more broadly, the district itself is being wound down, with its few remaining schools returning to Memphis-Shelby County Schools or similar local oversight. Any family who might have considered Journey Hanley would need to look at the schools that have replaced it, whether under the district or the charter commission, and evaluate those current institutions from scratch. The data here tells the story of a school that struggled academically and did not survive the restructuring of the state’s turnaround experiment.
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