The top reported proficiency rate is 0% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Harris-hillman Special Education
Harris-Hillman Special Education is a public, special-purpose school within the Davidson County district, serving students from pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade. It is classified as a special education school, which means it is specifically designed to meet the needs of students with disabilities. This is the defining fact about the school and shapes every aspect of what it offers.
The school is located in Nashville, a large and fast-growing state capital. Nashville is a major urban center, home to the music industry, healthcare, publishing, and a range of other sectors. It is a sprawling, car-dependent city with a mix of downtown civic institutions and university campuses spread across a wide geographic area. The housing market in the school's ZIP code is expensive; a typical home value there is well above the national average, and rents are correspondingly high. This suggests that families living near the school are paying a premium for the neighborhood.
Enrollment at Harris-Hillman exceeds that of a typical neighborhood school for its grade span. The student body is diverse, with a white majority and substantial shares of Black and Hispanic students. A small share of students are Asian or multiracial. Information on the share of students who qualify for free or reduced-price meals was not available. It is common for special education schools to have a high proportion of students with disabilities, and the school's programming is built around that population, but specific data on the percentage of students with an Individualized Education Program (IEP) was not reported in the available data.
State testing results are reported, but they show a proficiency rate of zero percent across all tested subjects and grades. In math, English language arts, and science at the third- and sixth-grade levels, no students scored at the proficient level. The same pattern holds for social studies, though those results were suppressed in the data rather than reported as zero. A parent should understand this in context. This is not a typical comprehensive school that serves a general student body; it is a specialized setting for students with disabilities, many of whom may be working on alternative academic standards or may not participate in the general state assessment at all. The zero proficiency rate likely reflects the fact that the students who take the test are a small and highly selected group, not the school's overall student body. A parent considering this school should ask the school directly about its assessment participation rates and what academic progress looks like for its students.
Because it serves a special-education population, many of the metrics that are routinely used to evaluate other schools do not apply in the same way. There is no reported graduation rate, no chronic absenteeism rate, and no discipline data. The school's overall proficiency index, when compared to other districts in Davidson County, places it in the bottom quartile. But again, that comparison is between a specialized school and general-education districts; a parent should not treat that as a direct measure of the school's effectiveness with its own students.
Information about the school's programs, course access, staffing ratios, and attendance patterns was not available in the data provided. The district itself, Metro Nashville Public Schools, has no reported changes in recent years that would affect a family's decision, based on the search that was conducted.
For a family whose child has significant disabilities and needs a dedicated, public special-education school from early childhood through high school, Harris-Hillman is that specific type of option within a large urban district. Families who are not in the special-education system, or whose child receives services in a general-education setting, would not be the school's intended population. Parents should contact the school directly to understand its referral process, the specific diagnoses and support needs it serves, and how it measures student growth outside the state testing framework.
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