Featured In the New Documentary, “The First Class”

In 2024, award-winning documentary filmmaker Lee Hirsch premiered “The First Class,” a documentary that goes inside Crosstown High to give viewers a front-row seat to the experience of its first graduating class.

Learn more here

Crosstown’s journey began when Memphis parent Ginger Spickler saw a billboard advertising the XQ Super School Challenge. She invited teachers, parents, students, local architects, writers, and business owners to join a design team that grew to 69 people. They gathered input from more than 200 students who shared how they often felt unheard in school. 

Crosstown’s stakeholders wanted more dynamic and engaging learning experiences for their students, and they craved a racially diverse school to reverse the tide of de facto segregation in Memphis. Their brightly lit, lively school opened in 2018 inside Crosstown Concourse. The building is a ten-story, one-million-square-foot Memphis landmark that’s been redeveloped with more than 40 businesses, nonprofits, health facilities, and civic groups. Students learn through projects, such as analyzing pollution in local soil and its correlation to cancer rates. Crosstown High’s commitment to being “diverse by design” means it recruits students from across Memphis. 

The public charter school serves about 480 students in grades 9-12. Together, students, teachers, and leadership keep students at the center and believe in all learners’ academic, cognitive, and social growth. Crosstown stays true to its carefully crafted mission and culture through constant iteration, alignment, and goal-setting.

Student Outcomes

In spring 2022, 122 students graduated from Crosstown High, representing the school’s first graduating class since it launched as an XQ school in 2018-19. Among their accomplishments, the class of 2022 had:

– A significantly higher graduation rate than the surrounding district and state (95 percent versus 80 and 90 percent).

– Better results on several standardized tests compared to their local, statewide, and national counterparts. Crosstown’s 2022 cohort also met ACT college-ready benchmarks in all four subject areas—English, math, science, and social studies—at significantly higher rates than their counterparts nationally. And 68 percent met the ACT’s college-ready benchmark in English, compared with 57 percent statewide and 53 percent nationally). That’s notable because 98 percent of Crosstown’s graduates took the exam compared with only about one in three nationally.

– The Tennessee Department of Education annually reports another ACT statistic: the percentage of graduates achieving an ACT Composite Score of 21 or higher. Almost half of Crosstown’s class of 2022 graduates (48.7 percent) achieved an ACT Composite Score of 21+, more than triple the 15.6 percent among Shelby County’s 2022 graduates and higher than Tennessee’s 2022 rate of 35 percent. Tennessee also breaks out this statistic for two student subgroups: students from low-income families and a combined category dubbed “Black/Hispanic/Native American.” For those groups as well, Crosstown’s graduates outperformed their counterparts, both in the surrounding region and statewide.