The Chattanooga School for the Arts & Sciences is a K-12

K-12

K–12 is a designation for the sum of primary and secondary education. It is used in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand where P–12 is also commonly used...

 magnet school

Magnet school

In education in the United States, magnet schools are public schools with specialized courses or curricula. "Magnet" refers to how the schools draw students from across the normal boundaries defined by authorities as school zones that feed into certain schools.There are magnet schools at the...

 in Chattanooga, Tennessee

Chattanooga, Tennessee

Chattanooga is the fourth-largest city in the US state of Tennessee , with a population of 169,887. It is the seat of Hamilton County...

. It was opened in 1986. Its liberal-arts curriculum is based around the 'Paideia' philosophy of Mortimer Adler

Mortimer Adler

Mortimer Jerome Adler was an American philosopher, educator, and popular author. As a philosopher he worked within the Aristotelian and Thomistic traditions. He lived for the longest stretches in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and San Mateo, California...

. The school building has been a school in several incarnations, and was once attended by Samuel L. Jackson

Samuel L. Jackson

Samuel Leroy Jackson is an American film and television actor and film producer. After becoming involved with the Civil Rights Movement, he moved on to acting in theater at Morehouse College, and then films. He had several small roles such as in the film Goodfellas before meeting his mentor,...

 (as Riverside High School).

Academics

The school has drawn some national attention for high test scores, a high percentage of graduates who proceed to higher education, and a somewhat coincidental similarity between the school's ethnicity percentages and the nation's ethnicity percentages. The school was also featured in Newsweek

Newsweek

Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...

magazine about the changing nature of the first grade. Instead of following the trend of putting academic pressure on first-graders, the school, according to the article, "champions a slowed down approach to education."

Athletics

While the school has no football team, the school athletics department has had considerable success especially in basketball, soccer and tennis.
Basketball-The Boys basketball team has 6 sub state appearances ( 1991, 1998, 2005, 2007, 2010, 2011) and 4 state tournament appearances, including the Finals in 1991 and 2007 along with a Semi-finals appearance in 2010 and a Quarter-finals appearance in 2011. The boys team is coached by Mark Dragoo.

The tennis team, both girls and boys, have had much success as well. The girls have 2 district championships( 2007, 2008). The boys have a handful of district and region championships as well as 2 sub state appearances( 2010, 2011),and 1 state appearance(2011) making it to the semi-finals. Individually, the tennis program has 3 state titles. Stanford Goss won a boys singles title in 2003 and the Kelly Sisters ( Kayla & Ahmee) won 2 girls doubles titles from 2009-2010. Coach Jerry Pate, a long-time veteran, coaches both the girls and boys programs.
The soccer programs have had a lot of success too. The boys team has 4 sub state appearances( 2003, 2004, 2006, 2008) and 3 state tournament appearances: making it to the Quarter-finals in 2003 & 2004 and the Semi-finals in 2006.