Chalkbeat

See how your Tennessee school performed on the 2026 TCAP

2026-08-27T15:21:12+00:00

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How did your student’s school perform on Tennessee’s TCAP tests?

The Tennessee Department of Education this week released school-level performance data on the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program English and math assessments students took last school year.

State- and district-level results released earlier this summer showed overall improvement across the board for the 2025-2025 school year. For the first time, a majority of students met or exceeded expectations on the state’s social studies assessments, while about 43% of students in grades 3-8 scored proficient in math.

While nearly 45% of Tennessee third graders met or exceeded expectations on the English language arts test, data showed those literacy gains dropped off as students progressed through middle school. Overall, 40.6% of students in grades K-8 met proficiency standards in English.

Chalkbeat Tennessee compiled state results for all students in grades 3-8 into a database searchable by school. The database lists proficiency rates for math and English language arts, frequently referred to as the state’s reading test.

The desktop version of the database also includes year-over-year changes in the TCAP proficiency rates.

Search your school here:

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee reading scores are up, but progress is uneven as students get older

2026-07-01T03:45:58+00:00

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Nearly 45% of Tennessee third graders met or exceeded expectations on the state’s reading assessment this year, but those early literacy gains fade as students advance through middle school.

Preliminary data from 2025-26 Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program showed steady progress in third grade English language arts, with 44.9% of students meeting or exceeding expectations, up from 41.7% last year.

That’s the highest proficiency level in nearly a decade, and a 9.2 percentage point increase since 2022, when Tennessee implemented a controversial reading law requiring significant interventions or retention for students who underperform on the TCAP ELA assessment.

On average, though, proficiency rates were lower through the end of middle school. Overall, 40.6% of students in grades 3-8 met proficiency standards on the TCAP ELA tests, while less than one in three eighth graders met standards this year.

A Tennessee SCORE analysis found that year over year, student cohorts lost reading and math proficiency as they advanced through middle school, even as third grade results continued to climb from pandemic-era lows.

Each middle school class this year scored lower than it did in 2025, with particularly large declines between sixth and seventh grade.

State data shows students are losing reading proficiency even before they reach middle school. About 40% of this year’s sixth graders met or exceeded expectations in ELA. Two years earlier, about 46% of that same cohort met or exceeded expectations as fourth graders.

Large achievement gaps also remain for historically underserved students. Despite years of improving test scores across the state, students from low income families continue to score well below, and the gap between the two groups has not improved over time. peers from higher income families.

Still, Tennessee has made overall year-over-year gains beyond reading. About 43% of students in grades 3-8 scored proficient on TCAP math tests. And for the first time, a majority of students met or exceeded expectations on the state’s social studies assessments.

“I am very proud of our gains in student achievement, highlighting our success in implementing strategies that elevate learning across all grades and subjects. This continued progress ensures every Tennessee student has the opportunity to succeed,” Tennessee Commissioner of Education Lizzette Reynolds said.

In addition to factoring into retention decisions for students, TCAP scores weigh significantly in the state’s school funding formula. Tennessee uses proficiency rates on these tests to help determine school letter grades later in the year.

The Tennessee Department of Education is expected to release school-specific results later this year.

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis students improve on state reading tests but struggle in math

2026-06-24T19:14:41+00:00

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Memphis students continue to improve on state reading tests, but struggle to achieve proficiency in math — especially in middle school.

Preliminary results from this year’s Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP, show the biggest literacy gains for third graders. Just under 32% achieved reading proficiency this year, up from 29.2% last year. Those who don’t pass face significant state interventions, including being held back for a year.

The overall reading proficiency rate in Memphis-Shelby County Schools increased by 1 percentage point to 25.7%, a growth rate on pace with recent years. That still lags behind the state average, with nearly 45% of students across Tennessee achieving proficiency this year.

“We’re trying to make sure that students are ready for third grade, because that’s when we switch: you learn to read K-2, then you read to learn,” said Angela Whitelaw, MSCS’ chief of academics. “We’re not where we want to be. But we’re proud of our teachers for the work that they keep doing year after year.”

These results are preliminary, said Bill White, MSCS’ accountability officer. The final TCAP data, which is adjusted to include alternate tests and exempt students, won’t be released for a few months. White said MSCS’ proficiency rates typically increase slightly in those final numbers. That’s also when individual school and student subgroup data will be available.

Academic performance in MSCS is under heightened scrutiny as a state-appointed takeover board assumes control of the district on July 1. Those nine oversight board members have the ability to alter curriculum and overhaul teaching staff, as happened in Houston’s 2023 state takeover.

District leaders say they’ve been focusing heavily on early literacy this past year, investing in staff for small-group lessons and after-school tutoring. Meanwhile, most elementary and middle school grades saw slight dips in math proficiency.

The biggest drop came among MSCS sixth graders, where 15.7% of students passed the math TCAP — down 4 percentage points from last year.

“When you put a focus on any one area, you will see improvement immediately,” Whitelaw said. “We see high schools are moving; we see the elementary, we have some bright spots. But we know as a district, six through eight, that’s where we’re going to have to spend some time.”

Whitelaw said high school math used to be the district’s “Achilles’ heel.” But MSCS high school students significantly improved on TCAP math tests this year, gaining more than 7 percentage points in geometry proficiency.

Whitelaw said three main changes this year contributed to that rise: The district created standardized lesson plans for teachers, invested in more professional development, and adopted a regional model that allowed academic coordinators more opportunities to coach high school teachers.

“The academic coordinators are like our lynchpin between curriculum and instruction in the classroom,” Whitelaw said. “They take the strategies that we showed them at the central office level and they make sure that it gets inside of those classrooms.”

Now that MSCS knows those strategies work, Whitelaw said leaders will focus on improving those models for middle school educators, such as seeking teacher feedback on standardized lesson plans. They’re partnering with the Council of Great City Schools to support that work and launching “lesson plan champions,” principal-selected teachers who can mentor their peers on instructional strategies.

Plus, the district received a five-year grant from national curriculum nonprofit TNTP to improve middle school literacy, receiving $90,000 annually.

“Instructional coherence is going to be big this year,” Whitelaw said. That means ensuring that what’s taught in classrooms is replicated in small group sessions and afterschool tutoring, she said.

Bri Hatch covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Bri at bhatch@chalkbeat.org.

MSCS third graders must retake TCAP literacy tests on last two days of school

2026-05-08T16:36:07+00:00

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Memphis-Shelby County Schools will require all third grade students to retake state standardized reading tests on the last two days of the school year because of a timing conflict with Tennessee’s data release schedule.

District officials said Thursday that they’re implementing a universal retesting because of the high stakes nature of a 2021 Tennessee law that holds back some third graders who don’t score as proficient on the state test.

The Tennessee Department of Education will release preliminary state testing results on May 20, the day before MSCS closes for summer break. Those late results mean the district wouldn’t have time to determine which students are eligible for retests, which can help underperformers avoid extensive interventions required by Tennessee’s third grade reading law.

Other school districts affected by extensive winter weather closures earlier this year are also grappling with the same issue. Metro Nashville Public Schools is currently considering its options, a spokesperson said.

Out of “an abundance of caution,” said MSCS Accountability and Data Director Bill White, all 5,450 third graders will spend their last two days retaking the literacy portion of the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program.

“These poor third graders are taking a lot of tests. And we recognize that,” White said. “We want any student who may have not been proficient the first time to have the opportunity to hopefully improve their score.”

Retake scores aren’t used in official proficiency data for the district, or in state and federal report cards. But students who pass the second time are exempted from required intervention measures.

Last year, just under 30% of MSCS third graders passed last year’s reading test, known as TCAP. A little over 40% of third graders passed statewide. According to the Tennessee law, all remaining students were required to receive additional tutoring or attend summer school.

Over 150 MSCS third graders were held back last year, and nearly 1,300 were required to attend the district’s Summer Learning Academy, according to an MSCS spokesperson. Around 3,000 students received additional mandated tutoring.

Usually, White said, MSCS uses preliminary data from the Tennessee Department of Education to sift out students who didn’t pass TCAP tests the first time to retake the exams.

Standardized testing was delayed in the district this year because of a February winter storm that shut down classes for two weeks. Educators statewide requested a pushed-back testing schedule, but the state department did not pass a universal schedule change. Districts most affected by the storm, including MSCS, implemented a delay anyway.

“We’re in kind of a scheduling bind,” White said. “With a district our size, the amount of data we’re talking about, that’s really not enough time to identify ‘these are the students who need to take it.’”

Liz Marable, who leads one of Memphis’ teacher groups, said district leaders made the only logical choice in retesting everyone.

Marable said no one is happy about subjecting children to more testing. And she worries that attendance will drop off in the final days of school, meaning some students will miss the opportunity to redo.

“But ultimately, it will hurt them if they don’t do it,” Marable said. “So you have to pick the lesser of two evils.”

The last time MSCS mandated retesting for all third graders was in the first year of the Tennessee law, White said. That year, over 25,000 students statewide were retested.

Nashville public schools are in a similar situation, with their last full day of classes on May 20. In an emailed statement, the district said it’s still considering options for how to move forward.

Amy Maples, MSCS’ director of curriculum and instruction, said the district will offer retesting sites on May 26 and 27 for students who are absent the last two days of school. Most third graders will complete the shortened online version of the literacy test, which doesn’t include a writing portion, on May 20.

“The goal is really to not put any additional hardships on our families,” Maples said.

This story has been updated to include additional data from MSCS officials and quotes from Liz Marable.

Bri Hatch covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Bri at bhatch@chalkbeat.org.

Some students get tutoring but end up as ‘intervention lifers.’ This common sense tactic could help.

2026-04-20T11:00:00+00:00

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Knox County Schools looked like it was doing everything right.

The district was using a well-regarded, evidence-based curriculum to teach students how to read. Young students who struggled got intensive tutoring using high-quality supplemental materials. Tutoring sessions took place during the school day, ensuring high participation.

But the 60,000-student district in eastern Tennessee wasn’t seeing the results from tutoring that leaders had hoped for. Erin Phillips, the district’s executive director of learning and literacy, decided to try something new: ask tutors to use materials that matched what students were learning in the classroom.

Working with outside researchers during the 2024-25 school year, Knox County Schools randomly assigned more than 300 early elementary students who fell below the 40th percentile on a universal literacy screener into two groups. One group received tutoring using the district’s usual supplemental materials. The other got tutoring using materials that were aligned with the district’s core curriculum, Benchmark Advance.

The results, described in a paper by researchers Cara Jackson and Ayman Shakeel, were striking. Students who received tutoring that aligned with classroom instruction made more progress, the equivalent of an additional 1.3 months of learning, compared with students in the control group whose tutoring sessions used supplemental materials.

This approach and the outcome might sound like common sense. But it goes against a widespread way of thinking about intervention, that if students didn’t learn the material well in class, they might benefit from new ways of approaching it or different explanations of the same concepts.

But the study suggests the opposite was true, that teachers and tutors may have inadvertently confused students by, for example, teaching different letter sounds in different orders or referring to the “magic e” in one setting and the “silent e” in another.

The findings are important as school districts look for ways to make tutoring more effective with limited dollars. School districts were urged by experts and officials to invest in high-intensity or high-dosage tutoring, generally defined as occurring at least three times a week and for 10 weeks or longer, as an evidence-based way to address pandemic-related learning loss. But large-scale tutoring programs often failed to produce the same outcomes as carefully designed pilot programs.

The education sector jargon for what Knox County is doing is “coherence.” That’s simultaneously an increasingly popular buzzword and a vital missing element in many education reforms.

In Knox County’s case, “What we were asking our most at-risk learners to do is carry the heaviest cognitive load,” Phillips said. “We were calling the same thing by different names in every learning experience. We were overloading their ability not only to have that knowledge in their brain, but to retrieve that information, not only retrieve it, but then apply it, and then transfer it from place to place.”

Using aligned materials, in contrast, lightens their cognitive load and gives them more opportunity to practice the same skills covered in class, she said.

Knox County students using aligned materials also did better on state standardized tests, according to the study from Jackson and Shakeel, though the difference was not statistically significant.

Tennessee is in its fifth year of a major early literacy initiative that includes teacher training, state-approved curriculum lists, mandatory tutoring for certain students, and holding back students who don’t meet certain benchmarks by third grade.

Stanford University’s National Student Support Accelerator’s review of tutoring research notes that alignment seems like it would be good practice but doesn’t have a strong research base. Jackson, research manager at the Center for Outcomes Based Contracting, said she wanted to address that gap with a randomized controlled trial.

“We were testing something lots of people very much believed would be true, and that a lot of people have talked about for a long time,” she said.

Jackson said she hopes other researchers try to replicate her findings in other settings and with larger groups of students.

Phillips is moving to adopt more aligned curriculums across subjects and grades. She’s also continuing to closely monitor student learning, including whether fewer students score in the bottom quartile or are referred for special education evaluation.

She said the study results shed light on a long-standing problem in the district.

“We had a decade’s worth of data showing us that students were not exiting intervention,” she said. “They were becoming intervention lifers. That’s not the intention of this support. All this data was showing that this was not working.”

Different curriculum choices can create an unhelpful ‘lasagna’

Many factors have nudged districts away from using aligned curriculum for students in intervention services, according to TNTP, a school improvement consulting organization that worked with Knox County.

Large established publishing houses dominate the market for core curriculum, while dozens of smaller companies fill in the gaps. When states draw up lists of approved curriculum, core and supplemental materials might go through different approval processes, and districts might not see materials from the same company on both lists.

Grants might also require districts to pick materials from certain vendors, contributing to a proliferation of different learning materials that take different tacks.

“We build this lasagna of program over program over program,” said Devon Gadow, TNTP’s director of national consulting.

Surveys by the research organization Rand Corp. found that teachers frequently cobble together materials from different curriculum companies, with the average teacher reporting they used two core curriculums and five supplemental curriculums.

And a study by the Center for Education Market Dynamics found more than 350 different supplemental math products in use across 1,700 school districts. These same school districts chose from fewer than 20 core curriculum options.

While districts often put significant time and attention into assessing core curriculum options before making a decision, they adopted supplemental materials in an ad hoc way, in part because the contracts were shorter and less expensive, the analysis found.

TNTP is urging state policymakers to look at ways they may be steering districts away from using more-aligned materials. The group also wants district leaders to look at what they already have in their arsenal that they could redeploy.

Gadow said district officials should be wary of marketing pitches based on coherence or alignment. They may not need to buy something new as long as they’re already using high-quality materials.

Core curriculum often includes materials to support scaffolding, remediation, and intervention, Gadow said, but classroom teachers don’t have the time to read through every page and develop lessons for struggling students. That’s work that central office staff could take on.

In Knox County, Phillips said teachers had developed a habit of using supplemental materials in the past when the district’s core curriculum wasn’t as good. Those habits were hard to break, in part because those past experiences led teachers to distrust that any core curriculum could cover all the necessary ground.

Phillips spent roughly $1.4 million from what remained of Knox County’s pandemic relief on aligned supplemental materials from Benchmark at the beginning of the study period. But if she had it to do over again, she would have looked more closely at what already existed in the core curriculum, she said. That’s what she’s doing now for other subjects. Most teachers are on board with the change, she said.

Meanwhile, she’s phasing out materials from other publishers as licenses expire, saving money going forward.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Federal judge won’t block Tennessee district book bans before trial

2025-11-20T22:21:38+00:00

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A federal judge has declined to block ongoing book bans at one of Tennessee’s largest school districts before a full trial next year.

In April, after months of heated school board meetings and district schools pulling more than 140 books from library shelves, three high school students sued the Rutherford County Board of Education. The students, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, argued in initial filings the book bans violated their First Amendment rights and disadvantaged students by blocking them from accessing “crucial, acclaimed, and historical works.”

Judge Eli Richardson denied a preliminary injunction this week, declining to block the district from limiting access to books until the full trial plays out and indicating that the defendants have an uphill battle in the case.

“Here, the Board (or for that matter the State writ large) has not prohibited students from reading the books or acquiring them elsewhere; instead it has merely opted not to carry them on school library bookshelves,” Richardson wrote.

Attorneys for both parties declined to comment on the ruling on Thursday.

The Rutherford County case, which also includes the literary and free expression group PEN America as a plaintiff, is the first legal challenge to Tennessee’s expanded school book statute in 2024 that culled hundreds of books from school shelves.

Rutherford County book removals include “Beloved,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the horrors of American slavery that includes depictions of sexual violence, and “Catch-22,” a satirical World War II novel. Both books have been recommended in Advanced Placement literature classes curricula in previous years.

The Republican-backed legislature used a state obscenity law to prohibit any school material that “in whole or in part contains descriptions or depictions of sexual excitement, sexual conduct, excess violence, or sadomasochistic abuse” or is “patently offensive.”

But guidance for interpreting the law was limited when schools were required to implement it last fall. Critics wondered if books depicting classic art with nude figures or books about puberty education could be included in the ban and questioned who gets to define “excess” violence or offensive content. The ACLU of Tennessee warned the law would be wielded by some who wanted to ban books that address race, racism, LGBTQ+ rights, and marginalized groups.

Other removals in Rutherford County include “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” a popular young adult novel in which a supporting character is gay, and “Wicked,” the popular retelling of Wizard of Oz.

A 2024 survey of members of the Tennessee Association of School Librarians found that more than 1,100 titles were removed in just a few months, as schools grappled with how to interpret the newly expanded law. PEN America named Tennessee as among the top 3 states with the largest number of book bans in the last school year.

A review in The Tennessean earlier this year found book removals surged in the past year, with 1,155 unique titles either fully removed from school libraries or heavily age-restricted between December 2023 and January 2025.

A full trial in the Rutherford County case is not expected to begin until next fall.

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee educators ask lawmakers to dial back or amend state testing

2025-09-26T05:46:45+00:00

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Tennessee educators are asking state lawmakers to dial back or alter state testing schedules and requirements, with one reading specialist testifying this week that 10-year-olds are not “developmentally ready” to handle the two-week testing block that schools face each year.

“It is a madhouse during testing, and we’re a small school district,” said Angel Moore, the Perry County High School guidance counselor, of the two-week window in April when Tennessee schools administer the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program.

Moore was among several educators who testified Wednesday before the Joint Advisory Committee on Innovations in K-12 Education. They described scheduling upheaval, teachers stretched thin, and kids stressed to the point of physical discomfort in the leadup to state testing.

Dr. Kevin Schaaf, a Metro Nashville Public Schools reading specialist, said students are often fatigued and disengaged in class, stressed by the emphasis on test performance.

“The two weeks of TCAP in April skews our efforts throughout the rest of the school year,” Schaaf said.

Schaaf suggested students should be screened before taking TCAP’s reading assessment, arguing there is no need to test a student if they have already demonstrated in the classroom and other testing that they cannot read at level. He also recommended splitting TCAP into three parts throughout the year.

“Imagine the difference when teachers are saying, ‘Next week we have an important math test on Thursday,’ instead of “The next two weeks are dedicated to TCAP,’ ” Schaaf said. “Ten-year-olds are not developmentally ready to endure two straight exam weeks as if they’re in college, so why are we putting them through it?”

Rep. Mark Cochran, a Republican from Englewood, also asked the education department to consider spreading TCAP testing out.

David Laird, Tennessee’s assistant education commissioner of assessment and accountability, said many states that attempted to spread out testing ultimately abandoned the practice “because it essentially enforces a statewide version of a pacing calendar, which is wildly unpopular in a lot of places.” Education officials also said it could impede local control to set school calendars.

High school testing requirements are also too stringent or ill-suited for certain students, some educators testified on Wednesday. Monroe County Schools federal programs director Lee Anne Strickland suggested the state eliminate its Algebra II “end of course” exam for 11th graders, maintaining the course requirement but dropping the test needed to get a high school diploma.

“That’s something we hear so frequently from our parents and our community: We test too much,” Strickland. “Now, I’m a firm believer in accountability, so I don’t want to suggest that we shouldn’t be held accountable for what we do in public schools.”

The Algebra II exam is given in the same grade Tennessee students are required to take the ACT. The dueling tests are not needed for students on career technical paths, Strickland argued, and it’s not “logical” to prepare students for two different standardized tests during the same school year.

Tennessee in recent years eliminated similar end-of-course exams for 11th grade chemistry and English.

Sen. Bo Watson, a Republican from Hixson, pushed back on Strickland’s testimony, saying students and teachers should be accountable for an end-of-course exam in the same way they would be for a final exam.

Some legislators appeared more amenable to Strickland’s suggestions.

“At some point, do we have to ask ourselves, are we giving a Tennessee EOC just for the sake of giving it? Or should we make something that is more aligned to the ACT?” Cochran said.

Some changes to state testing are already in the works, education officials said.

Tennessee elementary schoolers will begin taking their state TCAP tests online as early as spring 2027, a move education officials hope will accelerate grading and the release of results to schools and families.

Elementary schoolers will continue to receive paper writing tests, which could require schools to administer the writing test earlier in the school year to allow for a shipping and grading window.

Laird told lawmakers that students will continue to use physical materials on reading comprehension tests, even if the test questions will be on a computer.

“If they’re taught all year to work with paper products, highlighting and underlining as they read, we’re going to give them the materials to use those strategies while they take the test,” Laird said.

The committee plans to meet again in October to consider potential recommendations yielded from the Wednesday testimony and previous meetings. Lawmakers expect to prepare a report with specific policy proposals when lawmakers return to session in January.

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis schools are increasing dyslexia support to boost state reading test scores. Will it work?

2025-09-08T11:05:00+00:00

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Memphis students with dyslexia will start receiving targeted reading support this school year through the district’s first universal intervention program in an effort to increase state test scores.

Under a nearly $540,000 contract approved by the Memphis-Shelby County school board last month, an outside literacy company will boost support for nearly 5,000 students who show characteristics of dyslexia. But one local reading expert noted that many students struggle with comprehension, which needs intervention beyond foundational skills.

MSCS is required by state law to screen every student for signs of dyslexia, such as difficulty connecting letters with sounds. But Tennessee allows only an outside provider such as a licensed psychologist to give an official dyslexia diagnosis to students, in order to trigger state and federal disability services.

Jo Anna McCall, an education consultant for Utah-based Reading Horizons, the literacy company contracted by the district, said the end goal of the program is to increase MSCS scores on the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP. Nearly 75% of Memphis students didn’t test as proficient in reading last year.

McCall said students with characteristics of dyslexia often get “lost in the shuffle” of general classroom instruction.

“Many have fallen through the cracks, and it’s going too fast for them, and so we have to slow down,” she said.

In an Aug. 26 board meeting, MSCS leaders said Reading Horizons will train at least one district staff member per school building to run small group tutoring sessions using the company’s dyslexia-focused curriculum by the end of the school year.

It’s unclear who exactly will receive that training or when they will run the 30-minute intervention sessions recommended by the company.

Reading Horizons’ method is based in the science of reading, a literacy strategy focused on phonics and fluency that has gained traction in education systems in recent years. Laura Kelly, a Rhodes College education professor who specializes in elementary literacy, said MSCS already uses the science of reading in its classroom curriculum.

“So my question is, what is this adding that their existing curriculum doesn’t already have?” she said.

Focusing on foundational phonics skills will help students with dyslexia, Kelly said. But she worries that won’t translate into improvement on comprehension skills – which means it’s unlikely to boost TCAP scores.

“TCAP is not a phonics test; it’s a comprehension test,” Kelly said. “And there is a good chunk of kids that master foundational skills, and then they still don’t comprehend what they’re reading.”

McCall said Reading Horizons’ method does go beyond phonics skills, including time in each lesson to read and write sentences or passages of text.

The company’s method is unique, she said, because of a “marking system” that helps students sound out words. Students mark vowels with x’s, break words into syllables, and follow simple pronunciation rules that McCall says guide about 75% of English words.

A screenshot of Reading Horizons product PDF.

“I think of this as training wheels on a bicycle,” McCall said. “As students are learning the patterns to the word, they’re going to have these markings. And then when they read passages, the marks won’t be there, but they can apply them when they come to an unfamiliar word.”

According to Reading Horizons’ contract, the company will provide scripted manuals, flashcards, and longer texts targeted to skills students are learning. There will also be one six-hour training for chosen MSCS staff and one-day targeted coaching budgeted at $3,000 each for 30 sessions.

MSCS Director of Curriculum Amy Maples said the district is investing the “bare minimum” funding level for Reading Horizons’ program, which company leaders said cuts out additional training and coaching sessions for school staff.

But Maples said MSCS could invest more in the program after the first year depending on results. The contract with Reading Horizons has the option for renewal through 2030.

District leaders will also be screening more students for characteristics of dyslexia this year, according to an emailed statement sent to Chalkbeat.

Bri Hatch covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Bri at bhatch@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis students outpace state growth in reading and math, but lag in social studies

2025-08-28T18:54:43+00:00

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Memphis students are exceeding state expectations for improvement in reading and math, but falling behind in social studies growth, test score data released Thursday shows.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools earned the highest districtwide growth score, a 5, on the 2024-2025 Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System, or TVAAS, for the fourth year in a row. Students also earned that top score in most specific content areas, including reading, numeracy, and science.

But MSCS’ social studies score dropped from a 5 to a 2 in one year, meaning students are showing less growth than expected.

Interim Superintendent Roderick Richmond said district leaders need to “face with honesty the areas where we did not meet our expectations” while celebrating the overall wins.

“Greatness grows not by ignoring challenges, but by confronting them with vision and determination,” he said in an emailed press release.

District officials plan to “audit and align” MSCS’ social studies curriculum, adding project-based learning opportunities and creating “monthly teacher cohorts” for data-tracking. The subject will also be added to MSCS’ new districtwide assessment system.

TVAAS differs from state proficiency data. The system measures student achievement throughout the school year instead of on a single end-of-year test, and compares that progress with the performance of statewide peers with similar academic backgrounds. Scores range from 1 to 5.

This means MSCS students are outpacing statewide growth expectations, even as they struggle to earn widespread proficiency scores on the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP. In the 2024-25 school year, less than 25% of MSCS students met proficiency benchmarks in reading, and just over 1 in 5 did the same in math.

MSCS high schoolers improved their TVAAS social studies score from last year, going from a 1 to a 3, which indicates their growth is on track with state expectations. Students in grades 4-8 reflected the districtwide drop from 5 to 2.

In the press release, district officials wrote that social studies instruction for early grades is “often minimized compared to ELA and Math, particularly for students from low socioeconomic backgrounds.”

But social studies “prepares students for college, careers, and civic life,” the district said. “More than half of academic vocabulary is tied to Social Studies content, making it an untapped driver of reading growth.”

In the spring, high school and middle school teachers participated in districtwide training around social studies instruction, which the district plans to offer to elementary educators this year.

Eight MSCS schools improved TVAAS scores from the lowest to the highest in one year, including:

Bolton High
Douglass High
Memphis Delta Preparatory
Riverwood Elementary
Rozelle Elementary
Sheffield Elementary
Springdale Elementary
Winridge Elementary

Bri Hatch covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Bri at bhatch@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis board leaves in-school literacy tutoring program in limbo days before classes start

2025-08-01T00:38:20+00:00

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Over 1,500 students in Memphis-Shelby County Schools could lose access to targeted in-school literacy tutoring this year as local nonprofit Literacy Mid-South faces ongoing budget challenges.

The nonprofit’s federal COVID relief funding expired in May, leaving its finances in flux like many other organizations nationwide. And in June, the Memphis-Shelby County school board decided not to include Literacy Mid-South in this year’s budget.

The full impact for MSCS students remains unknown with the start of the school year only days away on Aug. 4. Memphis-Shelby County board members still haven’t responded to the nonprofit’s revised proposal in which Literacy Mid-South would tutor 500 students for a fraction of the original price, CEO John Nichols told Chalkbeat.

It’s been over a month since Nichols made that offer.

“While we are not actively partnering with Memphis-Shelby County Schools … at this time, we remain deeply committed to supporting student learning across the region and are continuing to explore ways to collaborate in the future,” Nichols said in a statement Thursday.

Since 2022, Literacy Mid-South has provided tutoring for MSCS students during school hours using $9.6 million of pandemic relief funding.

It’s unclear whether MSCS offers or will offer any other tutoring programs during the school day. District officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

In May, the school board requested nearly $40 million in one-time investments from the Shelby County Commission for the upcoming school year, which included $2.2 million for Literacy Mid-South. Board member Natalie McKinney said the commission only gave them $5 million from that request for school safety upgrades.

In an interview with Chalkbeat earlier in July, Nichols said the in-school schedule allows Literacy Mid-South to reach more students. Just over 29% of MSCS elementary students passed state reading tests last year, meaning the majority are required by Tennessee law to be either held back or receive additional academic support.

“There are so many factors at play with before and after school tutoring,” he said. “Transportation is a huge issue for our students, as well as after school activities and parental schedules. You’re guaranteed protected academic time with this model.”

This past year, Literacy Mid-South partnered with 18 MSCS schools to serve around 1,700 elementary students. Nichols said he originally requested $2.5 million from the school board in January for the 2025-26 school year to maintain that level of involvement, with federal money no longer available.

But district officials have said that ask is unreasonable. Board Member Natalie McKinney told Chalkbeat in early July that she didn’t support the nonprofit’s initial proposal in June because she wants more data showing Literacy Mid-South’s model is “best practice” for improving student outcomes.

“If this is the best practice, then we should be utilizing it in a way that is sustainable,” McKinney told Chalkbeat. “What we cannot do is say that we’re going to spend $2 million on 1,000 students. I don’t know how to justify that.”

But before those comments, Nichols had already come back to the board in late June with a request for $650,000 to tutor 500 students. He was hoping for an answer before training for this year’s tutors starts in mid-August. Tutoring services usually begin in September.

Last year, the nonprofit reported that its students improved their scores from fall to winter by an average of 5.9 percentage points on an online assessment used by the district called iReady. The year before, that figure was 7.5 percentage points from the beginning to end of the school year.

Nichols said he recognizes the need for a more robust study of the program. The nonprofit secured a federal grant this year to gather that data. But it needs a group of at least 1,000 students to fulfill the terms of the grant.

Nichols said Literacy Mid-South is expanding its partnerships with nearby charter schools to fill the gap. Last year, the nonprofit worked with six local charters. This year, Nichols said, nine charter schools and one public school in Millington fill the group’s roster.

“We’re currently thinking about, is there a way that we could utilize school staff to kind of observe, and offer a ‘train the trainer’ model, to ensure that literacy tutoring is happening in a homegrown way in the district,” he added.

McKinney said she suggested that idea to Nichols as a way to make the partnership with Literacy Mid-South more sustainable.

“We have to invest smartly,” she told Chalkbeat on Aug. 1. “This could be a pathway to a teacher pipeline.”

Even if Literacy Mid-South eventually secures funding from MSCS, Nichols said he worries about the “loss of momentum” in reading progress for the students Literacy Mid-South wouldn’t reach in its more-limited tutoring plan.

“I also think one of the value-adds of our program is that it did free up capacity for teachers,” he said. “It really helped elevate and strengthen what was happening in their classrooms.”

A previous version of this story mentioned a school board vote on Literacy Mid-South’s budget request. On Aug. 1, board member Natalie McKinney told Chalkbeat there had been no vote, only discussions about the proposal. The story has also been updated to include additional comments from McKinney about the “train the trainer” model and the Shelby County Commission.

Bri Hatch covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Bri at bhatch@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis-Shelby County students show ‘steady growth’ in state reading, math tests

2025-07-09T00:12:44+00:00

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Students in Memphis-Shelby County Schools continue to improve on state standardized tests post-pandemic, with growth in scores in most categories in the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP, released Tuesday.

In an emailed statement, Memphis-Shelby County schools celebrated “steady growth” across almost all grades and subjects.

But reading and writing still pose a challenge for two key groups. High school English proficiency in the state’s largest district dropped and the majority of third grade students did not hit a critical reading benchmark.

These results are a bright spot for the district following a state legislative battle over control of MSCS. In the spring, Republican Rep. Mark White proposed a bill to create a state-appointed board to manage the district for at least four years, sharply criticizing its management and performance. The effort faced harsh criticism from Memphis locals, and eventually stalled in the Tennessee legislature.

“The 2025 TCAP results reflect more than a single year’s progress,” the district said in its statement. “They affirm a long-term trajectory of improvement and a deep-rooted belief that every student can achieve.”

The MSCS statement said district leaders “recognize areas of opportunity, particularly in the slight decline in English I and II,” the high school level reading and writing courses.

The district reported that 24.6% of all students met or exceeded expectations on TNReady reading assessments. That’s compared to 23.7% of students last year.

And just over 29% of students in grades 3-5 passed in reading. Tennessee law requires students to be held back or sign up for additional tutoring if they don’t hit those reading proficiency marks, though previous state data shows very few students are retained after completing intervention benchmarks like summer programs and tutoring.

Over 21% of all MSCS students also tested on track for math, up from 18.7% in 2024, MSCS leaders said. Algebra I and II students posted the largest gains.

“These increases reflect the district’s continued emphasis on algebra readiness, including the availability of 8th-grade Algebra I and summer Bridge Camps to prepare students for early success in advanced math,” MSCS said in the statement.

Statewide, around 40% of students met or exceeded TCAP proficiency in both reading and math. The six independent school districts that surround Memphis continue to outperform MSCS across the board.

Last year, well over half of the suburban students passed both math and reading sections. Here’s this year’s breakdown, for students in grades 3-8:

Bartlett City Schools: 48.6% passed TCAP reading, 55.6% passed in math
Germantown Municipal School District: 69% passed reading, 76.3% in math
Arlington Community Schools: 69.8% in reading, 72.8% in math
Millington Municipal Schools: 31.9% in reading, 33.4% in math
Collierville Schools: 69.2% passed in reading, 73.5% in math
Lakeland School System: 63.8% in reading, 66.4% in math

Interim Superintendent Dr. Roderick Richmond said in a statement that “growth is not optional” for the Memphis school district.

“At MSCS, we’re not waiting on greatness; we’re growing it,” he said. “The data confirms what we already know: we’re heading in the right direction. But good is not our goal.”

Bri Hatch covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Bri at bhatch@chalkbeat.org.

NAEP results: Tennessee students buck grim national trends on nation’s report card

2025-01-29T05:09:00+00:00

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Tennessee students held their ground on a major national test in a year when average student test scores declined nationwide.

Results from the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, released Wednesday, show that average test scores in Tennessee increased slightly in fourth and eighth grade reading and math, compared with 2022, though the gains were not statistically significant.

Tennessee’s latest post-pandemic results stood in contrast to declines seen nationwide and in many other states. And Tennessee students scored three to four points higher than the national average in math and one to two points higher in reading.

“Tennessee students did well relative to other states, and we did better than some of our neighbors,” Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds said.

“We didn’t move backwards, we moved a little bit forward, and we expect to do better next year,” added state Rep. Mark White, of Memphis, who chairs a key House education committee and also serves on the NAEP governing board.

Math scores outpace reading scores

Tennessee has launched numerous initiatives aimed at bolstering early literacy, but the latest NAEP showed the state’s most dramatic improvements came in math.

In fourth grade math, 42% of students scored proficient or advanced, an increase of 6 percentage points from 2022. The state was one of 29 jurisdictions that posted scores similar to 2019, before the pandemic. Only Alabama had average scores higher than 2019. Nationwide, average scores are down three points, and 22 states had declines.

In eighth grade math, Tennessee’s proficiency rate also grew, while the national average declined. Tennessee was one of just two jurisdictions with similar scores to 2019. Average scores dropped 9 points.

In fourth grade reading, Tennessee was one of 47 states with no statistical change from 2022. Nonetheless, its scores were up slightly, whereas the nationwide average dropped by two points from 2022 and by five points from 2019.

The small increases in eighth grade reading scores were not statistically different from 2022 or 2019, but again, the small increase stood in contrast to nationwide averages that dropped 5 points since 2019. Tennessee also saw more notable increases in scores among higher-performing students in the 75th percentile.

The relatively strong showing in math, according to state officials, could be tied to the full return to in-person learning, which studies show is especially important for math instruction; Tennessee’s 2021 adoption of new math standards; and the subsequent rollout of math curriculum to align with those standards.

They expect that trend to continue with passage of a 2024 state law spotlighting more analysis of and support for math instruction.

Tennessee was an early adopter of pandemic-era interventions

Tennessee has been held up as a model both for how it managed federal pandemic relief spending — quickly steering money into tutoring, summer learning camps, and afterschool programs aimed at students who had fallen furthest behind — and for its intense focus on early literacy. State test results from 2024 show students there making steady progress since 2021.

The challenge now will be to maintain progress and deploy state funds to replace federal pandemic relief aid that expired last year.

“We still have that obligation at the state level to continue to support districts in as many ways as possible,” said Reynolds, the state’s education chief. She cited free professional development resources provided to school systems by her department as one example.

“Local school officials also knew that the money was ending, so they’ve been building in their own sustainability practices to keep the work going,” she said.

White, the state lawmaker and NAEP official, said the state’s controversial 2021 third-grade reading intervention and retention law was a key part of the mix. It pushed children whose families might have opted for summer breaks into summer learning programs and motivated schools to increase support for struggling readers.

“If a child is not reading proficiently in third grade, we want to really understand why and not just pass them on,” he said.

State officials already are digging into the latest NAEP data on how various student groups performed — to study how they can offer better support.

Tennessee’s growing population of English language learners saw across-the-board improvement, while students with disabilities showed slight decreases.

The national results track with test score trends from the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, which in 2024 showed that students continued to improve from post-pandemic lows.

The alignment of national and state data is important, said Amy Owen, the state’s senior education policy director, because “it shows that our students will be able to compete with students from across the country when they look at post-secondary and career opportunities.”

“We’re seeing steady increases, which is significant when you think about where our kids were during COVID,” added Reynolds. “Our fourth graders were kindergartners then, our eighth graders were fourth graders.”

Memphis district opts out of separate NAEP assessment

Since 2018, NAEP has also released results for Memphis Shelby County Schools, one of roughly two dozen large urban districts participating in national math and reading tests through the Trial Urban District Assessment program, which is designed to help those districts measure student performance against districts in other large cities.

But last year, leaders of the Memphis district chose not to participate in the program.

White, who represents part of Memphis, said the lack of participation represented a “leadership breakdown” as the district cycled through superintendents.

“That’s sad that we don’t have their scores,” he said. “We can’t continue that trend.”

What is NAEP?

Not every Tennessee fourth-grader or eighth-grader took the national test when the federal government administered the assessments in early 2024.

NAEP tests a nationally representative sample of students in every state. In Tennessee, each of the four assessments was taken by about 1,700-1,800 students in 80-90 schools.

The results, published as the nation’s report card, allow comparisons across states and are an important marker for showing how students are doing over time.

The last three testing cycles happened in 2019, 2022, and most recently in 2024, providing an especially helpful comparison of what students knew before the pandemic and how much they have rebounded from COVID-related learning disruptions.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee panel still waiting to hear first book appeal under 2022 school library law

2024-12-11T12:00:01+00:00

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Two years after Tennessee lawmakers made it possible to ban books from school libraries statewide, not a single book challenge has been heard, let alone approved.

And no complaints are waiting to be considered, either.

Since early 2023, parents, students, and school employees have been able to challenge library content by submitting an online form to the Tennessee Textbook and Instructional Materials Quality Commission.

But only three appeals have been filed with a commission that this year hired its first full-time staff at an annual cost of $500,000, in part to manage anticipated book appeals. All three appeals were withdrawn within a month.

“It’s been surprising,” said Commission Chair Linda Cash, about the lack of appeals before the state panel.

Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature passed Gov. Bill Lee’s school library law in 2022 to establish a local review process to make sure books and materials are “appropriate for the age and maturity levels” of the students who can access them.

A few months later, lawmakers approved a second measure creating an appeals system so that book complaints can go before the state’s existing textbook commission if the complainant isn’t satisfied with a decision by a local board or charter school. That law gave the commission unprecedented authority to ban certain books statewide, or to restrict them to certain grade levels in all Tennessee schools.

The school library legislation came after Tennessee emerged as one of the first states to restrict classroom discussions about race, gender, and bias. That the commission, two years in, has not considered any book ban complaints is evidence that school library debates are playing out locally instead of at the state level, with conservative parents getting mostly what they want.

Rep. Jerry Sexton, a Republican from Bean Station who co-sponsored the bill to create a book appeals process, said at the time that school libraries needed to be purged of content that he deemed as “pornographic” and “obscene.” His proposal also would have required schools to provide the commission with a list of books in their library collections.

When pressed on the House floor by Democratic Rep. John Ray Clemmons of Nashville about what the state should do with any banned books, Sexton said: “I would burn them.”

But Senate sponsors, who originally wanted the textbook commission simply to develop library guidance for schools, were more measured about approving any legislation that could ignite a wave of book removals. The Senate and House ultimately approved a compromise bill to establish the appeals process, without requiring schools to submit lists of their library books to the state.

“I think these appeals to the state will be rare,” Sen. Mike Bell, a Riceville Republican, said at the time. “I can’t imagine it being more than a handful – five a year, 10 a year.”

To help with the appeals process, the commission hired its first full-time staff — an executive director, staff attorney, and administrative assistant.

Cash, the chairperson who lobbied for state funding to staff up, said the administrative help was needed and overdue, regardless of whether the commission received book appeals.

Linda Cash, who chairs the Tennessee Textbook Commission, is also director of Bradley County Schools and the state's 2025 Superintendent of the Year.

The unpaid, all-volunteer, 13-member textbook panel still has its core responsibilities of approving state textbooks and instructional materials and establishing contracts with publishers to guarantee availability to schools at the lowest price. (The body just completed the latest textbook adoption cycle to align classroom materials with Tennessee’s science standards. The panel will look next at textbooks for career and technical education, then social studies.)

As also required under the 2022 law, the commission last year issued library guidance, not only for itself as the state’s appellate body, but for school districts and charter schools to follow to make the local review process more consistent.

Cash, who is also the chief of Bradley County Schools, never expected the commission to receive a flood of library book appeals. But she anticipated the state panel would have acted on at least some after two years.

Instead, book banning action escalated at the local level after lawmakers voted this spring to expand the governor’s “age-appropriate” library law to prohibit materials that offend conservative sensibilities, especially related to sexual content and LGBTQ issues. The law now includes a broad checklist of the kinds of content deemed unsuitable, including nudity, descriptions or depictions of sexual excitement, sexual conduct, and excess violence.

As a result, at least 1,100 books were removed locally during the first few months of the academic year, according to a statewide survey of members of the Tennessee Association of School Librarians. Hundreds more have been pulled since the survey was conducted. Leaders with the librarians group believe those numbers are conservative.

The vast majority of the removals were handled preemptively by school officials and librarians without going through local complaint processes that had been in place for years. Those processes generally allowed students, parents, or educators to flag their concern with a school librarian and eventually take unresolved matters to the local school board that took into consideration a recommendation by an ad hoc review committee of educators and parents.

“I think that’s unfortunate,” Cash said of some unilateral book removals under the stricter library law.

The commission’s library guidance, issued in 2023, called for local schools to adopt and follow a thoughtful process for receiving feedback about library materials.

“We have professional librarians who do an excellent job of looking at books and bringing concerns before committees of educators and parents to screen them,” Cash said.

On the other hand, Cash believes the library laws have made school officials and librarians more attentive to the concerns of parents and increased scrutiny of book collections for age-appropriateness.

“Parents want to be heard and listened to,” she said. “When we don’t do that, I think that’s when we begin to have issues.”

Former Sen. Jon Lundberg, who co-sponsored the bill that ultimately opened the door to statewide book bans, said he’s not surprised that the textbook commission has yet to hear its first challenge of a local library decision.

“It wasn’t that bad decisions were being made about library books,” said the Bristol Republican. “We just decided to establish a process, in case there ever was a need.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Few third- and fourth-graders are being retained under Tennessee reading law, data shows

2024-11-22T01:14:36+00:00

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Some 60% of Tennessee third-grade students scored below proficiency in English language arts on 2024 state tests. Fewer than than 1% of them were retained under the state’s reading and retention law, and about 2.5% are no longer enrolled in public schools, according to new data.

Among fourth graders who had been promoted by receiving tutoring during the 2023-24 academic year under the same law, just over 1% were held back this school year, while at least 4% have left their public school.

The findings, presented by Tennessee’s chief academic officer to the State Board of Education on Thursday, show some of the effects of Tennessee’s 2021 reading intervention and retention law aimed at accelerating learning after the pandemic.

The controversial statute was pushed by Gov. Bill Lee, who said he wanted to draw a hard line to “stop the cycle of passing without preparation.” The legislature has since approved several revisions to loosen the policies and provide more pathways to promotion for students who don’t test as proficient readers.

State leaders are ‘encouraged’ by tutoring and summer program data

The big question is whether students are becoming better readers with the state’s interventions.

That includes summer programming, which began in each school system in 2021 to mitigate the effects of disruptions to schooling during the pandemic. About 121,000 students went that first year, and participation has leveled off to about 90,000 in subsequent years.

Chief Academic Officer Kristy Brown, in her presentation to the board, said attendance rates improved for recent summer programs, indicating that parents are finding value in them.

As far as academics, she said: “What we’re really seeing is the effects of decreased summer slide, or the lack of it, for students who are participating, compared to those who are not.”

Summer slide, referring to when students’ academic proficiency regresses during summer break, is a common phenomenon, especially for historically disadvantaged populations.

As for required small group tutoring, which younger students receive weekly during the school year if they don’t meet expectations on state tests, Brown said students testing in the bottom level, called “below” proficiency, are moving in the right direction.

In addition, almost half of the 12,260 fourth graders who received required tutoring in 2023-24 showed improvement as the year progressed. Over 14% of them scored as proficient on their TCAPs last spring, and nearly 33% met the threshold for showing adequate growth based on a state formula.

The data is the first available for fourth-graders who started receiving additional support after scoring below proficiency in the third grade.

“To finally have the numbers — to see that the needle appears to have been moved in a positive way like that — I was glad to see,” said Ryan Holt, a member of the state board.

Several other board members also said they were “encouraged” by the data.

Brown, the state’s academic chief, cautioned that gains can’t be traced at this point to any single part of the state’s reading interventions.

“It’s a combination of the things that we’ve done,” she said, “with professional learning for teachers, and summer programming, and tutoring, and those things customized for those students to see the gains that I think we’ve seen in Tennessee.”

Many educators and parents have been less enthusiastic.

The high-stakes testing was well-intended, they say, but it’s taken an emotional toll on many of Tennessee’s youngest students, affecting their self-confidence and their feelings toward school.

The legislature’s most recent revisions to the law were intended to give parents and educators more input into retention decisions.

Many students facing retention used alternative pathways to promotion

After the 2023-24 school year, most of the nearly 44,000 third graders who were at risk of retention used other pathways to promotion.

Nearly 27% were exempted for various reasons, including having a disability or suspected disability that impacts their reading; being an English language learner with less than two years of ELA instruction; and having been previously retained.

Over 4% retook the test at the end of the academic year and scored as proficient.

Others were promoted through a combination of tutoring and summer program participation.

For the 12,260 fourth graders who participated in tutoring last school year, over 14% scored as proficient on the state’s assessment in the spring.

Over 32% met the state’s “adequate growth” measure that’s tailored to each student. It’s based on testing measurements that the state uses to predict the probability that a student can become proficient by the eighth grade, when they take their last TCAP tests.

And nearly 44% of at-risk fourth graders were promoted by a new “conference” pathway that lawmakers approved on the last day of the 2024 legislative session. It allows the student to be promoted if their parents, teacher, and principal decide collectively that it’s in the child’s best interest.

Any fourth grader promoted to the fifth grade via the conference pathway must receive tutoring in the fifth grade.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

List of nearly 400 purged library books is circulating among Tennessee school districts

2024-11-16T00:10:49+00:00

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One Tennessee school district’s list of nearly 400 books removed from library shelves, including titles by authors ranging from Dr. Seuss to Toni Morrison, is being used by other school systems as a possible template to follow.

Administrators for Wilson County Schools directed the district’s librarians to pull the books a month ago. This week, leaders with Clarksville-Montgomery County Schools sent its librarians the same list to consider when reviewing their collections.

A third large suburban district, Rutherford County Schools, instructed its librarians this week to remove around 150 titles — 51 of which overlap with the list in neighboring Wilson County.

The removal there came at the request of school board member Frances Rosales, who told Chalkbeat that she used the Wilson County list and reviews on the website Book Looks as the basis for her request.

The purges come under Gov. Bill Lee’s 2022 “age-appropriate” school library law, which lawmakers expanded this year to prohibit public school libraries from having books with “nudity, or descriptions or depictions of sexual excitement, sexual content, excess violence, or sadomasochistic abuse.”

Sponsors of the changes, enacted amid national “culture wars” fueled in part by pro-censorship websites, say their goal is to protect students from obscene content and give families more control over their children’s education.

But the changes have also created a climate of fear, confusion, and self-censorship for school leaders and librarians, prompting some to revise or ignore their own review processes and preemptively pull titles from their shelves.

Graphic novels and books containing LGBTQ+ topics for high schoolers are among the casualties, as are classics like Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” about a young African American girl who longs for blue eyes, and popular children’s picture books like David Shannon’s “No, David!” and Seuss’ “Wacky Wednesday.”

“This law was designed to catalyze book banning,” said Kasey Meehan, director of PEN America’s Freedom to Read program. “We should not be surprised now that we are seeing the mass removal of books in response to this censorial legislation.”

Tennessee law likely faces a constitutional challenge

Tennessee’s original 2022 law, championed by the governor, required districts to publish the list of materials in their library collections and periodically review them to make sure they are “appropriate for the age and maturity levels of the students who may access the materials.” Each community was to define what is considered age-appropriate based on local standards.

This spring’s revisions by the legislature added a definition of what’s “suitable” — including verbiage about sexual content, nudity, and violence that could be interpreted to prohibit literary classics like “Romeo and Juliet,” historical novels such as “All Quiet on the Western Front,” and encyclopedias containing photographs of nude statues.

The law is expected to be challenged in court over its vague wording, a lack of compliance guidance from the state, and the uneven way the law is being applied across Tennessee.

Among groups tracking its implementation are the ACLU of Tennessee and some publishing companies.

In Florida, several large publishers sued education officials there in August over a 2023 state law prohibiting sexual content in school libraries. They argued that the law had ignited a wave of book removals in violation of the First Amendment.

‘Creating an unofficial statewide book ban list’

A survey conducted this fall of members of the Tennessee Association of School Librarians found that more than 1,100 titles had been pulled statewide under the revised law during the first few months of the academic year.

“I’ve removed 300 books in the first month of school,” one librarian anonymously told the organization.

Since the survey, the number of titles pulled across Tennessee has ballooned “from a trickle to a tidal wave,” said Lindsey Kimery, a Nashville school library supervisor who is one of the group’s leaders.

“If Wilson County’s list is being shared around, and district leaders see it as a cheat sheet so that they don’t have to conduct their own reviews, it’s creating an unofficial statewide book ban list,” Kimery said.

A spokesman for the Clarksville-Montgomery district, which serves about 38,000 students near the Kentucky border, emphasized that Wilson County’s roster was being used “as a resource, not a mandate” for its own librarians.

“We are not directing you to immediately remove all of these titles from your library collection,” curriculum leaders told principals last week, according to talking points from the meetings that the district shared with Chalkbeat.

“However, we are providing this list as an example of books already vetted by Tennessee educators and strongly encouraging you and your library-media specialists to review the list and consider, if you have these titles in your collections, whether these materials violate state law.”

Books in violation must be removed, the principals were told.

In Rutherford County, where 150 books were removed this week, the school board voted Thursday night to give librarians time to review the titles and come back with a formal recommendation on whether they should be permanently removed or returned to the shelves.

“I don’t believe we intentionally have pornography in our schools, but I do believe that some books with questionable content have trickled in,” said Rosales, who told Chalkbeat that she “put a lot of thought and research” into her request to remove 150 titles.

She added, however, that “our librarians are experts, and we need to give them time to review these books and give us a report.”

Other school systems conducting library reviews reported that Wilson County’s list isn’t factoring into their work.

A spokesperson for Knox County Schools said the East Tennessee district is collaborating with its librarians and legal team to identify books for possible removal and will provide its schools with a list in the weeks ahead.

Below, you can view the list of books removed by Wilson County Schools.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

How Tennessee’s largest school system is stepping up its literacy work

2024-10-16T22:04:00+00:00

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Superintendent Marie Feagins is embracing a “back to basics” approach to reading instruction as Memphis-Shelby County Schools seeks to improve student test results that rank near the bottom statewide and nationally.

The foundation of Feagins’ literacy plan is high-quality curriculum and consistent daily instruction focused on phonics, vocabulary, and comprehension, plus giving students more opportunities to engage with texts.

“It just means that we’re getting back to fundamentals when we talk about teaching and learning in our schools and our classrooms,” Jared Myracle, the district’s new executive director over literacy, told school board members Tuesday during a work session.

The strategy isn’t a departure from the district’s embrace in recent years of the movement known as the “science of reading.” That approach, which is grounded in an explicit, systematic teaching of phonics, puts more emphasis on sounding out words.

But with 78% of students in Tennessee’s largest school system scoring below proficiency on state tests for English language arts in 2023-24, district leaders say, there’s an urgent need to intensify literacy work for its 106,000 students.

“To put it very simply, we’re talking about ensuring our students are able to decode or break down what words say, and then when they put them back together, to actually understand what they’re reading,” Myracle said.

Feagins declared that “literacy is the foundation of all learning” when she hired Myracle in June for a cabinet-level position focused exclusively on that need. A 20-year educator, Myracle most recently served as chief academic officer of Jackson-Madison County Schools, also in West Tennessee.

In his first report to school board members on what he’s doing to improve literacy, Myracle said a key element of this year’s professional development sessions for educators has been to place more responsibility with students, so that “the brain doing the work is the brain doing the learning,” as opposed to students passively listening to a teacher standing in front of the class.

“We’re asking teachers to begin every class with a literacy-based focusing activity so that students have consistent opportunities to practice building those muscles day in, day out. They also end their class with a literacy-based closing activity,” Myracle said of the reading, writing, or speaking exercises.

With just a few minutes of such activities at the start and end of every class, he said, “students have over 1,500 additional opportunities in a school year to exercise those muscles. And that’s the type of repetition that adds up.”

Myracle acknowledged that reading comprehension is challenging in Memphis, where a high concentration of students live in poverty and aren’t exposed to many enriching experiences outside of school.

According to the state report card, 55% of students are considered economically disadvantaged in Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

Jared Myracle

“It’s not that students who come from low-income families can’t read, or can’t learn to read,” Myracle said. “It’s just that they oftentimes have knowledge deficits that take longer to fill than their more highly advantaged peers.”

The district has shared literacy “toolkits” with parents, supplementing the tens of thousands of books given away annually by Literacy Mid-South, as well as assistance from numerous other nonprofit partners.

“It’s very important, and it accelerates students’ learning, if they read on the same topic multiple times,” Myracle said.

Memphis students have long trailed the rest of the state on state and national reading assessments, prompting numerous initiatives through the years. This spring, the district improved to a 22.4% proficiency rate after logging post-pandemic lows on the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, still significantly behind the statewide proficiency rate of 39%.

But school board members were encouraged by Tuesday’s presentation.

“This is good stuff,” Stephanie Love told Myracle, before asking him about the major differences between the district’s work now and last year.

He cited a bigger focus on using materials adopted for English language arts classes and stepping up daily literacy instruction. It’s also important to give the plan adequate time and support to work.

“Sometimes we get distracted in education by bright and shiny objects and we want to chase other initiatives that aren’t at that instructional core,” Myracle said.

“The commitment that we’re making is that we’re going to stay focused on these things at the middle of the instructional core to improve achievement and to improve the literacy rates of our students.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

‘Beloved’ and five other library books banned by one of Tennessee’s largest school systems

2024-09-20T03:58:42+00:00

In one of Tennessee’s book banning hot spots, the Rutherford County Board of Education voted Thursday to remove six books from high school libraries, including Toni Morrison’s “Beloved,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the horrific realities of American slavery.

Also removed were Stephen Chbosky’s “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” a coming-of-age novel in which a supporting character is gay, and “Wicked,” Gregory Maguire’s popular retelling of the classic “Wizard of Oz” tale.

But Sherry Shahan’s “Skin & Bones,” which delves into eating disorders, failed to get enough votes for removal and will stay on high school library shelves in Rutherford County Schools, a suburban district south of Nashville with about 50,000 students.

The votes came amid a politically charged national climate and debates in Tennessee over what constitutes age appropriateness versus censorship.

Tennessee legislators recently revised Gov. Bill Lee’s 2022 school library law to expand the definition of what books are prohibited. The goal, they said, is to ensure the materials are appropriate for the ages and maturity levels of the students who can access them.

But instead of holding public votes on questionable material as Rutherford County’s board did Thursday, the revised law has created confusion for librarians and school leaders, prompting many to quietly pull controversial books from the shelves. A recent survey of members of the Tennessee Association of School Librarians found that more than 1,100 titles have been removed statewide under the changes, with more under review.

Rutherford County’s board voted one by one on seven books under review at the request of board member Caleb Tidwell, who cited “sexually explicit” content that he believes crossed the line of local community decency standards.

The votes came in a packed meeting room after two hours of public comment and debate, with more than a dozen citizens speaking both for and against Tidwell’s proposal. Some who opposed the books read several passages aloud.

Also removed were two novels by Sarah J. Maas, “Queen of Shadows” and “Tower of Dawn,” and Yaa Gyasi’s “Homegoing.”

The decisions came after several board members expressed confusion over which state laws and policies to follow in making their decisions: the state’s criminal obscenity law that calls for review of the material as a whole, or the revised school library law that prohibits sexual content either “in whole or in part.”

Members also voted against considering a compromise from Stan Vaught, a newly elected board member who proposed creating mature reading areas within school libraries requiring parental approval for access. The seven books in question would be placed there, he said.

The ACLU of Tennessee, which sent a Sept. 16 letter urging board members to keep all seven books, said Thursday’s votes represented the viewpoints of a vocal minority who wants to ban books that address race, racism, LGBTQ+ rights, and marginalized groups.

'Beloved' is Toni Morrison's haunting novel about sexual violence and the brutality of American slavery. It won a Pulitzer Prize in 1988.

“Rutherford County students will pay the price and be at a significant disadvantage compared to their peers across the state and the U.S. who have access to these materials and are developing the critical thinking skills needed for college and beyond,” Kathy Sinback, the organization’s executive director in Tennessee, said in a statement.

But Tidwell, who called for the books’ removal, said the decisions were a “win for the protection of minors,” and he hinted that more library books will be reviewed.

“While there is likely more work to do, tonight was a step forward,” he said after the meeting.

The district already removed 29 titles earlier this year, as well as one last year, Mike Curato’s “Flamer,” a graphic novel about a gay teenager struggling with his identity.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated which character in “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” identifies as gay.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Under Tennessee’s stricter school library law, some books quietly disappear

2024-09-17T22:09:26+00:00

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Jennifer Edwards was a teenager in Arizona when she first read “Beloved,” Toni Morrison’s haunting novel about sexual violence and the brutal realities of American slavery.

“It had a profound effect on me,” she said, citing the empathy, historical understanding, and critical thinking skills the book imparted.

Now a mother of two sons and living in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, Edwards wants teens in her community to have access to her all-time favorite book.

But under a recently revised state law broadening the definition of what school library materials are prohibited, her local board of education is set to vote Thursday on whether to pull the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and six other books with mature themes from the shelves of Rutherford County Schools.

“Banning books is not OK,” Edwards told the board last month as it began reviewing the materials. “Just because you don’t like what the mirror shows you doesn’t mean you put the mirror down.”

This week’s vote comes after the district, south of Nashville, already removed 29 books from its libraries this year under a previous policy, part of a wave of purges on campuses across Tennessee and other states.

How the ‘age-appropriate’ debate is altering curriculum

In Tennessee, that wave started under Gov. Bill Lee’s 2022 school library law requiring periodic reviews of catalogs to ensure materials are appropriate for the ages and maturity levels of the students who can access them. Librarians and teachers had to publish their inventories of book collections online for parents to view. Early removals included books about marginalized groups, including people who identify as LGBTQ+, and descriptions of slavery and racial discrimination throughout U.S. history.

This spring, scrutiny escalated. Republican lawmakers added a definition of what’s “suitable” and, based on the state’s obscenity law, prohibited any material that “in whole or in part contains descriptions or depictions of sexual excitement, sexual conduct, excess violence, or sadomasochistic abuse.”

In the absence of state guidance on how to interpret the changes — What constitutes excess violence, for instance? Are photographs of nude statues allowed? What about Shakespeare’s “Romeo & Juliet”? — some school boards like Rutherford County’s are putting questionable material to a vote. Educators in many other districts are quietly culling their shelves of certain books.

“Yes, there is some subjectiveness to it, but there’s also a line. We need to determine what the line is, and then hold it.”
Caleb Tidwell, board member, Rutherford County Schools

A recent survey of members of the Tennessee Association of School Librarians found that more than 1,100 titles have been removed under the changes, with more under review. One librarian anonymously reported pulling 300 titles at a single school since the start of the academic year. Only a sixth of the organization’s members responded to the survey.

“We may never truly know the level to which books have been removed from school libraries in Tennessee,” the organization said in a statement, noting that large-scale removals may cause some libraries to fall under the state’s minimum standards for collection counts.

“A literal interpretation of this law may have the unintended consequences of gutting resources that support curriculum standards for fine arts, biology, health, history, and world religions, to name a few, especially in high schools, where AP curriculum and dual enrollment courses require more critical texts,” the group said.

Lindsey Kimery, one of the organization’s leaders, said the law’s rollout has created “chaos and confusion” for school librarians.

“Some librarians have received guidance from their central office; some have not,” she said. “Some boards are updating their policies for handling book challenges to align with the law’s changes. Some districts have interpreted the law to mean they should preemptively go through their collections and pull anything they think has one of the prohibited topics in it.

“It’s all over the map,” Kimery added.

‘Phantom book banning’: Censorship in the shadows

The quiet censorship is being noticed by First Amendment advocates, from the ACLU of Tennessee to Julia Garnett, who graduated last spring from Hendersonville High School in Sumner County, north of Nashville.

Garnett started a free speech club at her high school during her senior year. Now a freshman at Smith College in Massachusetts, she is the youth spokesperson for the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week, Sept. 22-28.

Last week, she searched her alma mater’s online library catalog to look for books by Sarah J. Maas and Ellen Hopkins, whose popular young adult novels are frequently challenged or banned due to their mature themes and sexual content.

None were listed.

“They used to be there, but they’ve disappeared,” said Garnett. “I call it phantom book banning, where libraries are being censored, but not in a public way. I think that’s what scares me the most.”

The law is vulnerable to a federal challenge on First Amendment grounds, said Kathy Sinback, executive director of the ACLU of Tennessee. The statute’s vagueness, a lack of compliance guidance from the state, and the uneven way the law is being applied across Tennessee are among issues that open the door to a lawsuit.

“But we’d love to see the legislature fix the problems next year without having to pursue litigation,” Sinback said. “We’d like to see it made constitutional in a way that will ensure our children have access to the literature they deserve.”

Legal precedents support students’ First Amendment rights

The House sponsor of the law’s recent revisions, Rep. Susan Lynn of Mt. Juliet, did not respond to emails asking if she’d be open to revisiting the law. Some of her critics worry the goal is ultimately to take a legal challenge to the U.S. Supreme Court, where conservatives hold a majority.

The Senate sponsor, Joey Hensley of Hohenwald, said he believes the law is constitutional.

“I’m always open to making laws better,” he said, “but I don’t think this interferes with people’s First Amendment rights, and I’m personally not hearing about problems with it. The law’s intent is simply to ensure public schools do not give children access to materials that are not appropriate for their ages.”

Sen. Joey Hensley, of Hohenwald, co-sponsored 2024 legislation to identify what school library materials are prohibited, and to require local school boards to act on book complaints within 60 days.

Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, said higher courts have consistently sided with First Amendment advocates on challenges to content in school libraries, even as efforts to ban books in public schools and libraries reached an all-time high in 2023.

The school library is supposed to be a place of voluntary inquiry — a safe space for students to explore ideas under the supervision of adults instead of alone on their cellphones.

“This gets to the core of the First Amendment,” she said, “the idea that libraries are a marketplace of ideas, and elected officials should not be able to dictate their contents.”

“Students are not just students; they are citizens.”
Ken Paulson, director, Free Speech Center, Middle Tennessee State University

But it’s also possible that another school library case could someday reach the U.S. Supreme Court. Two book ban cases from Iowa and Texas are already making their way through the federal courts.

Current legal precedent stems from the high court’s 1982 ruling involving a school board in New York state that wanted certain books removed from its middle and high school libraries. In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled against the board and held that “the right to receive ideas is a necessary predicate to the recipient’s meaningful exercise of his own rights of speech, press, and political freedom.”

Justice William Brennan wrote that while “local school boards have a substantial legitimate role to play in the determination of school library content,” the First Amendment doesn’t give government officials the power to ditch books because they don’t like them or disagree with their viewpoints.

Ken Paulson, director of the Tennessee-based Free Speech Center and a former editor-in-chief of USA Today, also cites the importance of a 1969 Supreme Court ruling establishing that students have constitutional rights, too.

The case involved students in Des Moines, Iowa, who wore black armbands to their public school in silent protest of the Vietnam War. The court sided with the students.

“Because someone is 12 or 14, we sometimes think they don’t have constitutional rights,” Paulson said. “But they do, and they’re surprisingly robust. Students are not just students; they are citizens.”

Middle Tennessee district is a book ban hotspot

In Murfreesboro, a college town that is home to about 50,000 students in Tennessee’s largest suburban K-12 district, most titles removed so far were in high school libraries. They generally were contemporary young adult novels containing sexual content and other mature themes, from child abuse and suicide to substance abuse and LGBTQ+ issues.

The books were flagged as “sexually explicit” material by school board member Caleb Tidwell and removed this spring without going through the district’s library review committee that includes a principal, teachers, librarians, and a parent.

Rutherford County Board of Education is scheduled to decide Sept. 19 whether to remove seven more books from local school libraries.

Xan Lasko, who recently retired as a high school librarian in Rutherford County, said the directives she received from Superintendent James Sullivan bypassed the district’s usual review process for handling complaints. Instead, Tidwell cited a provision of board policy requiring the immediate removal of sexually explicit material. Sullivan concurred, according to their email exchange obtained from the district through a public records request from Nashville TV station WSMV.

Tidwell, a Republican who was reelected to the school board in August, said he made the requests on behalf of individuals who have expressed concerns but who feared retaliation from the media and individuals in the district.

In his opinion, all of the materials in question violate both the state’s obscenity law and local board policy. Most, he said, have “education value near zero, or very low.” For those that provide historical context, other books that go into those topics — but without sexually explicit language — are available.

“It’s a very contentious topic,” said Tidwell, who has three school-age children. “But if we focus on the content, most of this stuff is pretty clear. Yes, there is some subjectiveness to it, but there’s also a line. We need to determine what the line is, and then hold it.”

Lasko, the former librarian, said that’s what librarians and educators do.

“My biggest issue is that a small number of people were making the judgment to curtail what students are able to read using a vague law,” said Lasko, who now chairs the intellectual freedom committee of the Tennessee Association of School Librarians.

“We have master’s degrees in library science. We know what we’re doing,” she said. “But a lot of times, we weren’t being consulted.”

New library policy diminishes the role of librarians

In advance of this week’s vote on Tidwell’s latest request to remove more books, the board revamped its library materials policy to add language from the revised state law. It also eliminated the 11-member review committee appointed annually by the board to consider book complaints.

Instead, materials that district leaders deem to be in violation of the state’s obscenity law are to be immediately removed from all school libraries and then reviewed for a final decision by the board.

A second avenue for removal — through complaints filed by a student, parent, or school employee — also requires a board vote after receiving recommendations from the principal and superintendent and a review by an ad hoc committee.

“Before,” said the ACLU’s Sinback, “there was a thorough process where every person on the review committee had expertise and would read the book. They’d look at the questionable content but also the overall quality of the material and how it could impact kids exposed to it in both a positive and negative way.”

Now, she said, the decision rests completely with board members.

The changes concern school librarians like Brian Seadorf, who oversees the collection at Blackman High School in Murfreesboro. He asked board members and parents to “just talk to us” if they have concerns about certain books.

“We are educators, we are parents, we are grandparents. … We are good people,” Seadorf told the board on Aug. 22.

Angela Frederick, a Rutherford County resident and school librarian in a neighboring district, added: “The titles you’re considering removing are for older students approaching adulthood. It is developmentally appropriate for teenagers to mentally wrestle with difficult topics. It is also excellent preparation for higher education. Shielding them from books like these does not prepare them for anything but ignorance.”

For Edwards, the Rutherford County parent who also spoke to the board, she’s most upset that “Beloved” is on the chopping block, even though she knows it’s a deeply sad and painful book to read. (Morrison, who died in 2019, said she was inspired to write the novel based on the true story of an enslaved woman, Margaret Garner, who killed her own daughter in 1856 to spare her from slavery.)

“Just because you don’t like what the mirror shows you doesn’t mean you put the mirror down.”
Jennifer Edwards, parent

“I remember it took me several weeks to finish ‘Beloved’ when I was 15, because I had to put it down every few days,” recalls Edwards, now 42. “I had to have time to process what I was reading.”

“But to restrict literary genius,” she continued, “it just doesn’t make sense to me.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Correction: A previous version of this story attributed a quote from Rutherford County resident Angela Frederick to librarian Brian Seadorf. This version corrects the misattribution.

Nashville students aren’t benefiting much from tutoring, new study shows

2024-09-12T19:06:07+00:00

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Matthew Kraft, an associate professor of education and economics at Brown University, was an early proponent of giving tutors — ordinarily a luxury for the rich — to the masses after the pandemic. The research evidence was strong; more than a hundred studies had shown remarkable academic gains for students who were frequently tutored every week at school. Sometimes, they caught up two grade levels in a single year.

After Covid shuttered schools in the spring of 2020, Kraft along with a small group of academics lobbied the Biden administration to urge schools to invest in this kind of intensive tutoring across the nation to help students catch up from pandemic learning losses. Many schools did — or tried to do so. Now, in a moment of scholarly honesty and reflection, Kraft has produced a study showing that tutoring the masses isn’t so easy — even with billions of dollars from Uncle Sam.

The study, which was posted online in late August 2024, tracked almost 7,000 students who were tutored in Nashville, Tennessee, and calculated how much of their academic progress could be attributed to the sessions of tutoring they received at school between 2021 and 2023. Kraft and his research team found that tutoring produced only a small boost to reading test scores, on average, and no improvement in math. Tutoring failed to lift course grades in either subject.

“These results are not as large as many in the education sector had hoped,” said Kraft in an interview. That’s something of an academic understatement. The one and only positive result for students was a tiny fraction of what earlier tutoring studies had found.

“I was and continue to be incredibly impressed with the rigorous and wide body of evidence that exists for tutoring and the large average effects that those studies produced,” said Kraft. “I don’t think I paid as much attention to whether those tutoring programs were as applicable to post-Covid era tutoring at scale.”

Going forward, Kraft said he and other researchers need to “recalibrate” or adjust expectations around the “eye-popping” or very large impacts that previous small-scale tutoring programs have achieved.

Kraft described the Nashville program as “multiple orders of magnitude” larger than the pre-Covid tutoring studies. Those were often less than 50 students, while some involved a few hundred. Only a handful included over 1,000 students. Nashville’s tutoring program reached almost 7,000 students, roughly 10 percent of the district’s student population.

Tennessee was a trailblazer in tutoring after the pandemic. State lawmakers appropriated extra funding to schools to launch large tutoring programs, even before the Biden administration urged schools around the nation to do the same with their federal Covid recovery funds. Nashville partnered with researchers, including Kraft, to study its ramp up and outcomes for students to help advise on improvements along the way.

As with the launching of any big new program, Nashville hit a series of snags. Early administrators were overwhelmed with “14 bazillion emails,” as educators described them to researchers in the study, before they hired enough staff to coordinate the tutoring program. They first tried online tutoring. But too much time and effort was wasted setting kids up on computers, coping with software problems, and searching for missing headphones. Some children had to sit in the hallway with their tablets and headphones; it was hard to concentrate.

Meanwhile, remote tutors were frustrated by not being able to talk with teachers regularly. Often there was redundancy with tutors being told to teach topics identical to what the students were learning in class.

The content of the tutoring lessons was in turmoil, too. The city scrapped its math curriculum midway. Different grades required different reading curricula. For each of them, Nashville educators needed to create tutor guides and student workbooks from scratch.

Eventually the city switched course and replaced its remote tutors, who were college student volunteers, with teachers at the school who could tutor in-person. That eliminated the headaches of troublesome technology. Also, teachers could adjust the tutoring lessons to avoid repeating exactly what they had taught in class.

But school teachers were fewer in number and couldn’t serve as many students as an army of remote volunteers. Instead of one tutor for each student, teachers worked with three or four students at a time. Even after tripling and quadrupling up, there weren’t enough teachers to tutor everyone during school hours. Half the students had their tutoring sessions scheduled immediately before or right after school.

In interviews, teachers said they enjoyed the stronger relationships they were building with their students. But there were tradeoffs. The extra tutoring work raised concerns about teacher burnout.

Despite the flux, some things improved as the tutoring program evolved. The average number of tutoring sessions that students attended increased from 16 sessions in the earlier semesters to 24 sessions per semester by spring of 2023.

Why the academic gains for students weren’t stronger is unclear. One of Kraft’s theories is that Nashville asked tutors to teach grade-level skills and topics, similar to what the children were also learning in their classrooms and what the state tests would assess. But many students were months, even years behind grade level, and may have needed to learn rudimentary skills before being able to grasp more advanced topics. (This problem surprised me because I thought the whole purpose of tutoring was to fill in missing skills and knowledge!) In the data, average students in the middle of the achievement distribution showed the greatest gains from Nashville’s tutoring program. Students at the bottom and top didn’t progress much, or at all. (See the graph below.)

“What’s most important is that we figure out what tutoring programs and design features work best for which students,” Kraft said.

Another reason for the disappointing academic gains from tutoring may be related to the individualized attention that many students were also receiving at Nashville’s schools.

Tutoring often took place during frequently scheduled periods of “Personalized Learning Time” for students, and even students not selected for tutoring received other instruction during this period, such as small-group work with a teacher or individual services for children with special needs.

Another set of students was assigned independent practice work using advanced educational software that adapts to a student’s level. To demonstrate positive results in this study, tutoring would have had to outperform all these other interventions. It’s possible that these other interventions are as powerful as tutoring.

Earlier pre-Covid studies of tutoring generally compared the gains against those of students who had nothing more than traditional whole class instruction. That’s a starker comparison. (To be sure, one would still have hoped to see stronger results for tutoring as the Nashville program migrated outside of school hours; students who received both tutoring and personalized learning time should have meaningfully outperformed students who had only the personalized learning time.)

Other post-pandemic tutoring research has been rosier. A smaller study of frequent in-school tutoring in Chicago and Atlanta, released in March 2024, found giant gains for students in math, enough to totally undo learning losses for the average student. However, those results excluded a quarter of the roughly 1,500 students who had been assigned to receive tutoring but did not attend sessions.

Kraft argued that schools should not abandon tutoring just because it’s not a silver bullet for academic recovery after Covid. “I worry,” he said, “that we may excuse ourselves from the hard work of iterative experimentation and continuous improvement by saying that we didn’t get the eye-popping results that we had hoped for right out of the gate, and therefore it’s not the solution that we should continue to invest in.”

Iteratively is how the business world innovates too. I’m a former business reporter, and this rocky effort to bring tutoring to schools reminds me of how Levi’s introduced custom-made jeans for the masses in the 1990s. These “personal pairs” didn’t cost much more than traditional mass-produced jeans, but it was time consuming for clerks to take measurements, often the jeans didn’t fit and reorders were a hassle. Levi’s pulled the plug in 2003. Eventually it brought back custom jeans — truly bespoke ones made by a master tailor at $750 or more a pop. For the masses? Maybe not.

I wonder if customized instruction can be accomplished at scale at an affordable price. To really help students who are behind, tutors will need to diagnose each student’s learning gaps, and then develop a customized learning plan for each student. That’s pricey, and maybe impossible to do for millions of students all over the country.

This story about tutoring research was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

National teacher of the year urges teachers to ‘find their voice’ as experts in their profession

2024-08-26T23:24:49+00:00

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The Tennessee educator chosen as the nation’s teacher of the year is calling on America’s 3.5 million teachers to “find their voice” on behalf of students as many states seek to censor teachers, ban books, and push voucher policies that send taxpayer funding to private schools.

Missy Testerman, who just ended her tenure as Tennessee’s teacher of the year, said that bigger educational priorities demand attention: air conditioners are breaking down in aging school buildings as a new academic year begins; federal pandemic relief funding is running out to pay for tutoring and summer learning programs; and school communities are struggling to provide mental health support, especially for their most marginalized students.

“When we find our voices, we find our own way to stand in the gap for kids. It is not enough to just shut our classroom doors and teach,” Testerman said in her video address to the nation, released this month by the Council of Chief State School Officers.

Testerman, who officially began as her profession’s top ambassador in July, is on leave this academic year from her job at Rogersville City School, where she teaches English language learners in her rural Appalachian town of 4,500 people. Her new role includes traveling to more than 150 speaking engagements or appearances before organizations spanning education, business, health, and government.

Among her messages: Teachers are experts in their field.

“Your governor is not an education expert. The legislature is not filled with education experts,” she told Chalkbeat. “If you want an expert on education policy and outcomes and what works for students, ask your teachers, your administrators, your director of schools.”

That message has resonated at her talks, where she’s routinely greeted afterward by a line of educators waiting to thank her.

“It’s hard to do a profession where you are the expert, but you’re often not treated as such,” she said. “Sometimes, we need to be reminded.”

Testerman spoke with Chalkbeat on Friday before ceding her title as Tennessee’s teacher of the year to the 2024-25 honoree, Bryan Kerns, a math and fire management instructor at Dobyns-Bennett High School in Kingsport.

In many ways, Testerman said, Tennessee epitomizes the challenges faced by educators she’s met across the nation, many of whom feel like they’re walking on eggshells just to keep demanding jobs that pay a modest salary.

While she applauded a focus on early literacy and significant investments in vocational and technical education under Gov. Bill Lee’s administration, she said other policy changes during the last six years have been more of a burden.

A 2021 state law limits what public school teachers can say about race, gender, and bias in the classroom and interferes with instruction on difficult but important topics included in the state’s academic standards. A group of Tennessee teachers is challenging that law in federal court.

Tennessee’s 2022 school library law, billed as a way to ensure materials are age-appropriate, quickly expanded so that a state panel can ban certain books statewide, based on local complaints. This year, lawmakers added a definition of “suitable” that makes it easier to remove materials, including many stories about Black people or those identifying as LGBTQ.

Also this year, the legislature passed a law requiring public school employees to out transgender students to their parents and debated a bill designed to ban LGBTQ+ flags in schools. Testerman called the second proposal, which failed to pass, a distraction.

“From my standpoint, there are so many problems facing schools — I’ll give you a list,” she said. “But that’s not one that I think we need to waste a lot of time on. Let that be a local decision.”

Meanwhile, Lee’s administration is pushing for a statewide voucher program that would let any Tennessee family use taxpayer money toward private school tuition, regardless of their family income.

“Tennessee is currently in the bottom tier of states in per-pupil funding for public education, and increasing that should be our focus,” said Testerman.

“Right now, however, there’s a $144 million placeholder in our state budget for a voucher program that didn’t even pass,” she continued. “It’s disheartening for teachers to know this money is sitting there doing nothing while their students have so many needs.”

Testerman said the money could be used instead to fix broken air conditioners in Memphis schools, hire more mental health professionals in her own school system, and replace outdated Chromebook laptops in suburban Williamson County near Nashville, one of the state’s most affluent districts.

“If Williamson County is seeing these kinds of financial problems,” she said, “you can imagine what’s happening in urban and rural districts in East and West Tennessee that don’t have the tax base to raise funds the traditional way.”

While it often feels like her profession is under attack, Testerman said she’s inspired by the educators she’s met across America as she advocates for higher compensation and respect for them.

“This job can feel heavy,” she said. “Teachers are facing student behavioral and mental health issues at a scale they’ve never seen before. We have no idea what kids go home to. But we can make the seven hours that they’re with us happy. We can use those hours to deliver academic content in a way that prepares them to move on and hopefully create a good life.”

“We are hope givers,” she said.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee fourth graders show big gains on state literacy tests as third graders hold steady

2024-06-13T17:50:48+00:00

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Tennessee fourth graders showed significant improvement on state tests for English language arts, while third grade scores were mostly steady after achieving historic gains last year, state officials said Thursday.

Fourth-grade proficiency increased by 2.9 percentage points to an overall rate of 46.4%, while third-grade proficiency improved by a half percentage point to 40.9% on tests used by the state to gauge reading levels under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP.

The rates are the highest since the state raised its academic standards in 2010 after receiving an “F” in 2007 from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for low academic expectations and for truth in advertising on its K-12 public education performance.

The state education department also reported fewer fourth graders scored “below expectations,” the bottom category for gauging proficiency.

However, the third grade scores put about three-fifths of those students at risk of being held back under Tennessee’s 2021 reading and retention law. Most of them still may advance, however, based on do-over test results and participation in various intervention options.

Last year, of the 60% of third graders who fell short of the state’s proficiency benchmark, only 1.2% were held back due to interventions, exemptions, and an appeals process.

In Memphis-Shelby County Schools, the state’s largest district, officials reported students made gains in both pivotal grades, with the most pronounced improvement by third graders.

ELA proficiency went up 3 percentage points to 26.6% for third graders and by 1.8 percentage points to 28.5% for fourth graders. But new Superintendent Marie Feagins said the improvements weren’t enough.

“Literacy is the anchor to the success that our 110,000 students deserve to experience,” Feagins said in a statement. “Thus, these data further support the need to direct more district resources directly to classrooms, with a target emphasis on a comprehensive literacy approach at every grade level.”

In a news release, Gov. Bill Lee credited the state’s comprehensive literacy strategy, including early investments in tutoring to help struggling readers improve after the pandemic disrupted schooling in 2020. Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds praised the hard work of students, educators, and families.

“As we continue our work to ensure that all Tennessee students can read at grade level, we remain committed to supporting teachers and empowering families with multiple pathways to achievement so every student can thrive in their academic journey,” Lee said.

The education department did not publicly release the data behind its report as it usually does. Spokesperson Brian Blackley said it will be published soon but could not give a specific date.

Impacts on retention decisions are uncertain

Data on how many third and fourth graders will be held back as a result of the scoring won’t be released until late summer before school starts, under tougher retention policies approved by the legislature after the pandemic.

“There are a lot of different pathways for student promotion, and some of those haven’t even occurred yet,” Blackley said, citing summer learning programs and third grade TCAP retakes that are still being scored.

A parent, guardian, or educator of a third grader who scored just below proficiency also can submit an appeal to the education department until June 28 based on certain conditions.

For students completing fourth grade who are at risk of retention, the state is to release its calculations by July 1 on whether they showed enough improvement to advance. If not, the parent or guardian must meet with their child’s teacher and principal to make that call. But many educators and parents have already been meeting to discuss those options and make plans.

A summer learning camp is in session at Rocks Spring Elementary School in Kingsport, Tennessee.

Low literacy rates have long bedeviled Tennessee

Third grade is considered a critical year for reading, because literacy is foundational to all subsequent learning. But reading scores have historically been mostly stagnant in Tennessee, with only about a third of the state’s third graders meeting the law’s high threshold for proficiency based on state tests.

For several decades, the state tried various strategies to move the needle, and with limited success.

After the pandemic, the state invested $100 million in COVID relief and federal grant funding to provide school systems with optional reading resources and support.

And during a special session called by Lee in 2021 to address pandemic-related learning losses, the legislature passed several laws to jumpstart the state’s literacy work. Among them: prioritizing reading improvements and investments in grades K-3, creating new tutoring and summer school programs, training teachers on the “science of reading,” including an emphasis on phonics, and — most controversial of all — strengthening retention requirements for grades 3 and 4 based on the results of TCAP testing in English language arts.

After getting significant pushback from parents and educators, lawmakers have revised the state’s retention laws several times to allow more students in those grades to advance.

Last month, the governor signed legislation to let each fourth grader’s parents, teacher, and principal decide collectively whether a student should be held back due to a second straight year of low reading scores, even after a year of tutoring.

The department expects to release statewide and district-level TCAP data in all testing subjects by the end of the summer.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee textbook commission hires first staff to prepare for school library book appeals

2024-05-29T11:00:00+00:00

Tennessee’s all-volunteer textbook commission is gearing up to consider new challenges to school library books after state lawmakers broadened the definition of what materials are prohibited.

Two years after the Republican-controlled legislature gave the commission broad new appellate powers to decide ultimately which books students can and can’t access in public school libraries, the panel has yet to receive its first case for review.

But that is expected to change. And for the first time, the commission will have its own full-time staff to support its growing workload, led by a recently retired school librarian from Crossville who formerly served on the commission.

Lee Houston, who has 30-plus years of experience as an elementary school teacher, coach, and librarian, became the body’s executive director in March.

The panel also hired an administrative assistant in early May and is seeking a full-time attorney.

With a potential flood of book challenges and appeals in a state that’s one of the nation’s leaders in banning books, Gov. Bill Lee and the legislature have budgeted $500,000 for the commission to staff up, plus another $55,000 for operational expenses, to help manage the significant expansion of its mandate.

Linda Cash, the commission’s chairperson, said the dedicated support is critical, especially as book complaints work their way through local school boards.

“We expect to start seeing some of those trickle up to us,” said Cash, superintendent of Bradley County Schools.

“I think everybody on the commission will take this very seriously and understands the weight and magnitude of any decision,” she added.

Books that some parents find objectionable could be removed statewide

Amid a nationwide backlash to the racial-justice movement that began in 2020, Tennessee was among the first states to pass laws aimed at restricting what teachers can discuss in the classroom and reviewing what books are available to students.

How the age-appropriate debate is altering curriculum in Tennessee and nationwide

Themes about race and systemic racism, disparaged by hardline conservatives as “woke ideology,” were among early targets. But the range of censored content has widened to include narratives about sexual violence, LGBTQ+ topics, and transgender identities.

The American Library Association reports 350 titles were challenged in 2023 in school libraries or other public libraries across Tennessee.

The organization does not disclose where those challenges occurred, since much of the data comes from confidential reports from libraries. But based on various news reports, districts in McMinn, Roane, Rutherford, Sumner, Wilson, and Williamson counties, as well as Collierville near Memphis, have been hot spots.

And the number of book challenges is likely to increase based on recent revisions to Tennessee’s age-appropriate materials law sponsored by Rep. Susan Lynn of Mt. Juliet and Sen. Joey Hensley of Hohenwald.

The 2022 law, which the governor pushed for, requires schools to periodically screen their library materials for “age appropriateness,” based on local standards and community input. A second law, which also passed in 2022, directs the Tennessee Textbook and Instructional Materials Quality Commission to rule on appeals of local decisions about individual books and gives the panel authority to ban them statewide.

This year, during the final days of the legislative session, lawmakers added a provision allowing a complainant to take a book challenge straight to the state commission if a school board doesn’t address a complaint within 60 days.

More significantly, the revised law defines what’s “suitable” for library collections in K-12 schools and classrooms. It flags any material that “in whole or in part contains nudity, descriptions or depictions of sexual excitement, sexual conduct, excess violence, or sadomasochistic abuse.”

Previously, the law required library materials to be appropriate for the age and maturity levels of students who could access the materials, as well as consistent with the educational mission of the school.

Supporters of the laws say they are protecting children and older students from age-inappropriate, sexually explicit material and exploitation. But critics say the goal is censorship — and that the changes will violate First Amendment freedoms.

Either way, the broadened definition puts a young-adult novel at risk of being banned for even a single paragraph referencing sexual excitement. A children’s picture book such as the Caldecott Award-winning classic “No, David!” could be pulled because one page shows the naked backside of a mischievous boy running down a street.

The 1929 novel “All Quiet on the Western Front” could be targeted for its detailed descriptions of physical and mental trauma suffered by soldiers during World War I. So could Toni Morrison’s “Beloved,” which portrays brutal and abusive sex as a tool of power when early America allowed slavery.

“They’ve tweaked the definition of their own law by not including that the work has to be considered as a whole, or that it’s protected if it has serious value, whether literary, artistic, political, or scientific,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.

“This is effectively banning complex works of literature that are read and used in 11th- and 12th-grade classrooms for students preparing for higher education or to enrich their own education,” she said, adding that “this might close off a whole wealth of literature that deals with difficult topics that, for instance, are part of study plans for the AP English test.”

Former librarian will lead commission’s work

Even before taking on book challenge responsibilities, the state textbook commission, whose 11 volunteer members are appointed by the governor and speakers of the Senate and House, had a full plate. Its primary task has been recommending new lists of textbooks and instructional materials for approval by the State Board of Education based on Tennessee’s ongoing revisions of its academic standards.

Currently, the commission is in the middle of the textbook adoption cycle for new science materials, a process that takes up to 18 months.

“It’s daunting and important work,” said Cash, the panel’s chairperson, “because it affects all public school students and teachers across Tennessee.”

In 2022, when the panel was given its new appellate powers over book challenges, Cash pleaded for funding to hire full-time staff as the commission missed its first big deadline to publish compliance guidelines under the new law. The legislature subsequently allocated funding so that the body no longer has to rely on the state education department for administrative help.

“We are very thankful for these positions,” Cash said.

Rep. John Ray Clemmons, who chairs the House Democratic Caucus, said Republicans have essentially created a new layer of government bureaucracy.

“It was a bad idea to start with, and now they’re throwing a half million dollars at it,” said the Nashville Democrat. “And for what? There’s nothing more undemocratic than pulling books off the shelves of public schools.”

Lee Houston speaks during a meeting of the Tennessee Textbook and Quality Materials Commission on Nov. 18, 2022, as Chairperson Linda Cash listens. Houston, who was a school librarian at the time, stepped down from the commission in March to become its first executive director.

Houston, the panel’s first executive director, worked most recently at Brown Elementary, a public school in Cumberland County, which is represented by House Speaker Cameron Sexton. In 2022, Sexton appointed her to the textbook commission, where at one of her first meetings, she argued for a rule to require that each commissioner read an appealed book in its entirety before voting.

“Context is important,” she said at the time.

In a recent interview with Chalkbeat, Houston said she expects that her new job, with an annual salary of $105,000, will focus largely on the textbook adoption process.

“We have no book appeals before us right now,” she said. “But as a commission, we will uphold the law.”

School librarians feel under attack

For school librarians across Tennessee, the latest statute revisions look like government censorship and overreach as they find themselves caught in the crossfire of national culture wars, fueled in part by pro-censorship websites like Book Looks and Rated Books.

“Do challenged books still go through due process? Or are we just supposed to pull them if they include a picture of Michelangelo’s naked statue of David?” asked Lindsey Kimery, a leader with the Tennessee Association of School Librarians.

As the library supervisor for Metro Nashville Public Schools, she considers Tennessee’s recent school library laws an affront to her profession. And she is concerned they are creating a climate of fear, especially in rural school systems without a library coordinator.

“I worry we’ll see more soft censorship there, the quiet removal of books, because there’s not someone with school library experience at the district level who has a voice at the table when it comes to dealing with these challenging times,” Kimery said.

Meanwhile, she said, librarians are “holding tight” until district-level attorneys can provide legal guidance.

“If librarians proactively remove a lot of books, we could see challenges related to censorship. If we don’t, I expect some individuals or groups will try to test the process to see what they can and can’t do,” she said. “Some school districts may just elect to let the complaints go directly to the state to deal with.”

“No matter how you slice it,” she added, “it’s bad.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Governor signs Tennessee law letting parents, educators make final 4th-grade retention decisions

2024-05-21T21:19:19+00:00

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Gov. Bill Lee signed legislation Tuesday to let each fourth grader’s parents, teacher, and principal decide collectively whether a student should be held back due to a second straight year of low reading scores, even after a year of tutoring.

The Tennessee law also requires more tutoring for public school students who advance to the fifth grade but didn’t test as proficient readers or show adequate growth by the end of fourth grade toward goals that are individualized for each student.

The changes will ease anxiety, and potentially provide extra resources, for thousands of students who are on the verge of completing fourth grade but at risk of being held back due to their performance this spring on the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP.

And it comes as the state education department began releasing preliminary test score data to districts this week to help families of third and fourth graders know where their students stand.

“It’s definitely a relief,” said Nashville mom Carly Fair, after the bill was signed into law. Her daughter was one correct answer short of automatic promotion to the fourth grade on last year’s TCAP.

“Testing tells us something, but it doesn’t tell us everything,” she continued. “I’m thankful parents are now invited to the table to decide with their child’s teacher and principal what is best for each individual student.”

Under Tennessee’s previous reading and retention law signed by Lee in 2021, state officials projected about 6,000 students were at risk of having to repeat fourth grade next school year, with no additional learning supports planned for them. Those students had opted last year for yearlong tutoring in the fourth grade to avoid being retained in third grade.

But on the last day of the 2024 legislative session, lawmakers voted to revise retention policies for fourth graders who continue to pull low scores in English language arts on their TCAPs. They directed the student’s parents or guardian to meet with the teacher and principal to discuss whether it’s in the child’s best interest to be promoted or held back. Majority will rule.

The governor, who has supported a more aggressive retention stance, did not comment as he signed the law. But earlier this month, Lee acknowledged tensions about relaxing the state’s literacy requirements for promotion.

“What’s most important to me is we enact legislation that allows for the success of children,” he told reporters on May 6. “One of the worst things that we can do for that child is to push them into the fourth and fifth grade if they can’t read. It almost ensures their failure. We’re trying to ensure success for children.”

Lee signed the highly anticipated law nearly two weeks after lawmakers sent him the bill on May 10 — and just one day before it was set to become law without his signature. By contrast, the governor signed a controversial bill to let some public school employees carry handguns on the same day he received that legislation on April 26, which was the day after the legislature adjourned.

The timing for the latest signing was an administrative matter, according to his spokesperson.

“The governor reads every bill that reaches his desk, and there are a lot to get through at this time of year,” said Elizabeth Lane Johnson, his press secretary.

It’s the second straight year Lee has signed off on revisions to the 2021 reading law, which authorized new summer school and after-school tutoring programs to help students catch up from the pandemic, while also strengthening retention policies for the two pivotal early grades.

Last year, when the statute’s tougher retention provision kicked in for third graders, lawmakers widened the promotion criteria to include both TCAP and benchmark test results, and ordered the creation of rules for appealing retention decisions.

Ultimately, only about 900 third graders, or 1.2% were retained in 2023 — not significantly more than in an average school year — after many families took advantage of the state’s intervention and appeals processes or received an automatic exemption, such as for students who have a disability or suspected disability that affects reading.

Now that the policy is officially revised for fourth graders, school and classroom leaders can relay promotion information to parents with more certainty, said Gary Lilly, executive director of the state superintendents organization.

“I think people are relieved that there is a path forward for so many fourth graders,” Lilly said, “and the fact it gives teachers, parents, and principals a voice in the process to determine what is best for each student.”

He continued: “I give a lot of credit to parents who reached out directly to legislators and school leaders about the anxiety their families were experiencing. It helped them to understand that this was a major issue for a lot of Tennesseans, just a year after they had experienced anxiety over the same law as it relates to third graders.”

Last week, in anticipation of Lee signing the law, the state education department published a tool to help families of third and fourth graders understand various pathways for promotion.

“As districts and schools begin to have essential conversations with families of students who are not yet proficient, we will continue to provide resources and supports so they can make informed decisions about their student’s education,” Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds said in a statement.

For students completing fourth grade who are still at risk of retention based on their preliminary scores, the state is to release its calculations by July 1 on whether they showed enough improvement to advance. If not, the parent or guardian must meet with their child’s teacher and principal to make that call. But many educators and parents have already been meeting to discuss those options and make plans.

The next few weeks will be especially busy for third-grade families and teachers.

Under Tennessee’s promotion timeline, the state was scheduled to report preliminary scores for third graders to districts by May 20 so they can begin communicating and planning with families about whether students will be automatically promoted to fourth grade or, depending on their scores, what their promotion options are.

Third graders scoring below proficiency in English language arts can retake their TCAPs between May 22 and 31. A parent, guardian, or authorized educator of a student who scored just below proficiency can submit an appeal to the education department between May 28 and June 28 based on certain conditions.

Additionally, third graders who scored “approaching expectations” on their TCAPs can be promoted if they scored at or above the 50th percentile on a separate reading screening test, as long as they also get tutoring throughout the fourth grade.

You can find more information about retention and promotion policies for third and fourth graders on the state education department’s website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include a parent’s comment.

Changes to Tennessee’s 4th-grade reading law pass after compromise on retention policy

2024-04-25T22:01:13+00:00

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Parents of Tennessee fourth graders would have input on whether their children get held back because of low reading test scores, under compromise legislation that’s headed to Gov. Bill Lee’s desk.

The legislation also provides additional tutoring to students who advance to the fifth grade, even if they didn’t test as proficient readers or show adequate improvement in grades three and four.

The Senate and House agreed on the provisions Thursday to address longstanding concerns about Lee’s 2021 reading and retention law, which threatens to hold back an estimated 6,000 struggling fourth-grade readers.

Under the current law, which Lee proposed, fourth graders who don’t score well enough on state tests have to repeat fourth grade, and receive no additional learning supports and resources during that year. But legislators said that wasn’t their intent when they voted to strengthen retention requirements for third- and fourth-graders during a special session to deal with disruptions to schooling from the pandemic.

The governor signaled later that he will sign the bill.

The legislature’s vote came on the final day of a 2024 legislative session that began in January — and nearly two weeks after students began testing under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP, which the state uses to determine reading proficiency.

Educators and families called the timing of the bill’s passage ironic, given that lawmakers have received pushback about the law for several years.

“They could have saved many fourth-grade students and their parents a whole lot of anxiety if they’d passed this earlier,” said Michael Ramsey, an instructional coach for Grainger County Schools, near Knoxville.

Different versions of the bill passed last week out of the House and Senate. When neither side backed down, they turned to negotiators to reach a compromise.

Both chambers were in agreement about directing the child’s parent or guardian to meet with the teacher and principal to discuss whether it’s in the child’s best interest to be promoted or held back. But on Thursday, negotiators added that the parent won’t make the final call. The majority will rule.

The final bill also sets TCAP scores as the only promotion criteria, and tutoring as the only required intervention for advancing.

Tennessee 4th graders await test scores — and outcome of debate that could hold back thousands

The House bill, sponsored by Rep. Gary Hicks of Rogersville, would have let schools take into account the results of a local benchmark test too. And it would have allowed families to choose between participating in a summer learning program or tutoring in fifth grade if promoted.

But in a concession, the Senate, where the bill was sponsored by Dawn White of Murfreesboro, agreed to drop its insistence that the changes take place for only two years. That provision likely would have required lawmakers to revisit the law in 2026.

This is not the first time the legislature has revised the law.

Last year, when the statute’s retention provision kicked in for third graders, lawmakers widened criteria to include both TCAP and benchmark test results to determine which third graders are at risk of being held back.

Third grade is considered a critical year for reading because literacy is the basis for all subsequent learning.

But there’s a growing consensus among Tennessee policymakers that third grade is too late to identify and help struggling readers.

Last month, in a rare action, the state Board of Education approved a resolution asking the legislature to refocus the state’s intervention efforts on grades as early as kindergarten.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with Lee signaling he’ll sign the bill.

Tennessee 4th graders await test scores — and outcome of debate on policies that could hold back thousands

2024-04-24T22:11:11+00:00

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Carly Fair, who has three children in Tennessee public schools, took on the role of an unpaid mom-lobbyist at the state Capitol this year on behalf of families like hers who have a fourth-grade child at risk of being held back under a 2021 reading law.

The law was well intended, she believes: If children are behind on their reading skills in grades three and four, they need tutoring and individualized attention to help them catch up.

But the law also says students in those critical early years may have to repeat a grade if they don’t score as proficient in English language arts on their annual state test, or show adequate growth as defined by the state.

“It feels like we’ve been in a pressure cooker for two years,” said Fair, whose daughter was one correct answer short of automatic promotion on last year’s state tests known as the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP.

“It was a real blow to her self-confidence,” Fair recalls about her daughter, then 8. “There were a lot of tears.”

Many third graders like Fair’s were able to advance to fourth grade last fall by attending a summer learning camp or receiving tutoring this school year.

But now, their families are waiting anxiously for the results of this spring’s TCAP assessment. If those students don’t demonstrate enough improvement, the law requires them to be held back — without receiving more tutoring or extra learning supports next year.

They’re also watching to see if lawmakers pass legislation to address what they believe are shortcomings in the statute — and outright missteps when it comes to thousands of struggling readers who took advantage of interventions to get promoted.

“The shocking part to me was they get no services, they get no tutoring, they get nothing, other than just retained in fourth grade,” Sen. Dawn White, a Murfreesboro Republican, told lawmakers earlier this year.

White is co-sponsoring legislation to revise the law to give fourth-grade parents a bigger say about retention decisions, and to provide additional learning services for students whose reading skills continue to lag.

She was among legislators who voted for the law in 2021 during a weeklong special session called by Gov. Bill Lee to address pandemic-related disruptions to schooling. The statute, which Lee pushed for, created summer learning camps and tutoring programs that have been popular with most families.

But Tennessee’s new retention policies, which started with last year’s class of third graders, have been controversial.

About 900 third-graders, or 1.2% from that class who took TCAPs, were retained last year. That’s significantly less than earlier projections after many families took advantage of intervention options and an appeals process.

For Memphis 3rd graders, threat of retention has hovered since kindergarten

This year, the state education department projects about 6,000 fourth graders could be retained — without the promise of additional supports.

That, Fair says, seems contrary to the law’s intent, which is to identify struggling readers, then to give them the tools they need to improve.

“TCAPs should be used as an alert system to assemble a team to determine where a student is,” she said, “and then to develop a plan to get them where they need to be.”

Sponsors of this year’s revision bill seem to agree.

Details stand in the way of an agreement

The Senate and House disagree about some specifics and appear to be headed toward a conference committee to try to negotiate a compromise before the legislature adjourns this week.

The House bill, sponsored by Rep. Gary Hicks of Rogersville, allows schools to take into account both TCAP scores and the results of a local benchmark test when determining whether a student is improving enough. If they aren’t, the student’s parent or guardian must meet with the teacher and principal to discuss whether it’s in the child’s best interest to be promoted or held back. If advancing, the student must take advantage of a summer learning program or tutoring during the fifth grade.

The Senate bill, sponsored by White, uses only TCAP results to determine whether the student is improving enough. While it allows parents and educators to jointly decide whether a student can be promoted, it requires tutoring throughout fifth grade, not summer learning, as the required intervention. And it puts the policy in place for only two years.

“We don’t want to come back and go through this all over again in two years,” Hicks, the House co-sponsor, told Chalkbeat after his chamber refused to concur with the Senate version.

But Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg, a Bristol Republican, likes the idea of putting a time limit on the changes. He was against relaxing the retention policy in the first place.

“We drew a line in the sand a few years ago,” Lundberg said, “and it’s a good line.”

Policy decisions trickle down to students

For Fair, whose child attends an elementary school in Nashville, following legislative debates about the issue has been a learning process. Last year, she began attending committee meetings at the state Capitol. Over the months, she’s met with lawmakers, members of the State Board of Education, and even representatives of the governor to talk about her family’s experience.

While officials have been accessible, “the disconnect from reality and how this affects people can happen pretty quickly,” she said.

Fair continued: “The emotional and relational toll that this can have 9- and 10-year-olds is pretty great. I don’t know if high schoolers experience this much pressure with their ACT and SAT tests.”

For now, she and other parents of fourth graders are watching for legislative developments and waiting for TCAP scores. Fair’s daughter took her assessment last week.

“She walked into it a little nervous, but brave,” said Fair. “I’m so proud of her.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee bill to ease reading law’s retention policy for 4th graders clears first hurdle

2024-03-20T01:56:23+00:00

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State lawmakers advanced legislation Tuesday that would put fewer fourth graders at risk of being held back this year under Tennessee’s 2021 reading law.

Similar to changes passed last year to address worries about the state’s tough new retention policies for third graders, the proposal seeks to widen criteria for determining which fourth graders could be held back if they aren’t deemed proficient readers, or aren’t showing adequate growth.

The current policy bases those decisions on the results of state tests this spring in English language arts under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP. Under the proposal that advanced Tuesday, on a unanimous vote by the House K-12 subcommittee, results from a second locally adopted benchmark test could be considered, too.

And if the student doesn’t show enough improvement under either test, the school’s principal and teacher must meet with the parent or guardian to decide whether the child should be promoted or held back. If advancing, the student must receive academic interventions that could include summer learning programs and tutoring during fifth grade.

The Senate Education Committee is scheduled to take up the bill on Wednesday.

Projections show thousands of students could have to repeat fourth grade this year, even after participating in state-funded tutoring and summer learning programs.

Lawmakers have gotten pushback from families and educators about retention policies that began affecting last year’s third graders and this year’s fourth graders under the 2021 literacy law. Backed by Gov. Bill Lee, that law passed during a weeklong special legislative session to address pandemic-related learning disruptions.

Last year, due to the intervention options and an appeals process that many families used, only about 900 third graders, or 1.2% from that class who took the test, were retained because of low reading scores.

But currently, no such alternatives are available for this year’s struggling fourth-grade readers.

“This bill is going to give us some alternative pathways to get from fourth grade to fifth grade,” said Rep. Gary Hicks, the Rogersville Republican co-sponsoring it with Sen. Dawn White, a Republican from Murfreesboro.

The House’s massive school voucher bill, which advanced Monday with a positive recommendation from the chamber’s Government Operations Committee, includes one public school provision to add several pathways to address the fourth-grade retention quandary. But since the Senate’s voucher bill is strictly about school choice, there’s no guarantee that any public school provisions will remain if both versions pass and legislative negotiators have to reach a compromise.

Rep. Mark White, the Memphis Republican who chairs the House Education Administration Committee and is helping to shepherd the voucher legislation, praised Hicks for offering up an option.

“If the omnibus bill doesn’t make it, we don’t want to be left hanging with the fourth-grade retention issue,” White told Chalkbeat earlier. “It’s just in case the other one falters.”

Gary Lilly, executive director of the state’s superintendent organization, said parents and educators have been hopeful for a “legislative fix” to give more options to fourth-grade families.

“As written, we knew the law would put a lot of students in a bad situation,” Lilly said. “Certainly, a lot of legislators agree that something needs to be done. This way retains academic supports for students, but it still allows them to progress to the next grade, provided there’s agreement that it’s in the best interest of the child.”

You can track the bill on the General Assembly’s website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee reading law’s retention policies should start as early as kindergarten, state board says

2024-03-04T23:54:55+00:00

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Tennessee’s top education policy board is urging Gov. Bill Lee and state lawmakers to refocus efforts to identify and help struggling readers on students in lower grades — as early as kindergarten — rather than waiting until third or fourth grade to intervene.

In a rare action, the state Board of Education unanimously approved a resolution Monday asking elected officials to revisit the state’s 2021 literacy law, which targeted third and fourth graders and strengthened retention rules for students who score poorly on state tests.

Over the past three years, the board has been working through the details and challenges of implementing the controversial law, which passed during a special legislative session called by the governor to address pandemic-related learning disruptions.

The law created popular summer learning camps and tutoring programs. It also included less popular provisions increasing the likelihood that third and fourth graders could be held back a grade eventually if they don’t perform well enough in English language arts under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP.

Third grade, when Tennessee begins to give its students TCAP tests, is a critical year for reading proficiency, because literacy is considered key to all later learning.

The board’s request for the state to reconsider the law’s retention provision is based in part on new tools that Tennessee teachers are using to identify reading problems before the third grade.

“Retaining students in grades K-3 rather than grades 3-4 will ensure that students who are in the most need of additional reading support will have access to foundational literacy skills instruction at a critical point in their foundational literacy development should they be retained,” the resolution reads.

While years of research shows the overall costs and benefits of retaining students are unclear, the general consensus among researchers and educators is that the earlier a struggling student is retained, the better the outcomes for that student.

“Third grade is too late,” Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds told the board last month when members asked whether Tennessee’s reading law is targeting the right age group.

Additionally, Tennessee students in kindergarten, first grade, and second grade now take three tests annually to screen them for potential reading challenges. Data from those tests wasn’t available when the 2021 law passed, but it could be used now to trigger key supports, interventions, and retention decisions earlier in a student’s academic career, the resolution says.

Ryan Holt, who represents Nashville on the board and wrote the resolution, said the law had a good intent but needs a “course correction.”

Executive Director Sara Morrison agreed. “It pushes us in the right direction as a state to look at those earlier grades and use data responsibly to make decisions earlier than third grade, but allows for that backstop to remain in third grade where we have that consistent TCAP measure,” she said.

Thousands of third graders were at risk of being held back last year because of their TCAP scores, but ultimately only about 900 third graders, or 1.2% were retained — not significantly more than in an average school year — thanks to intervention options and an appeals process that many families took advantage of.

The law also requires this year’s fourth graders to be held back if they don’t score as proficient, or show “adequate growth,” on their TCAPs.

Officials are projecting that the fourth grade retention number will be significantly higher than the third-grade rate, because the law allows for fewer exemptions for those students.

Just weeks ago, the state board approved a complex formula for what constitutes enough improvement for fourth graders — but not before several members questioned whether the law is targeting the right age group.

“I just want to encourage us to keep moving in the direction of working with teachers who would say the earlier, the better. Let’s not wait,” said Larry Jensen, a board member from West Tennessee.

Board Chairman Robert Eby, from Oak Ridge, said the body’s decision Monday to send a message to elected officials falls in line with its duty to develop and maintain a master plan for K-12 public education.

“We don’t pass many resolutions,” Eby said. “I think it shows the importance we’re putting on this issue.”

Asked about the board’s resolution, a spokeswoman for the governor reiterated the law’s intent, supports, and impacts.

“Beginning in kindergarten, students have access to high-dosage tutoring and summer school programs that reinforce proven phonics-based instruction,” said Elizabeth Lane Johnson, Lee’s press secretary. “Parents and teachers can track their students’ progress through regular reading screening tests, so they can determine the right path forward based on the unique needs of each student.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Some Tennessee fourth graders have to meet individualized ‘adequate growth’ measure or risk retention

2024-02-17T00:43:57+00:00

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Thousands of Tennessee fourth graders will have to show during state testing this spring that they’ve made progress toward becoming better readers in order to move to the fifth grade, according to an “adequate growth” policy measure approved by the Tennessee board of education Friday.

But continued pushback against Tennessee’s 2021 reading law could prompt new advocacy and recommendations for changing it. Some board members said they would support lawmakers revisiting key pieces of the legislation meant to help struggling readers.

Their deliberations Friday suggested many members made their votes so that school districts and families could plan for what is coming, and not because they support the required growth measure in the law, which is the only pathway thousands of students may have to advance to fifth grade.

“Clarity is better than ambiguity,” said board member Nate Morrow, an education administrator.

Tennessee’s reading law gets pushback again as thousands of students could repeat fourth grade

Last year’s third graders were the first to face the threat of retention since the law took effect. While 60% of students were marked at-risk because of their scores on the state’s English and language arts subject test, just 1% of third graders were ultimately retained, according to state data.

About 15% of students advanced to fourth grade with the expectation that interventions like summer school or tutoring would help boost their reading skills. Retention in fourth grade will be unavoidable for these students, however, if they don’t score proficient on the test or meet their individualized “adequate growth” testing metric approved Friday by the state board.

David Laird, assistant commissioner of assessment and accountability at the Tennessee Department of Education, presented the proposed calculation for determining a student’s growth on the TCAP test. While the calculation is much more complex than the straightforward growth measure required for some third graders, it is individualized to each student, he explained.

The calculation looks at where a student was in third grade and makes a determination of how far that student has to go to reach proficiency during their public education, a metric that is “objectively a high bar … in Tennessee,” Laird said. He said recent tweaks to the calculation include consideration for retake exams and, for parts of the calculation, students’ scores in other subject areas. Department officials plan to provide districts with these growth projections for each student by the end of the month. (Read the specific calculation in part 7 of the policy.)

Laird said, “In all the different places we could have put the line for adequate growth, what does that actually help us understand in terms of kids actually becoming proficient at some point in time in the future?”

What remains to be seen, he said, is how effective the high dosage tutoring interventions have been for this student group.

Tennessee’s 3rd-grade retention law requires ‘adequate growth’ to advance. Here’s what that means.

Some board members voiced support for a set of resolutions board member Ryan Holt said he plans to bring to the board’s next special meeting in March. Holt, appointed in 2022, encouraged the board to exercise its advisory capacity and propose to the General Assembly a re-evaluation of the literacy law and to call on lawmakers to create more pathways for students to advance to the next grade with reading supports rather than be retained.

Krissi McInturff, a state board member who has been a fourth grade teacher, criticized the law’s lack of continued supports for fourth graders who still aren’t meeting Tennessee’s benchmarks and said she hoped lawmakers would consider changes.

“I believe up until the fourth grade growth component, they have done an amazing job getting students the support they need,” McInturff said. Tennessee third graders, for instance, can avoid retention by enrolling in summer school or tutoring. “But unless there is a pathway for fourth graders to move to fifth grade, this will be in all aspects a retention law.”

The Tennessee State Board of Education will hold a special meeting on March 4. Find the full meeting schedule and agenda information on the board’s website.

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee’s reading law gets pushback again as thousands of students could repeat fourth grade

2024-02-16T01:58:33+00:00

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Tennessee’s comprehensive pandemic-era literacy law, which last year provided several interventions to help struggling third grade readers advance to the fourth grade, offers no such escape hatches for those same students to avoid retention this year if they don’t show “adequate growth” under the 2021 law.

Now, as the State Board of Education prepares to vote Friday on what constitutes enough improvement for fourth graders who are at risk, state lawmakers are getting pushback from families whose students could be held back if they score poorly on state tests this spring, even after taking advantage of state-funded tutoring and summer learning programs.

At least 5,000 students are projected to fall in that category, according to the state education department. But some estimates put that number higher.

“I think we’re going to put so much pressure on these kids that it’s going to be a real mess,” said Sen. Rusty Crowe during a legislative hearing Wednesday.

The Johnson City Republican wants to revise the 2021 law so that students and parents who are engaged with their teachers in the learning process don’t get punished. He and Rep. Chris Hurt, a Halls Republican, have introduced legislation to let a struggling fourth grade reader’s teacher, principal, and parents decide collaboratively whether to retain the student based on multiple measures, not just state test results for English language arts under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program.

It’s uncertain whether the General Assembly is willing to revise the law again, especially after making several tweaks last year to widen the criteria for holding back third graders.

Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg repeatedly has said Gov. Bill Lee’s literacy law sets reasonable and appropriate expectations in the state’s long drive to improve reading proficiency.

“We’ve moved the needle from 30% to 40% proficiency [for third graders], but 40% still isn’t acceptable,” the Bristol Republican said at a January legislative hearing.

State board is required to define ‘adequate growth’

The State Board of Education appears poised to approve proposed policy changes that include a definition of “adequate growth” for fourth graders to get promoted if they don’t score as proficient readers this spring.

Chairman Robert Eby told lawmakers this week that he expects a full discussion Friday — but that members ultimately will follow the law, which directs the board to define adequate growth.

The proposed definition is tailored to each student, based on testing measurements that the state already uses to predict the probability that a student can become proficient by the eighth grade, when they take their last TCAP tests.

“It is complicated; it is not something that is easy to explain,” said Sara Morrison, executive director of the state board, during testimony before the Senate Education Committee.

“We do feel like it is statistically robust and makes sense,” she added. “But that doesn’t make it easy, and it doesn’t make it an easy decision for our board.”

Board members have received a lot of public feedback about the matter, including a letter this week from Erin O’Hara Block, a Nashville school board member who worked as Tennessee’s assistant commissioner for data and research in former Gov. Bill Haslam’s administration.

Block called the proposed calculations for measuring adequate growth “confusing,” and suggested that the real problem lies with the law itself.

“Instead of passing this revision of policy, I suggest that your board defer until a later date with a request that the legislature remove this portion of the law based on a lack of clear, transparent, viable, and implementable options,” she wrote.

In an interview Thursday with Chalkbeat, Block said state test scores are being misused because of the law. TCAP results were intended for diagnostic purposes, she said, not for high-stakes decisions such as holding a child back a year at school.

“This law was written quickly in the midst of a global pandemic and passed in a special legislative session. So why aren’t we revisiting it?” she asked.

Legislature drew a line in the sand

The law passed in 2021 during a weeklong session called by the governor to address pandemic-related learning disruptions. The same law created summer learning recovery camps that began that year and tutoring programs that started in 2022.

The interventions have proven popular to help students catch up, but the law’s retention provision — which began with last year’s class of third-graders — has been controversial.

Still, due to the intervention options and an appeals process that many families took advantage of, only about 900 third graders, or 1.2% from that class who took the test, were retained because of their reading scores.

The number of fourth graders expected to be retained this year will be significantly higher, officials say, based on the current law.

Research is mixed about whether holding students back helps or hurts them. Supporters say it spurs additional supports that struggling readers desperately need. Critics worry that retention falls disproportionately on student groups who are already marginalized, such as those who are of color or are economically disadvantaged.

During a workshop on Thursday, several State Board members questioned whether the law is even targeting the right age group — and Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds agreed. Intervention and retention policies aimed at kindergarten and first and second grades would be more effective, she said, adding that “third grade is too late.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Vouchers, school safety, retention: Key education issues to watch as Tennessee lawmakers return

2024-01-08T11:00:00+00:00

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Five years after a bruising legislative battle opened the door to private school vouchers in parts of Tennessee, lawmakers are preparing to take up a controversial bill to create a similar program statewide.

Gov. Bill Lee’s universal voucher proposal, which eventually would make all K-12 students eligible to use public funding to attend a private or home school, is expected to dominate debate after the 113th General Assembly reconvenes on Tuesday.

But other issues affecting students and educators are sure to emerge in a state where education reform has been front and center since 2010, when Tennessee won $500 million in the federal Race to the Top competition to jumpstart changes.

And if the last few years are any indication, a few surprises may surface in the months ahead. Politics and tragedy have shaken up the education priorities of several recent sessions, from an 11th-hour Republican drive in 2021 to restrict classroom discussions about racism and bias to last year’s deadly Nashville school shooting that led to new investments in campus safety and dramatic protests over Tennessee’s lax gun laws.

With the GOP supermajority setting the agenda again this year, here’s a look at some big issues to watch as the opening gavel falls.

School vouchers: Lee’s expansion plan renews long-running debate

In November, the governor said he’ll introduce a new Education Freedom Scholarship Act to offer $7,075 in taxpayer money for each of up to 20,000 students statewide next school year to attend a private or home school, with eligibility restrictions for half of them. In 2025, eligibility would open up to all students, regardless of their family’s income.

The proposal would mark a massive expansion of Tennessee’s voucher program, which is now limited to three urban counties and still under-enrolled. But more than a month after Lee’s announcement, few details have been released.

“I have yet to understand where the financing is coming from,” said Sen. Page Walley, a Republican whose district includes eight rural counties in West Tennessee.

“If we jump to statewide vouchers, I don’t see how we fund it without robbing Peter to pay Paul,” he added.

School safety: Renewed discussion, but no gun laws (it’s an election year)

Tennesseans were unnerved when an armed intruder shot and killed three children and three adults at a private Christian school in Nashville on March 27, in the middle of last year’s legislative session. And the growing impact of gun violence on kids across the state is undeniable.

But Republican lawmakers’ response last year was to further harden schools rather than entertain any proposals to restrict gun access — not even for people who are deemed at risk of hurting themselves or others, as the Nashville shooter had been.

“We’ll be back in January,” parents wanting stricter gun laws vowed in August after a special session on public safety yielded little action on guns.

Spectators watch the Tennessee Senate doing business at the State Capitol during a special legislative session on public safety in August 2023. Lawmakers were called back by Gov. Bill Lee after a mass school shooting in Nashville in March.

Some of them have organized news conferences and rallies at the Capitol this week for students, educators, and others to voice their concerns. Meanwhile, a group of parents from The Covenant School in Nashville, where the tragedy took place, say they’ll continue to advocate for changes to “ensure responsible firearm ownership, safe schools, and accessible adequate mental health care for all individuals across Tennessee.”

GOP leaders anticipate the legislature will revisit many of the proposals left on the table.

They include several measures to let certain citizens or school employees carry handguns in schools, and a bill to require all public and private schools to create alarm policies that differentiate emergencies for fire, weather, or an active shooter.

A new bill, from Republican Sen. Mark Pody of Lebanon and Rep. Susan Lynn of Mount Juliet, would let schools purchase lanyards equipped with emergency alert buttons for school staff to wear around their necks.

But don’t expect the legislature to look seriously at bills to restrict gun access in an election year, according to several key Republicans.

“I do not believe there’s an appetite or pathway to success for any legislation that might be introduced that is going to infringe on constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens,” said Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson, of Franklin.

With the latest State of the Child report ranking Tennessee near the bottom nationally for access to mental health resources, Johnson sees more room for discussion on that topic.

“I think a big conversation in the coming session will be how we strengthen our mental health safety net,” Johnson said, “as well as general access to mental health treatment in Tennessee.”

Third-grade reading law: Lawmakers may revisit retention provision — again

Last year, the legislature widened the criteria, beginning this school year, for determining which third graders are at risk of being held back if they aren’t deemed proficient readers under a 2021 law targeting pandemic learning lag.

Now under the same law, the state may have to retain thousands of fourth graders who test poorly this spring.

“I think we have to look into it,” said Rep. Mark White of Memphis, who chairs a House education committee. “We’ve probably got a lot of fourth graders who have already done summer school and tutoring but still won’t pass that test. It’s never a bad thing to have off-ramps and waivers.”

He added: “I want us to continue looking closer at kindergarten, first, and second grades so we’re not waiting until the third and fourth grades to address these challenges.”

But Sen. Jon Lundberg, who chairs his chamber’s education panel, is less inclined to make more changes in the 2021 law.

“We’ve set the standard for proficiency and for showing adequate growth, and I don’t want to move those,” he said.

Federal education funding: Talk about rejecting it looks like just talk, for now

House Speaker Cameron Sexton surprised many in his own party last year when he floated the idea of Tennessee rejecting more than a billion dollars in federal funding for students, which he said could be offset with state tax revenues.

In November, a task force appointed by Sexton and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally held hearings to explore the possibility. But Lundberg, the panel’s co-chairman, told Chalkbeat afterward that he didn’t expect the state to reject federal funds, even if it can find a way.

Legislative leaders polled by Chalkbeat last week said they haven’t heard of any legislation coming out of the hearings.

“It doesn’t hurt to know where our funding is coming from and how it’s being spent,” said White, the House’s education leader, said of the task force’s discussions, “but I don’t see that conversation going anywhere in the short term.”

Teacher shortages: Vacancies could lead to creative thinking

With Sexton declaring that Tennessee has enough state revenues to cover more than $1 billion in federal funding, plenty of public school advocates asked why the state wouldn’t use that excess instead to accelerate the governor’s plan to raise the minimum salary for teachers to $50,000 by 2027. (This year, the base is $42,000.)

Districts struggled to fill nearly 4,000 vacancies statewide last school year, especially in the middle grades, English as a second language, world languages, and special education, according to one report. And shortages of school bus drivers are a nationwide problem.

Lee told reporters that, while state revenues have flattened in recent months, Tennessee’s economy remains strong.

Gov. Bill Lee speaks with reporters on Thursday after a tour of a Nashville ministry. “We should probably look at our investments in public school funding and investments in teacher pay every year,” he said when asked about the prospect of accelerating pay increases.

“We should probably look at our investments in public school funding and investments in teacher pay every year,” he said when asked about the prospect of accelerating pay increases.

But with the teaching profession facing a post-pandemic crisis in Tennessee and nationally, the legislature could also pursue other avenues to elevate the profession.

Currently, the state covers less than half of health insurance premiums for its teachers, while state employees get 100% of their premiums covered. Moving teachers to the state employee plan could be a boost to both teachers and the local districts that employ them.

Professional Educators of Tennessee has also called on the legislature to develop policies to address child care access and affordability for teachers, more than 80% of whom are female.

“If you want to keep good teachers,” said Executive Director JC Bowman, “ease their burdens so they can focus on their work in school to educate and nurture our future generation.”

To follow this year’s legislative business, visit the General Assembly’s website for calendars, committees, legislation, and livestreams.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

How a George Floyd book event at Whitehaven H.S. got squeezed by Tennessee law

2023-11-07T16:24:27+00:00

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Students at Memphis’ Whitehaven High School got a chance last month to hear from journalists Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa, authors of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book on George Floyd — his life, his brutal killing by police in 2020, and its aftermath.

But the students didn’t get to hear any excerpts from “His Name Is George Floyd,” and they weren’t allowed to take home copies of the book from school. The authors had to give their presentation without going too deep into the book’s main theme of systemic racism.

Who determined the restrictions and why is unclear. The organizers of the event, a local partnership called Memphis Reads, said their instructions to the authors were based on guidance from the school district on complying with Tennessee law that requires that books used in school be “age appropriate.”

Memphis-Shelby County Schools officials disputed their account, but repeatedly declined to answer questions about what they told the organizers or how they interpreted the law. In an email to the authors after the event, district communications chief Cathryn Stout said MSCS did not run the book through its review process before the visit.

In the end, the authors told Chalkbeat, the students who gathered at Whitehaven that day were shortchanged by restricted access to the book and a censored experience.

“Neither Tolu nor I know who to cast blame on,” Samuels said. “I’m not sure we could, or we should.”

But the ambiguous restrictions in this and other Tennessee laws have caused concern at the local level about compliance, Samuels said, resulting in “messy, potentially explosive debates between entities that usually get along.”

What is Memphis Reads?

Memphis Reads is a 12-year-old community reading program based at Christian Brothers University.

Each year, a selection committee chooses a book and brings the author or authors to Memphis to speak at CBU and Rhodes College, another partner. The program focuses on first year students at each school, but expands to include students at one public high school. The selected book usually relates to Memphis in some way.

This year, for instance, a CBU assignment asked students to relate the book’s themes to Memphis, where five police officers were charged in the death of Tyre Nichols. Nichols died in January, three days after officers beat him during a traffic stop. His death brought on federal investigations that have pushed Memphis to reexamine the relationship between its police and its people.

The five officers were fired after an internal investigation. One of the officers accepted a plea deal Thursday.

“The whole point of it … . is that we want to build community one book at a time,” said Justin Brooks, who has led the event since 2021 as CBU’s director of community engagement.

George Floyd killing sparked a movement, then a backlash

Floyd was killed during an arrest in May 2020, when a Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee onto Floyd’s neck for several minutes. An onlooker’s video recording of the event went public, triggering a huge outcry and calls for and policing reform. The officer was ultimately convicted of second-degree murder.

Samuels and Olonnuripa’s book, written while both were reporters at the Washington Post, looks not just at the incident but also at how pervasive racism in education, criminal justice, housing, and health care systems shaped Floyd’s life. “We learned about the man himself … and much more than how he died,” Samuels said during a forum at Rhodes College.

They also wrote about what happened afterward: a season of demonstrations, dialogue, and unrest during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by what they call a “burgeoning backlash” to the racial justice movement, resulting in state laws across the country that stifled classroom discussions on race.

Tennessee was among the first states to legislate what public school students can — and cannot — be taught about race, gender, and bias. And the penalties are steep. Educators who violate the law may have their teaching licenses suspended or revoked. Districts can be fined for repeat offenses.

The authors of “His Name Is George Floyd” won 2023 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction.

MSCS officials and the Memphis Reads organizers did not specifically cite this law as a factor in what ultimately happened at Whitehaven, but the law nonetheless hangs over educators’ decisions about what topics are appropriate for classroom discussion. Two Memphis teachers are among five in Tennessee challenging the law in federal court.

Tennessee’s Age Appropriate Materials Act, meanwhile, requires schools to publish a list of what’s in their library collections online and develop policies to review and remove books that aren’t appropriate — a term that the law leaves undefined.

MSCS has leeway to interpret this law, but longstanding tensions between the majority-Black, Democratic-led city and the mostly white, GOP-dominated state government mean the district can ill afford to risk a fight with the state over the nuances of race and books.

Christian Brothers University runs the Memphis Reads program in partnership with other community groups. In communication with Chalkbeat, CBU cited the Age Appropriate Materials law as the reason it understood that books and materials couldn’t be distributed at the Whitehaven event and said that the guidance came from the Memphis school district.

CBU and other Memphis Reads partners “were under the instruction of MSCS leadership when completing the formatting and regulations concerning the Age-Appropriate Materials Act,” Justin Brooks, the CBU community engagement director who heads Memphis Reads, wrote in an email to Chalkbeat.

MSCS officials wouldn’t confirm that to Chalkbeat, or explain whether Tennessee’s law regulating classroom conversations about race influenced any restrictions.

In the email to the authors after the event, shared later with Chalkbeat, Stout wrote that time constraints prevented the district from going through its own process to approve the book. Stout wrote that the district regretted that their “experience was anything less than welcoming.”

“Given the new, more detailed process, it will take some time to coordinate, but please know that His Name Is George Floyd is now under consideration to be added to the Whitehaven High School library collection,” Stout wrote to the authors, “and we look forward to having conversations with other school communities as requests arise.”

Separately, Stout shared with Chalkbeat a copy of a description from library book distributor Baker & Taylor that categorizes the book as “adult” and among the American Library Association’s “Notable Books for Adults.”

Stout also wrote in a public social media comment explaining the district’s position that the American Library Association labeled “His Name is George Floyd” as “adult literature (18 and older).”

What the ‘adult’ label says about a book

ALA spokesperson Raymond Garcia told Chalkbeat that the group “does not rate books” for age appropriateness.

Booklist, a book review magazine published by the ALA — and listed among resources for librarians in an MSCS manual — uses its “adult” label not to be restrictive but to signal that a book would be of interest primarily to adults, Garcia said.

“His Name is George Floyd” is also categorized as “nonfiction” and “social sciences.”

If the label was a factor in the decision not to allow Memphis Reads to distribute the books at Whitehaven, then that’s an “inaccurate understanding” of the purpose of such book labels, said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, the director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom at the American Library Association.

“We can think of any kinds of works of literature that would have been originally rated as of interest to an adult reader that are absolutely fine for young people to read, and it’s not too controversial,” Caldwell-Stone told Chalkbeat, citing “To Kill a Mockingbird” as an example.

Nonetheless, the ambiguity in Tennessee’s standard of “appropriateness” creates gray areas and heightens the stakes for local districts concerned about avoiding a violation, Caldwell-Stone said.

If a person or district cannot risk breaking the law, “then you’re going to be very thoughtful about what books you offer,” she said, “and thereby limit the opportunities to learn and engage with all kinds of ideas, even controversial or difficult ideas.”

A spokesperson for the Tennessee Department of Education says MSCS did not reach out to the state for guidance, and MSCS didn’t respond to a question from Chalkbeat about that issue.

Thanks to a donation from the publisher, Viking Books, students who want a free copy of the book will be able to get one from Respect the Haven, a community development group in Whitehaven that’s part of Memphis Reads.

Whitehaven High School serves some 1,500 students and is known among Memphis for its school pride and focus on students’ post-secondary scholarship achievements. Almost all of its students are Black, and about half of them are from low-income families.

“This event basically got censored out of fear of violating some law,” said Jason Sharif, head of Respect the Haven. “With us being a predominantly Black city, a predominantly Black school district, you cannot keep books like this or stories like this from being told to Black students.”

Jason Sharif, head of Respect the Haven, a partner in Memphis Reads, said the Whitehaven H.S. event “got censored” out of concern about state law.

Students caught up in racial politics

By the time Samuels and Olorunnipa arrived at Whitehaven High School for the event on Oct. 26, they knew some of the restrictions they would have to operate under. The two reporters were prepared to tell students about the journalistic work that went into writing the book, but to avoid going into depth about many of the issues it raised.

Brooks, from Memphis Reads, had told them they wouldn’t be able to read directly from the book, or talk about the book’s discussion of how systemic racism created many barriers for Floyd, long before his arrest and killing. MSCS was involved in setting these restrictions, Brooks said. The district did not comment on its role.

Instead of an open question-and-answer period, five students were pre-selected to ask Samuels and Olorunnipa prepared questions, which was different from the open conversations at the two other panels that Memphis Reads organized. This was in line with MSCS protocol for events, Brooks said.

Brooks said it was CBU’s call to keep the event closed to media, out of concern for student safety. A Chalkbeat reporter attended two similar events at the college level.

Stout said Brooks and Sharif had created a narrative about the event that is “inconsistent” with the district’s point of view and its own initiatives. She highlighted a Memphis school integration curriculum and a social emotional learning curriculum involving the death of Tyre Nichols, a Black man who was fatally injured by Memphis police after a traffic stop in early 2023.

MSCS told Chalkbeat that it was glad Whitehaven students had the opportunity to hear the journalists speak, as did CBU in its own communication.

Authors Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa had early doubts about being part of an event at Whitehaven High School with restrictions on their speech, but said they were grateful for the opportunity.

And Samuels and Olorunnipa, who had early doubts about being part of an event with restrictions on their speech, said they were grateful for the opportunity, too. They were approached at the end of the event by a Whitehaven high schooler with a notebook full of questions who said he wanted to be a journalist. The authors relished the chance to expand what the student imagined for his future.

“Even through this period of backlash, we think it’s important to continue to push forward and continue to make a pathway for people who are caught up in the back and forth,” Olorunnipa said during another forum.

“A lot of these kids have nothing to do with the politics,” Olorunnipa added. “They are just trying to make it. They’re just trying to live their best lives. And sometimes they become pawns in our political fights.”

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Reading retests whittle down number of MSCS, Tennessee 3rd graders facing retention

2023-06-08T21:48:22+00:00

Update: June 8, 2023: This story has been updated with statewide results for the retest, provided to Chalkbeat by the Tennessee Department of Education on Thursday.

About 1 in 5 Memphis Shelby-County Schools third graders who took a state retest in reading last month succeeded in earning an easier path to fourth grade — about 1,200 students in all.

Roughly 500 students in the district did well enough on the retest to be able to go straight to fourth grade, without summer school or tutoring, according to results released Wednesday by the Tennessee Department of Education. The other 700 improved enough that they can choose either summer school or tutoring to advance, rather than having to attend both.

That still leaves large numbers of MSCS third graders — along with thousands more across the state — who may have to participate in both interventions to avoid being held back under the state’s strict new retention law for struggling readers.

Statewide, about 3,300 third graders scored proficient on the retest, and can head straight to fourth grade, according to updated data shared with Chalkbeat Thursday. That’s nearly 13% of third graders who took the test across the state. About 60% of third graders who didn’t score proficient in the spring tried the test a second time.

The district-level retest results released Wednesday give district and state officials a fuller picture of the impact of the 2021 law, which took effect with this year’s third graders.

The results didn’t account for students who successfully appeal their scores, and the ones who are exempt from the law because they have limited English proficiency or reading disabilities, or have been retained before.

But in MSCS, the state’s largest district, the retest made a difference for hundreds of students who were initially identified as being at risk for retention, based on their English language arts scores on the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program. About three-quarters of MSCS third graders didn’t score proficient on the initial test administered in the spring, one of the worst rates in the state.

Critics of the test have said it does not specifically measure reading skills, making it a poor criterion for determining whether third graders can be promoted.

Statewide, some 44,000 students, or 60% of third graders, did not demonstrate proficiency on the initial TCAP English language arts test.

But unlike most other Tennessee districts, MSCS got almost all the students who didn’t pass the first test to take a similar retest during the final weeks of school.

“We are proud of students who participated in the retake for exploring this pathway,” interim state Education Commissioner Sam Pearcy said in a statement about the scores.

Clay County Schools, a small district in north central Tennessee, reaped significant benefits from the retest. While only half the third graders eligible for a retest participated, three-fifths of them did well enough to score proficient and move automatically to fourth grade.

For most school districts, though, improvements from the retest were more modest.

Here are key takeaways from a review of the district-level results:

Half of Tennessee districts had between 10% and 20% of their students achieve proficiency on the retest.
A third of Tennessee districts had between 10% and 20% of students improve from the lowest performance level — “below” proficiency — to the next-highest level, “approaching” proficiency.
Just under half of Tennessee districts had fewer than 10% of students improve from “below” to “approaching.”
A little more than half of Tennessee districts had a retest participation rate of 50% or more.

Results for each district are in the chart below.

Correction: June 8, 2023: An earlier version of this story misstated the number of students who did not score proficient on the spring English language arts tests. It is 44,000, not 74,000.

Thomas Wilburn and Nadia Bey contributed data analysis.

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

For Memphis 3rd graders, threat of retention has hovered since kindergarten

2023-06-05T02:00:00+00:00

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With only a few days left in third grade, LaQuencher Sanders’ 8-year-old daughter, Kamryn, just wanted to be done with school.

She had been in the class of kindergartners who were sent home in March 2020 because of COVID. She was among the first-graders who had spent a year learning online as the pandemic raged. In second grade, her reading test scores got her flagged for retention under a new policy at Memphis-Shelby County Schools. To avoid being held back a grade, she had to attend summer school, and then tutoring throughout third grade.

This year, as the end of the year approached, she had a sense that her reading scores on the test she took in the spring may not be high enough for her to move on to fourth grade automatically. That meant that to avoid having to repeat the grade, she would likely face more summer school and another year of tutoring.

On the day her teacher was going to give her those scores, Kamryn arrived at school early, as usual. But at some point that morning, she walked out the front doors of her elementary school — and kept going. She walked a mile away, all by herself, before she stopped and asked for help. Police picked her up just before a major intersection and took her back to Kate Bond Elementary School.

All of it was just too much, she later explained to her mom.

“She told me that she was tired of school,” Sanders said.

Many third-graders across Tennessee found out in May that after a turbulent start to their education, they could be in for more testing, summer school, and tutoring, because they didn’t meet state requirements on a standardized reading test this spring. The interventions are dictated by a state law that took effect this year to improve literacy and deal with the legacy of learning loss during the pandemic.

LaQuencher Sanders’ daughter, Kamryn, usually loves school. But the stress of the third grade reading retention law prompted her to walk out of class — and keep walking.

Statewide, about 60% of third-graders did not meet the standard for proficiency. In MSCS alone, more than 6,000 students missed the mark.

It was the second time that this same cohort of MSCS students faced the threat of being held back over their reading scores. The district briefly had its own retention policy aimed at improving lagging performance in reading and targeted at last year’s second graders.

While the MSCS policy was based on a composite of 12 different scores, the new state law hinges on the results of a single test: the English language arts section of the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP.

When those scores came out in May, some families were caught by surprise. Others, like Kamryn’s, knew what was coming — more school days, and less break time.

But that didn’t make the reality any less difficult.

Local school boards opposed focus on a single test

Lauren Giovannetti was one of the surprised ones. Her 9-year-old son, Anders, recently got tested to join the district’s gifted-education program. He scored at or above grade level on four benchmark tests throughout the school year.

But on the TCAP test — the only one that matters for this year’s third graders under the retention law — he scored “approaching” proficiency, one step below proficient on the state’s four-level scale.

To avoid being held back, students in that level have to attend summer school or tutoring, unless they do well enough on a retest, successfully appeal their result, or qualify for an exemption. (Students with reading disabilities and a limited time learning English are exempt, as are students who have been held back before.)

Anders was sick and crying over the results, Giovannetti said. He went back to Grahamwood Elementary School to take the test again. By then, peers knew which students scored well enough to move on to fourth grade automatically, and which ones didn’t, Giovannetti explained, because the students who had to take the test again were pulled out of class.

“I just don’t understand why this is the only factor that they’re looking at for something that’s such a big deal,” said Giovannetti.

Local officials had expected the TCAP results, combined with the fresh threat of retention, to be jarring for some families. “Even third graders who are performing at grade level could be subject to retention,” school board members for MSCS and suburban districts wrote to lawmakers about the new legislation in 2021. Testing as proficient on the state test, they argued, is not the same as grade-level mastery.

They implored lawmakers to seek a “comprehensive assessment” of third graders’ performance, rather than using a single state test to flag students for retention, which they said could have “possible negative life-long effects.”

“It’s not appropriate to put this much pressure on a 9-year-old,” Giovannetti said.

Families in Memphis and across the state have united over their frustrations with the law, and lawmakers responded by accepting some proposed amendments, including one that expands the criteria by one test for certain students. But the changes won’t take effect until next school year.

Giovannetti’s son got the results of his retest on his last day of third grade. He was one correct answer shy of scoring “proficient” and heading straight to fourth grade.

Giovannetti submitted an appeal, based on Anders’ results from an earlier benchmark test. It was approved within days, she told Chalkbeat, leaving her to wonder why the earlier score couldn’t have been counted in the first place.

“There’s something off here, and I don’t think it’s 6,000 kids,” she said. “I think we need to look into this test, and make sure it’s really measuring what we want it to measure.”

Students went through two years with threat of retention

MSCS officials say they have tried to convey to students that they are more than just a test score. But the state law makes clear that the one score on the TCAP may determine how these students will spend their summer, and possibly their next year in school.

The district sought a more accurate assessment of a student’s reading capabilities by introducing its own retention policy for second graders. Other states were already implementing reading retention policies, and there was one on the books in Tennessee that allowed schools the option to retain students based on third grade reading scores.

The board approved the policy in 2019, as the district was staring down a lofty literacy goal and stagnant reading scores. At the time, this year’s third graders were entering kindergarten, and school officials were stressing the importance of literacy as a gateway to advanced learning.

District officials considered delaying implementation of the policy because of the pandemic, but decided not to, on the basis that third grade would be too late to intervene. So the threat of retention trailed students into their second grade classrooms as they returned from a year of online school.

Giovannetti recalls second grade being intense, as teachers prepared students for third grade. Her son made it through to third grade without having to attend summer school. This year, she said, the state’s retention law for third graders was “kind of all we heard about.”

The district’s retention policy doesn’t exist anymore. MSCS revoked it in August without much discussion.

But by then, the learning setbacks caused by online schooling, which continued in MSCS well after other Tennessee districts resumed in-person school instruction, had already prompted Tennessee lawmakers to enact a statewide policy, but based on just the one test. So the retention threat followed these students into third grade.

“We were ahead of the game,” Angela Whitelaw, then one of two MSCS acting superintendents, told board members in an August committee meeting. “But now we need to align all of our resources and all of our work along with the state.”

Facing more school, student ‘wanted to go home’

Sanders, Kamryn’s mother, said she’s been keeping up with parent meetings and all the online communication from school that her daughter brings home.

Even before the scores arrived, third grade teachers had been talking about retests, and some students, including Kamryn, had already been signed up for summer school, based on anticipated results.

The walkout incident was shocking, Sanders said, because her daughter has always seemed to love school.

She had to attend summer school last year and tutoring throughout the year for reading. But that hadn’t stopped her from enjoying other subjects, like art and music. And in math, she helped her classmates learn their multiplication tables, her mom said.

On that day, “she just said she wanted to go home,” Sanders said.

In a statement about the girl’s experience, the district said counseling and other emotional supports are available to students, and that her school still had fun end-of-year activities.

“Districtwide, we’re working hard to uplift and celebrate our third graders,” the district said, “because we know the state-mandated reading retention law has deeply affected these little learners.”

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

More Tennessee 3rd graders tested proficient in reading this year, but 60% face risk of retention

2023-05-22T21:20:36+00:00

Tennessee’s third-grade reading proficiency rate jumped by more than 4 percentage points to 40% on this year’s state tests.

But that means up to 60% of its third graders could be at risk of being held back under the state’s tough new retention law.

The results, based on preliminary scores, showed some level of improvement in all four of the state’s reading performance categories. The percentage of third graders who scored as advanced readers, the state’s top performance category, rose 3 percentage points to 13%, the largest figure in over a decade.

Tennessee released the statewide data Monday as families began receiving news about whether their third graders scored well enough on spring tests to move on to fourth grade.

While the state won’t release the final scores until this summer, the preliminary scores offer the first statewide glimpse at the effects of a controversial 2021 law passed in an effort to stem pandemic learning loss and boost Tennessee’s long-lagging scores for reading.

Gov. Bill Lee, who championed the 2021 law, called the gains “historic.”

And Penny Schwinn, the state’s outgoing education commissioner, pointed to Tennessee’s new investments and strategies for literacy, including an array of programs to train teachers on phonics-based reading instruction.

“While we still have a long way to go before we reach the goals laid out in legislation,” Schwinn said, “I appreciate the ongoing efforts of Tennessee schools as they implement summer and tutoring programs to provide students not yet on grade level with the supports they need to thrive.”

Scores set students on varying pathways to promotion

Tennessee has about 74,000 third graders. The early data showed 35% scored as “approaching” proficiency, down 1 percentage point from last year; and 25% scored “below” proficiency, down by 3 percentage points last year in the state’s bottom category. Another 27% were deemed to have met the state’s threshold for reading, up 2 percentage points from last year.

Those who weren’t deemed proficient readers may retake the test this week to try to improve their score, or may have to attend learning camps this summer or tutoring sessions this fall to be eligible to advance to fourth grade.

But the state’s numbers do not factor in students who are automatically exempt under the law. Those include third graders with a disability or suspected disability that affects reading; students who have been previously retained; and English language learners with less than two years of instruction in English language arts.

“Exemption decisions will be dealt with at the local level, in compliance with the law,” said Brian Blackley, a state education department spokesman.

District officials spent the weekend analyzing preliminary scores that the department shared with school leaders late Friday afternoon.

Knox County Schools was among the first school systems to report district-level results, with more than a third of its third graders at risk of retention. The district shared scores with families on Friday night and gave them until Sunday to sign up their child to retest this week. More than 1,200 Knox County third graders retook the test on Monday, said spokeswoman Carly Harrington.

About 38% of Nashville students face possible retention based on an analysis of performance and exemptions by Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools.

Chattanooga-based Hamilton County Schools reported that more than one-fifth of its third graders either did not score proficient in reading, or did not meet the state’s exemption criteria. “We are in the process of notifying families right now,” spokesman Steve Doremus said Monday.

In Rutherford County Schools, a large suburban district south of Nashville, about 30% of third graders may have to satisfy additional learning requirements to be eligible to advance to fourth grade.

School officials in Memphis did not immediately answer Chalkbeat’s questions about third-grade performance.

“We’re working to support the families of our third-grade students over the next few days as they prepare for retests, appeals, our MSCS Summer Learning Academy, and end-of-year celebrations,” Memphis-Shelby County Schools said in a statement.

In releasing statewide data on Monday, the department reversed course from its stance last week.

Historically, the state has not publicly released data from preliminary student-level scores, which are protected by federal confidentiality laws. Blackley said Friday that would continue to be the case. On Monday, however, he said the public release of some statewide results was an attempt to increase transparency because of the high stakes for third graders.

“We understand there’s a lot of interest,” he said, “so we wanted to give a comprehensive view of third-grade data for English language arts as soon as possible.”

Critics of retention law step up their criticisms

This year’s third graders were the youngest students affected by school disruptions during the pandemic. Their kindergarten year was shortened by three months when Gov. Bill Lee urged public school officials to close their buildings in March 2020 to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

Lee later called the legislature in for a special 2021 session to address ongoing learning disruptions. Lawmakers authorized the creation of summer programs and tutoring during the school year for elementary and middle school grades, while also approving new reading proficiency requirements for third graders to advance, beginning this school year.

The resulting state-funded learning interventions have proven popular, but the retention policy has received widespread criticism.

It’s “worth remembering this broken 3rd grade retention policy was rushed into law during a 4-day special session without any input from educators or families,” state Sen. Jeff Yarbro tweeted over the weekend.

The Nashville Democrat questioned the adequacy of the state’s financial investment in education, its interpretation of scores from the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, and the law’s focus on third graders.

“Maybe, just maybe, our efforts should focus on instruction & interventions in K-2 (if not earlier),” Yarbro wrote.

In Memphis, Sen. Raumesh Akbari said the possibility of holding back thousands of third graders based on a single test score was “manufactured chaos.”

“There are so many student interventions we could be supporting to improve reading comprehension. High-stakes testing, with the threat of failing third grade, is not one of them,” said Akbari, who chairs the Senate Democratic Caucus.

Many school officials also question whether TCAP is the best measure of a child’s ability to read.

“The promotion requirements around one TCAP data point don’t portray simple ‘reading ability,’” Rutherford County Schools Superintendent James Sullivan said in a statement.

“Instead,” he said, “the TCAP third grade English Language Arts assessment is a measure of a student’s performance on all Tennessee Academic ELA Standards including the ability to interact, decipher, comprehend, and analyze comprehensive text.”

Adrienne Battle, director of schools in Nashville, said her district did not agree with the law’s retention policy, but is working with its families to navigate the law’s impacts.

“It is important for children, parents, and the community to understand that if a student didn’t score proficient on this one test, it does not mean they failed, that they cannot read, or that they are not making learning progress,” Battle said. “Tennessee has some of the highest standards in the nation for student expectations.”

Local pushback caused legislators to revisit the law during their most recent legislative session. Among other things, lawmakers widened criteria for determining which third graders are at risk of being held back, but the changes won’t take effect until next school year.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Laura Testino contributed to this report from Memphis. Contact her at ltestino@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee’s 3rd-grade retention law requires ‘adequate growth’ to advance. Here’s what that means.

2023-05-19T22:15:06+00:00

When Tennessee lawmakers passed a tough third-grade retention law in 2021, they ordered districts to provide academic interventions like summer learning camps to help struggling readers get promoted on time.

The law also says third graders who score just below reading proficiency must show “adequate growth” on a test given at the end of those camps in order to advance to fourth grade.

But the statute didn’t define “adequate growth,” and policymakers have debated ever since what that ambiguity means.

On Friday, the State Board of Education provided an answer: To get promoted, students who scored as “approaching” reading proficiency on their state test this spring must improve by at least 5 percentage points on another state test given at the end of their summer learning program.

“This definition is intended to capture a reasonable amount of growth a student could achieve during the four-week camp, relative to the student’s achievement during an entire school year,” said Sam Pearcy, Tennessee’s deputy education commissioner, while presenting his department’s recommendation to the board.

The definition was the most pressing question lingering over the controversial new retention policy outlined in the state’s 2021 learning acceleration law. That policy, which kicks in with this year’s third graders, is expected to cause thousands of students to attend summer school in the next few months or undergo tutoring next school year to avoid being held back.

Questions and complaints pick up as score data goes out

Members of the state board said they’ve received other questions daily about the law — everything from tutoring access to how to appeal to the state to get exempted from the policy. State-provided tutoring is Tennessee’s other intervention program for struggling readers under the 2021 law.

“We’re going to continue to work through the process,” board Chairman Bob Eby, of Oak Ridge, said Friday. “It’s not perfect, but the intent is right.”

Warren Wells, a board member from Shelbyville, said critics have called the retention law “ridiculous” and said that it “wasn’t thought through.” But he countered that it was the right response to unprecedented learning disruptions caused by the pandemic.

“This year is going to be hard,” Wells acknowledged, “but we are going to continue to look at it and make sure that we make the best decisions for the future of our children.”

Also late Friday afternoon, school districts received preliminary scores from the state tests taken this spring, kicking off a busy few days of analysis and communication with parents about what those results mean. Most families should have information by Monday or Tuesday about how their third grader performed, so that they can make decisions about whether their student should retest next week to try for a better result, or will have to enter learning intervention programs this summer or fall.

The preliminary testing information won’t be publicly released, however, said Brian Blackley, a spokesman for the education department.

Early reading scores for individual third graders are confidential, said Blackley, and “meant to give districts prompt, actionable data as quickly as possible to help students and families.”

Statewide and district-level results from the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP, will be released publicly this summer, he added.

Board irons out a wrinkle in ‘adequate growth’ policy

Before approving the definition for “adequate growth,” the board made a late change to the department’s recommendation to address concerns that some third graders who scored “approaching” proficiency this spring could unwittingly be penalized for retaking their reading test next week.

If those students improve their baseline score on the do-over but still aren’t deemed proficient readers, they would have to score even higher on the summertime post-test to improve by 5 percentage points.

“Then there’s no incentive for the individual to take that retake test,” Eby said.

For such cases, the board set spring TCAPs, not the retake assessment, as the baseline test.

The “adequate growth” requirement will not apply to students who scored “below” proficiency, the state’s bottom category, on either the TCAP or retake tests. The law requires those students to participate in both a summer learning camp and state-funded tutoring throughout fourth grade to get promoted.

All rising fourth graders who participate in summer camps also must maintain a 90% attendance rate in those programs, as stipulated in the law.

School leaders welcome answers

The post-test won’t be the TCAP, but state officials say testing vendor Pearson is developing the assessment to be a “TCAP-style” test. Questions will align with state academic standards, and the test will not include the writing portion that TCAPs do.

“Post-test results are able to be returned immediately because they exclude a writing component which takes more time to score,” according to one state document. “Adequate growth calculations will be returned within five business days of the administration of the post-test.”

While third-grade TCAPs were conducted with pencil and paper, the post-test will be conducted on devices using Schoolnet, an online platform launched by the state in 2020 to provide free and optional assessments to school systems.

Districts must use Schoolnet to give retake tests next week, as well as tests at the end of summer camp. Many schools already use Schoolnet to give extra benchmark tests to third graders during the school year, and the state delivered last year’s summer post-test via the platform as well.

Several district leaders told Chalkbeat they were comfortable with the state’s newly set growth bar.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools already targets growth of 3 to 5 percentage points during each of its three tutoring terms during the school year.

“So 5 percentage points is pretty close to the gauge we’re using internally for tutoring,” said district spokeswoman Cathryn Stout. “It’s on the high end, but it’s in the realm of possibility.”

Breckan Duckworth, who oversees summer programming for Hamilton County Schools, said it’s difficult to gauge whether the state’s growth definition is reasonable because it depends on whether the post-test is as rigorous as TCAPs.

“I do know that our kids tend to show growth and do well on the assessments that are provided during summer programming,” Duckworth said.

“Would I be happier if it was a little lower than 5 percentage points? Absolutely,” she said. “But at this point, it’s not going to keep me up at night.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Reading test scores go out today in Tennessee. The stakes are higher than ever for third graders.

2023-05-19T10:00:00+00:00

The end of the school year — typically days of celebrations and send-offs — will be filled instead with more high-stakes testing and weighty decisions about summer school for thousands of third-grade students under Tennessee’s new learning and retention law.

On Friday, school districts are scheduled to receive preliminary scores from state tests given this spring, kicking off a busy few days of analysis and communication with parents about what those results mean.

Most families should have information by Monday or Tuesday about how their third grader performed.

Students scoring as proficient readers will advance to the fourth grade, as expected. And third graders who scored below proficiency can retake a reading test next week to try for a better result. Students who still score below proficiency on the retest must enter learning intervention programs as soon as this summer or fall to help them catch up, or they can present their case to the state on why they should be exempted.

The dizzying pace was set in motion by a 2021 law that drew a line in the sand on reading proficiency beginning with this year’s class of third graders. Those students were kindergarteners when the pandemic hit and ushered in unprecedented disruptions to learning.

Memphis mom Charmeal Neely-Alexander says the state’s new third-grade policy is the latest example of how school has been tough from the start for her daughter, now 9: The pandemic interruptions began in kindergarten, and now there’s the pressure of high-stakes testing.

“I’ve never seen anything so daunting,” Neely-Alexander said of the consequences attached to this year’s Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, known as TCAP.

Students ‘approaching’ proficiency have two options

While the precise number of third graders at risk won’t be known until after Friday’s data dump, 64% of last year’s third graders — almost 46,000 students — would have been identified as eligible for retention had the new policy been in place for them, according to a recent state comptroller’s report. That number, however, does not factor in exemptions or appeals that are expected to significantly decrease the actual number of students at risk for retention this year. (For instance, students who have a disability or suspected disability that affects reading are exempt from the new policy.)

In short, the law says third graders who score as “approaching” reading proficiency have two options to advance to the fourth grade: They must either attend a summer learning camp and maintain a 90% attendance rate, then show adequate growth on a test administered at the end of the program; or they must take advantage of state-funded tutoring throughout the 2023-24 school year.

Third graders who score in the bottom category of readers known as “below” must participate in both intervention programs to get promoted to fourth grade.

Most districts are strongly urging students who either scored in the bottom two categories or missed the spring TCAPs due to illness to test again during the state’s window for retesting between May 22 and June 5. Officials with the state education department say their testing vendor will return new scores within 48 hours after those tests are submitted.

But the state’s largest district, Memphis-Shelby County Schools, is making the testing do-over mandatory for third graders at risk of retention.

“It’s another opportunity for the child to score proficient,” said Chief Academic Officer Jaron Carson.

“We’re going to make the most of the time we have,” added district spokeswoman Cathryn Stout, noting that the school year doesn’t end in Memphis until May 26.

Thousands register for summer learning programs

Meanwhile, because of the tight timeline at the end of the school year, administrators have been encouraging families to register their third graders for summer learning camps before they know the test results. Many districts are beginning those programs in early June.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools expects about 2,700 third graders to participate in summer learning academies hosted by 21 schools June 20 to July 19. That’s out of about 6,000 third graders in the school system’s district-run schools.

Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools has 3,600-plus students — more than half of its third-grade class — signed up for its summer program that begins on June 1, while Knox County Schools has more than 1,500 of its 4,500 third graders registered for camps that start June 5. In Hamilton County, more than a third of its 3,300 third graders are signed up to participate, also beginning on June 5.

The numbers are expected to fluctuate significantly, however, in the next few weeks, depending on TCAP and retest results.

“We will keep registration open throughout the end of the school year to ensure every third-grade student who needs a seat has one,” said Sean Braisted, spokesman for Nashville’s district.

Flexibility is key to staffing this year’s summer camps

School leaders and teachers have been communicating with third-grade families throughout the school year about the new law and its significant implications for their students.

They’ve also been planning how to quickly scale up their summer programs for third graders, especially related to staffing, depending on how many students ultimately show up.

“We have to prioritize summer learning experiences for rising fourth graders because of the implications of law, and that has meant limiting the enrollment of other grade levels for the first time since these camps were offered,” said Erin Phillips, executive director of learning and literacy for Knox County Schools.

“That’s a challenge,” she continued, “because we want to do what’s best for every student. But we know we have to prioritize that rising fourth-grade group. We have to have enough staff.”

For Memphis-Shelby County Schools, staffing is already in place to accommodate an influx of third graders, says Stout, thanks in part to a $2,000 bonus being paid to those teachers, in addition to a $31-an-hour wage.

“We feel confident that we’ll be fully staffed,” she said. “It’s important to remember that 1 in 4 MSCS students attended some type of summer program with us last summer, so it’s given us a lot of experience and served almost as a preview of what to expect this year.”

Breckan Duckworth, who oversees summer programming for Hamilton County Schools, said many teachers have become accustomed to the extra pay after working in state-mandated summer programs the last three years.

“For the first time, we’ve not had any problem with staffing summer programs,” Duckworth said. “We’ve actually had to turn away a few classified staff and certified teachers because we don’t have a spot for them.”

Interventions are disruptive, but designed to help

For Neely-Alexander, the Memphis mom, all of the classroom focus on TCAP testing felt “rushed” this year. And she’s bothered that the summer camp could be mandatory. But she still views the learning interventions as a win-win for her daughter, who will spend the summer with other kids, since it will also provide her family with free summer child care.

Regardless of her daughter’s scores, “she’s going to go anyway to the summer learning academy,” Neely-Alexander said.

As for school leaders, their messaging about required interventions has focused on extra opportunities to support struggling readers, not judging them for needing extra support.

“We know that for some families, this will interrupt their summer plans and there’s a mix of emotions involved,” said Stout, with the Memphis district. “But we also know that 1 in 7 people in Shelby County struggles with literacy. I hope that, as a community, we really rally around these students.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Laura Testino contributed to this report from Memphis. Contact her at ltestino@chalkbeat.org.

Bill to ease Tennessee’s third-grade reading and retention law clears first legislative hurdle

2023-03-15T10:00:00+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Sign up for our free Tennessee newsletter to keep up with the Shelby County public school system and state education policy.

State lawmakers advanced legislation Tuesday that would put fewer third graders at risk of being held back this year under Tennessee’s 2021 reading law.

The law, which pins retention decisions on how well a student scores in English language arts on the annual Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program test, would be revised to consider results from a second state-approved test, too — but only for third graders who score just under the state’s proficiency threshold on their TCAP.

The legislation also would direct the state Board of Education to develop rules for appealing any retention decision for students who scored as approaching proficiency.

And it would require that any public school student held back in kindergarten, first grade, or second grade undergo tutoring during their following school year.

The House K-12 subcommittee advanced the measure — which was similar to legislation filed last week by House Education Committee Chairman Mark White — after studying a flurry of other bills to revise the law. Parents, educators, and school boards have flooded lawmakers’ offices with complaints about the state’s stricter retention policy, which takes effect with this year’s class of third graders.

Committee members ultimately rallied around the compromise bill that passed on a voice vote. The measure widens reading test criteria for retention but keeps the state, not local educators, in control of those decisions.

The legislation still faces multiple votes in the House and Senate and could put lawmakers at odds with Gov. Bill Lee. The Republican governor pressed for the law and is urging the legislature to stay the course on the state’s literacy strategy.

His strategy draws a clear line in the sand to prevent “social promotions” and includes free tutoring and summer learning camps to help struggling students catch up on learning, as well as options for retesting third-graders who are at risk of being retained.

“Contrary to what critics will say, Tennessee’s reading success plan is about moving kids forward, not holding them back,” Lee wrote in a recent editorial published by The Tennessean.

A spokeswoman for the governor offered no further comment Tuesday night when asked about the bill’s advancement.

But the leader of the state’s largest teacher organization called it a “positive step.”

“Multiple measures are important when understanding student achievement for young children,” said Tanya Coats, president of the Tennessee Education Association. “A year-end test that runs for 180 minutes for 8- and 9-year-olds should not be the only way we understand where students are in English language arts.”

Only a third of Tennessee students read on grade level, according to state testing data. The existing law puts tens of thousands of third graders — and more than 2,700 students in Memphis-Shelby County Schools, the state’s largest district — at risk of being held back this year if they do not take advantage of summer learning opportunities and tutoring.

“We don’t always get it perfect the first time,” said Rep. Sam McKenzie, a Knoxville Democrat, calling the proposed changes an improvement.

Asked by McKenzie what percentage of third graders would be at risk of retention under the proposed changes, the bill’s sponsors could not give an accurate estimate but said there would be an impact.

“There would be more retained if we didn’t pass this bill,” said Rep. Scott Cepicky, a Culleoka Republican, who is carrying the bill in the House for White.

Third grade is considered a critical marker for reading, which is considered foundational to all subsequent learning. But while the law is intended to set children up for success in school, critics say the retention policy could have significant unintended negative consequences by shaming students who are already struggling. And they note that children from low-income families are more likely to be retained in the early grades because they have limited access to high-quality early childhood education and support at home.

Most research suggests that retention has, on average, null or negative effects on students, and that it’s also linked strongly to dropping out of high school.

You can track the bill on the General Assembly’s website. To learn more about Tennessee’s current retention policy, visit the state education department’s answers to frequently asked questions.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tenn. legislative leader wants to widen reading test criteria for determining third-grade retention

2023-03-07T11:00:00+00:00

A leading House Republican has filed legislation in Tennessee to widen criteria for determining which third graders are at risk of being held back if they aren’t deemed proficient readers.

A 2021 law pins the entire decision on scores from the state’s annual TCAP test given each spring for English language arts. But a proposal filed Monday by Rep. Mark White would consider results from a second state-approved test, too.

Under White’s legislation, third graders who don’t score as proficient on their TCAP could still avoid retention and related learning interventions if they score in at least the 50th percentile on their most recent reading benchmark test. Districts give those assessments periodically throughout the school year to measure students’ reading skills, fluency, and comprehension.

White is seeking to satisfy educators and parents who are unhappy that the state’s new retention policy hinges on scores from a single state test that could impact tens of thousands of third graders this year. However, his proposal would not give authority back to local educators to make the final decision, as called for by numerous school boards, the state superintendents association, and several teacher groups.

At the outset of this year’s General Assembly, legislative leaders said revisiting the controversial reading and retention law was their No. 1 education priority. Lawmakers have filed a flurry of bills with various ideas.

White’s legislation includes components from several of those bills but carries particular sway, because the Memphis Republican chairs the House Education Administration Committee and also sits on a K-12 subcommittee that is deciding which proposal moves forward. The Senate, where Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg is co-sponsoring White’s bill, is letting the House take the lead on vetting any proposed revisions.

After holding a legislative hearing last month on Tennessee’s reading problem, White huddled in recent days with other House GOP leaders to try to reach a consensus on how to address local concerns about the controversial law, which Republican Gov. Bill Lee pushed for as a key part of Tennessee’s pandemic learning recovery plan.

The law also created summer learning camps and tutoring programs to support students who are struggling in reading and math and to provide avenues to avoid retention if they don’t test as proficient readers in the third grade, which is considered a critical marker for learning in subsequent grades.

The K-12 subcommittee, chaired by Republican Rep. Kirk Haston, from Lobelville, is scheduled to discuss the various bills on March 14.

In addition to adding benchmark test results to the retention equation, White’s legislation seeks to make clear that a parent or guardian can appeal a retention decision under certain circumstances, or give written permission for their child’s teacher, guidance counselor, or school administrator to file an appeal.

White also proposes a new requirement that any public school student held back in kindergarten, first grade, or second grade be assigned a tutor and undergo tutoring for the entire next school year.

You can read White’s amendment below.

Tennessee looks to ‘Mississippi miracle’ as it grapples with stagnant reading scores

2023-03-01T17:29:52+00:00

Tennessee, which once counted on Mississippi’s worst-in-the-nation reading scores to elevate its own national ranking for literacy, is now looking to its neighbor to the south as a role model for how to improve.

In a turnaround dubbed the “Mississippi miracle,” the state saw its fourth-grade reading scores on a national test rise dramatically between 2013 and 2019, even for historically marginalized groups like Black and Hispanic students. Mississippi also maintained its reading gains in 2022, while scores in most other states declined after the pandemic caused unprecedented disruptions to schooling.

Now under several 2021 laws, Tennessee is employing many of the same tactics that Mississippi did under its 2013 law. Among them: prioritizing reading improvements and investments in grades K-3, training teachers on the “science of reading,” including an emphasis on phonics, and — most controversial of all — requiring third graders to pass a state reading test to get promoted to the fourth grade.

Carey Wright, Mississippi’s education chief from 2013 to 2022, praised Tennessee during testimony Wednesday before state lawmakers in Nashville who are considering whether to make changes to Tennessee’s policies for holding third graders back.

“You are really to be commended for the comprehensive nature in which you’ve approached this topic,” she said, noting that Tennessee has even required its teacher training programs to change how they teach reading instruction, which Mississippi did not.

Wright cited a recent Boston University study finding that Mississippi third-graders who were retained under that state’s law went on to achieve substantially higher scores in English language arts by the sixth grade. The study also found that retention had no impact on other outcomes such as attendance or identification for special education.

But national research about retention is mixed. Critics argue that there are more risks than benefits — from negative social and emotional effects to a disproportionate impact on student groups who are already marginalized, such as those who come from low-income families, are of color, or have disabilities.

Why Tennessee zeroed in on third grade

Literacy is foundational to all subsequent learning, and third grade is considered a critical marker. As the old saying goes: You learn to read up until the third grade, and after that, you read to learn.

But for years, reading scores have been mostly stagnant in Tennessee, with only about a third of the state’s third graders showing proficiency based on state tests.

In 2011, lawmakers passed a retention law to try to address the problem, but the statute was largely unenforced, with few third graders being held back by local school leaders.

“So here we are 12 years later having the same discussion,” said Rep. Mark White, who chairs the House Education Administration Committee and helped pass the state’s new reading and retention policies.

“I personally am grateful that we passed a retention law … because now we have everybody’s attention,” the Memphis Republican said to kick off Wednesday’s hearing.

House leaders have compiled a list of 14 bills that aim to revise or tweak the law. They range from gutting the retention provision altogether to giving local districts more authority to determine which students should be held back. Gov. Bill Lee pressed for the 2021 law and wants to stay the course.

To avoid retention, the law says third graders whose scores on state tests show they are “approaching” proficiency must attend a summer camp and demonstrate “adequate growth” on a test administered at the camp’s end, or they must participate in a tutoring program in the fourth grade. Students who score “below” proficiency must participate in both intervention programs.

Third graders are exempt from retention if they were held back in a previous grade; have or may have a disability that affects reading; are English language learners with less than two years of English instruction; or retest as proficient before the beginning of fourth grade.

Parents also can appeal a retention decision if their child performed at the 40th percentile on a different test that allows for comparisons with national benchmarks, or if the child experienced an event that reasonably impacted the child’s performance on the TCAP test. The appeal can be based on other criteria such as results from locally administered screening tests required by the state.

Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn has shepherded Gov. Bill Lee’s reading improvement plan including Reading 360, an array of programs to train teachers on reading instruction, provide more resources and mentoring networks to school districts, and support families to help their children read better.

Pushback against retention is widespread

While Tennessee’s tutoring and summer learning programs are popular, many parents and educators dislike the part of the law that makes results of the state’s standardized TCAP test for English language arts the only criterion to determine whether third-graders can progress to the fourth grade. Numerous school boards also have passed resolutions urging the legislature to revisit the new retention policy.

On Wednesday, several district superintendents echoed that call.

“I respectfully ask that you allow districts to use multiple data points when making the monumental decision to retain a student, which can have serious long-term consequences,” said Gary Lilly, director of Collierville Schools in Shelby County.

Beyond the state’s test, school districts generally give students multiple assessments that are specifically designed to gauge reading progress. All of those results could be considered, Lilly said, along with other factors such as a student’s overall achievement, attendance record, and emotional and social maturity.

Lilly noted that Tennessee also has among the nation’s highest thresholds for measuring proficiency. The state began working to raise them when a 2007 U.S. Chamber of Commerce report gave Tennessee an “F” for truth in advertising, because its standards were so low that most students were deemed proficient.

But Lilly suggested that Tennessee may want to rethink those high thresholds.

“I am not advocating to decrease the rigor of our standards,” he said. “What I am saying is that the TCAP test should not be viewed as the definitive authority to target students for retention.”

Another concern is the state’s one-year timeline for implementing the new retention policy at scale, affecting third graders who score either “approaching” proficiency or “below basic.” Some district leaders have argued that starting just with the students who score “below basic,” which is Tennessee’s lowest-performing category, would be a more targeted and logistically feasible approach.

Jeanne Barker, director of Lenoir City Schools, said her district won’t receive TCAP results until after the school year ends, leaving little time for students to take the test over or for families to decide about attending summer learning camps or appealing retention decisions to the state education department.

Penny Schwinn, Tennessee’s education commissioner, acknowledged the “tight timeline” but testified that no parent should be surprised by the end of the school year if their child is identified as having a reading deficiency.

“Parents should be receiving notification that their child may be at risk for needing additional supports two times before we even get into testing season,” said Schwinn, adding that preliminary TCAP results will become available the week of May 19.

Advocates look beyond third grade

Policy conversations that began with third grade reading continue to gravitate toward earlier grades.

Wright said Mississippi’s playbook emphasized the importance of literacy instruction and interventions for struggling readers as early as possible.

“My goal was that, by the time third grade came around, there shouldn’t even be an issue around third grade,” she said. “We should have captured those kids a long time ago and made sure that they were getting the interventions and the help that they needed.”

Tennessee education advocates shared similar sentiments.

Nancy Dishner, president and CEO of the Niswonger Foundation supporting students and educators in East Tennessee, said her biggest concern about Tennessee’s current initiative is that “we’re not doing it early enough.”

“We have to move back,” Dishner said. “Birth is when we need to start helping our kids, not when they enter elementary school.”

Amy Doren, a 35-year educator and former coordinator of early childhood programs at Kingsport City Schools, agreed.

“Children’s brains develop 90% to capacity by age 5. So why would we not seek to make an impact in those early years?” Doren asked. “That’s where we want our children to learn to be problem-solvers and critical thinkers, so that when they get to the third grade, they’ll be ready to handle it.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated on March 1, 2023, to add that parents can appeal a retention decision based on the results of locally administered, state-required screening tests; and to clarify that the one-year timeline for implementing the third-grade retention policy “at scale” refers to potentially holding back students in two scoring categories, versus starting just with the lowest-performing category.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Bill to clarify Tennessee school library law would exempt classroom book collections from scrutiny

2023-03-01T00:34:44+00:00

When Tennessee enacted a 2022 law requiring each public school to publish a list of its library books online for parents to see, many educators were surprised later when state officials said the law applies to teachers’ classroom book collections, too.

Now two Democratic lawmakers have proposed legislation to clarify that Gov. Bill Lee’s Age-Appropriate Materials Act was intended to scrutinize books in traditional school libraries, not collections that teachers keep in their classrooms to encourage reading.

The goal of the proposal, says Sen. Jeff Yarbro, is to shield teachers from having to spend their personal time cataloging their classroom collections, which often include hundreds of books. It’s a task that Yarbro views as burdensome and unnecessary — and which he worries could backfire if exasperated teachers opt to box up their books and take them home to avoid the hassle.

“I am hopeful we can work with folks on both sides of the aisle to remove this absurd burden from our teachers,” said the Nashville lawmaker, who is scheduled to bring his bill before the Senate Education Committee on March 8.

Teachers who are trained to teach children to read should be trusted to provide high-quality, age-appropriate books in their classrooms, Yarbro said.

That’s the way that Alice Irvin sees it, too. A second-grade teacher in Franklin, south of Nashville, she’s taught for 30 years, holds a master’s degree in early childhood education, participates in continuing education, and gets evaluated annually by her district.

“As a highly trained teacher, I find this law insulting,” said Irvin, who has 1,300 titles in her classroom collection. “My library center is the heart of my classroom. Over the years, I’ve purchased hundreds of high-quality children’s books for it.”

Governor called for greater transparency in school libraries

When Tennessee’s Republican governor proposed a review of school library books for age-appropriateness during his 2022 state address, he said the purpose was to “ensure parents know what materials are available to students in their libraries.”

But after the GOP-controlled legislature approved Lee’s proposal, a subsequent memo from the state education department’s attorney said a school library also includes “materials maintained in a teacher’s classroom.”

The law’s expanded scope, announced as the new school year was starting, surprised even lawmakers who had debated the measure just months earlier.

“I serve on several House education committees and don’t recall classroom book collections ever being brought up during our discussions about this bill,” said Rep. Sam McKenzie, a Democrat from Knoxville.

Yarbro said he hopes the department’s decision to interpret the law broadly was not “politically tainted” by recent Tennessee laws that aim to restrict what teachers can teach and students can read, especially related to race and gender.

Sen. Jeff Yarbro is co-sponsoring a bill that would exempt classroom book collections from Tennessee’s 2022 school library law.

Through his bill, co-sponsored by Rep. Darren Jernigan of Old Hickory, he also wants to preempt the challenges of complying with and enforcing the law as it relates to classroom book collections.

“Our early childhood teachers have a hard enough job without the state legislature putting up a bunch of hoops for them to jump through,” Yarbro said. “We’re seeking a common sense solution so that teachers aren’t put in the position of potentially running into legal or compliance issues every time they bring a new book to their classroom.”

“That would just be dumb,” he added.

School leaders have been working on compliance

Last fall, Hamilton County Schools and Murfreesboro City Schools were among several districts that directed teachers to begin cataloging their book collections right away so that schools could publish those lists early in the school year. But most districts spent several months studying the issue and exploring digital tools to help teachers create their inventories.

Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools sent guidance over winter break directing teachers to use an online platform called Libib to catalog and publish their lists of classroom library materials by the end of the school year.

“We have not asked any teachers to remove or prohibit access to classroom materials while the cataloging process is ongoing,” said district spokesman Sean Braisted.

Knox County Schools sought feedback from its educators before developing a cataloging app and a process to streamline publication of book lists, with some help from the district’s educational assistants, said spokeswoman Carly Harrington. “We expect cataloging will be completed by March 10, prior to leaving for spring break,” she added.

Other districts, like Irvin’s in Franklin, purchased a scanning app for iPads and used classroom aides to scan books for teachers beginning in January.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools did not respond to multiple requests from Chalkbeat for information about its compliance plan for classroom book collections.

Many teachers and parents haven’t been happy with the process.

“I spent half of my day scanning my library and sorting the books and a good chunk are gone due to them not scanning, being older, etc.,” wrote Natalie Vadas, a special education English teacher at Nashville’s Murrell School, in a Feb. 20 tweet. “How sad that THIS is how we have to spend our time.”

Leslie Wallace said her 8-year-old son came home upset in January when his Knox County teacher announced that students might have to start bringing their own reading books to school because of a new law.

“He loves to read and he said, ‘Mom, if they want us to learn how to read, why are they taking our books away?’” Wallace recounted to Chalkbeat.

“It was a good question,” she said.

To track the legislation, visit the General Assembly’s website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Concern over Tennessee’s third grade reading and retention law prompts flurry of bills

2023-02-03T19:23:09+00:00

Lawmakers have filed at least 18 proposals to try to address concerns about a new Tennessee reading law that could force tens of thousands of third-graders to attend summer school this year to avoid being held back.

Several bills would gut the retention provision altogether, while others would keep the law mostly intact but extend related state-funded summer and after-school programs beyond this year.

Some measures would give authority back to local school districts instead of the state to determine which students should be retained. Others would add measures beyond Tennessee’s annual test for making such a decision. And one proposal would establish a new reading and retention checkpoint even earlier than third grade — making students who are finishing kindergarten take a reading test to determine whether they are ready for the first grade.

All are in response to a controversial law that passed in 2021 during a weeklong special legislative session called by Gov. Bill Lee to address learning disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The same law created summer learning recovery camps that began that year and tutoring programs that started in 2022.

The interventions have proven popular to help students catch up from the pandemic, but the law’s retention provision — which kicks in with this year’s class of third-graders — has sparked pushback and even outrage.

“It’s upsetting, because it feels like they’re punishing our children,” said Leslie Wallace, whose 8-year-old son is in third grade in Knox County Schools. “At this age, a child is going to be extremely discouraged if they’re held back, especially if they started kindergarten during the pandemic.”

The Republican governor pushed for and has stuck by the law, including the aggressive retention policy, which could hold back third graders who aren’t deemed proficient readers based on state TCAP tests administered each spring.

“If you really care about a child’s future, the last thing you should do is push them past the third grade if they can’t read,” Lee told Chalkbeat last fall before easily winning a second term in office.

But now many lawmakers in the GOP-controlled legislature want to take a closer look at the law’s far-reaching implications for third graders, their families, and schools.

“I’m not saying you should never retain a child,” said Rep. Gloria Johnson, a Knoxville Democrat and retired teacher who voted against the law. “But the decision should be made student by student, by their teachers and parents — not because of sweeping legislation that’s based on a single test score.”

Legislators drew a line in the sand

Third grade is considered a critical year for reading because literacy is foundational to all subsequent learning. But reading scores have been mostly stagnant in Tennessee, with only about a third of the state’s third graders meeting the law’s high threshold for proficiency based on state tests.

In 2011, lawmakers passed a retention law to try to address the problem, but the statute was largely unenforced, with few third graders being held back by local school leaders. That set the stage for the 2021 retention provision that, starting this school year, requires third graders to get extra help if they don’t show proficiency on their TCAP test for English language arts.

Backers of the new policy say the law might not be perfect, but they also worry that many Tennesseans don’t fully understand it.

“This was never about ‘fail one test and you’re automatically retained,’” said Rep. Kirk Haston, a Republican who is a teacher, coach, and health education administrator in Perry County. “It’s more about reading identification and providing a lot of supports for students who need help.”

The law says students whose scores on state tests show they are “approaching” proficiency must attend a summer camp and demonstrate “adequate growth” on a test administered at the camp’s end, or they must participate in a tutoring program in the fourth grade. Students who score “below” proficiency must participate in both intervention programs.

Third graders are exempt from retention if they were retained in a previous grade; have or may have a disability that affects reading; are English language learners with less than two years of English instruction; or retest as proficient before the beginning of fourth grade.

Numerous school boards across Tennessee have passed resolutions calling for revisions, though. Among other things, they’ve urged the legislature to let local educators make retention decisions, without giving final authority to the state. And they’ve noted that TCAP is not a reading diagnostic test and, therefore, isn’t the best measure of a student’s reading ability.

But should the line be drawn earlier?

It’s little wonder that the retention rule is controversial — because research is mixed, and holding students back is a controversial policy decision in education.

Supporters say having students repeat a grade can spur additional supports that struggling readers desperately need, and that those academic interventions matter, especially in the early grades.

Critics worry that retention falls disproportionately on student groups who are already marginalized, such as those who have disabilities, are economically disadvantaged, or are of color.

Most research suggests that retention has, on average, null or negative effects on students, and that it’s also linked strongly to dropping out of high school.

The best time to intervene in a student’s progression in school is also under discussion in Tennessee. Increasingly, lawmakers and education advocates are recognizing the importance of also providing interventions for struggling students in kindergarten, first, and second grades — instead of zeroing in on third grade.

That’s where discussion veered this week in a House education subcommittee chaired by Rep. Scott Cepicky, a Republican from Maury County, during an exchange with Reginald Nash, a former Memphis kindergarten teacher who now works for The Education Trust in Tennessee to advocate for education equity.

“The General Assembly should consider revising the law to permit students at risk of retention who opt into reading and tutoring at the beginning of third grade, as opposed to after it, and as early as kindergarten, to be promoted,” Nash told lawmakers. “This approach could possibly be easier to implement, requires less bureaucracy to track, and proactively gets more students into reading tutoring before and during third grade.”

Cepicky, who is co-sponsoring a bill that could delay kindergarten entry for many children and add another retention gate before kindergarten, clearly liked the idea of programs and policies directed toward students before they fall too far behind.

“We have to do something in early education to change the dynamic that we have right now,” he said. “We can’t keep going with the status quo.”

Legislators must sort through revision bills

Before the 113th General Assembly convened last month, revisiting third-grade retention topped most lawmakers’ list of education priorities this year based on feedback from constituents.

The large number of proposals filed by this week’s bill-filing deadlines bore that out as Republican leaders shared their plans for sorting through the barrage of legislation.

Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg said Thursday he’ll let the House take the lead in vetting the proposals, with hopes of eventually bringing a consolidated bill before his panel.

In the House, the first focused look is set for Feb. 14, when all of the bills are laid out before an education subcommittee chaired by Haston.

“We’re just trying to get organized,” said Haston, who added that he doesn’t expect votes for several weeks. “We want to get everything on one calendar to see the lay of the land.”

As part of the process, Rep. Mark White, who chairs the full House Education Administration Committee, has scheduled a Feb. 22 hearing to discuss early childhood literacy. Nine legislators are new to his 19-member committee, and White said he wants them to understand the big picture before voting on any potential revisions to the 2021 Learning Loss Remediation and Student Acceleration Act.

Among those testifying at the hearing, he said, will be a range of literacy experts, from third-grade teachers and school superintendents to Tennessee’s education chief, Penny Schwinn, and education officials in Mississippi, where students improved the most on national reading tests in 2019.

In the meantime, Tennessee schools have been sending out information and hosting meetings with parents of third grade students to inform them about what the law means for their child.

But many parents like Wallace, in Knoxville, are afraid.

“I appreciate the interventions being put in place, but I don’t appreciate the threat that my child could get held back if he doesn’t score high enough on a test,” she said. “I don’t feel like it’s a conducive environment for learning.”

The Education Trust has compiled a list that summarizes and analyzes each retention-related bill.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee lawmakers propose scholarship program to address child care ‘crisis’

2023-01-30T22:52:13+00:00

With the cost of quality child care often exceeding in-state tuition bills at Tennessee colleges, two lawmakers filed legislation Monday to create a state government program to offer child care scholarships to low- and middle-income families.

Dubbed Promising Futures, the program would use tax revenue from the state’s growing sports betting industry, most of which currently goes into a lottery education fund that supports the popular HOPE and Tennessee Promise college scholarships.

The bill comes after a 2022 study found that Tennessee businesses and taxpayers are losing $2.6 billion annually in earnings and revenue because parents have problems accessing child care.

Those numbers amount to a crisis, say state Sen. Becky Massey and Rep. Mark White, who are sponsoring the legislation.

“Working parents of young children struggle with child care affordability, quality, and access, which affect their ability to work,” said Massey, a Knoxville Republican. “In turn, many businesses are struggling to find employees.”

White believes that Promising Futures can do for early child care access what Tennessee Promise has done for higher education access. Under that groundbreaking initiative created in 2014 under former Gov. Bill Haslam’s administration, Tennessee became the first state to offer its high school graduates a chance at two years of tuition-free community or technical college.

Rep. Mark White, of Memphis, is co-sponsoring the Promising Futures bill with Sen. Becky Massey, of Knoxville.

“Promising Futures is just as important,” said White, a Memphis Republican who chairs a House education committee. “We can help our young families, support early childhood growth, and position our state on the front end to improve our literacy rate.”

Their bill would launch the program in mid-2024, for children through age 5 whose parents’ household income does not exceed the state’s median income (currently $67,708 for a two-person household, $79,719 for a family of three, and $88,095 for a family of four). Also eligible would be children who reside with a foster parent or legal guardian. The state education department would oversee the scholarships and pay funds directly to the program in which a child is enrolled.

The program would capitalize on rapid growth in tax revenue from the sports betting industry.

Tennessee legalized sports wagering in 2019 and collects 20% of the gaming industry’s adjusted gross revenues as a privilege tax. Of that, 80% currently goes to the lottery fund deployed primarily for higher education scholarships, 15% to the state to distribute to local governments, and 5% toward mental health programs.

The Promising Futures bill proposes starting the scholarship program in mid-2024 with 60% of the privilege tax revenue from sports wagering, increasing to 80% by mid-2025. Such a change might also require changes to how the remaining 20% gets allocated.

Other lawmakers have been eyeing that growing pot of money, too. Last year, Rep. David Hawk, of Greeneville, sponsored a bill that would have directed some sports betting tax revenues to local governments to help them deal with the skyrocking cost of school construction. But his measure stalled in committee.

Massey thinks now is a good time to redirect sports betting money toward child care and early education needs.

“The lottery fund has a good reserve, so it’s not going to jeopardize the money needed to (keep) Tennessee Promise a viable program,” she said.

At a legislative hearing earlier this month, Mary Beth Thomas, the executive director of Tennessee’s Sports Wagering Advisory Council, reported the state collected more than $68 million in sports betting privilege taxes in 2022, compared with $40.6 million a year earlier.

Promising Futures is backed by Tennesseans for Quality Early Education, or TQEE, which formed in 2016 to advocate for a strong education foundation from birth to third grade. The group, which has more than 30,000 members across Tennessee, launched a website and petition Monday seeking public support for the bill.

“Child care is crucial to early health and brain development. It’s really in all of our best interests to ensure those child care settings are high quality,” president and CEO Blair Taylor told Chalkbeat.

“With Promising Futures, we’ll not only be helping the workforce of today; we’ll be preparing the workforce of tomorrow,” she said.

TQEE conducted last year’s child care study with support from Zogby Analytics and economist Cleve Belfield. The survey of nearly 1,300 working parents with children under 6 found 80% reported employment disruptions due to inadequate child care. Of those, 26% quit or were fired, 32% turned down a job offer or promotion, and 30% reduced their work hours from full time to part time or were prevented from increasing their hours to full time. About 20% stopped seeking employment altogether.

You can track the bill’s progress on the state legislature’s website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee legislative preview: Key education issues to watch as lawmakers return

2023-01-10T11:00:00+00:00

When Tennessee legislators passed a tough third-grade reading law during their 2021 special session on education, they didn’t seek the input of many educators.

But they’re hearing a lot of feedback now, as the law’s stricter retention policy kicks in with this year’s class of third graders. Educators are warning about the potential for thousands of students to be held back because of low reading scores, along with a slew of logistical challenges created by the law.

Revisiting the controversial third-grade reading law is expected to top the list of education priorities heading into this year’s 113th General Assembly, beginning Tuesday in Nashville.

Meanwhile, Republican Gov. Bill Lee will unveil details of his legislative agenda and proposed budget several weeks after being sworn in for his second term on Jan. 21.

Last year, no education issue seemed too big or small for the GOP-controlled legislature to take up — from passing Lee’s sweeping rewrite of the state’s K-12 funding formula to authorizing teachers to confiscate students’ cellphones if they’re deemed a distraction in class. Lawmakers also asserted state power over several matters traditionally handled at the local or school level, including which books are OK for libraries and how to resolve a dispute between two cities over school properties.

This year, the GOP may flex its supermajority power again on socially divisive issues, including one bill that seeks to limit health treatment for transgender youth.

But whether charter school advocates will try again to pass charter-friendly legislation is still uncertain after several Republican-sponsored proposals sputtered last year and the fallout over charter applications linked to Michigan’s Hillsdale College galvanized supporters of traditional public schools.

As for the Democrats, their minority status limits their influence over legislation. But expect them to hammer their messaging around themes of restoring local control over education and the potential fiscal effects of expanding Tennessee’s charter school sector and private school voucher programs.

Here are five things to watch for as the General Assembly convenes:

Expect a ‘quieter year’ from Lee’s administration

During his first term, the governor spent significant political capital to pass major education laws — launching a private school voucher program, creating a powerful state commission to oversee charter school growth, expanding vocational education options for middle and high school students, and replacing the state’s 30-year-old resource-based funding formula with a student-centered one called Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement, or TISA.

Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican businessman from Williamson County, will be sworn in to his second term in office on Jan. 21.

Last fall, Lee suggested the dizzying pace would continue, with a campaign pledge to teachers and parents that he would “make the most of the next four years.”

But legislative leaders working closely with his administration say this year’s education focus will be to execute what’s already passed — not introduce new major initiatives.

“We’ve done a lot, and I think it’s going to be a quieter year on education,” said Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson, who carries bills on the governor’s behalf.

Specifically, he said, Lee wants to monitor this year’s rollout of the funding formula and third-grade retention policy. “We may need some tweaks and improvements on those but, in terms of any new broad initiatives, I don’t anticipate anything from the administration,” Johnson told Chalkbeat.

Lee pledged more money for K-12 education

When Lee pressed last year for an education funding overhaul, he pledged an additional $1 billion annually for students if TISA passed, beginning with the budget that takes effect this July 1. With state revenues continuing to exceed expenses, the expectation is that he’ll make good on that promise.

On other budgetary matters, Lee has said he wants to continue upping teacher pay. He’ll also likely set aside money so the all-volunteer state textbook commission can hire staff to manage a new library book appeals process authorized by the legislature in 2022. And he’s expected to propose more funding for the state agency for children’s services, which is severely understaffed and short of beds for abused, neglected, or foster children who are taken into state custody.

Meanwhile, the legislature will review ways to continue tapping state or federal dollars for perennial educational wants, from more social services for schools to expanded access to pre-kindergarten and early child care.

Lawmakers will revisit third-grade retention policy

Vowing to stop the cycle of letting students who can’t read move up to the next grade, Lee pressed for the new third-grade reading law, which tightens state retention policies that generally haven’t been enforced under a 2011 law.

The 2021 law made it more likely that schools will hold back students who aren’t considered proficient in reading by the end of third grade, based on the results of annual state tests this spring. It also authorized new summer school and after-school tutoring programs that can help struggling third graders avoid being held back.

But with only a third of Tennessee third graders projected to test proficient in reading, educators insist that state test results don’t tell the full story about a student’s reading ability. They want more local input that takes into account the results of periodic “benchmark” tests administered throughout the year.

“This is the No. 1 concern I’m hearing across the state with superintendents, school boards, and parents,” said House Education Committee Chairman Mark White, who says he’s open to adding benchmark test results into the calculations. “We cannot ignore it.”

Expect other legislative proposals to try to improve the quality of education before third grade, especially to support literacy.

Rep. Scott Cepicky, a Republican from Maury County, is one of the legislature’s most prolific sponsors of education legislation.

Rep. Scott Cepicky, for instance, is looking at raising the minimum age to begin kindergarten. Currently, Tennessee law requires children entering kindergarten to be at least 5 years old on or before Aug. 15 of the school year they’re entering.

His proposal is based on a recent analysis by the state comptroller’s office, which found that Tennessee students who were older at kindergarten enrollment performed better on third-grade literacy tests than their peers.

School voucher program could expand

After overcoming a string of court challenges, private school vouchers became available this school year in Memphis and Nashville. Now Sen. Todd Gardenhire is looking to expand the “pilot” program to Hamilton County, where he lives.

The Chattanooga Republican had voted against education savings accounts in 2019, but said he’s changed his mind since the Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the controversial law last spring. He’s also frustrated that Hamilton County Schools has abandoned a $20 million school improvement plan for its lowest-performing schools.

Gardenhire filed his bill last month and recruited White to co-sponsor the measure in the House.

Meanwhile, the law continues to face legal challenges. Metro Nashville and Shelby County governments gave notice last month that they’ll appeal a lower court’s dismissal of their remaining legal claims to the Tennessee Court of Appeals.

The state comptroller’s first report on the program’s efficacy isn’t due until Jan. 1, 2026.

Efforts to attract and keep teachers grow

Both state and national data suggest that teacher shortages are limited to certain districts, schools, and subjects, not an across-the-board problem. But with the churn of educators and school staff worsening during the pandemic, expect several new proposals to try to strengthen teacher pipelines beyond Tennessee’s existing grow-your-own programs, as well as to support those already in classrooms.

The Tennessee School Boards Association is urging the legislature to incentivize potential teacher candidates by reimbursing those who pass the Praxis exam, which measures knowledge and skills needed to be a teacher. The test generally costs about $120. (The State Board of Education is also considering dropping EdTPA, another licensing test required currently of about 900 “job-embedded” candidates, who make up about a third of the state’s teacher pipeline.)

Cepicky and Sen. Joey Hensley have filed a bill to provide teachers with $500 annually to pay for classroom supplies, instead of the current $200, so that they’re not counting on charity or personal funds to cover those costs.

But for many districts, an even bigger staffing issue is hiring enough support staff.

South of Nashville, Williamson County Schools has only three-fourths of the school bus drivers needed by the suburban district and is also understaffed for teacher aides for special education students.

“Every little tool you can give us in our toolbox, if it can fill one or two spots, it’s worth it,” Superintendent Jason Golden told his local legislative delegation during a weekend workshop.

“We’re looking at it,” responded Hensley, a Hohenwald Republican. “We know it’s a big issue.”

To find legislators, track bills, and livestream legislative business, visit the Tennessee General Assembly website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee students’ NAEP scores drop across the board

2022-10-24T04:01:00+00:00

Tennessee bet big that tutoring and summer programs would help students rebound quicker from the pandemic’s crushing blow to learning, but the results of the latest national tests don’t indicate an immediate payoff.

Mirroring unprecedented national declines in achievement, the state’s students slid back between 2019 and 2022 on math and reading exams in the fourth and eighth grades, according to data released Monday in what’s called the “nation’s report card.”

Based on results from the National Assessment of Education Progress, or NAEP, Tennessee’s slide was part of the nation’s largest math decline on record.

But perhaps more disappointing was the state’s performance in reading, with scores falling several points more than the national slide. Tennessee is prioritizing literacy and is overhauling how it teaches students to read, including a greater emphasis on phonics. And under a rigorous new third-grade retention law, it’s poised to hold back more students who don’t score as reading on grade level on state tests next spring.

The drops on this year’s national scores generally returned Tennessee to its lowest NAEP performance in math and reading since 2011, before outsize gains on the 2013 exam earned it the title as the nation’s fastest improving state.

Also, under a special assessment program in which NAEP administers tests in 26 big-city school systems, Memphis-Shelby County Schools was the only district to record among the top five declines on every test. No other Tennessee district participated in that voluntary assessment program.

Some regression in student performance had been expected in most every state after COVID-19 shuttered school buildings in the spring of 2020 and forced educators and students to toggle back and forth to other modes of learning for the next two-plus years.

But Tennessee acted early and aggressively to blunt the pandemic’s impact on learning — beginning with summer camps in every school district in 2021 — and had hoped to at least hold steady on this year’s state and national tests.

Last school year, Tennessee launched a three-year tutoring project to provide frequent, in-person, small-group help for students who were struggling in either math or reading. Federal relief funding covered much of the cost, with more than half of the state’s districts participating in the tutoring initiative.

Gov. Bill Lee also pushed to get students back into brick-and-mortar classrooms beginning with the 2020-21 school year. That drive turned out to be important, because states where schools more fully offered in-person instruction tended to see somewhat smaller declines in math and fourth-grade reading, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of the national data.

“If there’s any state with a chance at doing decently on this exam, I think it’s Tennessee,” Mike Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, told Chalkbeat last week before the scores were released.

“But of course,” he added, “NAEP serves as a great audit to see whether that is the case or not.”

It was not.

No state improved in math

In fourth-grade math, where Tennessee has generally kept pace with national averages since 2013, the state was down 3 points on a 500-point scale from 2019. But that was still better than this year’s 5-point national decline and double-digit drops in New York, Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware.

Still, 10 states managed to hold steady in fourth-grade math, including neighboring Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and Louisiana.

In eighth-grade math, Tennessee’s score dropped by 8 points, the same as the national average decline. Utah was the only state to show no significant change in that category.

Reading scores also took a hit

In fourth-grade reading, Tennessee fell 5 points from 2019, compared with the national drop of 3 points.

No state increased its fourth-grade reading score, while 30 states nationally and nine in the South saw a decline. Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, and Mississippi saw no significant change, which was a victory of sorts for those states bordering Tennessee.

In eighth-grade reading, Tennessee dropped 5 points, compared with a 3-point national decline. The slump marked a return to the lowest performance in that category since 2003 for Tennessee, one of 33 states nationally and 11 in the South that saw a decrease. Among border states, Alabama, Georgia, and Virginia saw no clear changes in their scores.

Racial disparities show up in results

The declines showed how acute the learning loss has been, particularly for students of color, whose communities were hit especially hard from the physical, social, economic, and political consequences of COVID.

In fourth-grade math, except for a slight uptick from Hispanics and English language learners and improvement from rural students, all student groups showed declines, particularly Black students, whose average score went down 12 points, compared with a 2-point drop for white students.

In eighth-grade math, students with disabilities were the only group to hold steady, and the average score dropped by 15 points for English language learners, 10 points for Black students, and 8 points for Hispanic students. The average drop for white students was 6 points.

In fourth-grade reading, the average score of Hispanic students and English language learners rose by 4 points, while Black students saw their score go down 11 points, compared with 5 points for white students.

And in eighth-grade reading, rural students held steady, but performance was down for all other student groups, particularly English language learners.

Tennessee’s education chief, Penny Schwinn, was especially concerned about the performance of the state’s Black students, whose score decline doubled the national average.

“If we don’t address this with some level of urgency, then shame on us,” she told Chalkbeat on Friday, before the scores were released. “These are students who absolutely can be successful. They need additional supports, and we need to double down on what we’re providing them.”

Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn visits Georgian Hills Achievement Elementary School in Memphis in June during its summer learning camp.

That, she said, means making sure that struggling Black students, particularly Black males, are participating in the state’s tutoring programs — and that the quality of the tutoring is high.

“We can’t just check the box and think that it will magically work,” she said. “It’s not just the intervention; it’s the quality of intervention.”

What is NAEP?

Not every Tennessee fourth-grader or eighth-grader took the national test when the federal government administered the exams in early 2022.

NAEP tests a nationally representative sample of students in every state. The results, published as the nation’s report card, allow comparisons across states and are an important marker for showing how students are doing over time. The national test is also helpful because, unlike state tests that vary widely and change frequently, it’s essentially the same test every time and has been administered for decades to provide long-term data.

Normally, NAEP is given every two years, but federal officials postponed the 2021 exam because COVID was still rampant. Now, the results from 2019 to 2022 provide an especially helpful comparison of what students knew before the deadly respiratory virus hit — and what they knew two years into the pandemic.

“The results show the profound toll on student learning during the pandemic, as the size and scope of the declines are the largest ever in mathematics,” said Peggy G. Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics.

NAEP counters Tennessee’s upbeat state test results

Tennessee’s grim performance on the national test comes just months after state officials reported that the most recent scores on state tests improved across all subjects and grades, largely returning to pre-COVID levels, except in math.

Petrilli, of the right-leaning Fordham Institute, said there are valid reasons for inconsistencies between state and national test results. For instance, state tests are more closely aligned to state academic standards and the curriculum taught in a state’s classrooms.

But NAEP also serves as an important external check on state testing and reporting systems, he said.

“Tennessee’s ed department was sounding awfully cheerful in June about state test results,” Petrilli said. “If that’s not what NAEP shows, the public should understand that it may not be as bad as it could have been — but it’s still bad.”

He hopes this year’s NAEP results serve as a gut check for educators, policymakers, and parents.

“It’s concerning when surveys show that most parents don’t think their kids are behind now, because that’s just not true,” Petrilli said. “The majority of American kids were already behind before the pandemic in terms of being ready for college and career, and now they’re further behind. So we do not need more happy talk. We need honest talk.

“We do not need more happy talk. We need honest talk.” —Mike Petrilli, President, Thomas B. Fordham Institute

“Parents should be advocating for their kids to get the extra help they need,” he said.

Schwinn said she stands by the results from state tests, which were taken by most of Tennessee’s nearly 1 million public school students this spring, as opposed to NAEP’s representative sampling of fewer than 10,000 students several months earlier — before the state’s high-dosage tutoring program began in earnest at scale.

“Frankly, I’d be pretty unhappy if we did not see a difference between January NAEP and our end-of-the-school-year state assessment,” she said.

A referendum on tutoring and summer camps?

Despite Tennessee’s disappointing NAEP results, state and federal officials remain bullish on strategies like tutoring and extended-learning programs.

Schwinn said it’s too early to see the impact of those interventions, as well as of the state’s reading overhaul.

“We picked research-based interventions,” she said, “and we’ve gotten these programs to a scale that is significantly bigger than any other state I know of. But we started the vast majority of those interventions at the same time this (NAEP) test was taken. So for me, this test will serve as a great baseline.”

U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona also has encouraged states and schools to use federal COVID aid more effectively and expeditiously on strategies like high-dosage tutoring and after-school programs.

And research has shown that frequent in-school tutoring is one of the most effective ways to help students make academic progress.

Tennessee educators are on board, too. They’re thankful for any investments that help students succeed, according to the leader of the state’s largest teacher organization.

“You have to keep in mind that kids have struggled both academically and emotionally during this pandemic. Some didn’t have much social interaction for two years. Many have lost family members to COVID,” said Tanya Coats, president of the Tennessee Education Association.

“NAEP is about a single test on a single day,” Coats said, “but we’re talking about the whole child. Anything we can do to support the whole child, we’re all for that.”

To view the full report, visit the nation’s report card here.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Anti-mosque activist reappointed to Tennessee textbook panel

2022-09-21T20:08:54+00:00

An activist who fought the establishment of a mosque in Tennessee more than a decade ago has been reappointed to the state commission that reviews and recommends books and instructional materials for local school systems to adopt.

House Speaker Cameron Sexton on Tuesday reappointed Laurie Cardoza-Moore to the Tennessee Textbook and Instructional Materials Quality Commission for a three-year term that ends on June 30, 2025.

The extension of her tenure on the panel, following her controversial 2021 appointment to a one-year term, comes as a new law gives the commission authority to overrule local school board decisions and ban certain school library books statewide.

The commission is scheduled to meet on Thursday to discuss its new responsibilities, as well as its review of math textbooks recommended by publishers.

Meanwhile, two national reports released last weekend found that attempts to ban books from U.S. school libraries are on the rise again this year, after reaching a historic high last year.

While most of the panel’s 10 commissioners are licensed educators, Cardoza-Moore is not. With an associate degree from the KD Conservatory College of Film and Dramatic Arts in Dallas, she is one of three members chosen by the governor and two legislative speakers — all Republicans — to represent parents and citizens.

She homeschooled her five children, who are now grown, and in 2005 founded Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, a Franklin, Tenn.-based organization that claims to fight anti-Semitism.

After supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, she falsely blamed Antifa, referring to the loose affiliation of anti-fascist activists who have been labeled “terrorists” by Republicans. In 2020, her group was named an anti-Muslim “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

In a brief telephone interview with Chalkbeat on Wednesday, Cardoza-Moore denied that she is anti-Muslim and said she has been objective in her review of textbooks and instructional materials in her role on the commission.

“Curriculum has to comply with state [academic] standards,” she said. “I look to make sure that it’s accurate and unbiased and reflects the values of Tennesseans.”

Her reappointment requires a confirmation vote by state lawmakers when they reconvene in January. In 2021, the Republican-controlled legislature voted to approve her appointment along party lines.

Cardoza-Moore’s first term ended June 30 while she was running for the GOP nomination to represent her Williamson County district in the Tennessee House of Representatives. Her narrow defeat in August by Jake McCalmon made her reappointment possible, said Doug Kufner, a spokesman for Sexton.

In his letter to Cardoza-Moore on Tuesday, Sexton said her new term begins immediately.

“I am confident that you will perform the duties of office with the high standard of professionalism, dedication, and integrity that the citizens of Tennessee deserve and expect of their public servants,” the speaker wrote.

Cardoza-Moore came to notoriety in 2010, when she opposed plans to build a mosque in Murfreesboro, south of Nashville.

During her confirmation hearings last year, Democratic Sen. Raumesh Akbari, of Memphis, asked about her comments at that time saying the mosque was being built to serve as a terrorist training camp.

Cardoza-Moore responded that there “absolutely” were terrorists in the group, but Akbari said law enforcement found no proof of her claims.

She testified that she has worked to fight classroom content that she described as historically inaccurate and biased. But she declined to answer questions about her beliefs around teaching students about the nation’s history of colonialism and slavery, since her work on the commission during her initial term would focus on materials for math, based on the state’s textbook adoption cycle.

The scope of the commission’s work will soon widen.

In 2023, the state is to begin reviewing science, fine arts, and wellness books. In 2024, the adoption cycle calls for a review of materials in social studies and world languages. And under a new state law, the panel can start having a say on school library content, based on appeals of local school board decisions over challenged books.

Several who opposed Cardoza-Moore’s appointment last year say their opinions haven’t changed.

Akbari, who chairs the Senate Democratic caucus, said Wednesday that Cardoza-Moore is “unqualified” to serve on a panel that has “an important role in our children’s education.”

Leaders of the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization said her reappointment is a distraction from students’ education.

“Laurie Cardoza-Moore, a conspiracy theorist whose anti-Muslim rhetoric has endangered Tennessee families, has no business serving on any government commission, especially one that can influence what students read in their textbooks,” said Edward Ahmed Mitchell, national deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

You can learn more about the commission on the state’s website.

Marta W. Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee school library law’s expanded scope puts new burden on teachers

2022-09-01T11:00:00+00:00

On a large colorful rug, several schoolchildren sat with their legs crossed. Others stretched out on their stomachs. All were poring over pages and unraveling words and stories from books like “Pete the Cat,” “Time for Breakfast,” and “The Tiny Seed.”

It’s reading time in Tahna White’s kindergarten classroom.

Her self-funded library collection anchors a joyful and eye-catching corner of her teaching space at Lowrance K-8 School in Memphis. Minutes earlier, her students were browsing through blue, purple, and green book bins sorted by themes like llamas, plants, feelings, and stories written by Eric Carle.

“They absolutely love going through these books,” said White, who has a master’s degree in language and literacy and has amassed about 500 children’s titles during her 20 years of teaching.

Still, White is prepared to box the books up and take them home if Memphis-Shelby County Schools directs her to catalog each one under a new state law aimed at school libraries.

“The task would be enormous, and I don’t know when I’d have time to do it myself,” she said. “Pretty much all my parents work, so it’s unlikely they’d have time to volunteer and help.”

Teachers and school leaders across Tennessee are trying to figure out how to satisfy recent state guidance on the 2022 library law. The statute requires public schools to scrutinize their library materials for “age appropriateness” and publish the full inventory for parents to view online.

Republican Gov. Bill Lee said the purpose was to “ensure parents know what materials are available to students in their libraries.”

But an Aug. 11 memo to district leaders said that under the law, a library collection is not limited to materials found in a traditional school library. It also includes “materials maintained in a teacher’s classroom,” wrote Christy Ballard, general counsel for the state education department.

Soon after, several school systems, including large districts in Chattanooga and Murfreesboro, instructed their teachers to begin cataloging their classroom collections by title and author, along with a brief description of each book — just as the new school year was beginning.

“So most teachers have hundreds of books,” said third-grade teacher Sydney Rawls, whose viral TikTok video showed her spending one Saturday creating an inventory, book by book, at Mitchell-Neilson School in Murfreesboro, south of Nashville.

Rawls described how her students beg to read from her collection after they finish a test or assignment, “and I have to say no, you can’t, because I haven’t had a chance to go through all of them to catalog them, to write them all down.”

For White and other educators who may face the same task, the answer may be just removing the books they’ve personally curated for their classrooms. It’s an option that some teachers have discussed on social media.

Tahna White is surrounded by her personal library collection in her kindergarten classroom at Lowrance K-8 School in Memphis.

Tennessee has a reading problem

Removing reading materials to comply with a state law would be an ironic twist for a state that has been trying for years to help its children become better readers.

Only one-third of Tennessee fourth-graders earned a proficient reading score in 2019 on the most recent national tests conducted by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also called the Nation’s Report Card.

In Memphis, home to the state’s largest district, nearly 80% of students aren’t reading at grade level.

The same legislature that passed the governor’s library proposal, dubbed the “Age Appropriate Materials Act,” approved a raft of measures the prior year aimed at improving students’ literacy skills.

As a result, all K-12 schools have adopted phonics-based reading instruction, while colleges have revised their training accordingly for aspiring teachers. Also, beginning this school year, one controversial new law increases the likelihood that schools will hold back students who aren’t considered proficient in reading by the end of third grade.

The prospect of children losing access to books because of teachers balking at cataloging their collections is something the governor and the law’s two GOP sponsors — Sen. Jack Johnson and Rep. William Lamberth — aren’t talking about.

None responded to questions or accommodated interview requests from Chalkbeat.

Gov. Bill Lee, flanked by GOP legislative leaders, speaks during a press conference at the close of the 2021 session of the Tennessee General Assembly.

Others involved in the library law’s development say they were taken aback by the state’s broad interpretation of what constitutes a school library.

“We don’t think that was the legislative intent,” said Dale Lynch, who leads the state’s superintendents organization.

“It obviously means a whole lot of work for teachers.”

Lindsey Kimery, past president of the Tennessee Association of School Librarians, said the governor’s chief of staff and policy adviser never mentioned classroom collections when discussing the legislation with representatives of her group earlier this year.

“It’s exactly the kind of thing that we were afraid of,” she said of the law’s expanded scope. “At the end of the day, this creates one more barrier to easy book access for students who have no problem accessing things like video games or cellphones.”

State Rep. Sam McKenzie, who serves on a House education committee, doesn’t recall classroom book collections being discussed during debates about the legislation.

The Knoxville Democrat plans to propose his own legislation next year to clarify that the library law does not extend to classrooms.

“This is a classic example of government overreach,” he said. “We need to get out of the way and let our teachers teach.”

Book bans have heightened tensions

Tennessee was already under a national spotlight last school year for several high-profile book bans.

Then lawmakers passed several bills aimed at restricting the kinds of books that students can read. In addition to the governor’s library review law, one measure lets the state textbook commission overrule local school board decisions and remove materials from school libraries statewide if they are deemed “inappropriate for the age or maturity levels” of students.

Tennessee was also among the first states to enact a law intended to restrict classroom discussions about the legacy of slavery, racism, and white privilege.

“What’s driving the whole debate is a push to get rid of books about race, gender, and sex,” said JC Bowman, executive director of the Professional Educators of Tennessee.

But fourth-grade teacher Karolyn Marino worries that, based on how educators are responding to the state’s definition of a school library, classic books will get pushed out of classrooms.

“Somehow, this law went down a rabbit hole that’s gone too far,” said Marino, who teaches in Williamson County, south of Nashville, and also serves on the board of the Professional Educators of Tennessee.

“It’s not that the ‘Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ will end up in a trash can; it’s that Huck Finn will end up somewhere in a box,” she said.

Most districts are exploring their options

Marino’s district, Williamson County Schools, is still determining how to comply with the law and new guidance, as are most school systems across Tennessee.

“Metro Nashville Public Schools was already in compliance with the new law based on the classic definition of a school library,” said spokesman Sean Braisted, noting that district leaders are developing a plan to address the broader interpretation.

“We will seek to do so in such a way that minimizes any burden placed on teachers who are rightfully focused on providing the academic instruction and support to their students,” he added.

That could mean giving teachers a tool to create a listing of their classroom collections without typing it out by hand. With the right resource, they could just scan a barcode on each book to automatically fill in the title, author, and description.

But such tools don’t come cheap. Kimery, who coordinates library services for Nashville schools, priced one system at $64,000 a year.

Others, like Williamson County’s Marino, say the state should pay teachers a stipend for any additional work required under the law.

The legislature’s fiscal analyst didn’t identify such potential costs when studying the governor’s proposal. The bill’s fiscal note said schools and districts “will be able to comply with the proposed legislation using existing resources during the normal course of business; therefore, any fiscal impact to state or local government is estimated to be not significant.”

In Memphis, White is ready to pack up her books if her district doesn’t come up with a workable plan for complying with the law. But for now, she is using them every day to help her students with reading, which is considered the foundation for learning and success in all subject areas.

“Our goal is to create lifelong readers,” White said, “but you can’t do that without books.”

Marta W. Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Bill to bolster school library book bans advances in Tennessee legislature

2022-03-29T23:11:24+00:00

Days after Gov. Bill Lee signed a law requiring school libraries to screen their materials for “age appropriateness,” Tennessee lawmakers advanced a harsher bill that could slap school librarians with criminal penalties over books some might label obscene.

The bill under consideration also would require districts or charter schools to pull books from library shelves if a parent or guardian complains the content is obscene or harmful to minors. A local school board or charter school governing body would have 30 days to decide whether to permanently remove the material based on local community standards. And the state could withhold funds from schools that don’t comply.

The Republican proposal, sponsored by Sen. Joey Hensley of Hohenwald and Rep. Scott Cepicky of Culleoka, passed 5-1 Tuesday in the Senate Education Committee, with three Republican members present but not voting. On Monday, the full House approved the measure 63-24 along mostly partisan lines.

With book challenges and bans on the rise in Tennessee and across the nation, supporters say the legislation is necessary to create processes for addressing complaints from parents. But critics worry school leaders will feel pressure to pull titles from shelves to avoid controversy. They’re also concerned how local officials would define obscenity.

Tennessee’s Republican governor, who proposed the age-appropriate school library bill that he signed last week, opposes the second measure as unnecessary.

“I think this bill seeks to solve the same problem that the governor has looked to solve with the Age-Appropriate Materials Act,” said Eric Mayo, Lee’s legislative liaison, during testimony before the Senate panel.

But Hensley, the bill’s Senate sponsor, said the governor’s plan doesn’t go far enough.

“The wording in the governor’s bill is age appropriate. This is dealing with age-inappropriate material and obscene and pornographic material,” he said, referring to books such as “Me, Earl and the Dying Girl,” about the friendship of a high school boy with a girl who has leukemia.

Hensley’s bill has had lengthy and contentious hearings in House committees, including testimony of support from country music singer-songwriter John Rich and former “Saturday Night Live” cast member Victoria Jackson, both Tennessee residents. Rich, of the duo Big & Rich, voiced unfounded claims that some librarians have allowed materials that “groom” school children for sexual abuse and pornography as a sexual predator would, while Jackson called the issue a “spiritual battle” between good and evil.

A leader with the Tennessee Association of School Librarians said its members do not purchase obscene or pornographic materials for school collections.

“If a student or parent feels a book is inappropriate, we encourage them to speak with their school librarian and follow district procedures for lodging a complaint so the book can be reviewed,” said Lindsey Kimery, the group’s past president, in a statement Tuesday.

This week’s debates in the GOP-controlled legislature were less accusatory of librarians than in previous committees but mostly supportive of the bill’s intent to block content that some parents find objectionable.

The Senate panel amended its version so local boards can set policies limiting the number of times a book or other material may be reported as obscene, or the number of materials that one person may report at one time.

But Sen. Raumesh Akbari, the committee’s lone Democrat, said the change wasn’t enough to safeguard libraries from unnecessarily removing books, including the Bible, from circulation, even if it’s only temporarily.

“My concern is that this will allow books to be removed before they’re even reviewed,” said the Memphis lawmaker. “I know that the school board will have the authority to review it and will likely put a book like the Bible back. But I think that it really abridges our students and the school community of their rights when one particular person finds something to be offensive and then it’s removed for 30 days.”

Sponsors in both chambers said criminal penalties against a school librarian would only happen if the librarian puts a book back in circulation in defiance of a school board decision to remove it. However, the Senate committee’s legal counsel said that’s not what the bill says.

Tennessee law currently shields people who possess obscenity if that content is required for educational, scientific, or governmental research. The bill would delete the educational exception.

During Monday’s debate on the House floor, Cepicky said his bill was intended “to protect librarians and prevent the arbitrary removal of a book from a school library.”

But Rep. Eddie Mannis, the legislature’s only openly gay Republican member, worried about other consequences.

“I just want to go on the record that I am adamantly against children ever being exposed to any kind of pornographic material,” said the Knoxville lawmaker, who voted against the measure. “I’m just concerned that this legislation could be used to subjectively eliminate education materials that people misjudge to be harmful or offensive strictly due to their own personal prejudice or bias.”

The state’s school library association opposes the bill, in part over the lack of clarity about how to interpret it and also because districts already have policies for reconsidering books that students or parents complain about.

“I’m concerned there will be a slew of unnecessary book challenges as a result of this bill, and I think it will create more trouble for school boards,” said Kimery, library coordinator for Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools.

Marta W. Aldrich is a senior correspondent who covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Celebrate Women’s History Month with stories of Tennessee women

2022-03-29T12:58:50+00:00

Tennessee women have been at the heart of major historical and cultural events in the United States — abolition, the Trail of Tears, women’s suffrage, and civil rights, as well as triumphs in music and athletics.

During the last days of Women’s History Month, and year-round, educators and readers can celebrate stories written by women and accounts of heroines that illuminate the richness of Tennessee culture and history. Here are some books by Tennessee female writers or about Tennessee women that readers of all ages can enjoy.

Early childhood readers

Ali Manning, author of the children’s book “Can I Play with my Food?”, pauses for a photo with two young fans, Blake (left) and Brooke Royston.

“Can I Play with My Food?”: Ali Manning (writer), Taylor Bou (illustrator)

Ali Manning is a food scientist and entrepreneur based in Memphis. Her early-reader picture book, “Can I Play with My Food?” encourages children’s curiosity and experimentation about what they eat. The story focuses on two sisters, Nema and Lexi, and their journey of discovery. Where does their food come from? What is the science involved in cooking? Along the way, the sisters also learn the importance of empathy and accepting people of varying abilities.

“Opal Lee and What It Means to Be Free: The True Story of the Grandmother of Juneteenth”: Alice Faye Duncan (writer), Keturah A. Bobo (illustrator)

Children’s book author Alice Faye Duncan has been a Memphis staple for more than thirty years. Her stories take crucial moments in Black history and bring them to life for young readers. Her most recent work, Opal Lee and What It Means to Be Free: The True Story of the Grandmother of Juneteenth, is one of the first biographies of Opal Lee, the woman who tirelessly advocated to make Juneteenth our newest federal holiday. Through Duncan’s research and Keturah Bobo’s illustrations, children learn about a living legend. Lee continues to give speeches and spread her universal message of freedom.

Elementary readers

“Coat of Many Colors”: Dolly Parton (writer), Brooke Boynton (illustrator)

Dolly Parton is one of Tennessee’s most celebrated daughters. The multitalented singer, author, humanitarian, and entrepreneur was born in Pittman Center, Tennessee. “Coat of Many Colors” is an early-reader picture book that illustrates the lyrics of her famous song of that name. Parton had humble beginnings as the fourth of twelve children in the Smoky Mountains. The book depicts her mother’s love and labor stitching a garment out of hand-me-down rags. The author encourages young people to show gratitude for what they’re given and to prevent bullies from stealing their pride.

“Wilma Rudolph: Track and Field Champion” by Adrianna Morganelli

“Wilma Rudolph: Track and Field Champion”: Adrianna Morganelli

Adrianna Morganelli is a prolific biographer writing for young audiences. “Wilma Rudolph: Track and Field Champion” details the life of one of Tennessee’s most revered athletes. Born in Saint Bethlehem, Tennessee, Rudolph faced many challenges. She suffered from pneumonia, scarlet fever, and polio-related paralysis all by the age of 5. Nevertheless, she persisted and went on to win three gold medals at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome. Rudolph’s story serves as an inspiration for all girls, African American children, and young people with disabilities.

Middle school readers

“Last in a Long Line of Rebels”: Lisa Lewis Tyre

Tennessee native Lisa Lewis Tyre connects the past and present in her debut novel, “Last in a Long Line of Rebels.” The protagonist is Lou, a 12-year-old girl. Initially, Lou is on a quest to save her condemned Civil War-era house. As she digs further into her history, she learns more about her ancestors — enslavers, abolitionists and everyone in between. The book illustrates a young girl’s adventure to save her home and right the wrongs of the past.

“Summer of My German Soldier”: Bette Greene

Bette Greene was born in Memphis. For part of her childhood, her family moved to Parkin, Arkansas, where they ran a general store, and then back to Memphis for her preteen and high school years. Her years in Memphis influenced her novel, which tells the story of Patty Bergen, a young Jewish girl in Arkansas during World War II. She befriends Anton, an escaped prisoner of war from Germany. The story chronicles Patty’s empathy as she harbors Anton in her family’s garage, and Anton’s attempt to bolster her self-esteem.

Secondary and post-secondary Readers

“The Foreign Student” by Susan Choi

“The Foreign Student”: Susan Choi

Susan Choi’s novel is set in 1955 at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. It details the unlikely romance between Chang, a 25-year-old student from Korea, and Katherine, a 28-year-old white American. The novel moves between events in the American South and South Korea, depicting the trauma and obstacles of race and class the characters must overcome to be together.

“Bloodroot”: Amy Greene

Amy Greene grew up in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains in Whitesburg, Tennessee, and lives in Morristown. Her debut novel follows four generations of women in the Lamb family as they navigate desire and disaster. The novel interrogates generational blessings and curses through magical realism. The author renders a realistic and complex portrait of legacy in Appalachia.

“How Moon Fuentez Fell in Love with the Universe”: Raquel Vasquez Gilliland

Mexican American writer Raquel Vasquez Gilliland lives in Tennessee with her family. Her second novel, “How Moon Fuentez Fell in Love with the Universe,” chronicles Moon’s coming- of-age story as she goes on a road trip with her twin sister, Star. Star becomes popular as a social media influencer and Moon agrees to act as her cameraperson and merchandiser. Over the course of the novel, Moon learns to defy expectations and has a budding romance. This eventful summer turns her world upside down.

“When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky”: Margaret Verble

Margaret Verble mines her Cherokee heritage for the novel, “When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky.” The tale, set in 1926 Nashville, depicts the life of Two Feathers, a young horse-diver who sets out to solve a mystery. Two Feathers and her friends want to discover why their zoo is plagued by curses and the specter of World War I. The novel invites the reader to contemplate what happens when we confront history instead of burying it.

Tennessee lawmakers to take up governor’s school library bill

2022-02-14T16:00:00+00:00

Gov. Bill Lee wants a new school library law in Tennessee to ensure parents know what materials are available to students, but school librarians say parents already have access to that information.

Some critics worry such a law could be abused to purge books about certain topics that some parents and students find uncomfortable.

The governor’s proposal, dubbed the “Age-Appropriate Materials Act of 2022,” is scheduled to debut in two legislative committees this week at the state Capitol.

The discussions come after several Tennessee districts removed books they considered controversial from reading lists — and amid a nationwide surge in book challenges by parents, activists, and others.

Last fall, Republican governors in Texas and South Carolina ordered systematic reviews of school library materials in those states. And the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom has reported an “unprecedented” number of book challenges nationwide in 2021. Many of the 10 most challenged books deal with race.

In his annual state address to Tennesseans, Lee, a Republican, called for a school library law “to create greater accountability at the local level so parents are empowered to make sure content is age-appropriate.”

His bill, sponsored by GOP majority leaders Rep. William Lamberth of Portland and Sen. Jack Johnson of Franklin, would require each public school to publish on its website the full list of books, magazines, newspapers, films, and other materials in the library. They also would have to adopt policies to hear feedback about content and to periodically review their libraries to ensure materials are “appropriate for the age and maturity levels” of students who can access them.

Those policies are already “standard practice” in most public schools across Tennessee, according to Lindsey Kimery, recent president of the Tennessee Association of School Librarians.

“What we’re concerned about is how this legislation could play out if it leads to policies and actions over and above what’s considered best practices,” said Kimery, who is also library coordinator for Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools. “For instance, a principal might feel the need on the front end to go through the collection line by line and purge books unnecessarily to head off any potential complaints.”

Representatives of the school librarians group have met twice with officials in Lee’s administration to discuss their concerns.

“We felt heard,” Kimery said late last week.

In Tennessee, book debates have simmered for more than a year and contributed to passage of a 2021 law limiting what teachers can say in the classroom about racial bias and systemic racism. But the focus has been mainly on controlling curriculum and instruction, not library books.

Most recently in East Tennessee, McMinn County’s school board voted to remove “Maus,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust, from its required reading list for eighth-graders. Minutes of the Jan. 10 meeting cited “inappropriate language” and an illustration of a nude woman.

In Williamson County, south of Nashville, a committee formed to review curriculum complaints, including many from the local chapter of Moms for Liberty, agreed to remove one book from its fourth-grade curriculum and restrict instruction on seven others. Gone is the Newbery Award-winning “Walk Two Moons,” about the journey of a 13-year-old girl with a Native American heritage to process her grief about losing her mother.

Lee’s library bill zeroes in on “age-appropriateness” but doesn’t define what that is. It doesn’t suggest that Tennessee school libraries are peddling “obscene materials,” as does another bill filed last month by Republican Rep. Scott Cepicky of Culleoka and Sen. Joey Hensley of Hohenwald to remove books that are deemed unwholesome.

The governor’s bill is scheduled to go before a House education subcommittee on Tuesday and the Senate Education Committee on Wednesday. The legislation’s goal is to make sure Tennessee has statewide standards to regularly review school library collections, said Luke Gustafson, a senior policy adviser to Johnson, the Senate co-sponsor.

“Some districts already adhere very well to those best practices, and there are some that could do better. The point is to set a baseline,” Gustafson said.

But Sen. Raumesh Akbari, who is the lone Democrat on the Senate’s education committee, called the bill “an unnecessary intrusion.”

“As a child, I viewed the library as a magical place where I could read books to go places that I couldn’t physically go and to learn about all kinds of people and places and things,” said the Memphis lawmaker. “To make it a political issue is a disservice to our students and an insult to our school librarians who are highly trained and have expertise on what’s age-appropriate. They don’t need to be micromanaged.”

Media experts suggest school libraries should be the last worry for parents and government officials. Social media makes it relatively easy for kids and teens to access inappropriate content — from misinformation to cyberbullying to outright pornography — through YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.

The nonprofit Common Sense Media, which helps educators and families navigate today’s media landscape, doesn’t think censorship is the answer to today’s book battles.

“There’s plenty of online content out there now that’s much more visually explicit than books in our school libraries,” said Christine Elgersma, the organization’s senior editor of learning content.

“It’s also important to keep in mind that our schools are places where ideas can be introduced in a controlled environment and where there can be a rich discussion moderated by an adult and witnessed by a whole group of students,” she said. “Compare that to a child or teen being alone in their bedroom with a computer or cell phone and trying to process a lot of iffy content all by themselves.”

Tennessee lawmakers file bill targeting ‘obscene’ books in school libraries

2022-01-28T23:58:44+00:00

Two Tennessee lawmakers have filed a bill aimed at purging books and other materials deemed “obscene or harmful to minors” from school libraries.

But several of the professional groups representing librarians across the state say districts already have processes in place to reconsider textbooks and materials that are flagged as objectionable.

“We feel that current school district board policies, when followed, adequately address concerns raised by parents or guardians about books,” said a Friday statement from the Tennessee Association of School Librarians.

The bill, filed this week by Republican Rep. Scott Cepicky of Culleoka and Sen. Joey Hensley of Hohenwald, would apply to public schools, including charter schools.

The proposal comes amid a national wave of book challenges, especially in politically conservative states like Tennessee, where individuals or groups are seeking to remove or restrict access to children’s and young adult books that they say contain pornography or other content deemed unwholesome.

Federal law strictly prohibits distribution of obscene material to minors.

In Texas and South Carolina, Republican governors have called for action against “obscene” content in school libraries, while school leaders in Missouri, Virginia, and Florida have pulled materials, including some award-winning books, after receiving complaints over a range of concerns.

Tennessee is a growing hotbed of complaints.

Earlier this month in East Tennessee, McMinn County’s school board voted to remove “Maus,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust, from its required reading list for eighth-graders. Minutes of the Jan. 10 meeting cited “inappropriate language” and an illustration of a nude woman.

Moms for Liberty, a conservative nonprofit group that originated in Florida, has targeted materials through its local chapter in Williamson County, near Nashville. Members of that group have used the public comment period of recent school board meetings to read excerpts they found objectionable.

And, John Rich, a well-known country music singer and conservative activist with a large Twitter following, tweeted about meeting this month with Gov. Bill Lee and Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn to discuss materials “that our kids are being exposed to containing obscene and pornographic content.”

Cepicky declined Friday to comment about his bill, which has 22 co-sponsors in the House. Hensley did not respond to a request for an interview.

Rep. Vincent Dixie, who chairs the House Democratic Caucus and sits on several education committees, mentioned the bubbling issue Friday when delivering an online speech for his party in advance of the governor’s State of the State address on Monday.

“Instead of fighting over which books can be in the library, let’s fight to provide every classroom with high-quality books and materials their students need to learn,” said Dixie, of Nashville.

A key question is how to define what materials cross the line.

“Even the Supreme Court has had trouble defining what obscenity is and, if the Supreme Court struggles with this, then the school boards statewide will have even more trouble,” said Mark Finchum, executive director of the Tennessee Council for the Social Studies, which represents social studies teachers across the state.

The push to ban books in America also targets many materials that affront conservative sensibilities regarding race and gender.

Last spring, Tennessee lawmakers passed legislation to prohibit classroom discussion in public schools about certain concepts about race and structural racism. And many of the books being removed from curricula deal with race, according to the list of the 10 most challenged books compiled by the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.

Another Republican bill, which was filed last year and is still alive, seeks to limit which supplemental teaching materials can be used in the classroom.

Last fall, three key Tennessee library organizations criticized censorship of books in school libraries.

“We oppose censorship within school libraries on the grounds that it is unconstitutional and contrary to the professional ethics of librarianship,” said a statement from the Tennessee Association of School Librarians, the Tennessee Library Association, and Friends of the Tennessee Libraries.

“Every book is not for every reader, but every child should have access to books they may want to read,” last fall’s statement said.

Erika Long, a Nashville school librarian and past president of the Tennessee Library Association, said this week that the groups issued the statement to respond to “the increasing number of challenges and bans happening across the country.”

“We wanted to make sure we addressed what is happening,” she said.

The bill filed this week cites a section of a Tennessee obscenity law that defines material “harmful to minors” as “that quality of any description or representation, in whatever form, of nudity, sexual excitement, sexual conduct, excess violence or sadomasochistic abuse when the matter or performance:

(A) Would be found by the average person applying contemporary community standards to appeal predominantly to the prurient, shameful or morbid interests of minors;

(B) Is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable for minors; and

(C) Taken as whole lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific values for minors.”

You can track the legislation here.

Tennessee’s first summer learning camps yield improvements in reading and math, governor says

2021-09-22T23:45:05+00:00

Tennessee public school students who participated in recent summer learning camps showed improvement in reading and especially in math, based on test results released on Wednesday.

Gov. Bill Lee’s administration reported an overall improvement of nearly 6 percentage points in English language arts and more than 10 percentage points in math for students who attended the six-week camps.

About 120,000 students in grades 1-8 — or 20% of those who were eligible — enrolled in the voluntary camps that districts were required to host under a new law aimed at recouping pandemic-related learning loss. The state picked up the $135 million tab, including $18.5 million to provide bus transportation.

“We know it’s been a tough year, but we’re very encouraged by this data that shows that swift action did pay off,” Lee said during a conference call with reporters.

Tennessee has been one of the most aggressive states in the nation in trying to address declines in student proficiency as the pandemic creeps into a third straight academic year. In January, Lee called a special legislative session for lawmakers to focus on K-12 education and approve initiatives to launch summer camps, after-school tutoring, and phonics-based literacy instruction.

State test scores released in August further illustrated the need to bolster student achievement. Those results, from tests given last spring, showed overall student proficiency declined 5 percentage points since 2019, the last time the state administered standardized tests under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, also known as TCAP. It marked a dramatic reversal of previous gains.

To measure progress during the summer camps, the state used a much simpler measurement — giving students 10-question tests anchored in the state’s academic standards at the start of the camps and then at the end. The camps required six hours of daily instruction in reading and math five days a week.

The state reported that improvement was markedly higher for elementary school students than for middle schoolers.

In math, elementary school students saw an improvement of nearly 12 percentage points — double the performance of middle school participants.

A writing exercise during a summer learning camp at Rutland Elementary School in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, in June 2021

In reading, elementary grades showed an improvement of over 7 percentage points, compared to 1 percentage point for middle school students.

Overall, economically disadvantaged students improved at generally the same rate as their more affluent peers, Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn told state lawmakers later Wednesday during a hearing to discuss the results.

“That’s a really big deal, because typically what we see is our economically disadvantaged students improve at a slightly slower rate,” Schwinn said.

State officials did not release detailed attendance data, but Schwinn reported that 96% of enrolled students attended for one or more days. Attendance was higher in elementary schools than middle schools.

Registration priority was given to students who generally scored below proficient in math or reading on their most recent TCAP tests or another state test used to identify students needing early intervention. The program also prioritized students eligible to benefit from federal funding intended to help poor working families.

Asked for more details about the testing data, a department spokesman said less than half of participating students took both tests. Schwinn called that a representative sampling and also said the 10-question assessment was the right tool to measure improvement over the summer.

“I do not think it’s appropriate to give students a 3-hour test at the beginning and the end of a summer program,” she told reporters, adding that the assessments gave her department “a directional sense on improvement.”

“I feel strongly that we absolutely saw academic benefits,” she said, noting ancillary benefits in student confidence, engagement and — for those returning to in-person instruction after a year of remote learning — preparation to re-enter classrooms.

But House Democratic Caucus Chairman Vincent Dixie said “it’s a little early for a victory lap.”

“I think the sample size of the students who attended summer school is pretty small and I’d wait until we find out more about this school year and the 1 million students who have struggled this year through the COVID-19 pandemic,” the Nashville lawmaker said in a statement.

At Wednesday’s hearing, several district leaders told lawmakers they believed the inaugural camps were successful — and that local flexibility on staffing and scheduling was key.

“There is no one size fits all,” said Danny Weeks, superintendent of Dickson County Schools.

Weeks and Cleveland City Schools Superintendent Russell Dyer asked for continued leeway to make adjustments as the program continues next summer, emphasized the importance of providing transportation to encourage student participation, and asked the state to consider increasing pay for teachers beyond $1,000 a week, which is basically the salary of a beginning teacher.

The state already is getting a return on its investment, they agreed, especially for struggling students that the program targets.

“Having our students come to school during the summer – having those fun learning experiences – absolutely made a difference when they came back in the fall,” Dyer said.

Schwinn plans 10-day bus tour to spotlight summer learning happening across Tennessee

2021-06-08T21:00:07+00:00

Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn is hitting the road to talk up summer learning opportunities during a 10-day bus tour of 50 school districts across Tennessee.

The state education department announced Tuesday that Schwinn will kick off her “Accelerating TN” bus tour next week. Her itinerary lists four days of stops in East Tennessee beginning June 14, visits to West Tennessee June 21-22, and a four-day tour of Middle Tennessee wrapping up on July 1.

The road trip seeks to spotlight summer programs required under a new state law to bolster learning that was disrupted by the pandemic. The work mirrors acceleration academies happening this summer in schools across the nation to help students learn key concepts they may have missed, while also preparing them for a new school year.

“This summer, students are in their schools and learning,” Schwinn said in a statement. “Districts and schools are planning how to spend historic amounts of federal funding to accelerate student achievement. The Accelerating TN 2021 bus tour will support this important work.”

Funded with state money freed up by billions of federal dollars flowing into Tennessee for coronavirus relief, most of Tennessee’s camps are already underway for kindergarteners through grade eight. For four to six weeks, teachers and staff are providing six hours of daily programming that include reading and math, as well as physical activity and play.

“Our aim is to accelerate the learning for our summer camp participants so that all students are ready for grade-level work when we return for the 2021-22 school year,” said Russell Dyer, director of Cleveland City Schools, where Schwinn is scheduled to visit during a swing through southeast Tennessee on June 17.

Tennessee won’t have a baseline on whether and how much students have fallen behind academically until results of state tests are released late this summer. But some districts have begun to receive early scores from assessments that began in mid-April and end this week.

The department did not immediately provide summer enrollment data requested by Chalkbeat, but a survey of several large districts indicates that tens of thousands of students are participating.

During her whirlwind tour, Schwinn wants to interact with students and educators at camps, as well as teachers being trained in phonics-based reading instruction as part of Tennessee’s Reading 360 initiative. Under a state contract with New York-based TNTP Inc., about 11,000 teachers in prekindergarten through fourth grade are learning about foundational principles of literacy in person this summer after completing a week of online training this spring.

Some stops on the bus tour will feature roundtable discussions with district leaders and elected officials, possibly including Gov. Bill Lee.

Artist’s rendering of the bus for Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn’s “Accelerating TN” tour of summer learning programs

The tour won’t include Shelby County Schools since the state’s largest district is finishing up the school year and will launch its summer learning academy on July 6, after Schwinn’s final stop. The Memphis district has hosted its summer academy since 2017 and is expanding offerings this year with federal funding.

“We are in talks with the commissioner’s office and looking for an opportunity for her to visit and see our academy in action,” said spokeswoman Jerica Phillips.

Schwinn last came to Memphis in April, visited Parkway Village Elementary School, and spoke with Superintendent Joris Ray about his Reimagining 901 plan for using federal coronavirus relief funds to revamp academics and school facilities.

The West Tennessee bus tour will focus mostly on rural areas like Tipton County, north of Memphis.

“It has been a unique and challenging year to say the least,” said Director John Combs, “so we appreciate Commissioner Schwinn taking the time to stop by Tipton County to share the department’s vision for Tennessee schools and see firsthand the great work happening in our district.”

Below is the bus tour’s schedule:

June 14-17: East Tennessee

June 14: Johnson City Schools, Bristol City Schools, Sullivan County Schools, Kingsport City Schools, Washington County Schools
June 15: Jefferson County Schools, Grainger County Schools, Claiborne County Schools, Scott County Schools, Oneida Special School District
June 16: Knox County Schools, Sevier County Schools, Blount County Schools, Maryville City Schools, Alcoa City Schools, Clinton City Schools, Tennessee School for the Deaf
June 17: Etowah City Schools, Polk County Schools, Bradley County Schools, Cleveland City Schools, Hamilton County Schools

June 21-22: West Tennessee

June 21: Benton County Schools, Hollow-Rock County Schools, Trenton Special School District, Bradford Special School District, Milan Special School District
June 22: Tipton County Schools, Lauderdale County Schools, Haywood County Schools

June 28- July 1: Middle Tennessee

June 28: Trousdale County Schools, Jackson County Schools, Overton County Schools, Pickett County Schools, White County Schools, Warren County Schools
June 29: Decatur County Schools, Perry County Schools, Maury County Schools, Williamson County Schools, Franklin Special School District, Metro Nashville Public Schools, Tennessee School for the Blind
June 30: Cheatham County Schools, Dickson County Schools, Sumner County Schools, Wilson County Schools
July 1: Murfreesboro City Schools, Rutherford County Schools, Clarksville Montgomery County Schools

Here’s how Tennessee plans to spend $491 million of federal stimulus funds on education

2021-05-21T20:55:36+00:00

Tennessee’s education department will spend the bulk of its $491 million share of one-time federal funding on new literacy, summer camp, and tutoring initiatives as the state seeks to accelerate student learning after a year of pandemic-related disruptions.

The department also will prioritize classroom resources, teacher training, and programs to prepare more candidates for the teaching profession.

The state released its spending plan this week for its portion of the nearly $4.2 billion that Tennessee is getting for K-12 education through four COVID-19 relief and economic stimulus packages passed by Congress.

School districts will receive the vast majority of the $4.2 billion. They have until June 1 to decide how to spend the largest and most recent round of funding provided under the Biden administration.

The massive infusion of cash — which amounts to two-thirds of what the state spends in a single year on its students — presents a historic opportunity to transform public education in a state that ranks near the nation’s bottom for per-pupil spending.

But all of the money must be spent or allocated by the fall of 2024, which means administrators likely won’t want to put it toward recurring expenses such as raising teacher salaries or hiring full-time specialists to support schools.

Gov. Bill Lee has called the amount of funding “historic” and urges local education officials to “keep student achievement at the center of all decision-making.”

The state education department’s plan for using its $491 million share is due to the U.S. Department of Education on June 7.

The department plans to spend $170.5 million — a third of its allocation — on programs that aim to help students catch up and accelerate learning. Those include learning camps starting this summer and after-school tutoring programs set to launch in the fall.

Another $120.7 million will bolster literacy work in a state where only a third of students test as proficient readers. The money will pay for new resources for classrooms and families and new training for teachers to ground their instruction in phonics.

This month, about 12,000 teachers in prekindergarten through the fourth grade began a two-week training program through an $8 million, two-year contract with New York-based TNTP Inc., a nonprofit group that provides teacher training programs.

Other planned investments include:

$56.5 million for professional development and additional resources to help teachers prepare for their courses.
$35 million to support Tennessee school districts’ adoption of new math textbooks in 2022-23.
$32.6 million for grants going to 21 districts to reimagine high school in ways that better equip students for college and careers, plus a new program to expand access to advanced coursework so high schoolers can earn college credit. The Tennessee-based Niswonger Foundation will recruit teachers and students into Tennessee’s new Advanced Placement Access for All Program, train teachers, and help develop new curriculum.
$32 million for online resources for teaching and learning and improvements for school districts.
$21 million to grow Tennessee’s educator ranks, including grow-your-own initiatives in which districts and teacher training programs partner to provide innovative, no-cost ways to enter the teaching profession.
$17.8 million to support student mental health through grants to school systems or new investments to help schools support students who have experienced trauma in their lives.

Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn said her department’s spending priorities are based in part on feedback from district leaders and education advocates from across Tennessee.

She plans to spend about $20 million to hire staff and establish systems to monitor how the federal money is being spent, both at the state and local levels. This spring, the legislature authorized the department to hire 22 staff members for that work.

Schwinn has encouraged district leaders to use at least 1% of their federal relief and stimulus funds to establish similar monitoring protocols at the local level.

The state also has an ongoing list of grant opportunities and free resources for students, families, teachers, schools, and districts.

Some grants are competitive, such as one to provide new equipment for schools with state designations specializing in teaching science, technology, engineering, and math. Other resources — like free reading materials for children in kindergarten through the second grade — are available for any Tennessee family who orders them.

You can learn more about the state department’s plan here.

‘Third grade is too late’: Memphis to forge ahead with second grade reading retention policy this fall

2021-03-10T21:58:41+00:00

Shelby County Schools officials are moving forward with a plan to hold back for a year second grade students who are behind in reading. The district will put the policy in place just before a new state law mandates retention of third graders lagging in reading.

The school board approved the policy in 2019 to begin this fall and set the stage by tracking students’ reading skills throughout the school year and improving reading instruction. Still, district officials had considered postponing the plan because of the pandemic.

But Antonio Burt, the district’s chief academic officer, said Tuesday that waiting would hurt the district’s reading scores and current students’ chances of catching up.

Those reading scores especially matter now, because in January Tennessee legislators passed a law requiring districts to retain third graders who are not proficient in reading and potentially affecting tens of thousands of students. That law goes into effect in the 2022-23 academic year.

The law exempts students previously held back a grade. That means that students who are retained in second grade under Shelby County Schools’ policy cannot be held back again in third grade under the state law.

Antonio Burt, the district’s chief academic officer, at a community meeting in 2019 to discuss the second grade retention policy.

The state begins testing students in third grade. Only about a quarter of Memphis students meet state requirements. The district’s reading scores also lag when compared with those of other urban school systems.

Educators consider third grade a critical year. Students who aren’t proficient by third grade are four times more likely to drop out of high school, research says.

The Memphis district is trying to boost struggling students before they reach that year.

“We feel that third grade is too late,” Burt told school board members at a committee meeting Tuesday. “If they don’t pass [the state’s TNReady test], they’ll be retained, but it will also count against the district composite average as well. So it’s a double whammy.”

Though the district and the state agree that holding back students can help boost their reading skills, each assesses student proficiency in different ways. Shelby County Schools’ policy relies on four ways of measuring a student’s progress throughout the year before deciding whether to retain them. The state law relies only on the annual standardized exam TNReady.

District leaders across Tennessee have expressed alarm at the state’s stricter method because it could mean two-thirds of students would have to repeat third grade. About 41% of students statewide fall just below the state’s threshold and could be retained.

School boards in Memphis and the surrounding suburbs recently signed a joint statement saying the state’s standard is unfairly high for students and could potentially hold back students who are actually reading on grade level. Instead of relying on one test, the statement suggests the state should consider other ways for students to show their reading skills.

The Memphis policy creates 12 points for second graders to earn throughout the year: four from quarterly report card grades in English class, six from two district reading tests during the school year, and two from the state’s optional annual exam for second graders. Students earning at least eight points will be promoted to third grade. If not, they’ll be required to attend summer school to try to boost scores to avoid repeating second grade.

Burt said the district is planning several community meetings about the state law and the district’s policy in the coming weeks.

Teacher feedback pushes Memphis superintendent to delay vote on $5.6 million literacy contract

2021-02-24T03:12:43+00:00

After getting pushback from teachers about the district’s plan to spend up to $14.5 million over the next five years on a literacy consultant, Shelby County Schools Superintendent Joris Ray pulled a vote on the contract from Tuesday’s school board meeting agenda.

Ray said he still supports the proposal to spend $5.6 million next school year on Educational Epiphany’s teacher training and take-home literacy flashcards for Memphis students. He said that until recently, he had “heard nothing but great things” from teachers about the program, but now wants to gather feedback from educators through surveys and meetings before deciding whether to bring the contract back to the school board.

“For once in a long time, we are providing continuity and consistency across all ZIP codes,” Ray told board members. “As always, I will continue to have the team listen and incorporate board, teacher, parent feedback in how we implement this change.”

The decision came after Chalkbeat, The Commercial Appeal, and The Daily Memphian reported on teachers’ concerns about the program. The training is part of the district’s plan to help students meet district and state literacy requirements.

Just before the meeting, about 25 cars with teachers carrying signs pulled in front of district headquarters, in part to urge school board members to vote against the contract. Of the 23 comments submitted to be read during the meeting, 15 were about the contract, all in opposition.

Daniel Warner, who was named the district’s teacher of the year last fall, said the program pushed him to spend 20 to 30 minutes on explaining a lesson’s objective, or standard, to students, which he said wasted precious classroom time.

“In my experience, instructional time is better spent on the content of the standard rather than the language of the standard,” he said. “Standards are not written for children, they are written for teachers.”

Parent advocacy organization Memphis Lift said it would rather see the money spent on more literacy coaches.

“We want Memphis children to get support for where they struggle, not a cookie-cutter program of information that teachers can also find online,” the group’s statement read.

School board member Stephanie Love said some people were “misguided” into thinking Tuesday’s vote would authorize spending $15 million at once. The contract would be foer that amount over five years if the program shows initial success and is extended. Love said she reviewed the program materials and believed they would help students.

“Unfortunately ... what our children need in terms of literacy, they aren’t getting 100%,” she said.

Ray said he will bring feedback about the program to a board committee meeting in March or April and then decide whether to schedule another vote.

Memphis school leaders are betting big on one consultant to change how students learn to read. Will it work?

2021-02-23T03:00:00+00:00

This story is a collaboration between Chalkbeat and The Commercial Appeal.

Seeking a new way to boost students’ reading skills at a crucial time, Shelby County Schools officials are betting big on a different kind of program that has shown positive initial results but lacks a long-term track record.

The Memphis district has proposed spending $14.5 million over five years on a leadership and teacher training company called Educational Epiphany, the brainchild of a consultant named Donyall Dickey whose work has already been piloted in the 88,000-student district.

The school board is scheduled to vote on the contract Tuesday, and the outcome is uncertain. Superintendent Joris Ray has been a vocal champion of Dickey’s work, but some school board members and educators have questioned the investment and the program’s philosophies.

Educational Epiphany CEO Donyall Dickey during a board planning meeting in Oct. 2020.

The contract would include teacher training and provide take-home literacy flashcards for students. In the first year, the district would spend about $5.6 million. The district then would have the option to spend $9 million more over the next four years if student test scores improve in the first year.

The program seeks to simplify what district leaders expect from teachers and help students break down words and understand their meaning. Most Memphis students are not meeting state requirements for reading.

The district briefly applied these teaching methods to seven Memphis schools in 2017 and since then has paid more than $1 million to Dickey’s company for teacher training.

District leaders have been striving to accelerate students’ reading skills for years, but have had limited success in a city where most students live in poverty. Improving reading has been even harder during the pandemic. Students have been learning remotely because the coronavirus has ravaged the community.

The district is depending on Dickey’s program to be a key driver in Memphis schools to meet state requirements for student reading levels. The most recent state test scores showed about 23% of third graders met that standard, compared with 36% statewide. District officials want 90% of third graders to be reading at grade level by the 2024-25 school year.

It’s too early to know what kind of impact this year’s training might have because students haven’t taken annual state exams yet. Even then, the unusual nature of this pandemic-disrupted year will make evaluation difficult.

Ray told board members during a fall planning meeting that he was convinced Dickey’s methods would propel more students to read on grade level.

“We’re going to do it one way,” he said. “And we’re going to do it in a way where we bring teachers along with us so teachers don’t feel like we’re doing something to them instead of doing something for them.”

Educational Epiphany in the classroom

The district spent $650,000 for Educational Epiphany to train teachers, principals, and other academic staff last summer and fall.

Teachers said that previously they had struggled to understand the district’s swarm of expectations on how they should improve student reading. So for some, the guidance in the new program is simple and intuitive.

Educational Epiphany instructs teachers to write out the objective, or what students should know by the end of the lesson. When reading the objective out loud, teachers help break down the words students may not know. Examples of words and concepts are offered by the teacher. Then the entire class is invited to participate in working through another example. Students get two other opportunities to work on examples, in a small group, and then on their own.

By the end of this process, students should be able to demonstrate that skill through different types of writing, such as presenting an argument or using various sources to explain something. In math, teachers should provide tangible ways for students to see how to apply complex math concepts that they learn. And after the school day, parents can reinforce literacy skills at home using Educational Epiphany’s flashcards.

Before, Bianca Martinez, a second-year sixth grade English teacher at Colonial Middle School, said the district expected teachers to go through multiple objectives in a day.

“A lot of us have already been teaching this way, but I think we feel heard and validated now,” she said.

District leaders had previously used a pacing guide that ensured teachers across all schools were covering the same material. Many students switch schools midyear because of poverty and housing instability. Now, there’s less pressure to cover a lot of material at once and administrators encourage teachers to review what students aren’t understanding.

But other teachers say the emphasis on breaking down the objective takes away precious time from building up other skills students need to learn to read.

Emma Sisson, a fifth grade teacher at Brewster Elementary, recently spent about 15 minutes out of an hour-long lesson just on the objective and its vocabulary, which Dickey calls “academic language.” Because of that, she ran out of time that day to finish a Frederick Douglass speech.

Before Educational Epiphany’s training, she would have spent less than five minutes on the objective and spent more time building on what students already know about the topic. Research has shown that familiarity with whatever topic students are reading helps them become better readers.

“Even if they know how to analyze and find the main idea, they may come across a topic they’re unfamiliar with and it’s like reading another language,” said Sisson, a third-year teacher. “I’m not saying that’s not important. It’s things I would be doing with my students, but the focus doesn’t allow me to do other things.”

So Sisson was surprised to learn that top district leaders were holding up that lesson as a good example. Dickey called it “masterful, powerful, thorough.”

He acknowledged that the objective Sisson was teaching was a mouthful: “Students will be able to describe and identify historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, and technical procedures in order to describe the relationships or interactions between two or more historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, and technical procedures in a text.”

Sisson paused to define “historical” as concerning past events. Students stumbled over reading words aloud like “concepts” and “procedures,” but encouraged each other to push through.

“It is evident that the professional development in which we have been engaged since June, July has made it to the classroom,” Dickey said during the district’s broadcast to all teachers about best practices.

Laura Taylor, an assistant professor at Rhodes College in Memphis who researches early literacy, said the language used in Tennessee standards are not geared toward students. She questioned whether students need to understand the education jargon.

“It’s not that I think students can’t learn that, I absolutely think they can,” she said. “The issue is whether or not that will be useful in helping them learn the things that we and they want to learn.”

Dickey did not respond to questions submitted by Chalkbeat and The Commercial Appeal for this article.

Dickey stresses that teachers should reinforce literacy skills in every subject. That aligns with national Common Core standards, which Tennessee’s learning requirements are based on.

Candice Golden, a fifth grade teacher at Dunbar Elementary, said she has seen her students apply their reading skills in science and math lessons. She uses Educational Epiphany’s guide that she said includes standard definitions for words as well as root words, prefixes, and suffixes. During a recent lesson, she told students fossils were something that “existed.” What does that mean?

“The student was able to connect that it happened in the past because of ‘-ed,’” Golden said, explaining one of the word endings she’s been teaching her students.

Board members’ reviews are mixed

Board members are split on whether to move forward on the $5.6 million contract with Dickey. Some say his methods are the answer they’ve been waiting for, while others want more time to see how the practices play out before spending more money.

“Spending a little over $14 million for one company that we don’t necessarily have all of the proven data that this is working for our children and our teachers, I’m a little skeptical about it,” board member Sheleah Harris said during a recent meeting.

Sample of Educational Epiphany take-home literacy flashcards for students.

Board member Shante Avant said she was worried the district was buying materials from Educational Epiphany that they could get for free from the state under a recently announced $100 million reading initiative called Reading 360.

The state’s program, still in its early stages, includes stipends for educators who attend training sessions about teaching students to read. It also includes classroom kits similar to Educational Epiphany’s flashcards, said Angela Whitelaw, a deputy superintendent. But the state resources will only go toward early elementary teachers who attend the training, while Dickey’s materials will be available to all students and teachers.

Educational Epiphany’s flashcards review common word endings and letter sounds. The cost equates to more than $40 per box based on the contract, and includes replacements, Whitelaw said.

“The Reading 360 resources alone will not be enough to address the longstanding literacy issues created by decades of underfunding by the state of Tennessee,” Whitelaw said in a statement.

Board member Althea Greene said Dickey’s program is worth the money because she’s seeing more principals and teachers agree on what is expected in classrooms — something she rarely saw in her career in Memphis schools.

“We’re going back to old practices,” said Greene, who with Harris are the only former teachers on the board. “We have a new generation of teachers who didn’t learn to read like I learned to read.”

Results in Memphis lack long-term track record

In 2017, Shelby County Schools tried Dickey’s program in nine pilot schools. Most of them were part of then-Superintendent Dorsey Hopson’s initiative that sought to improve schools at risk of closing.

The teaching methods were only implemented in the nine pilot schools in 2017-2018, Shelby County Schools officials said. Reading test scores increased at seven schools, ranging from 1 and 9.6 percentage points.

Whitelaw, the district’s deputy superintendent, said the primary change at the pilot schools was implementing Educational Epiphany’s guidance. Officials pointed to the one-year gains to justify expanding Dickey’s reach in the district. Ultimately, Dickey’s work did not continue in those schools due to inadequate funding, the district said. But the district continued to pay him for other services, including leading this school year’s earlier teacher training.

By 2019, the year after Dickey’s program ended, seven pilot schools posted improvements in test scores from 2017, the year before Dickey’s methods were adopted. Of those schools, three saw continuous improvements year after year. Because the pilot stopped after one year, it’s unclear how or if continuous gains were the result of Educational Epiphany teaching practices.

Taylor, the early literacy expert, cautioned against any school district looking to test scores during the pandemic to accurately evaluate a new program. She said that once students have returned face-to-face learning, existing diagnostic testing and state testing could measure effectiveness.

Teacher and student data are also important, she added, noting that talking to them is one way to measure how useful the program is.

Dickey has worked with other urban school districts, which have used state test scores to measure effectiveness. He started teaching in Baltimore in the late 1990s, rose through the ranks, and later led academic departments in Philadelphia and Atlanta.

When Dickey consulted two mostly Black elementary schools in Atlanta, state test data showed significant improvement in reading scores from 2016 to 2019.

But when Dickey began working with Baltimore schools as a consultant, the results were less clear. Shelby County Schools provided reading test scores from three Baltimore elementary schools that increased up to 30 percentage points in a single year, but didn’t specify when. Maryland state test data stretching back to 2003 did not match any of the numbers in the district’s report. Dickey did not respond to questions about the discrepancy.

Golden, the science and math teacher at Dunbar, said she has watched Shelby County Schools go through several teaching methods and would like to see consistency. To see if Dickey’s teaching practices work, the district would need to watch students over a few years, she said.

“When I think about delivery for the children,” she said, “I have to always think it’s a marathon and it’s not a race.”

Broadband, teacher pay, literacy are priorities in Tennessee governor’s proposed budget

2021-02-09T02:13:30+00:00

Declaring he wants to solve Tennessee’s broadband dilemma once and for all, Gov. Bill Lee proposed spending $200 million to close internet service gaps, an investment that he says will benefit students as well as the economy.

The plan is part of a $41.8 billion proposed budget the Republican governor unveiled Monday during his annual State of the State Address at the Capitol in Nashville. The proposal for the fiscal year starting July 1 includes almost $342 million more for K-12 education than allocated in the current year’s budget.

“A significant, one-time investment, combined with significant private investment, will get broadband to just about every community in Tennessee, and tonight, that’s exactly what I’m proposing,” Lee said during a joint session of the Tennessee General Assembly.

The governor also wants more money for educator pay, literacy programs, and charter school facilities using better-than-expected revenues during the coronavirus pandemic.

And he’s requesting $29 million to start a school voucher program this fall should the Tennessee Supreme Court side with his administration and restore a 2019 voucher law overturned last spring. The high court agreed last week to take on the case.

Teacher pay and literacy were the biggest-ticket new items for education. The governor proposed a 4% increase toward educator compensation at a cost of $120 million, plus an additional $110 million to support new phonics-based reading initiatives his education chief, Penny Schwinn, announced last month. Lee also is seeking $24 million to help charter school operators with their building costs.

Lee’s spending plan would maintain funding for public schools through its complex formula known as the Basic Education Program — and set aside another $20 million to help offset this year’s statewide enrollment decline during the pandemic. But it’s uncertain if that amount would cover what is needed, since next year’s funding is largely based on this year’s enrollment. Last fall, enrollment was down by 33,000, according to the Tennessee Department of Education.

Democrats and Tennessee’s largest teacher organization had urged Lee to go bigger toward public education this year. After reviewing his proposals, they were disappointed he asked for more new money for capital improvements — $931 million in all — than for education. The governor also wants to add $50 million to get the state’s rainy day fund to a record $1.5 billion.

“Tennessee ranks 46th in the nation for student funding, and Tennessee teachers earn less today than they did a decade ago after inflation,” said Hendrell Remus, chairman of the Tennessee Democratic Caucus. He called Lee’s proposed teacher increase “an insult to educators.”

The president of the Tennessee Education Association praised Lee’s broadband proposal, but not his overall education budget.

“Long before the pandemic hit our state, our public schools were already suffering under a plague of chronic underfunding,” said Beth Brown, noting an urgent need for more school counselors, social workers, nurses, librarians and support staff. “It is irresponsible and harmful to Tennessee children for Gov. Lee to continue this pattern of insufficient state investment in our schools, especially at a time when Tennessee has the largest revenue surpluses in state history.”

Aides described the governor’s spending plan as “cautiously optimistic” as the pandemic continues. Last year, the emerging virus prompted Lee to roll back many of his education proposals, including a $250 million trust fund to support and grow mental health services for students in Tennessee’s highest-risk schools. This year, Lee is proposing $6.5 million in recurring funding toward student mental health.

The legislature will decide whether he gets his wish list. Lawmakers reconvened their regular session this week following a four-day special session on education last month. They’ll vote on a final budget before adjourning this spring.

Tennessee governor softens tone but still wants Memphis students in classrooms by mid-February

2021-02-04T00:34:46+00:00

Gov. Bill Lee asked Memphis school leaders last week to offer an in-person learning option by Feb. 15 but sidestepped questions Wednesday about what would happen if they don’t.

“We’ve only talked about what we can do to support them,” Lee said of his conversations with Shelby County Schools Superintendent Joris Ray. He added that he wants to “keep communications open” with Ray.

The remarks appeared to defuse a possible showdown between the state and its largest school system over the best way to educate Memphis students during the deadly pandemic, which has been hardest on people of color and those from low-income communities. Meanwhile, several local Shelby County health officials said a return to classrooms could be managed safely.

The governor spoke during an exchange with reporters after signing a handful of education bills into law from the recent special legislative session on education.

Ray announced last Friday that he was delaying students’ return to Memphis classrooms for a third time, despite the governor’s call for a mid-February in-person option and a threat from legislators to reduce or cut state funding for districts that don’t comply. The superintendent said state and local officials need to work together first to further reduce the infection rate in his mostly Black community.

Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, the only other Tennessee district meeting completely virtually, is scheduled to begin returning to in-person learning on Thursday under a transition plan Director Adrienne Battle announced on Monday.

Lee said he was grateful to Battle and hopes the Memphis district “moves in that direction soon.” He said he has offered Ray an unlimited supply of rapid COVID-19 tests and emphasized that the state health department will prioritize teachers for vaccinations after elderly Tennesseans get their shots.

Earlier this week, Tennessee opened vaccinations to people ages 70 to 74 after prioritizing health care workers and Tennesseans over 75. Health Commissioner Dr. Lisa Piercey said the approximately 300,000 people in the new age group could take the rest of February to vaccinate. Teachers are in the next statewide group on the priority list.

“Supply is still very limited,” Piercey said Tuesday of the vaccine, but she expects it to increase each week.

On Wednesday, Tennessee reached a somber milestone: More than 10,000 residents have died during the global pandemic since the first case was reported in the state last March.

The newly signed laws were passed during a four-day special session last month to respond to pandemic-related school disruptions. They will:

Hold teachers, schools, and districts harmless from the results of state tests scheduled for this spring, as long as at least 80% of each district’s students take the assessment.
Require school systems to adopt phonics-based reading instruction and revise what aspiring teachers must learn in their college training programs about how to teach reading.
Authorize new summer school and after-school tutoring programs to begin this summer and fall to help students catch up from learning they may have lost.

The learning recovery law includes a controversial provision that, beginning in 2022-23, will increase the likelihood of schools holding back more students who aren’t considered proficient in reading by the end of third grade. Those students could also retest or take advantage of the new summer and tutoring programs to get promoted to the fourth grade.

Lee called the legislation “historic” as he prepared to sign the bills in a large room on Capitol Hill filled with legislative leaders, school superintendents, and some teachers, as well as his education chief, Penny Schwinn.

Because the governor convened lawmakers early to focus on education, Tennessee took a national lead in addressing pandemic-related learning challenges.

“I think Gov. Lee is right to boast about Tennessee’s aggressive actions here,” said Michael J. Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. “As far as I know, the Volunteer State is out front of its peers when it comes to addressing learning loss.”

Patricia Levesque, chief executive officer of ExcelinEd, a school reform group launched in 2008 by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, agreed.

“They called a special session and dealt with a variety of issues — reading, assessments, tutoring, summer camps, teacher pay — all within one week,” Levesque said. “This will give their state agency more time to focus on implementation.”

Tennessee strengthens third-grade retention requirements as legislature takes up flurry of education bills in special session

2021-01-22T01:40:29+00:00

Tennessee lawmakers on Thursday approved new requirements that increase the likelihood of schools holding back more students who aren’t considered proficient in reading by the end of third grade.

They also authorized new summer school and after-school tutoring programs to help students catch up and struggling third graders to avoid being retained. And they voted to hold teachers, schools, and districts harmless from the results of state tests scheduled for this spring.

The legislature passed a barrage of legislation during the third day of a special session called by Gov. Bill Lee to address learning disruptions for students during the coronavirus pandemic, plus longstanding challenges with teacher pay and literacy.

House leaders expect to wrap up the session on Friday and approve a 2% funding boost toward teacher salaries this year from Jan. 1 to June 30. The Senate passed the measure on Thursday. A spokeswoman for the governor said Lee plans to propose a 4% total increase toward salaries beginning on July 1 for teachers and other certified educators.

The legislature also voted to require school systems to adopt phonics-based reading instruction and revise what aspiring teachers must learn in their college training programs about how to teach reading.

Lee’s administration crafted the remediation and retention legislation. Once the governor signs the bill into law, summer and tutoring programs will launch this year through local school systems, while the new requirements for third-grade retention will kick in beginning with the 2022-23 academic year.

Lawmakers approved the learning programs in spite of last-minute questions about the adequacy of the state’s plan to pay for them with a combination of state and federal funds, plus matches from local districts.

“It’s not going to be enough,” said Senate Minority Leader Jeff Yarbro, a Nashville Democrat, who said the state is “doing this on the cheap.”

“This is an unfunded mandate and a gigantic one,” Yarbro said. “We are extending a six-week period for every district in the state for a lot of students and we are not sending anywhere near the resources to pay for it.”

But Sen. Bo Watson, a Hixson Republican who chairs his chamber’s finance committee, said he was satisfied after the state’s chief fiscal officer testified the funding from one source — unclaimed lottery prizes — should be sufficient for the first two years. After that, the summer school program is to be scaled down.

The third-grade retention plan was the most controversial part of the legislation and would determine reading proficiency based on the results of a single test, the state’s annual TNReady assessment for English language arts.

Democrats questioned the wisdom of making TNReady such a high-stakes test for its youngest test-takers, potentially keeping third graders from being promoted.

Struggling readers wouldn’t be held back automatically, though. Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn said third graders who don’t score high enough will be given a chance to take the test again or improve by enrolling in the new learning programs.

Lawmakers tacked on one provision to create a process for families who want to appeal their retention through the state education department.

Will holding back struggling third-grade readers improve literacy? Tennessee’s governor thinks so, but others aren’t sure.

2021-01-20T04:30:09+00:00

Gov. Bill Lee’s proposal to take a more aggressive stance holding back Tennessee third-graders who are struggling to read is drawing criticism from educators and parents who question his logic and timing.

As part of a plan to help stem pandemic-caused learning loss, Lee wants to strengthen a 2011 state law that has been largely unenforced, with few students actually being retained.

Beginning with the 2022-23 academic year, the governor wants to require schools to hold back third-graders who don’t meet a certain threshold on state standardized tests. Those students will be given a chance to take the test again or improve through new summer school or after-school tutoring programs slated to launch this year, but will be retained if they do not.

“When we stop the cycle of passing without preparation,” Lee told lawmakers Tuesday, “we give kids a better chance at succeeding in middle school and beyond.”

His plan, discussed briefly before a joint session of the General Assembly, has emerged as one of the most controversial among a slate of legislation lawmakers are considering this week during a special session on education. The legislature is looking at ways to get students back up to speed during the coronavirus pandemic and address longstanding concerns about student literacy and teacher pay.

Third grade is considered a critical year for reading because literacy is foundational to all subsequent learning. Research says students who aren’t proficient by that point are four times more likely to drop out of high school. Other research ties poor reading skills to higher rates of depression, teenage pregnancy, and pre-teen alcohol use.

But critics are concerned about the high bar for proficiency that the governor wants to set. Currently, only a third of the state’s third-graders could meet that threshold based on the results of the state’s most recent tests.

And that proficiency level would be determined by the results of a single test — the state’s annual spring assessment for English language arts which Tennessee has mostly struggled to administer cleanly since 2016 because of computer and logistical problems.

“We have a lot better readers in Tennessee than the state’s data suggests,” said Mike Winstead, superintendent of schools in Maryville and a member of the legislative committee for Tennessee’s superintendents organization.

He believes threatening young readers with remediation and retention if they fall just below the proposed threshold for proficiency is “misguided” and could end up demoralizing students.

Based on 2019 test results, about a fifth of Tennessee third-graders fall in the state’s bottom reading level, which Winstead views as needing remediation or potential retention. He’s most concerned about the 41% who are categorized as “approaching” grade level and also targeted by legislation that Lee has backed.

“A lot of those students just miss hitting the proficient mark by one or two questions and are labeled as significantly deficient in this bill,” Winstead said.

He thinks it would be smarter for the state to focus on students who score in the state’s bottom group — an approach echoed by many educators, said Dale Lynch, executive director of the Tennessee superintendents group.

“A lot of our teachers believe you can be proficient but still be categorized as approaching grade level,” Lynch said.

Some critics are questioning the governor’s timing. His retention proposal likely would eliminate many struggling third-graders from taking national reading tests scheduled for fourth-graders in 2024 as part of the National Assessment of Education Performance, also known as NAEP.

“If you keep kids in third grade so they don’t take the fourth-grade test, your NAEP scores look better and you have a Mississippi miracle,” Winstead said, referring to that state’s dramatic rise on the 2019 national test. “There’s a lot of ways to raise your test scores, and one way is to make sure that kids who can’t pass it don’t take it.”

State officials deny that’s their motivation. The goal, they say, is to help districts help their students who are most in need of improvement.

“This bill would provide significant and fully funded supports and pathways that have never been provided before, … with retention being the last of those pathways,” said a spokeswoman for the education department.

Others concerned about high-stakes testing question the bill’s dependence on a once-a-year test to gauge student proficiency. Tennessee plans to administer those tests in person this spring, even as the pandemic continues to disrupt schools.

Stephanie Love, a school board member in Memphis, said Tennessee’s embattled TNReady assessment has been unreliable during a normal year, much less during a public health crisis.

“I agree there should be some type of accountability measure,” she said, “but it has to be something we can trust.”

Nashville parent Sonya Thomas has other concerns about shifting to a punitive structure too soon. The state plans this year to start retraining teachers on phonics-based reading instruction and change how prospective teachers are taught in college to teach reading.

“I think we’ve got to put first things first,” said Thomas, who leads the Nashville Propel parents group. “We’ve got to equip our teachers. We can’t punish our children for something that is not their fault.”

Even before the governor proposed enforcing the state’s 2011 retention law, Memphis school leaders were considering whether to delay a new Shelby County Schools policy to start holding back struggling second-graders.

“The pandemic has changed everything,” Superintendent Joris Ray said earlier this month.

The school board approved the policy in 2019 and based it on students meeting eight of 12 criteria, not just TNReady test results. Ray now says he might wait to see the results of more district-administered reading tests before deciding whether to proceed.

“You’ve got to take that into consideration when you’re implementing anything that’s new and that’s going to possibly have an adverse effect on children,” he said.

Chalkbeat reporter Laura Faith Kebede contributed to this report.

Tennessee governor unveils summer school and tutoring proposals, promises teacher pay hike

2021-01-15T00:25:13+00:00

Gov. Bill Lee on Thursday proposed new summer school and tutoring programs to catch students up from learning disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

He promised a pay hike for teachers, but did not specify an amount.

The governor also wants state testing to happen this spring — but only to determine how much students know after a year of uneven teaching and learning, not to hold teachers and schools accountable for the results. And he is asking for a new statewide emphasis on phonics-based reading instruction.

The details came in the first wave of bills filed in advance of a Jan. 19 special legislative session focusing on K-12 education.

“Educators across the state are working tirelessly to turn the tide for their students and help them regain critical math and reading skills,” Lee said in a statement. “We believe they should be compensated for their efforts and look forward to working with the General Assembly to provide funding for our teachers.”

The governor is expected on Friday to ask lawmakers for more money for teacher pay, likely by about 4%. That increase would match what Lee proposed a year ago but rolled back after the pandemic emerged and the state’s economy sputtered. He’s also expected to propose the same level of funding next year for schools that saw their enrollment decline this year.

The decisions will set the state’s policy agenda for students, educators, and schools for at least the rest of the public health emergency.

The summer school and tutoring proposals aim to help struggling students catch up on learning if they can’t read on grade level or are identified as needing intense academic help based on the state’s screening and intervention system launched in 2014.

“COVID-19 has disrupted every aspect of education, and we are on the cusp of severe consequences for our students if we don’t act now,” Lee said.

The six-week summer school program, for kindergarteners through grade eight, would begin by June through local school districts and be staffed by teachers getting paid a minimum of $1,000 per week. A second six-week program is proposed for summer of 2022. And in subsequent years, the program would shift to four weeks for grades four through eight.

“This pandemic has highlighted the importance of continuity and additional supports for students who need it,” said Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn, adding that the additional summer learning time would be for full days, and provide transportation, too.

While school systems would have flexibility to run their own programs, they would be required to emphasize reading and math. “And I feel strongly that we need to include play as well, especially for young children in the summer,” Schwinn said.

The after-school tutoring program would launch in the fall, staffed by a corps of trained tutors that could include teachers or college students. Three days a week, tutors would work with students at a ratio of one to five in the elementary grades and one to eight for older students.

“This reflects the best practices we’ve seen,” Schwinn said.

The learning program legislation would strengthen a 2011 Tennessee law that allows schools to retain struggling readers in third grade. Currently, few students are actually held back.

By 2023, Schwinn said, a student who is not reading at grade level by the end of third grade would be retained, retested, or required to participate in the extra learning programs.

“We’ve had this retention law on the books. It would now be strengthened with this proposal,” she said, “and it comes with significant state funding.”

The cost for the new learning programs — estimated at about $90 million annually for the first two years of summer school and an undetermined amount for the tutoring — would be covered through a combination of federal and state funds, plus matches from local districts.

“It’s a big commitment and investment in the future of students, and I think it is one of the things we hope other states do as we all come out of the pandemic,” Schwinn said.

And because reading proficiency is the foundation for all learning and only a third of Tennessee third graders are reading on grade level, the governor wants to require all 147 school districts to adopt high-quality literacy programs that are based on phonics. That proposal aims to work alongside the state’s new Reading 360 initiative, which will invest $100 million of one-time federal funds in phonics-based reading programs, including new reading instruction training for teachers in the early grades.

Summer school and tutoring proposals expected as Tennessee tries to help students catch up

2021-01-13T00:18:47+00:00

Gov. Bill Lee is expected to unveil proposals this week to create or expand summer school options and after-school tutoring programs as Tennessee seeks to catch up students from learning disruptions caused by the pandemic.

House Education Chairman Mark White said Monday the proposals will be among a barrage of legislation on K-12 education filed in the coming days through the governor’s office.

The 112th Tennessee General Assembly convened on Tuesday and is gearing up for a Jan. 19 special session to focus on pandemic-related challenges for students, educators, and schools.

Other likely proposals, White said, would increase pay for educators; maintain next year’s state funding levels for schools that have lost students this year; and require all school districts to adopt high-quality literacy programs that are based on phonics.

The details come as Tennessee is due for another massive infusion of federal stimulus money to support its students and schools. Tennessee expects to get $1.1 billion, with about $990 million going directly to local school districts. That’s four times the $260 million received in the first round of emergency funding.

Addressing learning loss and reopening school buildings safely are among the major priorities behind the emergency money, and the state education department will get its own pot of about $200 million to work with.

White said the legislature eventually may consider proposals that could extend the school year to help students make up for missed learning time. But during the special session, the learning focus will be on summer school and tutoring, he said.

“If we’re going to have more summer school this year, I’ll advocate that it must be done in person,” said the Memphis Republican. He’s frustrated that most Memphis schools have not offered an in-person option this school year, even as Shelby County Schools Superintendent Joris Ray says reopening school buildings isn’t safe yet in his community.

“I just don’t see the value of having summer school virtually if we’re trying to catch students up,” said White.

Both summer school and tutoring are considered concrete ideas for helping struggling students get back on track.

Research shows that “seat time” matters for student learning, whether through summer school, extended school days, or turning spring break into a weeklong learning academy.

According to other research, tutoring in small groups can lead to large academic gains, although it’s expensive to provide a low student-to-staff ratio. Last summer in the pandemic’s early days, the family foundation of former Gov. Bill Haslam and his wife, Crissy, spent $1 million to hire a thousand college students to tutor elementary-age students at Boys & Girls Clubs across Tennessee.

A new state commission advising lawmakers on how to close learning gaps caused by the pandemic is calling for “aggressive” remediation programs that target the state’s most vulnerable students, including those who are of color, learning the English language, have disabilities, or are from low-income families.

The Tennessee Commission on Education Recovery and Innovation, created by the legislature when it became clear that COVID-19 would grind on, recently delivered the first of three reports to assess the effects of the learning loss on the state’s education systems and make recommendations.

“In reality, we don’t know the true effects,” said Tara Scarlett, the commission’s chairwoman and president of the Scarlett Family Foundation, during a recent meeting.

Because state tests were canceled last year when the virus spread rapidly across the U.S., the panel has had to rely on pre-pandemic data, national education trends, and results of a survey sent to Tennessee school superintendents.

Nationally, the nonprofit testing organization NWEA predicted that U.S. students started this school year having lost roughly a third of a year in reading and half a year in math, but newer data suggests that learning loss projections may have been overstated.

Even so, it’s clear that instruction models this school year have varied widely by district, including in Tennessee. Students of color and students from low-income families have been far more likely to be learning fully virtually, while the parents of students attending in-person school say the quality of instruction is better.

In its first report, the new commission said it’s critical for Tennessee to administer state tests this spring so the results can set a new baseline and inform interventions and innovations moving forward. Similar calls have come from the State Board of Education and influential education advocacy groups such as the State Collaborative on Reforming Education, or SCORE.

The legislature is expected to agree and require testing, but also to order a one-year pause in accountability policies that tie test scores to teacher evaluations and school ratings.

The nine-member commission recommends the state prioritize programs that shore up learning, including a laser focus on literacy and numeracy for students in kindergarten through the third grade. Other priorities should be student well-being, technology gaps, and preparedness for higher education and career opportunities, the panel said.

Last week, Tennessee’s education chief, Penny Schwinn, announced plans to invest $100 million of one-time federal funds in phonics-based reading programs, including new reading instruction training for teachers in the early grades. Her Reading 360 initiative includes new literacy resources, mentoring, and support for educators and families.

Teacher pay, school funding, mental health: Large districts look ahead to Tennessee legislative session

2021-01-06T00:25:43+00:00

The leaders of Tennessee’s four largest school districts asked lawmakers Tuesday to keep funding intact for education, raise teacher pay, and invest more in student mental health as the coronavirus pandemic tests school communities in unprecedented ways.

They also talked about the need to accelerate vaccinations against the virus and praised Gov. Bill Lee’s administration for bumping up teachers and school staff on the state’s priority list for shots.

In addition, Shelby County Schools Superintendent Joris Ray lauded the state for its newly released plan to invest $100 million of one-time federal funding in early literacy programs.

“Literacy is life,” said Ray, noting that just one in four students in his Memphis district are reading on grade level. “If our students can’t read by the time they’re in third grade, we are in big trouble.”

Ray and his counterparts in Nashville, Knoxville, and Chattanooga appeared virtually for an hourlong panel discussion with members of the House Democratic Caucus ahead of this year’s legislative session. The General Assembly is scheduled to organize next week and reconvene on Jan. 19 for a special session called by the governor to focus on education issues.

Tuesday’s discussion marked the first time during the COVID-19 crisis that all four urban superintendents were asked to weigh in collectively and publicly with lawmakers about their challenges and needs, albeit with members of the legislature’s minority party. Although they oversee more than a fourth of the state’s nearly 1 million public school students, none of the urban leaders were among the six superintendents invited to testify in September when the GOP-led House Education Committee met to discuss learning loss during the pandemic.

“It’s been a year like no other,” said Bryan Johnson, superintendent of Hamilton County Schools in Chattanooga. “I’d love to paint it rosy, but it’s been difficult.”

Superintendents described how their school systems have tailored learning models to their local populations and community spread of the virus. Schools in Knoxville and Chattanooga have provided more in-person instruction, followed by those in Nashville. The state’s largest district in Memphis, where spread of the virus is highest, continues to operate virtually.

“Our schools are completely connected to our communities,” said Adrienne Battle, director of Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools. “Our goal here, and I know across the state, is to bring students back for in-person instruction as soon as possible when it is safe to do so.”

A masked student looks at a hallway billboard in Nashville’s Westmeade Elementary School as Tennessee’s second largest district worked to navigate the coronavirus pandemic in the fall of 2020.

Reflecting national trends, the vast majority of Tennessee’s 147 school districts have experienced dips in enrollment this academic year. Most of Tennessee’s declines stem from families who shifted to homeschooling or private schools or held back students due to start kindergarten, according to Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn.

Superintendents are concerned that the enrollment drop could put hundreds of millions of dollars at risk in next year’s state budget for education, since enrollment from the current school year sets per-pupil funding levels for the next one. Early statewide data shows about 33,000 fewer students started public school in the fall, which normally would decrease Tennessee’s allocation for public education by at least $320 million.

“If we can just make sure that we continue to be funded based on the [enrollment] from last year – in other words, hold us harmless – that would be extremely helpful,” said Superintendent Bob Thomas. He gave a long list of new pandemic-related expenses for Knox County Schools and added that virtual learning options “are here to stay,” even when the pandemic ends, requiring more funding.

Thomas and Ray also asked for more money for teacher pay, as all four superintendents described educators adapting to the pandemic to teach virtually, in person, and sometimes both.

“Teachers and leaders and support staff have been absolutely remarkable and heroic in regards to what we’ve asked them to do,” added Johnson, who recently recovered from his own bout with COVID-19.

School funding and teacher pay are among five key education issues to be taken up during the special session. Legislative leaders have indicated they’re likely to keep funding intact as more students are expected to return to public schools next year. And the governor has said he’d like to boost teacher salaries too if possible, after rolling back a planned 4% hike last year as the economy sputtered.

But new investments in student mental health are less certain. That need did not make Gov. Lee’s list of education priorities to be discussed during the special session, even as superintendents have asked for more counselors, social workers, and other mental health professionals due to the pandemic’s heavy emotional toll.

“We’re trying to do as much as we can to make this as normal as we possibly can in a very abnormal situation for our students and our teachers,” said Knox County’s Thomas.

Last year, before the pandemic emerged, the governor proposed creating a $250 million trust fund to support and grow mental health services for students in Tennessee’s highest-risk schools. But that proposal was quickly scuttled after the pandemic hit.

Other issues slated to go before lawmakers during their special session are literacy, learning loss, and policies designed to hold students, teachers, and schools accountable for their performance.

Tennessee unveils $100 million plan to help its youngest students read better

2021-01-04T23:40:15+00:00

Tennessee plans to invest $100 million of one-time federal funds in phonics-based reading programs in a sweeping attack on low student literacy rates that have bedeviled the state for decades.

Calling it an “exciting moment,” Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn on Monday unveiled Reading 360, an array of programs to train teachers on reading instruction, provide more resources and mentoring networks to school districts, and support families to help their students read better.

The goal is to reverse this year’s anticipated learning loss due to the coronavirus pandemic and then catapult third-grade reading proficiency rates from 37% to 62% by 2025 under a new campaign known as “25 by 25.” The state’s previous reading goal, set in 2016 by former Gov. Bill Haslam, was for 75% of third-graders to read on grade level by 2020.

“We are saying that we are serious about this as a state,” Schwinn said of the new charge against illiteracy using federal COVID-19 relief funds and two major grants from the U.S. Department of Education.

“Now we have this one-time opportunity to invest a significant amount of money — not just in one part of the reading continuum but the entirety,” she added during an interview with Chalkbeat.

The investment comes as Tennessee officials project a 50% drop in reading proficiency rates for third-graders because of disruptions to schooling that began last spring, though those projections are based on pre-pandemic data. Gov. Bill Lee also has identified literacy as one of five topics to be discussed during a special legislative session on education scheduled to begin on Jan. 19.

“We know that teaching reading is hard. It has always been hard. But it is even more so as a result of COVID,” Schwinn said.

It’s hard to know exactly how much the public health crisis has hurt students’ reading skills across Tennessee, or the nation. State tests were canceled last spring, and this school year’s assessments won’t be given for several months, if they happen at all. The nonprofit testing organization NWEA predicted that students started this school year having lost roughly a third of a year in reading and half a year in math.

The pandemic also worsened gaps in access to school resources. That means Tennessee’s reading investment, while significant, will be a drop in the bucket toward addressing learning losses that have disproportionately hurt students who were already behind academically, including students of color and those from low-income families.

The federal funding allows Lee’s administration to implement literacy programs that it couldn’t convince the legislature to pass last year as the economy sputtered, tax revenues dropped, and lawmakers struggled to reach a consensus on the best approach. A major component of that legislation would have set aside tens of millions of dollars to train teachers on the foundational principles of reading instruction and work with colleges and universities to retool their teacher training programs on literacy.

According to a request for proposals released in late December, the department plans to spend $8.9 million to hire a vendor to retrain up to 11,000 educators in prekindergarten through fourth grade with a weeklong virtual course this spring and another week in person over the summer. Teachers will get a $1,000 stipend after completing the training and also receive a classroom kit with reading resources, Schwinn said.

The contract might be renewed for up to $500,000 annually, which would require legislative approval for recurring funds.

Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn interacts with students during a visit to Forest Hill Elementary School in Germantown, near Memphis, on Sept. 2, 2020.

Schwinn emphasized that all programs under Reading 360 will be optional and separate from any reading legislation that lawmakers pursue this year.

“Nothing in Reading 360 is mandatory,” she said. “They are about supports and resources that districts have said they need or that would be helpful to them, so we are providing options using one-time funds.”

She also said that Reading 360 has “nothing to do” with a similarly named product by Renaissance Learning, a publicly traded company that sells Accelerated Reader and Star Testing programs. Rather, the name stems from Tennessee being positioned to tackle the literacy crisis “from all sides.”

The Tennessee State Board of Education is responsible for reading policies related to teaching methods, practices, and curriculum. Three of its leaders — Sara Morrison, Lillian Hartgrove, and Robert Eby — were among 15 education leaders issuing statements of support for Reading 360 in the department’s four-page news release.

Spokeswoman Elizabeth Tullos said the state board had input in the plan and will work alongside the department on its rollout. “Over time, the board anticipates it will assist through crafting policies for educator preparation providers, examining instructional materials, and providing oversight,” she said.

Tennessee governor calls for special legislative session focused on education

2020-12-29T22:20:06+00:00

Gov. Bill Lee called Tuesday for a special legislative session next month to focus on escalating challenges with Tennessee education during the pandemic.

The Republican governor wants the newly elected 112th General Assembly to convene on Jan. 19 to look specifically at education before taking up other business during its regular session.

On the agenda will be questions about state testing accountability next spring as the pandemic continues, as well as funding for teacher pay and schools for the following academic year. Lee also wants lawmakers to approve initiatives to address learning loss and a comprehensive literacy package to improve students’ reading proficiency.

“We know that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused immense disruption for Tennessee’s students, educators, and districts, and the challenges they face must be addressed urgently,” Lee said in a statement. “Even before the virus hit, and despite years of improvement, too many of our state’s students were still unable to read on grade level. I’m calling on the legislature to join us in addressing these serious issues so we can equip our hardworking educators and districts with the resources and supports they need to set our students on the path to success.”

Leaders of both chambers of the General Assembly said they support the special session.

“Tennessee has made tremendous improvements in education over the last decade. The virus has begun to put all of that at risk,” said Lt. Gov. Randy McNally. “It is of paramount importance that we take steps to reverse the learning loss that has taken place and prevent any further erosion of our progress.”

House Speaker Cameron Sexton said a statewide response is necessary to blunt the pandemic’s impact on education.

“Our goal is to make sure students are learning in the classroom, teachers have the resources they need, and our students have additional assistance in their educational journeys to improve their chances of success,” Sexton said.

Details about each issue will be released by Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn “in the near future,” according to a news release from the governor’s office. That includes a plan to launch a literacy program dubbed “Reading 360,” which will leverage a federal grant to support a phonics-based approach to reading instruction in the early grades.

In early 2020, the legislature appeared to be on track to approve a major literacy package. However, the spreading coronavirus and a related economic slowdown sidelined the $36.5 million proposal in June.

The same GOP-controlled legislature maintained funding for K-12 schools for this academic year, but also rolled back a promised pay raise for teachers and rejected Democrats’ calls for emergency education funding.

The leader of the Senate Democratic caucus said Tuesday that any new education investments should address systemic funding issues that go beyond this year’s learning losses.

“The coronavirus did not create inequities in education and it is not the cause of our teacher retention crisis, but it did make these problems worse,” said Sen. Raumesh Akbari of Memphis.

“No matter what zip code you’re in, every child deserves a great, well-funded public school, and our teachers deserve a safe working environment that respects and rewards their contributions,” she said.

Tennessee’s last special session was in August after the governor called legislators back to Nashville for a week. They passed protections to businesses from lawsuits arising from the coronavirus and new penalties for protesters camped on state property to demand racial justice.

Memphis schools already have one tool to deal with learning loss. What’s missing is funding.

2020-12-23T17:01:00+00:00

The pandemic has driven the national education conversation to focus on getting kids back in schools and attempting to repair the widening gaps in students’ educations. As a former third grade teacher in Memphis, I’ve been thinking about how schools are going to handle this enormous task of addressing the academic challenges created by the pandemic.

One thing I know from my teaching experience is that Tennessee schools already have a tool at their disposal: a program called Response to Intervention and Instruction. The program is state-mandated, so every school uses it. But it’s also severely underfunded relative to the enormous need. So despite teaching in a variety of schools and neighborhoods, I have never once seen a successful, thriving RTI² program.

If done well, though, it could be exactly what students need. Here’s how it should work.

Say I have a class of 30 students. During the first few weeks of the school year, they’re all tested in reading and math. According to these results, my students are separated into three groups. Ideally, 24 of my students should be in tier one, learning with “grade-level instruction.” Another four or five students should be in tier two, receiving “strategic intervention” in small groups, no larger than eight students. Only one or two of my students should be in tier three, receiving “intensive intervention” in groups of three students or less.

The reality is that, in many Memphis schools, this triangle is flipped. Most students are one or more grade levels behind and need intensive intervention, while a small percentage of students fall into the tier one category.

In order to get the results that an RTI² program has the potential to achieve, schools have to be able to hire the staff needed to help students the way they need in small groups.

But schools don’t have the funding to do that, or sometimes even to purchase research-backed curriculum. It is functionally impossible for our public schools to provide the services all of the students in tier two and tier three need without significant additional funds.

So what happens? Schools do what they can, and most students don’t get the level of help they need. The share of students truly receiving intensive intervention remains at 3-5%, even though the real need is many multiples of that.

I saw this firsthand. Often, because a majority of students weren’t on grade level, my “small” groups of students most in need of intensive help ended up being anywhere from seven to 10 students.

I often gathered my group of 10 third graders on the carpet and attempted to deliver a lesson written for three to five kids. That meant students had fewer opportunities to respond to questions, and were not as actively engaged.

During this pandemic, gaps in learning for students in all three tiers are undoubtedly widening. The full depth of the pandemic’s impact on student learning is still unknown, but early data indicates that students have already lost learning.

I’m terrified that this learning loss will be heavily concentrated in our forgotten schools that already operate with too few resources, and the students who are already struggling will continue to slip through the cracks. One need only to look at historical data from cities and time periods where extreme interruptions of learning have occurred to start to fully realize the long-term impact COVID-19 will have on our students’ educational lives.

With fully funded RTI² programs, schools could have a real chance at repairing the pandemic’s damage, especially for younger, at-risk students.

Shelby County Schools and local charter school organizations should start preparing now for inevitable learning loss by finding funding for these programs. This funding could come from the state or from the federal government. Notably, it could also come directly from the city of Memphis, which currently contributes almost no money to K-12 education.

What’s clear is that students, after more than seven months removed from the classroom, will have even greater needs when they fully return to school buildings. Our students deserve instruction that meets them where they are and sets them up for success. They deserve real academic support.

Haley Mathews is a former elementary educator who continues to serve Memphis students through her work at ALLMemphis, an organization dedicated to increasing literacy rates and educational equity in our community.

Tennessee governor may call special legislative session focused on education during pandemic

2020-12-09T01:45:52+00:00

Gov. Bill Lee is reportedly mulling whether to call a special legislative session on education as he looks to tackle a growing list of challenges facing Tennessee students whose learning has been disrupted by the pandemic for a second straight school year.

The Tennessean reported Tuesday that the Republican governor is considering a special session to prioritize education issues escalated by the coronavirus, based on conversations with “multiple legislative officials.”

A spokesman for the governor would not confirm that report but said education is a priority for Lee.

“The Governor is weighing a number of options to ensure that students and educators have the resources and supports they need to succeed in the most challenging school year in Tennessee’s history,” press secretary Gillum Ferguson said in a statement. “We’ll continue to work with the General Assembly to chart the most appropriate path forward on this critical issue.”

Education is already expected to be front and center of the regular session that’s scheduled to convene on Jan. 12. A special session would likely happen that same month and focus solely on education.

Among decisions awaiting lawmakers: a literacy proposal left over from the last session, ways to address learning loss, funding schools as enrollment declines, how to handle state assessments scheduled for next spring, and whether those test results should be used to hold students, teachers, and schools accountable.

“Ultimately, it’s the governor’s call,” House Speaker Cameron Sexton told Chalkbeat. “If Gov. Lee decides to call a special session, he has that authority, and we will work with him.”

Lee has ordered a special session before. In August, lawmakers convened for a week to pass protections to businesses from lawsuits arising from the coronavirus and new penalties for protesters camped on state property to demand racial justice.

Asked if the governor has spoken with him about convening another special session, Sexton said: “There’s always conversations going on. Whether they pan out is a whole different discussion.”

As leader of the House, the Crossville Republican said any conversations about education in the legislature need to include ways to incentivize districts to reopen their classrooms. He cited recent statements by Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, that schools and classrooms should be open during the pandemic.

“So my expectation is that Tennessee classrooms should be open,” Sexton said, “and there needs to be a discussion about how to hold them harmless for enrollment declines to receive the same level of state funding for schools.”

Cameron Sexton is the speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives.

The speaker singled out the state’s largest school system in Memphis, which announced last month that school employees will receive a 1% salary increase with money saved by shifting to online classes.

“Shelby County Schools decided to take the money they saved by not opening classrooms and used it to give their teachers pay raises. That’s fine to do. But if school systems aren’t opening classrooms and they’re not spending all their money, should they be held harmless when we set BEP funding for next year?” he said.

Superintendent Joris Ray has kept school buildings closed to Memphis students this fall despite pressure from the state to reopen after COVID-19 cases surged in July. He has said his plan to reopen classrooms in January could be delayed if community spread worsens.

On Monday, the district released the results of a survey of parents and teachers showing less than a third of students are expected to return to in-person learning with the new year. Of teachers, 83% have chosen to continue teaching virtually.

“Shelby County Schools remains committed to flexibility as we base our reopening decisions on feedback from our school board, science, and guidance from health officials,” the district said in a statement.

All other school districts in Tennessee have at least partially reopened school buildings, though many have intermittently closed when COVID-19 has caused staffing shortages.

Proposal to revamp Tennessee reading instruction halted amid economic crisis and legislative power struggle

2020-06-03T21:58:12+00:00

A resurrected proposal to change the way Tennessee’s youngest students learn to read appears to have stalled for the year.

Without comment, Sen. Dolores Gresham on Wednesday tabled the proposal from discussion in the education committee she chairs before adjourning the panel for the year. A statement issued later by the Tennessee Department of Education suggested that the timing was off for creating a costly literacy initiative, given the current economic crisis.

The development came as the House and Senate resumed their legislative work after recessing in March, but the two legislative bodies remain at odds over their agenda amid the coronavirus pandemic. Senate leaders insist on limiting business to budgetary matters and other issues affected by COVID-19.

Gresham’s parliamentary move came without fanfare and appears to close the books, for now, on the Tennessee Literacy Success Act. It means the state won’t begin a systematic training this year of current and future teachers on reading instruction that is rooted in phonics.

The legislation is modeled after changes made in Mississippi, the only state to show gains in reading on the latest national tests known as the Nation’s Report Card.

Asked why she shelved the literacy bill, Gresham directed reporters to Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson, who did not immediately comment.

Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn, who helped develop the framework for Gov. Bill Lee’s initial literacy proposal, did not comment either. But a statement from the education department said the state’s literacy rate — with only a third of third-graders reading on grade level — must be addressed “at the right time.”

“During this time of uncertainty and given associated costs for the proposal, the department looks forward to working with the Governor’s office and the Tennessee General Assembly to revisit legislation in the future,” the statement said.

Last week, the House Education Committee approved the revised literacy bill after several hours of often passionate discussion, including how to pay for the $36.5 million initiative as state revenues plunge. One idea: use millions of dollars in federal coronavirus relief funding coming to Tennessee, even as much of that money already is earmarked for other needs.

The latest plan costs roughly half as much as the governor’s comprehensive literacy initiative proposed in early February. But as the economy ground to a halt six weeks later, Lee tabled the idea and scrubbed most of his legislative agenda.

House sponsors wanted to salvage the initiative because they view reading improvement as essential to helping students who are falling even further behind while school buildings are shuttered during the public health emergency.

They proposed switching to phonics-based reading standards and training current and future teachers in kindergarten through fifth grade on that approach. The plan would have required participating districts to screen their youngest students for reading development. It also would have prohibited third-graders from being promoted beginning in the 2022-23 school year if they could not read and didn’t receive extra local instruction and support.

Tennessee has sought for years to improve its stubbornly low literacy rate and saw some encouraging gains in 2018 under the Read to be Ready program launched under former Gov. Bill Haslam’s administration. That year, the state enjoyed a 2.3 percentage-point increase to almost 37% of third-graders reading on or above grade level. Funding for that program, which paid for literacy coaching for teachers and summer reading camps for the state’s youngest students, has dried up under Lee’s administration.

Tennessee seeks to salvage literacy initiative during budget crisis — and use coronavirus relief money to pay for it

2020-05-29T22:03:08+00:00

Three months after Gov. Bill Lee tabled his comprehensive literacy initiative because of an impending budget crisis, a revised reading proposal has resurfaced and is advancing in the Tennessee General Assembly.

But legislators’ expectations to use federal coronavirus relief funding to cover next year’s $36.5 million cost is at odds with the state education department’s plans for that one-time money. And it’s uncertain whether relief funds at the governor’s disposal are available, given all of the needs spurred by the pandemic.

How to pay for the switch to phonics-based reading instruction appears to be all that stands in the way of changing how Tennessee’s youngest students learn to decode words on a page, based on decades of research.

“We’re on the precipice of something really, really big in Tennessee,” said Rep. Scott Cepicky, who has helped to craft the legislation. It’s modeled on changes that helped Mississippi become the nation’s only state to post significant reading gains on the latest national test known as the Nation’s Report Card.

The House Education Committee voted 18-6 to approve a scaled-down literacy bill on Thursday, including a switch to phonics-based reading standards. The initiative would train current and future teachers in kindergarten through fifth grade on that approach and require participating districts to screen their youngest students for reading development.

The proposal aims to attack Tennessee’s stubbornly low reading rate and would prohibit third-graders from being promoted if they can’t read and haven’t received extra local instruction and support beginning in the 2022-23 school year.

No committee members questioned the goal of improving literacy, but several challenged the timing. The legislature must make deep budget cuts over the next month to offset plummeting revenues and a shortfall estimated at between $500 million and $1.7 billion.

“It feels like my employer just gave me a pink slip, and I went out and bought a new car,” said Rep. Jason Hodges, a Clarksville Democrat, of GOP efforts to jumpstart the initiative.

But Chairman Mark White and Cepicky said the money could come from several pots of federal funding coming to Tennessee.

“In crisis, there’s opportunity,” said Cepicky, a Republican from Columbia. “The CARES Act gives us some flexibility here.”

But on Friday, Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn presented her department’s spending plan for $26 million approved last week by the U.S. Department of Education under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act.

Half of the department’s allocation would pay for technology to support remote learning statewide. The rest would go toward a variety of needs such as competitive grants to help school districts innovate, a remote learning partnership with PBS television, support for student mental health needs and students with disabilities, and leadership development in a fast-changing teaching and learning environment.

“The U.S. Department of Education said the fund is for the state agency and the local education agencies to provide emergency relief to address the impact that COVID-19 has had on our districts,” Schwinn told the state Board of Education in her presentation.

“Certainly, we will continue to watch and see what the legislature ends up approving” on literacy, she added.

Most of the first-year cost of the Tennessee Literacy Success Act would pay for training for K-5 teachers on the new reading approach. It also would cover the cost of developing a test to screen students on their progress. Another $4 million would be needed annually to continue the program.

Local districts would share a cost as well, at a time when local budgets are under significant stress. Fiscal experts estimate a statewide local cost of $24 million in the first year and $14.2 million annually afterward to pay for aligned textbooks and instructional materials and ongoing coaching and support.

Rep. John Ray Clemmons, a Democrat from Nashville, said his school district is already slashing its budget while trying to invest in technology and distance learning. He questioned whether federal coronavirus relief can be used “like it’s Monopoly money.”

But White argued that reading is foundational to learning and should be prioritized, even amid a pandemic.

“I can’t recall how many times in this committee we’ve [asked] why do only 34% of our kids read on grade level by third grade. This is an honest attempt to try to start addressing that,” said the Memphis Republican, adding that the governor supports the revised measure.

After COVID-19 hit shuttered schools nationwide, a survey of district leaders across Tennessee identified technology and internet access for students as the most significant challenges they face in a new learning and teaching environment. Only 10 out of the state’s 147 districts reported having a computer for each student to take home, with 80% needing better internet access for their students.

The survey — which helped guide the education department’s plan for its CARES spending — showed other district priorities are finding ways to serve special populations like English language learners and students with disabilities; providing mental health services for students; and giving their teachers and leaders professional development for remote instruction.

The literacy bill now awaits a recommendation from the House Government Operations Committee before heading to the chamber’s finance panel. That’s where its fiscal note will be scrutinized as the legislature also figures out where to cut the state’s $39 billion budget.

“I don’t want people to get bogged down on the money,” Cepicky said later. “That’s the job of finance. Our job is to pass legislation to help students be the best they can, and I believe we’ve done that.”

A spokesman for Lee said the governor supports the bill but did not answer whether he would use discretionary CARES funding to pay for it.

“We know that literacy is foundational to a child’s education, and we will continue to engage with the legislature in pursuing solutions that will dramatically raise literacy outcomes for Tennessee children,” said press secretary Gillum Ferguson.

Tennessee governor commits to preserving state funding for schools during budget crisis

2020-05-28T22:23:38+00:00

Gov. Bill Lee said Thursday his administration is committed to maintaining current state funding for schools, even as Tennessee faces a revenue shortfall that economists estimate will run between $500 million and $1.7 billion.

He’s defaulting to the legislature, however, when it comes to prioritizing new education spending such as a teacher pay hike, a scaled-down literacy initiative, and the state’s embattled education savings account program.

“It’s very difficult to know what the future is,” Lee said, but “we need to make certain that we provide funding for our public school systems all across the state, as education is arguably the most fundamentally important piece of our budget.”

“Every other initiative will be decided by the legislature,” he said in response to questions from reporters during his weekly press conference on the coronavirus.

The governor’s comments came as the legislature prepares to revisit an emergency budget passed in March before lawmakers recessed abruptly as the coronavirus shut down schools and businesses nationwide.

Earlier this week, Lee’s finance chief directed state agencies to identify reductions totaling 12% of their budgets.

“The impact of COVID-19 on our economy and our state revenues is projected to be unparalleled in terms of both its suddenness and magnitude,” Butch Eley, commissioner of finance and administrataion, wrote in a memo to department heads on Tuesday.

“This economic situation came on quickly and will now require a multiyear approach of restraint and reductions,” he added.

Tennessee’s K-12 budget accounts for more than $6.5 billion out of the state’s $39 billion spending plan. A 12% reduction would require cutting funding to schools through the formula known as the Basic Education Program, or BEP. But Eley told the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday that the BEP will be spared because public education is among services considered “mission critical.”

“We’re going to do this in a fashion that I think is logical, rational,” Eley said.

Earlier this week, four economists presented grim economic forecasts to the State Funding Board, which charts state fiscal policy and is led by the governor. All four agreed it will take years to recover from the last three months of job losses and revenue shortfalls, while two warned that the outlook will worsen if the virus is not contained.

“The course of this recovery will be determined by the virus,” said Bojan Savic, an analyst from Tennessee’s Fiscal Review Committee.

Meanwhile, legislative committee work resumed this week and lawmakers have begun to discuss other cuts that need to be made, as well as spending priorities for the fiscal year that begins on July 1.

The House Education Committee was expected to take up a scaled-down literacy bill later Thursday aimed at training current and future teachers to take a phonics-based approach to reading instruction. That could come at a cost of up to $48 million to provide training on foundational principles of literacy.

The legislature also is expected to revisit a 2% teacher pay increase included in the state’s emergency budget, as well as $41 million for the school voucher program that Lee continues to champion, even as a judge overturned Tennessee’s education savings account law earlier this month. The state is appealing that decision to the Tennessee Supreme Court in hopes of still launching the program this fall.

Five education issues to watch for as Tennessee legislature resumes business this week

2020-05-26T10:00:00+00:00

Four months ago when projecting another revenue surplus for Tennessee, Gov. Bill Lee’s administration proposed more than $600 million in new investments to public schools, including a teacher pay hike, bolstering early literacy, and tackling the mental health needs of K-12 students.

Then a global pandemic hit.

This week — as lawmakers begin returning to the Capitol wearing masks to guard against the coronavirus — they’ll stare at cratering revenues and the need to make deep cuts to Tennessee’s spending plan.

“Any bill with any kind of a fiscal note is not going anywhere,” promised House Education Committee Chairman Mark White. “The money just isn’t there.”

Already gone is a $250 million mental health trust fund to support students. Lee proposed that novel approach in early February, then cut it six weeks later when the state’s economy suddenly ground to a halt.

Lawmakers will begin sorting out what to eliminate next when they resume committee work on Tuesday before heading back into session on June 1. Leaders say they expect to adjourn by the third week of June.

Here are five issues to watch for:

Lee’s early literacy initiative could still happen, but on a smaller scale.

After the governor asked for $68 million for a comprehensive literacy program to attack Tennessee’s stubbornly low reading scores, the House took the lead in vetting his proposal. But just as lawmakers were on the verge of passing the bill out of committees, they stripped spending for it from the emergency budget.

White is among leaders who believe the proposal’s most important parts might be salvaged this year. “I would still love to get the ball rolling now with new phonics-based training for our teachers,” he said late last week.

Central to the plan is about $48 million to retrain teachers on literacy instruction and change how teacher training programs prepare new educators to teach reading. White suggests that the state education department’s $30 million share of federal coronavirus relief funding might help cover the cost, since that one-time money can go toward teacher training.

A pay increase for teachers is uncertain.

Lawmakers likely will revisit new spending that barely made the emergency budget, like the $58.5 million set aside for teacher compensation in 2020-21.

Lee had proposed a 4% teacher pay hike, then halved it when shifting to a bare-bones spending plan as schools were being closed. But the virus has radically shifted the state’s budget outlook. For April alone, general fund revenues fell more than $651 million short of projections.

Already cut from the emergency plan: the governor’s proposal to increase annual base pay from $36,000 to $38,000 for teachers with a bachelor’s degree and no teaching experience.

Voucher funding is in trouble.

Many public school teachers and advocates were upset at Lee’s insistence on retaining $41 million for the first year of his controversial program to pay for private schooling for some students, while clawing back proposed increases for teacher pay.

Now the future of Tennessee’s education saving accounts is in doubt after a Nashville judge overturned the 2019 voucher law in early May.

Lee wants to keep funding for vouchers intact, even though two courts have blocked the program from proceeding while the state appeals the ruling. But he also acknowledged recently that “everything’s on the table” for budget cuts.

Of the $41 million set aside for the program, $3 million is to cover the cost of administration. The remainder is to offset anticipated funding losses to districts in Memphis and Nashville as students accept education savings accounts. Democrats want that “school choice” line item struck from the budget and reallocated as support for traditional public schools.

Expect discussions on summer school and technology.

This spring’s sudden school shutdown — and the associated loss of learning for Tennessee students — is elevating conversations about how the state can best support students who need help the most.

Rep. Scott Cepicky, a Republican from Columbia, had already been pushing summer school programs targeting struggling students in kindergarten through third grade. His bill could be expanded to K-8 to deal with expected gaps in learning starting in the summer of 2021.

Sen. Raumesh Akbari of Memphis says now is the time to address the digital divide for students needing computers and internet service.

“Our focus should be on how we can help students learn in our new environment, including the likelihood that much of school will need to happen online,” said Akbari, the lone Democrat on the Senate Education Committee. “COVID-19 has exposed tremendous gaps between the haves and have nots, and we’ve got to address inequities in technology and internet access for both urban and rural districts.”

On everyone’s mind: Will state government maintain education funding?

Tennessee has made significant investments in public education under its last three governors but still ranks 45th in the nation in per-pupil spending. The state also prides itself on being fiscally conservative. This year’s plummeting revenues will test the legislature’s resolve when it comes to prioritizing dollars for its most vulnerable children. Ultimately, lawmakers will decide whether to maintain funding through the state’s formula known as the Basic Education Program, or BEP.

With that unknown, district leaders and anxious school boards have been cutting costs and passing conservative budgets across the state, even as they seek to quickly ravamp how to do school in a COVID-19 environment.

“We cannot go backwards,” said JC Bowman, executive director of the Professional Educators of Tennessee. He hopes the legislature will dip into its “rainy day” surplus, if necessary. “Sometimes it rains, and this is the time when we need to dip into that well,” Bowman said.

A spokesman for the governor says the depth of the state’s “health and economic crisis” has the administration weighing all of the options.

“We’re going to have to make some tough decisions,” said Lee’s press secretary, Gillum Ferguson, on Friday. “The administration will be working closely with the legislature to make sure a balanced budget is passed.”

Haslams want to hire a thousand college students to tutor Tennessee children this summer

2020-05-12T16:08:38+00:00

A new Tennessee Tutoring Corps aims to recruit at least a thousand college students to provide summer tutoring for elementary-age students whose education has been disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.

Funded by the family foundation of former Gov. Bill Haslam and his wife, Crissy, the program will run from June to August in partnership with organizations representing nearly 90 Boys & Girls Clubs across the state, from Memphis to Bristol.

The goal will be to stem learning loss for up to 5,000 students from low-income families who participate in Boys & Girls Clubs.

At a price tag of about $1 million, the program marks the first major statewide investment in addressing learning loss due to the public health emergency. The Tennessee Department of Education is reviewing how best to spend up to $26 million in federal funds expected to arrive this summer to respond to COVID-19 for needs that range from technology, to summer and after-school programs, to mental health services.

Research shows the pandemic will significantly worsen summer slide, a learning phenomenon that occurs between school years when low-income students tend to lose ground in reading and math. Meanwhile, their more affluent peers tend to make slight gains through enriching activities like travel, summer camps, and outings.

“The summer slide is a very real problem,” the former governor said in a statement Tuesday. “With students being out of school for so long because of the coronavirus, this year could be more of a summer avalanche.”

Additionally, the program wants to leverage the talents of college students, about a third of whom have lost summer internships because of COVID-19. Tutors will be paid stipends of up to $1,000.

“We hope to attract students who care about their communities, about making a difference during this difficult time, and about helping younger students learn and grow,” said Crissy Haslam, a literacy advocate during her husband’s eight-year administration that ended in January 2019.

The tutoring sessions will be conducted in person, not via digital devices as some other summer learning programs are doing during the public health crisis. Organizers say the Tennessee Tutoring Corps will show deference to how communities are reopening their economies.

“Flexibility is an important part of launching this initiative,” said Alexia Poe, a spokeswoman for the foundation. “Reopening will look different in different parts of the state, and we’ll be mindful of that and make adjustments accordingly. The Boys & Girls Clubs have protocols in place that will apply to this program and program tutors and participants.”

About 10% of the organization’s clubs are currently open, while the others are determining when to reopen, said Ryan Hughes, executive director of Boys & Girls Clubs in Tennessee.

Clubs now in operation are conducting temperature checks, using face masks, elevating cleaning practices, and limiting the number of people in each program space.

“Safety is our No. 1 priority while we seek to fulfill our mission,” said Hughes. “Summer slide is an issue we focus on every year, and this partnership allows us to double our efforts at a time when it’s especially needed.”

Candidates to serve in the corps must currently be enrolled in college and pass a background check. Preference will be given to students who have a 3.0 GPA or higher, have completed at least their freshman year, and are Tennessee residents. The deadline to apply is 11:59 a.m. EST on May 29.

In response to coronavirus pandemic, Tennessee governor slashes proposed school budget, retains vouchers

2020-03-18T19:02:20+00:00

Gov. Bill Lee’s administration unveiled a revised budget plan Wednesday that halves the proposed increase for teacher pay and cuts most of the education initiatives he announced before the new coronavirus created a public health emergency in Tennessee.

Gone is the $250 million trust fund that the Republican governor proposed to support and grow mental health services for students in the state’s highest-risk schools.

Also slashed is $68 million to overhaul literacy instruction, $25 million to bolster low-performing schools in the state-run Achievement School District, and $24 million to help charter schools with building costs.

Lee retained $38 million for education savings accounts, a controversial program set to start this fall to let eligible families in Memphis and Nashville use taxpayer money to pay for private school tuition.

The bare-bones spending plan is expected to move quickly through committees as the General Assembly seeks to pass a state budget — its only constitutional requirement — before recessing by the end of the week.

“At this point, we want to hold back on all large expenditures,” House Education Committee Chairman Mark White said Tuesday night as the budget was being reworked. “We may have to hunker down and use more funds to support the livelihood of Tennesseans affected by these emergencies.”

Lt. Gov. Randy McNally echoed that attitude on Wednesday. “This proposed budget ensures Tennessee will be in a posture to respond to the fallout and provide the essential services all Tennesseans count on,” he said in a statement.

Lee made K-12 education the centerpiece of the spending plan he unveiled Feb. 3 during his State of the State Address, including $650 million in new dollars — even more than the half-billion-dollar federal award Tennessee received in 2010 as part of the Race to the Top competition under President Barack Obama.

But in recent weeks, priorities have changed as Lee declared states of emergencies both for deadly tornadoes on March 4 and the ongoing spread of COVID-19.

The budget overhaul includes a new fund with $150 million to cover health and safety issues related to the pandemic, plus $350 million for the state’s “rainy day” fund for anticipated economic challenges due to business shutdowns.

“We are now likely embarking on a recession caused by this rare health pandemic,” Finance Commissioner Stuart McWhorter told the Senate finance committee on Wednesday. “Clearly, we are in a time of recovery, a time of preparedness, and a time of many unknowns.”

Asked by Senate Minority Leader Jeff Yarbro whether extended school closures could affect if and how teachers will be paid, McWhorter said Lee’s administration is “sensitive and aware of that issue” as it faces “some really tough decisions.”

“We want to make sure that we’re treating people fairly and understand that teachers who are not in the classroom teaching [should not be] penalized for that,” McWhorter answered.

The new budget proposal, which makes about $400 million in reductions from Lee’s original plan, still sets aside $58.7 million more for teacher pay, half of what Lee proposed last month. That equates to an increase of 2%.

As for other cuts, Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn said it’s prudent now to take investments in reading, mental health, and school turnaround work off the table from her 5-year strategic plan unveiled in November.

“The Department of Education will remain laser focused on supporting districts, schools, teachers, and students during these challenging times,” Schwinn said in a statement.

The legislature plans to reconvene on June 1.

Schwinn on the hot seat over Tennessee’s handling of textbooks and contracts

2020-03-12T01:44:26+00:00

Tennessee lawmakers grilled Commissioner Penny Schwinn Wednesday about the Department of Education’s relationships with certain private companies over recent textbook adoptions and millions of dollars worth of anticipated contracts under a major literacy proposal.

Schwinn appeared before the Senate Education Committee for a second straight week, where Sen. Mike Bell questioned decisions last year involving the state textbook commission and how Tennessee came up with its approved list of curriculum for English language arts.

The Riceville Republican said the department appeared to try to influence which publishers made the final cut, prompting a legal challenge by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Co. That company’s petition, filed last November, charged that the department had “unilaterally altered the adoption process when it had already begun and significant steps already had been completed.”

Committee Chairwoman Dolores Gresham also grilled Schwinn about whether the department already has begun conversations with potential vendors over a half dozen contracts anticipated from Gov. Bill Lee’s $68 million literacy proposal, which is working its way through the legislature.

Schwinn said no, and Gresham reminded the department not to get ahead of itself.

“In case you or your staff haven’t heard, the principle by which we work is that the governor proposes, but the legislature deposes,” Gresham said. “So if the governor says you’re going to get $48 million [next year], well, the truth is, maybe so, maybe not.”

The tense 45-minute exchange took place as the legislature considers a literacy bill that would change the way that most Tennessee students are taught how to read. Switching to the phonics-first instructional approach would require hiring at least one vendor to retrain teachers. It also would revamp how the state’s teacher training programs instruct future teachers about foundational principles of literacy.

A day earlier, a House subcommittee approved the latest rewrite of the literacy bill, including a new provision requiring the department to use a competitive bidding process to choose all vendors associated with the rollout. Under Schwinn, the department has been criticized for a $2.5 million no-bid contract involving the state’s emerging education voucher program.

Schwinn was on the defense during most of Wednesday’s budget hearing. At one point, Bell played video of contradictory statements by Schwinn and Lisa Coons, the department’s chief of standards and materials, about the most recent textbook adoption process.

The 10-member Tennessee Textbook and Instructional Materials Quality Commission is responsible for recommending official lists of curriculum for various subjects, which then must be approved by the state Board of Education before local districts make their purchases based on the roster.

At issue is the department’s involvement in a decision to suspend the process two months before its completion and to hire Johns Hopkins University to review the textbook commission’s protocols for choosing curriculum. That review prompted changes that led to a revised list of approved publishers.

While curriculum choices and purchases are local matters, Bell said local school officials later felt “pressured” by the department to use certain companies from the revised list. He cited social media posts by the department and its leaders touting certain curriculum.

“It doesn’t give me a lot of confidence — not only in how the textbook commission is operating but the influence of the Department of the Education over the textbook commission and with the leadership of the Department of Education at this time,” Bell said.

Members of the Senate Education Committee question Commissioner Penny Schwinn and her staff during a budget hearing on Wednesday.

Schwinn denied Bell’s assertions of department overreach on curriculum matters. Her staff, she said, has followed state law in working with the commission to identify high-quality resources for classrooms.

Since taking the helm a year ago, the commissioner has spoken passionately about the need to put richer texts in front of students as Tennessee seeks to boost its abysmal literacy rate. Almost two-thirds of the state’s third-graders read below grade level, based on state tests.

“The department does not get involved in the local adoption process in terms of decision-making,” Schwinn told Bell. “We recognize those are local decisions. … The department is in no way pushing any particular publisher.”

Gresham said the conversation isn’t over.

“There is more time to be devoted to this,” the chairwoman said. “Honestly, the questions that have come up this afternoon and last week give us pause.”

Sen. Dolores Gresham chairs the Senate Education Committee.

Gresham added: “If the textbook commission and the Department of Education’s relationship is not what it should be or what it’s intended to be when we reconstituted the textbook commission several years ago, then there will be steps taken to resolve those issues.”

Gresham asked Schwinn if she or her staff have had conversations with any vendors related to the literacy bill.

According to an online notice, the department hosted two meetings with potential vendors on Feb. 4 to discuss approaching contracts, including literacy supports.

“We haven’t met with any of the publishers related to that. That would have to be a competitive process,” Schwinn answered, adding that “internal conversations” at the department have focused on what invitations for proposals might look like.

Gresham responded: “I just want to make sure you’re not making those assumptions and going ahead and doing RFPs (request for proposals) for certain amounts of money when 1) you haven’t gone through the budget process and 2) the bill is rolled a week. So that’s really important.”

“To clarify,” Schwinn answered, “there are no RFPs that are published at all at this time.”

Literacy bill on the move in Tennessee Legislature, minus the phrase ‘science of reading’

2020-03-10T22:30:26+00:00

Gov. Bill Lee’s comprehensive proposal to revamp how Tennessee students learn to read is advancing in the Legislature after weeks of discussions and revisions.

Gone is the phrase “science of reading,” which has been replaced with the words “foundational literacy skills.” Both refer to phonics-based instruction that starts with sound and builds comprehension by emphasizing content over skills. The wording might make a difference, however, when it comes to hiring a vendor for the initiative’s rollout.

A House education subcommittee approved the latest rewrite on Tuesday, sending the matter to the full panel for consideration next week.

Concerned that just over a third of Tennessee’s third-graders are reading at or above grade level, the Republican governor has set aside $68 million in next year’s proposed budget to overhaul reading instruction. If approved, most of the money would go toward retraining current teachers on the foundational principles of literacy and changing how the state’s teacher training programs instructs the next generation of educators to teach reading.

Groups representing superintendents, teachers, and institutions of higher education have weighed in since the bill’s Feb. 3 introduction, as has the research and advocacy group SCORE, which stands for the State Collaborative on Reforming Education.

“We feel that this bill is a much better product through the collaboration that we’ve had with many members and many stakeholder groups,” said Charlie Bufalino, the education department’s legislative and policy liaison. “We’re very grateful for that process of collaboration.”

One new provision guarantees that the education department will use a competitive bidding process to choose all vendors associated with the rollout. The department and its commissioner, Penny Schwinn, have been criticized in recent weeks for a $2.5 million no-bid contract involving the state’s new education voucher program.

Another change seeks to assure stakeholders that this initiative has nothing to do with the politically sensitive Common Core academic standards, which Tennessee revised and replaced in 2017.

The initial proposal directed that literacy instruction would be based on the “science of reading,” but that language prompted concerns that vendors branding themselves that way would have an advantage over other vendors with the same approach.

Lee’s amended plan now centers on equipping the state’s youngest children with “foundational literacy skills,” defined as “systematic phonics instruction, with a focus on phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary development, fluency, and oral language,” combined with “knowledge-based reading comprehension.” Most district leaders support this shift, which many school systems have already begun.

The House subcommittee on curriculum, testing, and innovation hears testimony on the reading bill from Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn.

Higher education institutions also would be part of the overhaul, since most Tennessee teachers are trained in colleges of education.

Currently, the state has 44 teacher training programs, but no common requirements when it comes to literacy instruction. That’s going to stop, said Mike Krause, executive director of the Tennessee Higher Education Commission.

“This is an emergent crisis, and we need to make sure we have that standardization so that, whether you’re a school superintendent in Memphis or Johnson City, the education prep candidates you’re getting have a common understanding,” he told Chalkbeat this week.

Krause wants instructors of future teachers to go through the same professional development as existing teachers, as well as pass a reading instruction test developed or identified by the state. “This is all hands on deck,” Krause said, noting that university presidents — not just deans of the various colleges of education — are part of the dialogue.

Several significant sticking points remain with the bill, though.

All districts would have to adopt a common diagnostic tool to assess reading development three times a year in the early grades. But the state already mandates that students in those grades undergo multi-year screenings as part of an existing intervention program launched in 2014 to keep struggling students from falling through the cracks. Districts contract with their own vendors to provide those screenings, and there’s concern that yet another diagnostic test focused on reading could overlap logistically and unnecessarily.

“We just entered into an agreement with Illuminate. So if they do something opposite, now we’ve got two financial implications due to the state coming up with a new bill at the 29th hour,” said Antonio Burt, chief academic officer for Shelby County Schools.

A provision that would exempt high-performing districts from some of the initiative’s requirements is another concern.

“Exempting some [local education agencies] from any part of a reading bill creates inequity for those students, and privileges districts with higher socio-economic populations,” said JC Bowman, executive director of Professional Educators of Tennessee.

House Education Committee Chairman Mark White has welcomed a thorough vetting of the proposal, and expects more scrutiny to come since the final bill “is going to change the way we train students in Tennessee to read,” considered the foundation for all learning.

The Senate has yet to take up the legislation, which that chamber’s education committee could consider as soon as Wednesday. There also are murmurs that individual lawmakers could bring forth alternative proposals.

You can follow the bill’s progression here and read the amended bill below.

Teacher pay, literacy, and mental health are priorities in Tennessee governor’s proposed budget

2020-02-04T00:15:11+00:00

Vowing to make Tennessee the best state in America to be a teacher, Gov. Bill Lee proposed $117 million more for teacher salaries and a slew of new initiatives aimed at luring more high-quality candidates to the profession and equipping them for the classroom.

The Republican governor also proposed $68 million for a new literacy program to ground teachers in phonics-based reading instruction and $25 million to support school improvement work. And he wants to create a $250 million trust fund to support and grow mental health services for students in Tennessee’s highest-risk schools.

In all, Lee asked the legislature for nearly $650 million in new dollars for K-12 education to bring the state’s total investment to $5.8 billion — about 17% of his $40.8 billion spending plan.

“Make no mistake: We will do whatever it takes to make Tennessee the best state in America to be a student, and that means making Tennessee the best state in America to be a teacher,” Lee said in his second State of the State Address before a joint session of the General Assembly.

Public education was the centerpiece of Lee’s address after focusing last year on increasing education choices for families beyond traditional public schools through education savings accounts and a new state charter school commission.

“The vast majority of our students are educated in traditional public schools,” he said, “and the majority of our efforts must remain focused there.”

Even so, the governor asked for $24 million to help charter schools with facility costs and $14 million for education savings accounts, which allow families to use taxpayer money to pay for private school tuition.

This is the second straight year Lee is seeking to bolster teacher pay. His administration set aside more than $70 million for that purpose last year, building on the compensation work of his predecessor, Bill Haslam. If applied statewide, the proposed allocation would amount to a 4% raise, although districts can funnel the additional money toward benefits or hiring more teachers, as long as their average teacher salary is at or above the state’s average of $53,980. Currently, the national average is more than $60,000, and Tennessee trails about half of its eight border states in teacher compensation.

Lee’s proposals come as Tennessee is seeing fewer teacher candidates in its training programs. At the same time, one in three current teachers report that they would leave the profession if they found a higher-paying job.

Over the next two years, the governor wants to increase the base pay for those with a bachelor’s degree and no teaching experience from $36,000 “so that no Tennessee teacher is making less than $40,000 a year.”

“This change to the salary schedule will reward teachers across the state while also making the teaching profession even more appealing to young people considering the high call of becoming an educator,” he said.

To complement salary increases, Lee wants to set aside $8.5 million to launch the Governor’s Teaching Fellowship to provide college scholarships for 1,000 of “our best and brightest” students to train to become teachers. He also proposed grants to help districts create their own teacher recruitment programs and announced plans for a first-of-its-kind competition to develop the world’s best teacher preparation program in Tennessee.

As expected, the governor recommended starting a new approach to addressing the state’s abysmal literacy rate, where just over a third of third-graders are reading at or above grade level. The comprehensive program would set aside $20 million for high-quality instructional materials and more than $48 million to instruct teachers in the “science of reading.” The latest research says the starting point to learn to read is sound, not sight, and shows that phonics instruction is crucial to that process.

In one of the most highly anticipated parts of his budget for education, Lee unveiled his plan for addressing the rising mental health needs of Tennessee students — an issue that Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn said was the top problem she heard about while touring schools last year.

Declaring that “help is on the way,” he said the creation of a $250 million endowment will lead to targeted investments in mental health services, which will be determined during a year-long needs assessment for each district.

“We will seek private donations to grow the fund over time and use the earnings to make investments for years to come,” Lee said.

In the meantime, he wants to allocate $3 million to expand services through the Department of Mental Health so that all 95 counties have at least one behavioral health liaison for their schools. Currently, that program covers only 36 counties.

Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn jumps to her feet as Lee announces new investments to K-12 education.

The Republican governor’s $600 million boost for public schools, while significant, fell significantly short of the level called for last week by the legislature’s Democratic leaders as the state continues to enjoy revenue surpluses. Minority party leaders said Tennessee needs a $1.5 billion boost to fully fund its constitutional obligations under the state’s funding formula for K-12 education. On Monday, they called Lee’s spending plan “an early and modest step on the long road to doing right by our schools.”

“It’s only a record-setting investment in public education because Tennessee has a really bad record when it comes to funding our schools,” said Sen. Jeff Yarbro of Nashville.

During his address, Lee took a swipe at naysayers who contend that he’s more interested in diverting money to private schools than in fully funding public schools.

“When you’re back home in your districts this year, if someone tells you we’re not supporting public education, they’re not telling the truth,” he said.

Lee’s plan drew generally positive reviews from education partners across the state.

“We are encouraged by his proposals to improve and heavily invest in literacy instruction, postsecondary attainment, improving educator pay and support, and innovative approaches to recruiting and preparing the teachers of tomorrow,” said President David Mansouri of the State Collaborative on Reforming Education.

Adam Lister, who heads Tennesseans for Student Success, called it “a bold agenda to continue to drive positive generational change.”

But the president of Tennessee’s largest teacher organization said the funding increase still falls woefully short for a state that ranks 45th in per-pupil spending, especially since Lee also wants to place another $50 million into cash reserves.

“Our public schools need $1.2 billion to get us to the Southeast average and out of the bottom 10 in funding. It is something our state can afford, and it’s the best investment our state can make,” said Beth Brown, a Grundy County teacher who heads the Tennessee Education Association.

She added that the extra money for teacher pay breaks down to about $1,450 per teacher, or approximately $28 a week.

What would this Memphis sixth-grade teacher do with a million dollars? Build a library, preschool, and community center.

2019-12-19T19:16:40+00:00

Loren Smith takes a selfie with some of his students.

In the two decades Memphis native Loren Smith has taught in his hometown, he has found that the biggest deterrent to student success is lack of reading skills.

Now a sixth-grade English teacher at Woodstock Middle School in Shelby County Schools, Smith has a plan to boost his students’ reading levels. He just needs a million dollars.

“Most of our students struggle to read very simple words,” Smith said. “If I were a millionaire, I’d provide a library, a preschool/daycare center, and a community center. I think those are the missing pieces to making our students super successful.”

But until he wins the lottery, Smith said he is making headway by encouraging his students to enjoy writing about topics they are passionate about. He gets to the grammar and punctuation later.

“I think that many people can be extremely critical about my students’ abilities to communicate,” he said. “So, the students are afraid of being judged. I take away the judgment. I build their confidence before teaching the skills.”

We spoke with Smith about an interaction with a student that he always remembers, his disdain for early school start times, and his love for chicken wings.

The interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How do you get to know your students?

I’ve learned that when you open up to people and come from a place of vulnerability, they trust you easily. So, I share things about my life, and then I have them share about their own hobbies and passions.

A humorous example is my passion for chicken wings. I love to eat chicken wings. And stories about trying another chicken wing spot in town always get my students going. People love to talk about food. The minute that I tell them a chicken wing story, my students are all saying, “Let me tell my story next, please Mr. Smith.”

Tell us about a favorite lesson to teach. Where did the idea come from?

I am very fond of including life lessons in writing lessons. Little people don’t care much for writing but they do like giving oral details about their adventures, mischievous or otherwise. I love their attention to detail when telling a story, and I ask them to translate that into writing.

My feedback to them is so important. But I don’t grade for grammar or structure when doing this kind of lesson. I simply respond to their thoughts. I think that many people can be extremely critical about my students’ abilities to communicate. So, the students are afraid of being judged. I take away the judgment. I build their confidence before teaching the skills.

What object would you be helpless without during the school day?

I am helpless without my laptop. I need it for instruction, communication, looking at data, creating lessons/plans, and ordering food because my school is pretty far out of town.

What’s something happening in the community that affects what goes on inside your class?

Many of my students come from Northaven, an area north of the city. It is a community filled with hard-working families and approximately 5,000 people live there. But there isn’t a library or community center there. The closest ones are miles away in Frayser, a neighborhood south of Northaven.

My students don’t have access to books outside of school. They go home and literally unlearn everything that they learn during the day. Even if parents worked three jobs, a community library or community center with tutoring or engaging reading programs would boost our students’ reading abilities. Most of our students struggle to read very simple words. If I were a millionaire, I’d provide a library, a preschool/daycare center, and a community center. I think those are the missing pieces to making our students super successful.

Tell us about a memorable time — good or bad — when a student changed your perspective or approach.

In my fourth year of teaching, I met a young lady who was very angry with the world. She was a 12-year-old in fifth grade, and she fought often. Slowly, she began to open up to me as I continuously reassured her of her ability to be great. School was starting to become a safe space for her.

I soon discovered that she was the oldest of 10 children, and they were all living in a very cramped space. She was the primary caretaker while her mom worked nights. She was simply overwhelmed. I understood. Her situation made me want to work harder for her. The young lady became one of my best students in a matter of months. She never wanted to miss a day.

One Monday, during lunch, I read the newspaper as I did every day and saw the most heart-wrenching news. I’d like to think that I have a pretty nice grip on my emotions, but at that moment, I bawled like a baby and had to leave the building. Over the weekend, my student’s mother was struck by a vehicle and died. It was a hit and run. The grandmother showed up at the end of the day. She told me that she was taking her grandchildren to Chicago. I never saw the student again.

That moment defined my career focus, it made me realize that I don’t teach for me. I teach because many of our students will have to fend for themselves. They need guidance to be able to do that. They need to know that someone cares enough about their well-being in order for them to even receive knowledge. I often ask my students, “What will you do for yourself if you find that all of the adults are gone? Will your education be relevant, then?”

What part of your job is the most difficult?

After 20 years in this business, I have to say that waking up early is the most difficult thing. Working with people is my peace. But what I can’t figure out is why schools are dedicated to this unnatural start to the school day. Geesh! My mind doesn’t wake up until at least 9 a.m. I clock in at 6:45 a.m. Really?

What was your biggest misconception that you initially brought to teaching?

This is very simple. I thought that teaching was going to be easy. My teachers made it look that way. Growing up, I attended schools within the “optional” program, kind of like a gifted program where students have to test in. They were classes for overzealous students. Those kids wanted to be there. The first time that I ever witnessed students actively avoiding school was when I started teaching.

What are you reading for enjoyment?

Currently, I am reading “The Water Dancer” by Ta-Nehisi Coates. So far, really good.

What Memphis can learn from Florida’s third-grade retention law as a similar policy goes into effect in 2021

2019-11-06T17:24:36+00:00

Nearly 20 years ago, as school districts across the nation were grappling with how to best build student reading skills, Florida was one of the first states to pass a law holding back third-grade students who did not read on grade level.

As the Sunshine state’s reading scores improved, more states followed suit, usually relying on one reading test to determine if a student would be promoted.

That retention strategy has now come to Memphis through a Shelby County Schools policy that will take effect during the 2021-22 school year. Test scores show the district’s youngest learners are lagging in reading, even when compared with other urban school systems. District officials say retention is necessary because without strong reading skills in third grade, students are four times more likely to drop out of high school.

But there are key differences between the Florida law and the Memphis policy approved earlier this year because of a top official who spent two years in one of Florida’s lowest performing districts. Antonio Burt, the district’s chief academic officer, liked the “laser-like focus” on reading the Florida retention law spurred in elementary schools.

“They knew where those kids were. They were tracking all year because no one wanted to be the school or the classroom that retained a lot of students,” said Burt, who left Florida and returned to Memphis in 2017 to lead the district’s Innovation Zone before being promoted to chief academic officer last year.

But he wanted a broader approach to determine if a student would be retained and wanted to focus on students a year earlier — in second grade instead of waiting until third grade.

“I knew we couldn’t focus like a lot of states do where that policy or statute is based on third grade because that’s too late,” he said. In addition, relying on a single test to determine a promotion would create “heightened anxiety” and may not truly capture a student’s reading ability, he said.

About half of U.S. states, plus Washington, D.C., require or encourage districts to retain third-grade students who lag behind in reading, according to the federal Education Commission of States.

This is the first year Michigan plans to to hold back third-graders who score more than a grade level behind on a state reading test. Alabama passed a similar law earlier this year that will take effect the same year as the Memphis policy in 2021. Current Tennessee law also allows schools to retain struggling readers in third grade, though in practice few are held back.

Studies have shown that retention, when coupled with summer school and other student support, can have a positive effect on achievement, especially in the early grades.

When looking at local data, Burt said he and his team noticed first-grade students tend to regress around winter break because the state requirements for learning foundational reading skills are assuming a level of mastery those students have not achieved yet. That worsens going into the summer, when many students forget some of what they learned because they have limited access to enrichment programs while they’re out of school.

Antonio Burt talks to a young student at a state-led listening tour at Wooddale High School.

That phenomenon, known as “summer slide,” is worse for students living in poverty — and Memphis has one of the highest poverty rates in the nation. The backslide leading into second grade places more of a burden on teachers trying to keep up with state requirements, which have mostly moved on from foundational skills, Burt said. In addition to helping about 8,700 students continue to build those skills, teachers are trying to keep pace with grade level learning.

“We can’t let up in second grade,” Burt said. “Not every district deals with the same challenges that Memphis deals with,” such as having a greater number of students moving more frequently from school to school and having more students with limited access to early childhood education.

The year Florida’s state retention law took effect during the 2003-04 school year, districts held back about 14% of third-grade students or about 23,000 students, up from 3% the year before. If a similar situation played out in Memphis, about 1,200 second grade students would be held back. (District officials did not provide Chalkbeat with recent retention rates for second-graders.)

Over time, the share of Florida’s students retained steadily fell. Six years later, it was down to about 6%, mostly because “more third-grade students were meeting the promotion standard,” said Martin West, a Harvard Graduate School of Education professor. He and other researchers followed 75,000 students retained under the Florida law and compared them with students near the cutoff score who were promoted as well as the new students now in their same grade.

“The retention policy was one part of a much broader effort to improve instruction in the early grades that seemed to have some clear benefits for Florida students,” such as higher test scores in high school and students taking fewer remedial courses, he said. Ultimately, though, West’s research found retention had no effect on their probability of graduating high school.

The Memphis retention policy is the most debated part of the district’s strategy to improve reading, but is not its only tactic. Shelby County Schools added 56 second-grade teaching assistants in struggling elementary schools and a new phonics curriculum this year. Elementary students also have 45 minutes of instruction per day dedicated to improving reading skills.

The policy requires students to meet eight of 12 criteria, including passing grades and scores on report cards and various tests administered throughout the year. Students also will be given the opportunity to attend summer school, and they will have 45 days into the next school year to meet the necessary criteria to move to the third grade.

Chalkbeat explains: Memphis kindergarten students will be the first affected by a new retention policy in second grade. Here’s how it works.

The Memphis policy also allows for some student exemptions. Florida’s exemptions meant districts retained only about half of those who did not pass the reading test.

When Florida parents appealed a decision to hold back their child, the mother’s education level often predicted whether or not the school would promote the student, research has shown.

If a student’s mother had a bachelor’s degree, the student was 14% less likely to be retained than a student whose mother dropped out of high school — even if their test scores were the same. The study also found black students and students whose mothers were foreign-born also were more likely than their peers to be held back. In New York City, black students were more than twice as likely to be retained as white students with similar test scores.

School board member Stephanie Love reads to students at Newberry Elementary School. She has led the board’s charge to the district’s administration to effectively communicate the new retention policy to parents.

Christina LiCalsi, who authored the Florida study, said she attributes the differences to exemptions being subjective, parents with less education not being as comfortable navigating education bureaucracy, and implicit bias from school leaders.

“Schools need to be aware of the fact that different parents have different agency,” she said. “So they need to be thinking about which students are being retained and which students are being promoted [and] whether or not there’s an equitable breakdown.”

Memphis parents like Christopher Martin, who has a son in kindergarten — part of the first class affected by the new policy — said he supports retention. But he worries about “discouragement” setting in for students who may be excelling in other subjects. He said his oldest son in fourth grade is a slow reader, but eventually gets it.

“Kids thinking, ‘What’s the point of going and doing good in everything else but this one thing is holding me back?’” he said as his son attended kindergarten on the first day of school at Delano Optional Elementary.

But Martin said he still thinks retention may be necessary for some students. “Some people make it to high school and can’t read good. Then, you got to hurt some people’s feelings when they think they’re doing good but then they fail a reading test and then get held back,” he said. “It’s got its ups and downs.”

This article tackles a topic raised during our 2019 Listening Tour. Read more about the Listening Tour here, and see more articles inspired by community input here.

Memphis kindergarten students will be the first affected by a new retention policy in second grade. Here’s how it works.

2019-10-31T22:05:09+00:00

Marnice DeShay thinks a lot of intervention needs to happen before Memphis students are held back for not reading on grade level. But her sister, Dianesia DeShay, says passing along children who are struggling in school does more harm than good, explaining, “Don’t send them on and they’re not ready.”

The siblings, both parents at Gardenview Elementary School, embody the debate over whether Shelby County Schools should hold back second-graders who are not reading proficiently. Both women, who earlier this year attended a parents meeting about a districtwide second-grade reading retention policy, agreed the district should do more to identify students who are behind in reading.

Literacy is the single biggest challenge facing the district, said Superintendent Joris Ray. “That’s why we’ve put in the 3rd Grade Commitment,” Ray told reporters on the first day of school. “If your child isn’t reading by third grade, it’s very difficult for them to succeed.”

The policy takes effect during the 2021-22 school year, which gives Shelby County Schools about two years to bolster its literacy efforts and educate the community on the changes to come. This year’s kindergarten students will be the first class of second graders to be impacted by the new policy, which could hold back students with lagging literacy skills.

Here’s what else you need to know about it.

Are most Memphis students reading at grade level?

Not according to the results of the 2019 state test, TNReady. This spring, about 24% of third graders in Shelby County Schools scored proficient in reading — at least six percentage points below the school system’s goal and down from 27% last year. That means about 6,200 of those Memphis students did not meet state requirements for reading. Ultimately, the district wants 90% of third-grade students reading proficiently by 2025. (Scroll to the bottom of this story for a searchable database of 2019 third-grade proficiency rates for each school in the district.)

Third-grade students statewide aren’t faring much better. About 37% of students across Tennessee’s nearly 150 districts met the tougher English Language Arts requirements put in place in 2017. Nine districts posted lower reading scores than did Shelby County Schools. In the state-run Achievement School District, which takes over low-performing schools, most of which are in Memphis, test results showed that just 5.6% of third-graders are reading proficiently.

On national exams this year, Shelby County Schools fourth-grade students ranked below average in reading when compared to 26 other urban districts.

School board chairwoman Miska Clay Bibbs reads to students at Newberry Elementary where she also went to school.

Miska Clay Bibbs, the school board’s chairwoman, said she thinks the low proficiency rates have something to do with the rise of high-stakes testing. It has caused educators to lose sight of the basics, she said. “Teachers have to focus on that end result rather than the whole child,” she said after a reading event at her alma mater, Newberry Elementary, where about 19% of third-grade students are reading proficiently.

Does that mean most second graders in the district will be held back?

It’s unclear, but state tests results will play only a small role in the decision. State-required testing begins in third grade, but some districts, including Shelby County Schools, choose to administer an optional state test in second grade.

How does the retention policy work?

The criteria are below.

Shelby County Schools will require eight out of 12 possible points to promote students to third grade

What	When	Measure of success	Possible points
Report card grade	Each quarter	70% or higher in English Language Arts	4
Test: Mastery Connect	Fall, winter, spring	On-track or mastery in English Language Arts	3
Test: Illuminate	Fall, winter, spring	Fall: 350 Lexile, Winter: 420 Lexile, Spring: 485	3
Test: TNReady	Spring	On-track or mastery in English Language Arts	2

Promotion criteria for second grade students starting in 2021-22

Note: Mastery Connect helps teachers see what concepts students aren’t grasping and respond by giving more individualized instruction. Lexile is a national measure that converts a student’s reading ability into a number.

Students with disabilities and English language learners have their own goals for grade promotion and will not be evaluated under this policy, said Antonio Burt, the district’s chief academic officer.

What is the district doing to improve reading proficiency?

Retention is not the only strategy the district is employing to get more students reading on grade level. Shelby County Schools spent millions of dollars this year implementing student supports such as a new phonics curriculum, and hiring 56 teacher assistants for second-grade classrooms in schools where less than 25% of students meet state reading requirements.

Additionally, kindergarten and first-grade students have 45 minutes per day this year dedicated to working on areas students are struggling. That will help them catch up faster, district leaders said.

Statewide, officials have looked to strengthen teaching in kindergarten through second grade, especially since state research shows principals tend to concentrate their weakest teachers in those early grades that are free from high-stakes tests. Yet when it comes to learning foundational reading skills, those grade levels are crucial.

Without strong reading skills in early grades, the rest of the student’s education can be an uphill battle. A student who is not reading on grade level by third grade is four times more likely to drop out of school, according to 2012 research from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. District officials often say it’s not a coincidence that nearly the same percentage of students who read on grade level in third grade also are considered college-ready on the ACT college entrance exam.

Antonio Burt, the district’s chief academic officer, at a meeting in Whitehaven to discuss the new retention policy.

How will the district communicate with families about their child’s progress — and the likelihood of being held back?

Parents of second-grade students in the 2021-22 school year will get updates on report cards on how their child is doing and will be notified by Feb. 1 if their child is in danger of being held back. Parents can appeal their child’s retention.

And as of this year, parents of kindergarten students will begin getting more detailed progress reports on reading skills so “parents will never be surprised in regards to where their kid is standing in relation to these criteria,” Burt, the chief academic officer, told parents at a community meeting this summer.

Parents can also go on the district’s website for information on how to help their children build their vocabulary and reading skills. District leaders have launched a bedtime story series on YouTube. They have also started to meet parents at tailgates and community events — handing out books and promoting literacy tools they can use at home.

Burt also promised parents to continue to host regular meetings about the new policy, and how they can support their child’s reading skills.

Ultimately, parents like Candace Marshall don’t want to have to fight school officials to make sure their child gets what they need.

“I don’t want her to be a statistic,” Marshall said.

How can parents find out how their child’s school is faring?

Below is a searchable chart of third-grade reading proficiency rates at each elementary school in Shelby County Schools for the past three years. Charter schools are included in the chart, but are not affected by the district’s retention policy. The state does not provide test data on schools that have fewer than 5% or greater than 95% proficiency to protect student privacy. Those scores are redacted.

This article tackles a topic raised during our 2019 Listening Tour. Read more about the 2019 Listening Tour here, and see more stories inspired by community input here.

Memphis shows reading, math improvement on national test, but lags behind other urban districts

2019-10-30T04:02:37+00:00

Memphis students held steady or improved in reading and math on a national test used widely to compare student performance across locations.

The most significant jump in student performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, was in eighth-grade math where the average score increased by about eight points. But when compared to results in 26 other large cities, Memphis scored significantly lower than average.

Shelby County Schools was included in the city comparison for the first time in 2017, when students ranked in the bottom third, where they remain. This year the city improved its ranking in all areas except fourth-grade math, which held steady at 20th out of 27.

The national test — often called The Nation’s Report Card — is low stakes for individual students and schools, but high stakes for politicians and education leaders who use the scores to champion or denounce education policies. The federal agency that administers the tests warns against connecting scores to specific policies.

Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn visited Memphis early in her tenure. Pictured here with Superintendent Joris Ray, right.

Superintendent Joris Ray said he was “extremely proud of the results.”

“It shows the district is focusing on effective instructional initiatives, and our educators deserve the credit for leading this work in the classroom,” Ray said in a statement Wednesday morning.

A national nonprofit leader who helps share best practices among urban districts called the district’s performance “some of the strongest gains of any major city in the country.”

“In the one area where the nation declined significantly, which was eighth grade reading, Shelby County held its own,” Mike Casserly, the executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, said in a district statement. “The reforms that the school district is pursuing academically are clearly producing results for students. Congrats to Shelby County.”

The national results mostly mirror improvements Shelby County Schools students made on Tennessee’s annual test known as TNReady. This spring, 20.9% of eighth-grade students scored proficient in math, up 11 percentage points compared with 2017.

Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn said the corresponding upward trend lines on state and national tests is encouraging. A previous gap in state and national results earned the state an “F” in honesty from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in 2007, spurring a slew of changes in how the state assesses student performance.

“Another reason to celebrate is that our assessments are more closely aligned than they have been in the past,” Schwinn told reporters Tuesday. “There’s a significant improvement in math, and I think that that’s something we’re very, very excited about and that frankly Shelby County should be very proud of.”

NAEP scores in reading and math are scaled from 0 to 500. Below are the changes in scores and Memphis’s ranking out of 27 urban districts.

Fourth-grade math: 20th at 228, up 3 points but no change in ranking since 2017
Fourth-grade reading: 17th at 205, up 2 points and moving up in the rankings by 3 since 2017
Eighth-grade math: 18th at 265, up 8 points and moving up in the rankings by 5 since 2017
Eighth-grade reading: 18th at 249, up less than a point and moving up in the rankings by 2 since 2017

Here’s how Shelby County Schools ranked among urban districts on the four tests:

Here’s what Memphis parents told us they want to know about early childhood and literacy – and why we want to hear from more of you

2019-10-02T19:07:16+00:00

When more than 50 Memphians gathered to talk about early childhood and literacy with us, we heard a lot of concerns and hopes for Memphis’ littlest learners.

From confusion about the location of preschool centers and how many seats are open to story ideas on how socioemotional factors affect young students – the audience at our “Pre-K to Third-Grade Reading: Parents, what do you want to know?” event left our reporters with many story leads to track down and even more questions to answer.

Held at the Benjamin Hooks Central Library, our event in late August was part of Chalkbeat’s seven-city “listening tour” this summer and fall, allowing our reporters to convene public conversations and learn from residents in the communities we serve.

We shaped our talks around some of the biggest education issues affecting Shelby County today – a new retention policy aimed at boosting the reading acumen of third-graders and an unprecedented push to fund more prekindergarten classrooms.

Now, we want to hear from even more of you on how we can better report on these topics.

That’s because early childhood – especially how our youngest students learn to read – is one of Chalkbeat Tennessee’s main focus areas this school year. It’s important to us that our readers drive our coverage. So, read below the ideas that came out of our event and email us with your own thoughts and questions. We’re listening at tn.tips@chalkbeat.org.

Attendees were divided into small groups to answer questions like “What issues do you think most impact a young child’s ability to learn?” and “Why do you think Tennessee and Shelby County have struggled to get their youngest students reading at higher rates?”

Throughout the evening, trauma and other factors that affect student learning outside of school came up over and over again.

“Family stressors are the biggest detriment to a child’s ability to learn,” said one participant, while another emphasized that parents and teachers need more training and awareness on how trauma can affect the brain development of young children.

Attendees were divided into small groups to answer questions like “What issues do you think most impact a young child’s ability to learn?”

This is a focus for Shelby County Schools, which is planning to pilot a restorative discipline program, where 30 schools will have a “reset room” with dedicated staff. With the approval of a teacher, students will be able to go there for support if they are struggling with behavior in class. Designed to help reduce suspensions and expulsions, it is part of Shelby County Schools stated efforts to become “a fully trauma-informed and trauma-responsive district.”

This year, our reporters are examining how adverse childhood trauma affects students and teachers and how schools are dealing with it. Researchers have tied stressful events such as divorces, deportations, poverty, neglect, sexual abuse, gun violence, and other traumas to lower math and reading scores, poor health, and behavior problems.

Do you have an idea for a Chalkbeat article on this? Email us at tn.tips@chalkbeat.org

Another major point of discussion was Shelby County Schools’ upcoming retention policy that will hold back second-grade students who aren’t reading on grade level. The policy will begin with second-graders in the 2021-22 school year.

Shelby County Schools is aiming to have 90% of its third-graders reading proficiently by the year 2025. But currently, only about 24% of them were proficient in reading on the state’s standardized assessment.

Parents, educators and community members attended Chalkbeat Tennessee’s listening tour on early education and early literacy.

“I want to be clear, it starts in pre-K,” district Superintendent Joris Ray told Chakbeat in a previous interview. “At the end of the day, it’s about our students really understanding and knowing how to read. The incoming kindergarten students will be the first class impacted by the policy. So, we have two years to really look and see what we need to do to make adjustments and get better.”

Attendees at our Listening Tour also said that a more effective prekindergarten curriculum could lead to stronger readers. Others pointed to a need for skilled teachers who stay in classrooms, and still others said more parental involvement would make the difference in boosting literacy rates.

Participants were mixed on whether or not the district’s new retention policy was the best way to build better readers.

One parent, who had also taught second grade for eight years, said it would be unfair to move students forward if they cannot read. She said she had held students back, and some of them went on to be honor roll students after receiving another year of instruction.

Another parent asked what Shelby County Schools would do in addition to the policy.

“Does SCS have strategies in place now for kids before they get to the second grade,” she asked. “Do they have a plan to remediate students who fail?”

Read more about the 2019 Listening Tour here, and see stories that tackle topics raised during the tour here.

Most test scores increase in Tennessee’s largest district; reading results down for youngest students

2019-08-15T13:12:47+00:00

State test scores for Shelby County Schools increased this year in every subject except English for elementary and middle school students, according to state data released Thursday.

But the district’s students did not make as much progress as other students across the state, earning Shelby County Schools the lowest score on the state’s 5-point growth scale.

Students did best in fourth-grade math, where 34.7% scored proficient on the state’s TNReady test, up from 27.9% last year. But in third-grade literacy, just 24% of students scored proficient, down from 27% last year.

Shelby County Schools officials said the results show “obvious areas for continuous support and improvement,” but cited examples of “encouraging progress that the district can build on.”

Superintendent Joris Ray, who started his first full year as district leader this week, said he was confident new efforts such as increased emotional support for students who have experienced trauma and increased attention on ensuring students have equal access to rigorous programs would help the district “overcome some significant barriers to learning that we’ve seen in previous years.”

“Working together, we will improve these results on behalf of all students,” Ray said in a statement. “That is our imperative task and one that I and my team keep in front of us every day. I realize that this is hard work, but the teachers, principals, and central office have the heart to move this work forward in our district.”

Three schools in the district, Tennessee’s largest, also improved enough to be excluded from the state’s next list of low-performing schools, used to determine in part which schools undergo state intervention. All of them appeared on the “priority list” for the first time last year — Dunbar Elementary, Getwell Elementary, and Robert R. Church Elementary.

Search below for a school within Shelby County Schools, including most Memphis charter schools. You can compare TNReady scores to see the percent of students scoring proficient and growth scores for multiple schools. If a score is marked as redacted, that is because there were not enough valid samples or the overall average is less than 1% or greater than 99%.

The district pointed to progress in all high school subjects as a “bright spot” in this year’s test scores. High schools have been the hardest for the district and state to improve, especially as students arrive several grade levels behind. Last year, Shelby County Schools dispatched a team of reading specialists to focus on high school, increased teacher development, and adjusted curriculum to better align with new state requirements. This year, the share of high school students scoring proficient in English II went from 18% to nearly a quarter. About 20% of high school students in English overall met state expectations.

The district already told parents that third-grade reading scores dipped this year in meetings about plans to hold back second-graders who don’t read on grade level for the 2021-22 school year. The school system aims to have 90% of third graders reading proficiently by 2025.

Ray said in a call with reporters Thursday morning that overall, the district is moving in the right direction.

“Next year this time we’ll be having a different conversation,” he said. “I guarantee it.”

NOTE: The state department said it did not administer elementary social studies and English III exams this year.

You can see schools Shelby County Schools leaders highlighted below:

Memphis third grade reading scores dip as district builds case for retaining students

2019-08-08T20:56:23+00:00

Fewer Memphis third grade students than last year are accomplished readers, according to Shelby County Schools’ annual state test data discussed in meetings with parents.

About 24% of third graders in Shelby County Schools scored proficient in reading on the state’s standardized assessment TNReady. That’s down from about 27% last year, and in contrast to 36% of elementary students statewide who tested proficient.

The full results from spring testing are scheduled to be released next week, but Memphis district officials shared the statistic this week at a meeting with parents on a new retention policy that will hold back second grade students who aren’t reading on grade level. The policy will begin in the 2021-22 school year.

Antonio Burt, the district’s chief academic officer, declined to speculate on why the scores dipped. Rather, he said the district would be looking to hone existing strategies — such as daily 45-minute small-group instruction and teacher leaders dedicated to foundational reading skills — and equip new second grade teacher assistants.

“The work and the need around K through 2 is so important,” he told Chalkbeat after Wednesday’s community meeting at Gaisman Community Center to explain the district’s retention plan.

“And as a state, we’re still recovering from the standards shift,” he added later about the state’s 2016 change to a new test with tougher requirements.

The news is a blow to the district’s efforts to strengthen early literacy, which has been a priority for the Memphis district. Superintendent Joris Ray and his leadership team often point to the correlation between third grade reading levels and a similar percentage of students considered college-ready on the ACT test.

Antonio Burt, the chief academic officer for Shelby County Schools, speaks to parents and teachers about the district’s upcoming second grade retention policy and strategies to improve reading.

“We know that if our kids that don’t master reading prior to third grade, they’re four times more likely to drop out of school,” Burt told parents Wednesday evening. “That same student would then be four times more likely to be incarcerated.”

Shelby County Schools is aiming to have 90% of its third grade students reading proficiently by the year 2025. That’s higher than the state’s goal of 75% for that same year.

This year’s kindergarten class would be the first group that could be held back a year because of Shelby County Schools new retention policy, Burt said. The district will require students to meet eight of 12 benchmarks, including minimum report card grades and reading scores, throughout the year in order to pass second grade.

Candace Marshall, a prekindergarten teacher and parent, said she mostly favors the retention policy and had faced resistance at a Memphis charter school when she wanted her niece to repeat first grade.

“I don’t want her to be a statistic. It made me question how many other kids get passed along,” she told Chalkbeat.

Here are four priorities that will guide the Memphis school board this year

2019-07-31T17:37:48+00:00

The Shelby County Schools board met for the first time this year to discuss strategy and create goals to work with their new superintendent.

Their priorities to improve literacy, create a better district culture, craft clearer expectations for the superintendent, and flesh out a plan for Memphis school buildings and programs this school year were meant to correspond with Superintendent Joris Ray’s goals he laid out as interim leader. Board members appointed him as the permanent leader in April and approved his contract for a $285,000 annual salary last month.

Board members meet annually with the superintendent and his top leadership team to discuss the district’s goals. This year’s meeting was hosted by the Urban Child Institute earlier this month.

Literacy: Preparing students to read on grade level has been a longtime challenge for Memphis schools. The percentage of Shelby County Schools elementary students considered proficient in reading rose by 3 percentage points on the state’s annual test last year — but only a quarter of those students read on grade level.

Billy Orgel

The district is adding teacher assistants in second grade and implementing a phonics curriculum this year to ramp up a plan to hold back students in second grade if they don’t meet certain reading benchmarks in the 2021-22 school year.

“We can solve all this right now if we put the funds into kindergarten, first grade, and second grade,” said board member Billy Orgel. “I think the community is ready for that because all we’re doing [now] is Band-Aid stuff and passing people along.”

But the district shouldn’t over-emphasize early grades, said Shante Avant, the school board’s chairwoman.

“I don’t want us to neglect middle school and high school students who are not reading on grade level who have to go out and get a job,” she said.

Culture: Avant described district culture as “how we have expectations for our students and from the superintendent to the staff that all of our kids are treated with dignity and respect.”

Board member Scott McCormick, second from left.

Ray has instituted more staff training to respond to childhood trauma, which one national health group estimates affects 37% of students in Shelby County. But culture also includes how staff feel about working in the district, said board member Scott McCormick.

“We’ve got to get the culture right,” he said. “One complaint is like dropping a rock in still water and the waves just go out and out and out… and pretty soon you have a bad reputation. And we don’t have a good reputation in the system as a whole.”

The district plans to release a new staff survey this fall and launch more employee appreciation programs. Results of a community and parent survey are expected next month.

Accountability: The school board has been working to update its evaluation tool for the superintendent for several months. Avant said she expects that to be done this fall.

“Accountability is how we make sure that the things that people are supposed to do, they’re actually doing it,” she told Chalkbeat after the meeting.

Board member Kevin Woods said the board should also create policy requiring pay increases for central office staff be connected to the district’s academic goals rather than simply getting raises when teachers do.

“It should be based on performance metrics,” Woods told the superintendent. “What expectations we set for you should drill down to your team and we shouldn’t be reading about pay increases or promotions unless those individuals have done something to merit those rewards.”

“Reimagining 901” plan: The possibility of more school closures has been looming ever since December when former superintendent Dorsey Hopson proposed consolidating 28 old school buildings into 10 new ones. The district has closed more than two dozen schools in recent years as enrollment decreased and finances were tight. Altogether, the district has almost $500 million in maintenance needs, which has caused some schools to temporarily close for air conditioning or heater breakdowns.

Shelby County Schools board members Miska Clay Bibbs, left, and Joyce Dorse-Coleman.

Still, Woods said Shelby County Schools has to make the plan “much bigger than school closures.”

That includes conversations about where to place more job training courses and “optional schools,” which have specialty programs that have academic requirements for admissions.

“We find that too many times that our children have to go outside of their zone to get what they need,” said board member Joyce Dorse-Coleman. “All our schools should be optional schools. There should be something at all schools.”

Ray has vowed to seek more community input on what academic programs neighborhoods want in their schools.

Memphis schools chief looking for new ideas because ‘what we’ve been doing hasn’t been working’

2019-07-19T22:04:17+00:00

As someone who has been a go-to problem solver in his previous roles in Shelby County Schools, Superintendent Joris Ray says he has had a hard time adjusting to the bureaucracy inherent in his new role.

“My pace is this,” he says as he quickly snapped his fingers repeatedly. “But I always want to show deference to the board and ensure that we’re in lockstep. And that’s how you get the best traction when we all move together.”

Ray has been the permanent leader of the Memphis school district for nearly three months — about as long as he was interim leader. Now, Ray is carving out his own initiatives, including one for black male students, which he plans to describe in detail on Monday. Chalkbeat sat down with Ray this week to discuss some of those details, how he hopes to get more students reading on grade level, and how his team plans to respond as students leave to take advantage of the state’s new voucher program by enrolling in private schools.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

You’ve talked about launching an initiative for black boys. Can you share your vision for what it will look like?

We’re calling it African-American Male Empowerment. There are some things that we as a school district must do. As superintendent I want to make sure we don’t have exclusionary practices around children, especially African-American males, in our gifted programs and our Advanced Placement courses. They have the lowest graduation rates, highest dropout rates, lowest ACT scores, and highest discipline rates.

I look at it as what we can do differently. It’s not about, in my opinion, changing African-American males, it’s about changing our response to them.

What were some of the underlying causes you found?

It’s about how we view African-American males. I met with a group of students this week from all over Shelby County and I asked them: What image do you see when you’re riding your bike and you think of somebody robbing you? All of them said they saw an African-American male doing it. Then one of the students asked me the same question. And I had to own my implicit bias because I saw what they saw. That’s a narrative we have to change about African-American males. We have to own our implicit bias throughout our school district.

It’s also about our African-American males living in poverty, not having some of the opportunities that their counterparts have to get internships, which goes back to implicit bias. School districts across the nation are quick to put an African-American male in special education, but slow to put them in classes of rigor. Why is that? That’s something we’re still uncovering and trying to figure out.

All 110,000 students are my priority. I’m the youngest of seven and my parents loved us all the same, but equity came in if I needed more attention or more help with homework or if I was sick that day. They did what they had to do for that particular child. And that didn’t mean they didn’t love all of us. As superintendent, I’m looking at the data for African-American males and this particular group is suffering in all areas. It’s my job to figure out what we can do to get better.

Do you support consolidating old buildings and building new ones?

Superintendent Joris Ray speaks at the groundbreaking ceremony for Alcy Elementary in May 2019.

When things make sense to do that, yes. But that’s something you still have to engage the community around. There’s a lot of angst when you talk about closing schools. To me, it’s about the best academic options. When we lead with academic options, our parents get it.

I was at the barbershop talking about if you had three cars and you’re paying notes on all of them. They all have things that are functioning well, but different things that’s broken with all three. Why not go and get you a nice brand new car with everything you need to get you to and from work and some of the other bells and whistles you would like to have? You’d be paying the same note on the brand new car as you would on three separate cars. Same thing with our schools.

When you come to parents that way, it makes sense. But if you come at it as if they’re losing something, our parents aren’t buying into it. It’s about providing quality education throughout all zip codes and providing the best academic options for students.

How is Shelby County Schools preparing for the impact of vouchers?

This is an unknown and uncharted territory for us. But what we can do is share with parents all the options they already have within Shelby County Schools. Many former private school parents are already choosing to go to White State High or Ridgeway or Germantown for International Baccalaureate programs. We want to provide a quality option for their child to get an education and I believe many parents will still choose Shelby County Schools.

The other question is what kind of education are parents going to get with a $7,300 voucher? That’s for the entire year. I’m afraid parents are going to choose a lesser option and the kids will not receive a quality education.

How will district plans to hold back second-graders who aren’t reading on grade level change what happens in classrooms?

I want to be clear, it starts in pre-K. At the end of the day, it’s about our students really understanding and knowing how to read. The incoming kindergarten students will be the first class impacted by the policy. So, we have two years to really look and see what we need to do to make adjustments and get better. I’m the kind of leader that is bold and courageous, but I’m practical. What I feel good about is we give them multiple checks (students must meet eight out of 12 indicators).

Read more about Shelby County Schools’ policy on holding back second grade students

Third-grader Brieston Fleming, 8, writes a story about his favorite athlete, Dwayne Johnson, after reading several books about sports stars during the last week of the state-funded Read to be Ready literacy camp held at Cornerstone Prep in Memphis’ Frayser neighborhood. June 27, 2019.

And our teachers are going to receive more high-quality professional development and support with education assistants in each grade.

What makes you think the supports around the retention policy will be the thing that makes the difference for early literacy?

I know one thing: What we’ve been doing hasn’t been working. So we have to try something new and innovative to get our teachers excited about reading, give them support, and raise community awareness around literacy. I sit with superintendents across the state and nation. This is something that’s plaguing school districts. We’re looking to other districts to help with solutions, but we have to tailor it to our students here in Shelby County. I just want to ensure that the public is aware and you have to start reading when the child is in the womb.

I remember when my wife was pregnant with my son. I took out a book every night and I would read to her stomach and to our son. I noticed even as a child when we would read as a 10-month-old, he would look up and take it all in. By the time he was 2 years old, he had his own books and he was attempting to read. If he was on punishment, he would be on his bed with a book enjoying himself. It would drive me crazy.

I want to develop that love and awareness for reading prior to students getting to pre-K. It takes the community to push it in our Sunday school at church, in our community centers, around family dinner tables. Wherever we go, we should be pushing literacy.

How would you describe the role of central office? What changes can people expect?

With student-based budgeting and principals taking more ownership in how money is spent, our central office has to change, but I don’t see it growing. How I see central office is you have to be responsive and everyone needs to be a customer service representative. Central office makes up a small portion of our budget. What I’m trying to do is put systems in place to help us better support schools. That’s what it’s all about.

I do think our human resources department is one department we are taking a strong look at because, to me, human resources is the heartbeat and it controls and helps with the culture and climate of the district. People should feel good about coming to work. I’ve heard from students about how they notice how principals treat teachers trickle down to how teachers treat students. That’s powerful.

Another department I’m taking a hard look at is information technology. We have backpack drives, we should be having laptop drives. And it takes a strong department to really beef up our infrastructure in what we’re trying to do with one-to-one devices.

Why one Memphis principal reads bedtime stories to students via Facebook Live

2019-07-15T20:22:23+00:00

Here, in a Q&A series we call “How I Lead,” we feature school and district leaders who have been recognized for their work. You can see other pieces in the series here.

What started as a way to give parents a break and excite students about reading has now attracted authors from around the world to send books for Principal Archie Moss to read on Facebook Live.

Archie Moss, principal at Bruce Elementary School in Memphis.

Moss has read bedtime stories every Tuesday night since February when he announced the push for more reading while at Bruce Elementary School’s Black History Month event.

“A lot of the stories we select are ones our students can see themselves in,” Moss said. “Some students don’t like reading because they haven’t found a book where they see themselves represented.”

Moss’ weekly bedtime stories attracted global media attention as Shelby County Schools leaders search for ways to incorporate literacy into more aspects of student life. Superintendent Joris Ray recently encouraged local leaders and celebrities with ties to Memphis to get online and follow Moss’ example.

The challenge is steep, but Moss has led the school to improved test scores since 2016. Bruce Elementary School in Memphis sits just outside the city’s poorest zip code and has earned the state’s highest student growth score for annual tests in three of the past four years. But reading scores still lag the district average. During the 2017-18 school year, about 15% of students were reading on grade level compared with 33% for the rest of the state.

In the midst of all that, Moss is pursuing a doctorate at the University of Memphis and leading a mentor program aimed at recruiting and keeping black male teachers in the classroom.

Here’s what Moss had to say about how a jar full of student names on his desk assists him in getting to know students, why he started an elementary basketball league, and what motivated him to get into teaching.

Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What was your first education job and what sparked your interest in the field?

I attended a high school in which some teachers did not have a vested interest in their students’ success. My ninth-grade geometry teacher informed the class that we would not succeed in life, and that we would be forced to work minimum wage jobs to survive. The experience influenced me to want to succeed and prove her and other doubters wrong.

My first education job was an internship at Breakthrough Collaborative in Cambridge, MA. I was given the task of teaching the lowest level students in seventh-grade math. Witnessing my students’ struggle disheartened me. I wanted to do everything in my power to directly and positively impact and influence another individual. This led me to join Teach For America in Charlotte as a sixth-grade math teacher.

Fill in the blank. My day at school isn’t complete unless I __________. Why?

My day isn’t complete if I did not do the morning and afternoon announcements to spread the positivity and ensure that each day starts and ends on a great note, and if I did not get caught by the pre-K, kindergarten, or first grade hug train. Being able to give them a hug, fist bump, or handshake brightens my day and helps to build a community of care.

How do you get to know students even though you don’t have your own classroom?

One of my priorities as a school leader is to ensure that all of my scholars feel deeply known. I facilitate and organize numerous initiatives to ensure that I get to know all of my scholars. I serve as one of the basketball coaches and also run my mentorship program where I get to mentor 40 boys of color. I am also the boy’s step team advisor. Aside from all of these activities I spend time during arrival, breakfast, and lunch building relationships with my scholars. I am also very intentional with making sure that I know all my scholar’s names and their stories. At the beginning of each school year, I place the name of all my scholars within the building in a jar on my desk. At the beginning of each week, I draw 5 names. If I do not know much about that student or do not know their story, then it is my job to get to know them.

Staff at Bruce Elementary School celebrate getting the state’s highest score for student growth.

Tell us about a time that a teacher evaluation didn’t go as expected.

I recall observing a teacher, and the students were really struggling to grasp the concept. The teacher tried numerous approaches, but the scholars did not experience success. I could sense the teacher’s frustration, so I cut the observation short, and asked the teacher to meet with me. We discussed strategies to assist the students with the difficult concept. I informed the teacher that I would be back the next day to teach the lesson with the strategies we discussed, and then follow up with a re-do observation. Observations should never be viewed as a punitive tool, but rather a growth and learning opportunity, and I think I was able to do just that with this teacher.

What is an effort you’ve spearheaded at your school that you’re particularly proud of?

There are two initiatives that I am most proud of: The Shelby County Schools basketball league for elementary schools and our bedtime stories series. The basketball league was started to provide positive outlets for our students. The league started with four schools and has grown to over 25 schools across the county. The league strengthens the school’s educational environment because scholars are working hard to make sure they stay out of trouble. “Bedtime Stories with Principal Moss” was born from an idea shared by our school librarian Monique Howard. All school year we were working to build a culture of reading and to find unconventional ways to reach our students. We came up with the idea to read bedtime stories on Facebook live. The idea has grown over time, and now we have community members serving as guest readers.

Bedtime Stories with Principal Moss. Tonight he will be reading "The Joys of Being a Little Black Boy" by Valerie Reynolds. Parents/Guardians: Comment with the name of your scholar to enter your scholar in a raffle tomorrow!
Posted by Bruce Elementary School on Tuesday, February 26, 2019

How do you handle discipline when students get into trouble?

We have a conversation about the incident and about making good choices. Inside of my office I have a choices chart that I often refer to during my restorative conversations. The conversation goes something like this: “We all make mistakes in life. But when we make mistakes, we have a choice on how we can respond. We can respond by lying, denying, blaming others, and failing to take responsibility. Or we can work to make the situation right by being honest, apologizing, and taking ownership for our actions.” Typically, I add a personal story to show the kids that even Mr. Moss makes mistakes. From here we brainstorm ways in which the students will make the situation right, how they will show up even better, and what they will do differently. It is important that the students feel seen and heard.

What is the hardest part of your job?

The hardest part of my job is handling the emotions of people — staff, students, parents, community members. You never know what someone is going through and often times their burdens become your burdens. My students and their families, as well as my staff are experiencing trauma daily, and I feel that I have to have answers to all their concerns, which is not always the case.

Principal Archie Moss and some of the students he mentors through a group he started called The Gentlemen’s League.

Tell us about a memorable time when contact with a student’s family changed your perspective.

We serve a significant population of students who are homeless or temporarily displaced. Often times we are not privy to this information. We were experiencing numerous outbursts from a particular student, and we had a difficult time understanding why. We reached out to the parents, but were unable to schedule a meeting. Eventually I was able to get in contact with the mother, who disclosed their housing situation and the reasoning behind her distance from the school. From the meeting I was able to learn all about the challenges this family was facing and was able to use our partnership with the Salvation Army to get the family some help.

What education policy is having a big impact on your school right now? How are you addressing it?

Funding has a huge impact on our school. I experience more and more students each school year who are not on grade level and cannot read. Schools need interventionists, reading tutors, behavioral specialists, strong phonics programs, and additional counselors. We need to ensure that schools have the necessary resources for student’s success. Reading is freedom, and I want all students to feel like they can be free every time they read.

What’s the best advice you ever received?

I was recently told not to let anyone dim my light simply because it is shining in their eyes. This work we do each day is hard work, but also heart work. We devote a lot of time, effort, and energy into ensuring that we create the best opportunities for all the kids we serve. Sometimes you will never please everyone, and that is okay. Just be sure that what you do each and every day is in the best interest if kids. This is a thankless profession sometimes, and we won’t always see the fruits of our labor. Just know that what you are doing is profound and if someone can’t handle how bright your light is, then simply offer them some sunglasses.

Tennessee’s summer reading camps are popular, getting results — and in peril

2019-07-02T23:29:57+00:00

Five-year-old Nykari McNeal has a new favorite word — “towers” — after seeing a drawing of the Eiffel Tower inside of a book during a summer reading camp in Memphis.

“Towers start with T!” says Nykari, who has taken to drawing pictures of towers because he likes the idea of being able to see over a big city.

Paris, France, is half a world away from Nykari’s neighborhood in the Frayser community of Memphis where most families live below the poverty line and many schools are ranked among the state’s lowest-performing. The closest thing to the Eiffel Tower are telephone poles lining the five-lane road in front of Cornerstone Prep, the charter school where Nykari will begin first grade in August. It’s also where he attended reading camp last month at one of hundreds of such programs launched as part of former Gov. Bill Haslam’s Read to be Ready initiative.

The camps seek to motivate young readers and help them to avoid “summer slide,” a phenomenon that especially affects students from low-income families who slide backwards in learning during their months off from school.

Nykari’s teachers say the daily, focused reading and writing instruction that he received at the government-funded camp is making a world of difference for him and 47 other youngsters who participated. Although funding is in jeopardy for continuing the camps next summer, they can’t believe that Tennessee would pull the plug on a program that invests in students like Nykari, just as it’s seeking to get 75% of its third-graders reading on grade level by 2025 — a big lift from the 37% currently at that threshold.

“We’ve seen a lot of growth with our kids this year,” said Marie Cushing, a second-grade teacher who also taught at the school’s summer camp in its second year. “It would be really harmful to not have that culture of reading to continue when they’re not in school.”

Read to be Ready camps first opened in 2016, and Tennessee has expanded the program annually with funding from the U.S. Department of Human Services. But state officials learned in January that the federal grant now has to be used for child care programs, not educational camps. Gov. Bill Lee’s administration then reached into discretionary funds to keep the camps afloat this summer, since Tennessee already had announced $8.9 million worth of grants would be awarded to 218 schools hosting them for about 9,000 students in 2019.

Now the question is whether Read to be Ready summer camps will be funded in 2020 and beyond, especially following the demise last month of the initiative’s 3-year-old network of literacy coaches working with local educators to beef up reading instruction statewide.

State legislators already have begun to get an earful from their constituents.

“If we’re abandoning this, what’s the plan?” asked Joey Hassell, a West Tennessee school superintendent and an outspoken advocate of Read to be Ready. “Our summer camp in Haywood County Schools means a lot to us. We’ve got 90 kids in it for a month this summer to help them read better, and the legislature didn’t even talk about these funding problems this year.”

House Education Committee Chairman Mark White said Read to be Ready is viewed as an effective investment and expressed surprise when he learned that funding was drying up.

“If you’ve got a program out there that’s working, I think you can expect a conversation will center around that in next year’s legislature,” said White, a Memphis Republican.

Educators involved with Read to be Ready say they will travel to the state Capitol to testify, if necessary.

“Every single student who attended our camp last summer had good grades the following school year, and their teachers told me that being in the camp seemed to make the students more excited about reading,” said Karen Sadikoff, an instructional coach for Sweetwater City Schools, east of Knoxville.

In addition to reading lots of books, the campers welcome special guests to read and talk with them. They go on field trips and then write about what they saw in their personal journals. They also explore summer-friendly themes like vegetables, plants, oceans, animals, and baseball. All the while, they are discussing what the words mean, learning about different kinds of words, and building their vocabulary.

Ari Bouie, 6, studies the art project she made after reading different fables during a monthlong Read to be Ready literacy camp at Cornerstone Prep.

“A lot of kids are spending the summer watching cartoons at home,” said Dorian Lloyd, a kindergarten teacher at Cornerstone Prep. “When they’re here with us, they can get excited about learning.”

At Rozelle Creative and Performing Arts Elementary, also in Memphis, principal Kimberly Shaw says the extra summertime reading makes her students less intimidated by the complex texts they’re introduced to when school starts.

“We need every reading program that’s available,” said Shaw about Rozelle, where only 30 percent of students can read on or above grade level.

Before stepping down in December, state Education Commissioner Candice McQueen said the camps had played a “crucial role” in raising the reading skills and motivation of participants, who have showed gains in reading comprehension and accuracy skills for three straight years.

Penny Schwinn, who succeeded her in February, said McQueen made “her job easier by prioritizing investments in early literacy” and added that Lee’s administration remains committed to the state’s lofty reading goals and literacy work. However, what that will look like remains to be seen, she said.

“We are going to have to use those funds in a way that’s aligned with strategic planning and instructional materials,” Schwinn told Chalkbeat, citing a need to widen access to high-quality texts.

Exposing students to such texts is a major part of the summer camps, which sent more than 193,000 books home with participants to keep during its first three summers. That means each camper, on average, received 25 new books for his or her home library — often the first ones they’ve owned.

“This program puts books into our kids’ hands that they otherwise wouldn’t have,” said Aszure Brown, a fourth-grade teacher who directs the camp at Cornerstone Prep. “Many of our parents, they can’t just go to a Barnes and Noble. It’s expensive and they just don’t have that access.”

Kenyari Harmon, 8, writes a story about tennis star Serena Williams.

Kenyari Harmon jumped up and down excitedly upon learning that she would get to take home a “bag of books” at the close of camp at Cornerstone Prep— books that the 8-year-old later was allowed to pick out herself based on her own interests. Her favorites? Stories that are “scary, silly and funny.”

But she predicted that her new library also might include “Game Changers,” a biography that she had just read about tennis champions Serena and Venus Williams.

“I like her because she never gives up,” says Kenyari of Serena.

McQueen ends her Tennessee tenure the same way she started — focused on reading

2018-12-17T23:06:04+00:00

When then-newly appointed Education Commissioner Candice McQueen began touring Tennessee schools in 2015, she was “ashamed” of the dearth of strong reading materials available for many students and their teachers.

“Depending on what districts and classrooms you were in, some people had resources and curriculum and some did not,” recalls McQueen, a former classroom teacher and university dean of education.

The shortcoming was just one of several that helped explain Tennessee’s stagnant reading scores and why only one in three students was considered proficient in reading, based on national tests.

There also was a gap in how teachers or teacher candidates were being equipped to teach reading, a lack of attention to fostering reading skills in students’ early years, and little to no public education programming to address “summer slide,” the tendency for especially low-income students to regress in academic skills during their summer break from school.

McQueen has sought to address all of those weaknesses through various investments and supports under Read to be Ready, which was her first sweeping initiative under Gov. Bill Haslam.

Now, as she winds down her four-year tenure this month, the outgoing commissioner considers that work — launched in 2016 with the support of Haslam and his wife, Chrissy — among her most important legacies as education chief.

Last week, as a fitting bookend to her statewide leadership before starting her new job as CEO of a national education organization, McQueen put reading front and center during three days of regional gatherings of teachers and literacy coaches in Memphis, Nashville, and Knoxville.

“We’re just now beginning to see progress on TNReady,” she said of last year’s reading gains in grades 3-5 on the state’s standardized test.

“It’s progress we’re proud of, even though it’s not as much as we want,” she added.

Indeed, the climb ahead is steep, despite this year’s 2.3 percent increase to almost 37 percent of third-graders reading on or above grade level. To reach Tennessee’s lofty goal of 75 percent by 2025, the state will have to move 5 to 6 percent more third-graders to proficiency every year.

McQueen says reaching the goal is “absolutely doable” and cites the groundwork laid through Read to be Ready. Since 2016, Tennessee has launched a statewide coaching network for elementary reading teachers, offered new training for educators, and made investments in better resources for students. There are also new standards and expectations in teacher training and summer reading camps for first- through third-graders who are furthest behind.

McQueen is especially encouraged by summer camps that have shown statistically significant reading improvements for participating students during the past two years. She recently announced $8.9 million in state grants to 218 public schools to host even more camps next summer.

Children participate in a 2016 summer reading program in Lauderdale County in West Tennessee as part of the new grant-based literacy program overseen by the Tennessee Department of Education.

As for the lack of high-quality textbooks and materials she first encountered in 2015, the state has identified texts that align with Tennessee’s new academic standards, and McQueen is urging districts to plan now to budget more for them.

“We’re building in this idea that you don’t just adopt; you purchase,” she told Chalkbeat. “Sometimes we see adoption where you have a set that all teachers are sharing. We feel like every teacher needs their own sets of books, their own curriculums, so they can adequately support all their students.”

Recognizing that strong reading skills are the foundation for learning and success in all subject areas, most Tennessee’s districts have embraced some or all parts of Read to be Ready. It’s popular as well with teachers, who say they like having both guidance and flexibility to help their students learn to decode letters and words, expand vocabularies, and deepen comprehension skills.

“This makes concrete resources available, but we’re also empowered to use our own teacher resources,” said Emily Townsend, who teaches kindergarteners in Coffee County.

Others are concerned that the focus on young children is coming at the expense of struggling middle and high school readers. “These are not throwaway kids,” said Stephanie Love, a board member for Shelby County Schools.

Love said the effects of poverty are also at play and require a deeper look at illiteracy in large cities like Memphis.

“I don’t think we need more initiatives; I think we need to reevaluate and see what’s preventing so many of our students from reading well,” said Love, a proponent of more state funding for schools. “Do they need glasses? Are they dyslexic? Did they not attend a pre-K or Head Start program?”

McQueen agrees that illiteracy is a “true equity issue.”

“Reading skills are a predictor of so many things across a lifetime,” she said of navigating school and jobs and avoiding crime and poverty. “We know that if you’re not reading proficiently by the third grade, you can still catch up, but it gets harder over time. Our passion for this work comes from what we know happens when kids are not reading.”

Summer camps lift reading skills for third straight year in Tennessee

2018-09-12T00:18:37+00:00

Tennessee’s campaign to help its children read better is seeing encouraging results from investments in school-based summer camps for youngsters at risk of regressing during school breaks.

First-, second-, and third-graders who participated in the state’s Read to be Ready summer program showed gains in reading comprehension and accuracy skills for a third straight year, according to a report released Tuesday by the state Education Department.

And the last two summers generated statistically significant improvements in those skills, based on assessments given in the early and last days of the camps.

This summer, more than 7,700 children took part in 250 reading camps across the state. The free programs provided four hours daily of literacy-based enrichment activities for four weeks and matched every five youngsters with one teacher. High-quality books, field trips, and teacher trainings were part of the mix.

Education Commissioner Candice McQueen called the impact “powerful” in building basic learning skills, especially for children from low-income families who are most likely to experience summer slide and fall academically behind their more affluent peers.

But Tennessee has a long way to go to reach its goal of having at least 75 percent of third-graders reading on grade level by 2025. Despite an encouraging uptick on the most recent state tests, only 37 percent of third-graders scored proficient in reading. And on national test results released this spring, fourth-graders’ reading performance remained mostly flat compared to 2013, when scores spiked for both reading and math.

Tennessee declared war on its reading problem in 2016, as McQueen joined Gov. Bill Haslam and his literacy-minded first lady, Chrissy, to launch Read to be Ready. The initiative’s centerpiece is the development of a cadre of literacy coaches to improve educator expertise.

The campaign also piloted a dozen camps that first summer with a $1 million gift from the Dollar General Literacy Foundation. The results were promising enough to expand the program last year with $30 million allotted over three years from the state Department of Human Services.

Nashville first-grader John Little reads a story at the 2016 kickoff of Tennessee’s “Read to be Ready” initiative.

School districts host their own camps using state grants awarded based on their applications. This year, more than three-fourths of Tennessee’s 147 school systems took advantage of the funding.

Those districts sent teachers who staff their camps to state trainings on literacy instruction. While the first two summers focused on integrating authentic reading and texts into the camps, this year’s trainings prioritized writing skills and increasing student interest and stamina for the written word.

The grants also provided each student with an average of 25 books for their home library this summer — sending more than 193,000 books home in all.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include the percentage of third-graders who scored proficient in reading on the most recent state test.

In his final months as Tennessee governor, Haslam reflects on his education legacy

2018-07-25T21:57:25+00:00

While Gov. Bill Haslam entered office as an education-minded leader intent on reforms, much of his administration’s K–12 public school work has focused on holding the line on sweeping policies launched under his predecessor.

Haslam, a Republican, inherited and embraced the changes spearheaded under Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat and fellow former mayor and businessman who led Tennessee’s overhaul to win a $500 million federal Race to the Top award in 2010.

As the term-limited Haslam winds down his eight years in office, he credits those policies — including a controversial one tying state test scores to teacher evaluations — for helping Tennessee become one of the nation’s fastest-improving states in student achievement, even as critics have decried the new system as punitive and demoralizing to teachers.

He has championed higher K–12 expectations while expanding college access for Tennessee students through two pioneering scholarship programs. Last year, the state’s high school graduation rate rose to a record-high 89 percent, and its average ACT score moved above 20 for the first time ever.

Chalkbeat sat down recently with Haslam to discuss his legacy, his accomplishments, and his disappointments — including Tennessee’s struggle to get testing right in the transition to computerized exams under TNReady, its new assessment. His answers have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

When you took office, what did you hope to accomplish specifically for K-12 education?

My goal was to make certain that Tennessee wasn’t the laggard in public education that we have historically been. We live in a very rapidly changing world. There is no question that more students need to have some sort of postsecondary credential and, to succeed there, they have to have better K–12 prep. A statistic that grabbed me early was that 70 percent of our community college students needed remedial work when they got to college. I thought, well, that’s just not going to work.

In today’s world, we’re going to keep seeing greater income differentiation unless we give more education opportunity. One of the keys is making certain more people have postsecondary opportunity, but that doesn’t do any good unless you’re prepared when you get that opportunity. And we clearly weren’t preparing students in Tennessee, even though we were telling their parents they were prepared.

You inherited a blueprint for school improvement from Gov. Phil Bredesen’s administration as part of Tennessee’s Race to the Top award in 2010. How did you view that handoff?

Some of the decisions made around Race to the Top were around raising standards, coming up with an assessment that matched those standards, and then having a teacher evaluation tied to the assessment. Those were significant policy decisions, and I realized our job was going to be to stand in the door and not let the state go backward because all of it was hard, whether it be raising standards and people saying you’re expecting too much of our kids; or coming up with an assessment that actually works; or having an evaluation tied to the assessment, which will always be a political issue. I think what we were able to do was to say that Tennessee is finally off in the right direction; let’s don’t turn around. We were rewarded when we got some of the early (national test) results from NAEP, both in 2013 and 2015, showing we really were making that kind of progress. And that helped us in encouraging people not to turn around.

As governor, you have frequently proclaimed Tennessee to be the fastest improving state in the nation based on gains between 2011 and 2015 in math and English on the Nation’s Report Card, known as NAEP. But last year, Tennessee’s NAEP scores were flat and even lost some ground in fourth-grade math. So what’s an honest assessment today? Are you still calling Tennessee the nation’s fastest improving state and, if so, what are you basing that claim on?

Gov. Bill Haslam poses with students at Riverwood Elementary School in Cordova, where he celebrated Tennessee’s 2015 NAEP results.

If you go back to 2010 and measure every state’s progress since then, I would argue we’re still the fastest improving state in the country. Has our growth slowed down? Yes. Am I concerned about that? You bet. But look at the sheer math of it. When your scores are low, it’s a lot easier to be the fastest improving. Once you’ve moved from being somewhere in the 40s to being in 28th, 29th, 30th, it’s a little harder to continue moving up. Second, there’s no doubt that some of the confusion due to everything from the issues around changes to our academic standards to difficulties in (testing) have hindered our growth more recently. But I would still argue that we are pointed in the right direction. And if you look at that last seven years, I would argue Tennessee has improved more than any other state during that period.

When you look back on the last seven and a half years, what are the things that make you the proudest on K–12 ed?

We really have worked to blow up some of the gaps that exist, whether it be racial or geographical. We’ve said we’re just not going to accept this idea that those kids can’t learn. I remember visiting a school early in my tenure where a principal had put together a roundtable, and two teachers were very specific in saying, “You’re expecting too much of our kids. Our kids are not those kids; our kids don’t go to college.” We’ve said, “No, your kids not only can go to college, but they need to, or at least a larger percentage of them need to.”

Haslam prepares to deliver his 2017 State of the State address to Tennessee lawmakers.

Second, we went through the same battle every other state did around the Common Core standards and the political pushback to those. But I think we came up with a good way to land and really ended up in a better place. [By ordering a comprehensive review of Tennessee’s standards,] we took the standards issue off the table, and yet we still have what I think are world-class standards.

Third, I think that one of the benefits of our postsecondary (scholarship) initiatives — Tennessee Promise and Tennessee Reconnect — is that it’s refocused efforts more on K–12 prep. In other words, some were thinking you’re done when you walk across the gymnasium stage and get your high school diploma, and you really don’t care all that much what you learned in high school, as long as you do enough to get that diploma. But now hopefully, we have dinner table conversations across Tennessee that sound different in saying, “You actually can go to college.” So high school matters more now than it did before.

What has been the one hardest thing about K–12 under your administration?

Obviously, the struggles we’ve had with getting the testing right. I think that we actually have a great test that matches the standards we’re teaching and that the standards are good standards. That makes the struggles we’ve had with testing all the worse. And what makes this all the more personally painful is that I firmly believe that having (teacher) evaluations tied to assessments and the accountability that comes with that has been one of the key pieces of our growth. I also know very well that a lot of people disagree with me on that and say it’s a bad idea. And every time we struggle with the test, it gives people ammunition to say you can’t have high-stakes testing because it doesn’t work.

One of my fears is that going forward, whoever sits in this governor’s chair next or whoever is the commissioner of education might not have that same commitment when the heat comes. Every state has had difficulty with online testing as you transition to it. I worry that the struggles will cause us to say, “OK, we give. We’re no longer going to have an evaluation that’s tied to an assessment.” And I think that would be a real loss for the state if we gave up that central tenet that has been part of our progress.

READ: Haslam worries testing troubles could unravel Tennessee education policy

Let’s go a little deeper about TNReady’s administration this spring and the technical problems that spoiled the return to statewide online testing. Education Commissioner Candice McQueen told district superintendents at the end of the second day of testing problems that she and her team were “completely devastated.” As every day seemed to bring forth new testing issues, many lawmakers called for her resignation. Did she offer to resign?

Haslam with his education chief, Candice McQueen

She never did, and I wouldn’t have accepted it. I think to say the testing issues were Candice’s fault is a complete mistake.

You have to go back and remember how we got here. Basically, the Legislature said let’s quit using PARCC or any Pearson-related test. [PARCC is the multi-state testing consortium, also known as the Partnership for Assessment in College and Career Readiness, which Tennessee pulled out of in 2014 because its test was based on Common Core standards. Pearson is PARCC’s testing company.]

We had a test that had been nationally tested that we had been using and was working well. But because of some of the fears of Common Core being part of a national agenda, people said we don’t want to use any of the big testing companies. It was the clear message. This happened before Candice even came. Kevin Huffman was education commissioner, and a lot of people in the Legislature had their doubts about Kevin and whether he was somehow part of what in their mind was this kind of national plan around education. And they didn’t want Kevin to be involved in picking the new testing vendor. So we immediately precluded ourselves from using any of the vendors who had done testing on that scale before. And then we took Kevin, who knew more about how testing should work, out of the whole RFP process. We were somewhat hamstrung by the state’s procurement process, and we ended up with a list of vendors that hadn’t had that kind of experience in implementing online testing and weren’t used to the volume of students we had.

READ: Why Tennessee’s legislators share blame, too, for TNReady headaches

I don’t use that to blame anyone. Ultimately, the issues we’ve had are our fault. But you do have to remember how we got here. We didn’t just all of a sudden go out and blindly say, “Oh, I think we’ll use these folks (as our testing vendor).”

By getting testing wrong again this year, are you concerned that Tennessee could end up undoing what it may be getting right? Do you worry that public outcry could unravel Tennessee’s policy work on standards, testing, and accountability?

I do, because unfortunately in today’s world, we’re not great at tying cause and effect. We’ve made these gains which everybody loves and everyone celebrates, and we have employers looking at Tennessee that never looked at us before. But those gains were a result of hard decisions, and the easy thing to do is to give in to all that. We would go backward. So do I worry about that? You bet. Matter of fact, if you said, why did I have a pit in my stomach the whole time (TNReady) was happening, it was because of that very thing — that a lot of people would say, “This is too hard, and we’re hearing too many complaints.”

We’re in a Social Media Age, and that’s what’s different today from when I started seven years ago as governor and definitely 40 years ago when I was an intern in the U.S. Senate. In those days, when citizens had issues, they wrote us letters and we wrote them back. Now, instantaneously while legislators are on the floor, they’re hearing from people. But we have to be very careful, both in the Legislature and in the administration. There are people who have opinions and preferences, and it is easy to stir folks up to express those in today’s world. I can easily find 50 teachers in every legislator’s district who don’t like what we’re doing and encourage them to send a Facebook message right now. It’s important for all of us to step back from social media and to realize that 50 messages right away may or may not be the full story. That’s a challenge, not just with education issues but with all issues, that I worry about for our democracy today.

In the race to succeed you, there is a fair amount of saber rattling around TNReady. In the Republican primary, U.S. Rep. Diane Black says the test is failing our kids, and Bill Lee told us that he’s open to changing the assessment process if it’s not meeting goals. Among Democrats, House Minority Leader Craig Fitzhugh says it’s time to start over on TNReady. Given that TNReady is the linchpin of the state’s accountability system for education, how would you respond?

Do we really want to go back? Do we really want to go back to when Tennessee was in the 40s out of the states ranked 1 to 50? And the obvious answer from anybody is going to be no. So the question is, well how did we move the needle? And we have moved the needle by standards, assessments, and evaluations tied to those assessments. Is that a difficult process? You bet. The truth is, Tennessee made those decisions on a bipartisan basis before I got here. I actually do agree with those decisions. I knew my job would be to stand in the door because I knew there would be pushback. I think we’ve done a good job of that. Obviously the TNReady issues have made that much more difficult. And if I’m running for office right now, I don’t know that I’d be planting my flag by TNReady, so I understand that. But I do hope everybody realizes how we got where we have gotten to in regards to education process and doesn’t let all that slip back through our fingers.

Is there anything currently missing or misrepresented on education in this gubernatorial campaign, or any point that you’d like to make as this election year ramps up?

Some of the noise around TNReady has overshadowed everything else, and one of those things is we’ve gotten a lot of national recognition recently for being a state that fairly portrays where our kids are in proficiency. We went from being an F on honesty the year before I got here to being a B- three years ago to getting an A this year. Ultimately, one of our responsibilities is to tell parents accurately how well their child is doing in school. So amid all the clamor over TNReady, we shouldn’t lose the fact that we’ve closed our honesty gap. That’s a huge thing, but it doesn’t necessarily play very well out there across Tennessee. We live in a world where the politics of opposition are stronger than the politics of support. So it’s a lot easier to be against something and, unfortunately because of our struggles around TNReady, it’s a pretty easy thing to be against. But a leader’s job in education is to say, let’s realistically assess where we are and then be relentless about driving to the results that we want.

Let’s talk money. Despite some big investments that have come under your administration, the state also has been sued by three of its four largest districts over the adequacy of school funding. Those lawsuits are ongoing. On a related matter, Randy Boyd, your former economic development commissioner who is running for governor, has called the state’s formula for funding education “antiquated and arcane” and in need of a redesign that reflects the modern needs of students. What about our level of funding for schools, and is it also time to overhaul the state’s Basic Education Program funding formula?

Haslam during a 2017 tour of Ross N. Robinson Middle School in Kingsport

We’ve added $1.5 billion in new dollars to public education, far more than any other administration has ever done. So to folks who say we’re not really committed to public education, I’d say we actually have put our money where our mouth is.

On the BEP formula, I think I said similar things when I was running for governor. Everywhere you go, you hear complaints about the formula. People think they’re getting the short end of the stick. Nobody thinks they’re coming out great. Some of the larger metropolitan systems are suing us but, when I came in, we were being threatened by the small school systems and historically the state has struggled with that as well. Three years ago, we said we’re going to totally redo the BEP formula. We came in and looked at turning it inside out in every way possible. But it was very difficult because, when you change it, you’re going to have winners and losers. You just are. And so the only way to change it is to do it like we did — in times when you add more money to the pie. If you’re just going to cut it up differently, it won’t work because the mad people will be madder than the happy people will be happy.

Literacy is an issue that both you and the first lady have prioritized. There is a growing consensus that quality pre-K could be the key to addressing the state’s early reading problems and low literacy rates. But it is a significant investment, and studies have shown that Tennessee hasn’t quite gotten the quality of pre-K right for the most part. What would your message be to the next governor when it comes to pre-K?

The governor and first lady Chrissy Haslam read to children in 2014 at the University of Memphis Child Care Center.

I would say the next governor should continue to study whether additional public education dollars are best suited to go toward pre-K or to a lot of the other places where we have put public education dollars: teacher salaries, more technology, etc. I think we’ve made the right decision while we’ve been here, but I’m not saying that will always be the right place.

One of the issues around reading is this. You have some parents who are literally reading to the child in the womb, and you also have far more students than we would like to admit who come to kindergarten having never picked up a book. There are homes in Tennessee that don’t have a book. Children literally come to kindergarten not knowing which way to hold a book. When you think about those two different situations and trying to provide some sort of fair opportunity, it shows the depth of the challenge. If I was going to be the next governor, I would not take more pre-K investments off the table. So far, the data has not shown the kind of improvements that we would like. But is that a quality issue or a fundamental concept issue? The next governor needs to try to evaluate that.

One thing that has been extraordinary about Tennessee is that for more than a dozen years and under two different administrations — one Democrat, one Republican — Tennessee has, for the most part, kept that same general blueprint for improving schools. But in an increasingly tense and partisan national political environment, is education reform even possible any more, or do you think those agendas are being squeezed out too?

You’re exactly right. We’ve actually been through an extraordinary period. First, we had President George W. Bush and No Child Left Behind. People had some issues around No Child Left Behind in the end, and I did too. But it was founded on an extraordinary idea for a Republican president — the idea that I don’t care what the zip code or what the child’s background, every child deserves the right to a great education. Then you had a Democrat president who came in and really put in all those basics that we talked about in Race to the Top. We’ve got to raise our standards. We’ve got to have great assessments and, most importantly, we have to have an evaluation tied to the assessment — going against the teachers union, the Democrats’ biggest base. So it’s been extraordinary, with an extraordinary amount of talk and focus put on K-12 education.

Now go back to the last election of 2016. Nobody talked about education, period. There was some talk about the free college ideas, but nobody was really talking about K–12 education issues the way that Bush and Obama had addressed those. So I think if you talk to a lot of people nationally in the reform movement, they’d say we’ve entered a different time. That’s not just about Donald Trump. It just wasn’t an issue in the 2016 presidential election. I personally think we’re making a grave mistake. As a country, we had made some really big steps forward. I worry about us having the consensus to keep it moving.

As governor, you just won a major national award from the Education Commission of the States for your contribution to American education. Now that you’re leaving office, is it hard to walk away from the conversation on education, both in Tennessee and at the national level?

Haslam accepts his award from the Education Commission of the States in June in Washington, D.C.

It is. I really don’t know what I’ll do next, but I will stay involved in education issues. I just fundamentally believe it’s the most important thing we do. Income inequality is a huge issue in our country. Forget what your politics are. It just is. And I think the only way to start to address that is public education. Some people think we can address it with new tax policies, or new poverty policies. I think keeping the focus on raising the standards and expectations around public education is our hope as a country. I hope to continue to be able to play a part in that conversation. I’ll be very careful not to violate the one-governor-at-a-time rule, so don’t expect me to be in the middle of arguments in the Legislature next year. But I do want to be involved in education issues. I just care too much to walk away from all that.

Memphis’ youngest students show reading gains on 2018 state tests — and that’s a big deal

2018-07-20T01:07:02+00:00

Those working to improve early literacy rates in Shelby County Schools got a small morale boost Thursday as newly released scores show the district’s elementary school students improved their reading on 2018 state tests.

The percentage of Memphis elementary-age students considered proficient in reading rose by 3 points to almost one-fourth of the district’s children in grades 3 through 5. That’s still well below the state average, and Superintendent Dorsey Hopson said “we obviously have a long way to go.”

Superintendent Dorsey Hopson has overseen Tennessee’s largest public school district since 2013.

Strengthening early literacy has been a priority for the Memphis district, which views better reading skills as crucial to predicting high school graduation and career success. To that end, Shelby County Schools has expanded access to pre-K programs, adjusted reading curriculum, and made investments in literacy training for teachers.

Hopson said the payoff on this year’s TNReady scores was a jump of almost 5 percentage points in third-grade reading proficiency.

“It was about five years ago when we really, really, really started pushing pre-K, and those pre-K kids are now in the third grade. I think that’s something that’s really positive,” Hopson said of the gains, adding that third-grade reading levels are an important indicator of future school performance.

TNReady scores for Shelby County Schools, which has a high concentration of low-performing schools and students living in poverty, were a mixed bag, as they were statewide.

Math scores went up in elementary, middle, and high schools in Tennessee’s largest district. But science scores went down across the board, and the percentage of high school students who scored proficient in reading dropped by 4 percentage points.

The three charts below illustrate, by subject, the percentages of students who performed on track or better in elementary, middle, and high schools within Shelby County Schools. The blue bars reflect the district’s most recent scores, the black bars show last year’s scores, and the yellow bars depict this year’s statewide averages.

Hopson said he was unsure how much the scores of older students — all of whom tested online — were affected by technical problems that hampered Tennessee’s return this year to computerized testing.

“From what people tell me, kids either didn’t try as hard in some instances or didn’t take it seriously,” Hopson told reporters. “We’ll never know what the real impact is, but we have to accept the data that came from these tests.”

But students in two of the district’s school improvement initiatives — the Innovation Zone and the Empowerment Zone — showed progress. “We’re going to double down on these strategies,” Hopson said of the extra investments and classroom supports.

In the state-run Achievement School District, or ASD, which oversees 30 low-performing schools in Memphis, grades 3 through 8 saw an uptick in scores in both reading and math. But high schoolers scored more than 3 percentage points lower in reading and also took a step back in science.

The ASD takes over schools in the state’s bottom 5 percent and assigns them to charter operators to improve. But in the five years that the ASD has been in Memphis, its scores have been mostly stagnant.

Tennessee Education Commissioner Candice McQueen said she and new ASD Superintendent Sharon Griffin are reviewing the new data to determine next steps.

“We are seeing some encouraging momentum shifts,” McQueen said.

Chalkbeat illustrator Sam Park contributed to this story.

Four Memphis charter organizations pilot new reading curriculum

2018-01-03T00:31:01+00:00

Four Memphis charter schools are piloting a new reading curriculum this school year aimed at boosting reading comprehension in a city and state with lagging literacy rates.

The Core Knowledge Language Arts curriculum is in classrooms at Memphis Delta Preparatory Charter School, STAR Academy Charter School, Gestalt Community Schools and Leadership Preparatory Charter School.

Created by author and professor E.D. Hirsch Jr., the curriculum focuses on students’ background knowledge of the topic, not only their formal decoding skills.

While the curriculum is free, teacher training and related resources are being funded with grants of about $10,000 from Memphis Education Fund, a collaborative created in 2014 and rebranded in 2016 in partnership with local education leaders and philanthropists.

Michael McKenna, founder of Memphis Delta Prep, said the money was crucial to making the change.

“As a small charter organization, we don’t have the ability for professional development like that in our budget,” McKenna said. “This gave us the opportunity to collaborate with others.”

The grants come at a time when local and state officials are doubling down on solutions to Tennessee’s reading challenges. The overarching goal is for 75 percent of the state’s third-graders to be reading on grade level by 2025. Currently less than half of Tennessee students are there.

Memphis Education Fund is providing the grants in collaboration with The New Teacher Project, the Core Knowledge Foundation and Hyde Family Foundations. (Disclosure: Hyde also supports Chalkbeat. Learn about our funding here).

Lesley Brown, the Memphis fund’s director of human capital investments, said the grants are just one facet of investment in early literacy. The group also helped to sponsor another literacy curriculum pilot of KIPP Wheatley at 11 charter schools.

“We don’t prescribe what curriculum is used, but we are trying to help eliminate barriers for schools to quality curriculum and to purchase quality books,” said Brown. “Kids feel the difference between books and photocopies.”

In their second year, Tennessee’s summer reading camps show improved skills for some

2017-10-13T18:01:18+00:00

The results are preliminary and incomplete, but there is some evidence that a summer reading program for Tennessee elementary school students helped many to improve their skills.

More than 8,000 rising first-, second- and third-grade students spent part of their summers in state-funded literacy camps, a significant increase from 2016. While testing data is available for only half of participating students, those who were assessed grew in their reading accuracy by an average of 4 percentage points from the start of the summer to the end.

The program, which involves extensive reading and writing by students and emphasizes comprehension and reading enjoyment, is in its second year. The camps are funded by the state’s Read to Be Ready Grant Program, which disbursed $8.5 million among 200 schools, compared to a dozen schools last year.

To determine the program’s impact, the state used pre- and post- benchmark assessments of students’ reading skills. Results analyzed for 4,499 students show that those students grew in their reading accuracy from about 80 percent to 85 percent.

The assessment found that students surveyed also grew in their comprehension of reading questions, from about 65 percent to 67 percent.

“The results today simply reinforce what we believe,” said Education Commissioner Candice McQueen in a press release. “When students have the opportunity to read high-quality, authentic texts and are deeply engaged in learning experiences around those texts, they will thrive.”

Chandler Hopper, a department spokeswoman, said the state did not have both pre- and post-data for all students. “In some cases, the student may not have been present for both pre- and post- data collection,” Hopper said, “and because we cannot definitively explain each missing data point at this time, we removed incomplete student records from these pre- and post- analyses. But this did not substantively change our findings.”

In addition, 16 out of 29 Shelby County sites weren’t included in the analysis because they were also a part of Shelby County Schools’ new summer academies. Hopper said there was a difference in curriculum and assessment between Shelby County Schools sites and the rest of the grant sites, and so they weren’t included in the analysis.

The Tennessee departments of Education and Human Services have earmarked $30 million for the summer programs over the next three years as part of a major literacy initiative, which aims to get 75 percent of third-graders proficient in reading by 2025.

Tennessee still has a long way to go. Only a third of its fourth-graders are proficient in reading, according to the most recent National Assessment of Education Progress. But McQueen has said she is hopeful the Read to be Ready programs will get students there.

“I had a chance to visit several camps over the summer and was so encouraged by what I was seeing,” McQueen said.

KIPP launches collaborative with Memphis charters to improve literacy results

2017-10-11T22:46:11+00:00

When a school adopts a new curriculum, one of the most time-consuming tasks for teachers is figuring out how to bring those new ideas into their classrooms.

This is especially true for charter schools with smaller staffs who are often starting from scratch in designing a curriculum aligned to state standards, said Monique Cincore, principal at Aspire East Academy in Memphis.

The KIPP Foundation, a national charter organization, is giving away its English curriculum, KIPP Wheatley, for free to help lighten other charters’ loads. And for the first time, KIPP has established a “charter collaborative,” sharing its curriculum and training for it with four Memphis charter organizations with the goal of helping local teachers and leaders figure out how to bring the curriculum into their classrooms.

“The charter world can be so siloed,” said Daniel Sonnier, the director of KIPP Wheatley Achievement, who helped run the first Memphis collaborative session in early October. “Everyone is doing their own thing. But now we have this shared curriculum, and we can learn from one another.”

Eleven elementary and middle schools from four different charter organizations in Memphis adopted the KIPP Wheatley curriculum last year, with Memphis Business Academy joining this year. Starting last week, 23 educators from the schools will meet monthly to try out ideas and receive feedback from KIPP Wheatley experts. KIPP led a two-day session with the educators at the Memphis Education Fund, which donated the space.

“We tend to work within our own buildings, and there’s not as much opportunity like this to practice and hear from other schools,” Cincore said. “Having this curriculum as a starting point cuts through a lot of heavy lifting, and helps me focus on this question: ‘How do I lessen teachers’ loads?’ ”

The participating schools are:

Aspire Public Schools

Aspire Coleman Elementary
Aspire Coleman Middle
Aspire Hanley Elementary
Aspire East Academy

Freedom Preparatory Academy

Freedom Preparatory Academy – Westwood
Freedom Preparatory Academy – Whitehaven

Memphis Business Academy

Memphis STEM Academy
Memphis Business Academy Middle

KIPP Memphis

KIPP Memphis Collegiate Elementary
KIPP Memphis Collegiate Middle
KIPP Memphis Preparatory Middle

One of the main goals of the collaborative is to grow English scores an average of 8 percentage points at the participating schools on the next state test, Sonnier said.

He said they are waiting for charter organizations to report on Wheatley’s effect on their state scores during the first year. Individual school scores for last year’s state TNReady exam haven’t been released yet, but state-level scores for K-8 show most students are lagging in literacy.

The KIPP curriculum is aligned with the Common Core and while the state of Tennessee moved away from Common Core to Tennessee Academic Standards this year, Sonnier said teachers won’t have much to change.

“Common Core and the Tennessee standards are very similar,” Sonnier said at the collaborative session. “A Common Core curriculum focuses on a close reading of text. For us, text is queen or king. It rules over everything.”

KIPP formed the literacy curriculum five years ago and is using grants from the Charter School Growth Fund and the Schusterman Foundation to spread KIPP Wheatley to cities like Memphis. The curriculum is now being taught to more than 15,000 students across the nation, according to a KIPP blog post.

Sonnier said they have seen positive results from the curriculum at their KIPP New York and KIPP New Jersey schools in particular, with KIPP New Jersey growing by 7 and 10 percentage points respectively in their elementary and middle school literacy scores on state tests last year.

KIPP is hoping to repeat its success in Memphis, with cross-charter collaboration as the key. If the collaborative is successful, KIPP will try a similar approach in other cities like Denver or New York, Sonnier said.

“The opportunity to interact and engage with folks in the way Memphis is able to is refreshing,” he said.

Memphis early education giant merges with Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library affiliate

2017-10-02T21:23:00+00:00

If Memphis is going to help its children become better readers, it needs to get books into their hands as early as possible.

That’s the thinking behind the newly announced merger of Shelby County Books from Birth with Porter-Leath, the city’s leading provider of early childhood education for children in low-income areas.

Since 2005, Books from Birth has distributed free books to children up to age 5 as the Shelby County affiliate of entertainer Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. Under an agreement finalized late last week, the program will now live under Porter-Leath, a nonprofit organization that oversees Head Start classrooms and wraparound services in partnership with Shelby County Schools.

The merger marks a concerted effort by Porter-Leath to move literacy education beyond the classroom by giving parents the tools they need to be their child’s first teachers. It also should expand the reach of the book delivery service in one of the state’s highest-poverty counties.

State and local leaders increasingly view better early education programs as key to higher rates of literacy in Shelby County Schools, where less than a third of third-graders are reading on grade level.

“(Books from Birth) will help us drive home the literacy lessons were making in the classroom,” said Rob Hughes, Porter-Leath’s vice president of development. “We want our students reading on grade level in kindergarten, so that they grow to be on grade level in elementary school, so they have a better chance of graduating high school. We see this a key piece of that strategy.”

Porter-Leath serves about 6,000 annually in 300 early childhood classrooms, and all of its children will now be enrolled in the Books from Birth home delivery program.

Read how Porter-Leath is seeking to up the quality of pre-K instruction in Memphis.

Through Porter-Leath, the group’s leaders hope to expand monthly book deliveries beyond 46,000 children, or 70 percent of pre-K children in Shelby County. (Memphis has a high rate of mobility, making it difficult to keep track of and serve youngsters.)

“It’s always been a challenge to keep families enrolled, and this partnership helps us really support the families that Porter-Leath serves,” said Jamila Wicks, executive director of Books from Birth. “We can better reach parents where they are.”

On National Summer Learning Day, Memphis takes stock of programs for kids

2017-07-13T22:05:16+00:00

When it comes to summer learning, it’s been a better year for Memphis, where a range of new programs have helped to stem learning loss that hits hard in communities with a high number of low-income students.

On Thursday, Mayor Jim Strickland celebrated that work in conjunction with National Summer Learning Day and against the backdrop of the children’s reading room of the city’s main library.

He estimated that 10,000 children and teens are being reached this summer through learning programs spearheaded through Shelby County Schools, Literacy Mid-South, Memphis Public Libraries, churches and nonprofit organizations across the community.

That’s a record-breaking number, Strickland says, in a city with a lot of students struggling to meet state and local reading targets.

Summer learning loss, also known as summer slide, is the tendency for students to lose some of the knowledge and skills they gained during the school year. It’s a large contributor to the achievement gap, since children from low-income families usually don’t get the same summer enrichment opportunities as their more affluent peers. Compounded year after year, the gap widens to the point that, by fifth grade, many students can be up to three years behind in math and reading.

But this summer for the first time, Shelby County Schools offered summer learning academies across the city for students most in need of intervention. And Memphis also received a slice of an $8.5 million state grant to provide summer literacy camps at nine Memphis schools through Tennessee’s Read to be Ready initiative.

Literacy Mid-South used Thursday’s event to encourage Memphians to “drop everything and read!”

The nonprofit, which is providing resources this summer through about 15 organizations in Greater Memphis, is challenging students to log 1,400 minutes of summertime reading, an amount that research shows can mitigate learning loss and even increase test scores.

Reading is a problem for many students in Memphis and across Tennessee. Less than a third of third-graders in Shelby County Schools read on grade level, and the district is working to boost that rate to 90 percent by 2025 under its Destination 2025 plan.

The city of Memphis, which does not fund local schools, has made Memphis Public Libraries the focal point of its education work. This summer, the library is offering programs on everything from STEM and robotics to art and test prep.

Parents are a critical component, helping their kids to take advantage of books, programs and services that counter the doldrums of summer learning.

Soon after the mayor left the Benjamin L. Hooks Library on Thursday, Tammy Echols arrived with her son, Torrence, a rising first-grader at Levi Elementary School. Echols said they visit regularly to read books and do computer and math games.

“We always do a lot of reading and we’re working on learning sight words,” Echols said as she watched her son build a tower out of giant Lego blocks. “Torrence is a learning child and it’s easy to forget what you just learned if you’re not constantly reinforcing.”

You can find summer learning resources for families from the National Summer Learning Association.

.@MayorMemphis says more than 10k children have taken part in summer programs to prevent summer slide! #nslday #StopDropAndRead pic.twitter.com/JPA2YDf28W
— Seeding Success (@seedingsuccess1) July 13, 2017

Careers is helping @LiteracyMSouth foster reading for National Summer Learning day! #rhodescollege | #keepkidslearning | #READ901 | #NSLDAY pic.twitter.com/B2ZKeEjEts
— Rhodes College Career Services (@RhodesCareers) July 13, 2017

Glad we got to Drop Everything and Read at the @npexcellence Book Club today #KeepKidsLearning #Read901 thanks for the engaging conversation pic.twitter.com/1dvqrmf3Fb
— Sam Mattson (@SamMattson901) July 13, 2017

Nashville’s third-graders trail the state in reading proficiency. Here’s the city’s plan to change that.

2017-03-01T20:58:37+00:00

As Tennessee grapples with its reading problem, Nashville has kicked off its own literacy effort aimed at accelerating the reading skills of the city’s youngest students.

The Nashville Literacy Collaborative recently launched as a six-month initiative organized by the Nashville Public Education Foundation and the Nashville Public Library in coordination with Mayor Megan Barry’s office and Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools.

Only 34 percent of the Nashville district’s third-graders read at grade level, compared to 43 percent statewide. Third grade is viewed as a critical reading milestone from which children can read to learn in later years.

“Reading at grade level is a major indicator for a child’s academic success, and a child’s academic success is a strong indicator for the future of Nashville,” Barry said in a statement. “The Nashville Literacy Collaborative will provide critical insights that will help us better understand and support the city’s early literacy needs.”

While Tennessee’s year-old Read to be Ready initiative focuses primarily on supporting teachers and changing the way reading is taught, Nashville is seeking to involve community members to reinforce the work of its school system.

“As a school district, we have to focus on improving first-time instruction as well as interventions when students fall behind,” Superintendent Shawn Joseph said. “But our efforts will be far more effective with a community-wide strategy to support our work.”

Lipscomb University will lead research for the campaign, mapping existing community efforts and identifying gaps in services. Organizers hope to have a clear plan for how the city can support students’ reading by this summer.

A 20-person community group began meeting in February. The collaborative will also seek input from literacy groups, faith and volunteer partners, parents, students and educators.

Members of the working group are:

Angie Adams, PENCIL
Elyse Adler, Nashville Public Library
Harry Allen, Pinnacle Financial Partners and Chamber Education Report Card
Paige Atchley, Tennessee Department of Education and Read to be Ready
Dr. Adriana Bialostozky, Vanderbilt Hospital
Carolyn Cobbs, Cumberland Elementary School
Monique Felder, MNPS
Rae Finnie, Glengarry Elementary School
Tari Hughes, Center for Nonprofit Management
Shannon Hunt, Nashville Public Education Foundation
Melissa Jaggers, Alignment Nashville
Erica Mitchell, United Way of Metropolitan Nashville
Laura Moore, Mayor’s Office
Kent Oliver, Nashville Public Library
Tara Scarlett, Scarlett Foundation
Renata Soto, Conexión Américas
Melissa Spradlin, Book’em
Amanda Tate, Nashville Public Library Foundation
Denine Torr, Dollar General Literacy Foundation
Whitney Weeks, Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce

McQueen takes stock of Tennessee’s literacy campaign after first year

2017-02-23T23:00:28+00:00

A year ago, Tennessee began a quest to address its lagging literacy rate.

It started with its youngest readers through an initiative called Read to be Ready. The goal was to change the state’s approach to reading instruction beyond alphabet recognition to “authentic” experiences in which students read to learn — and for fun.

On Thursday, Education Commissioner Candice McQueen took stock of the progress after one year, laying out next steps that will focus on classroom instruction and teacher support.

The initiative, she said, must outlive its funding, which includes $4.2 million that pays mostly for a literacy coaching network and an additional $30 million for reading camps to serve 30,000 students during the next three summers.

Year Two will be about “building the framework” that can be used for years to come to teach Tennessee’s youngest students to read.

McQueen holds up a report detailing the second year of Tennessee’s Read to be Ready initiative.

“We know the gains that we want to make will not happen overnight,” she said during a celebration event in Nashville attended by about 120 stakeholders. “The reason I’m truly optimistic is the success we have started seeing in such a short period of time.”

Researchers found that schools participating in the state’s new literacy coaching network invested significantly more time in reading comprehension last year in grades K-2 — 67 percent, compared to 37 percent in 2015.

But Tennessee has a heavy lift ahead. Only a third of its fourth-graders are proficient in reading, according to the most recent National Assessment of Education Progress. The state wants to get 75 percent of its third-graders reading on grade level by 2025.

The new network of literacy coaches sprawls across two-thirds of the state’s districts and includes 200 teacher-coaches. Working with other teachers, they select texts designed to engage and challenge students to practice more on reading and writing, and less on filling out worksheets.

“That’s why we’re investing so much in you as teachers and educators, saying your knowledge matters,” McQueen said.

Michael Ramsey, an instructional coach in Grainger County, is already seeing changes at his elementary school.

“With the coaching network, teachers have the opportunity to reflect and take (instruction) to the next step,” he said.

But, “it takes time,” Ramsey said of training the teachers and working with students. He urged state and local leaders to “just stay consistent and give us time.”

Ramirez resigns as academics chief for Shelby County Schools

2017-02-21T17:30:18+00:00

Heidi Ramirez has resigned as chief of academics for Shelby County Schools, less than 2½ years after coming to Memphis to help turn around the fledgling district following a massive restructuring of the city’s education landscape.

In a letter emailed Tuesday morning to district principals and instructional leaders, Ramirez said she was leaving “to be closer to loved ones and take on new challenges.”

“I am so proud of the great work we have been able to accomplish together,” she wrote. “Together, we have accelerated implementation of both supports for struggling learners and good first teaching — especially in literacy, while also improving the overall climate for learning for both students and staff.”

Shelby County Schools confirmed Tuesday that her resignation is effective March 31, and Ramirez wrote that she would “ensure a successful transition process.”

Her resignation comes a little over a month after a restructuring of district leadership that included the promotion of Innovation Zone leader Sharon Griffin to chief of schools. Ramirez, who was hired as chief academic officer, became chief of academics. Meanwhile, Griffin took on some of the responsibilities previously shouldered by Ramirez and Brad Leon, now chief of strategy and performance management. All three serve on Superintendent Dorsey Hopson’s cabinet.

Ramirez came to Memphis from Milwaukee Public Schools. She previously was associate dean for the College of Education and director for Urban Education Collaborative at Temple University, and at one time served on Philadelphia’s School Reform Commission.

When she arrived in Memphis in 2014, she was tasked with helping to increase the number of students reading on grade level, as well as the district’s graduation rate.

Those efforts may be starting to pay off.

She spearheaded a comprehensive literacy plan that pushed to improve reading skills across the curriculum. Last year, the district earned high marks for literacy growth for high school students who took the state’s TNReady test. However, overall growth scores were down, and the district is still far from its Destination 2025 goal of boosting third-grade reading proficiency to 90 percent by 2025.

Graduation rates have seen a slight bump, too. Some 78.7 percent of seniors received their diplomas in 2016, up from 75 percent the previous school year.

“I’m most proud of the work (we) have done to raise and reinforce expectations for our students,” she wrote, “and the continued evidence … that all of our children can achieve to high standards of career and college readiness…”

In her letter, Ramirez trumpets that student attendance is up and suspensions are down. She cites improvements in kindergarten readiness and student access to complex tests, and also notes that the growth in graduation rates extends to the district’s large population of black students, those with disabilities, and English language learners.

In a statement, Hopson praised Ramirez, especially for her work on Destination 2025, the district’s strategic plan.

“(Her) vision has helped enhance planning and coordination across all of our academic departments and stakeholders — from teachers and coaches to school and district leaders,” he said.

Hopson told Chalkbeat that the district will look to tweak the job description in collaboration with Griffin before Ramirez leaves. “With all the work she’s done, I think we’re going to take it to the next level,” he said.

With approximately 105,000 students, Shelby County Schools is Tennessee’s largest school district, the result of a 2013 merger of Memphis City Schools and legacy Shelby County Schools, followed by the exit a year later of six suburban municipalities that started their own school system.

Correction, February 21, 2017: This article has been updated to include the correct percentages of graduation rates for Shelby County Schools. A previous version listed the state percentages instead of the district’s.

$30 million grant will grow Tennessee’s summer reading program tenfold

2017-01-24T22:37:01+00:00

Last year, some 600 children statewide got to take advantage of summer reading programs under a new Tennessee literacy initiative. This summer, that number will soar to 10,000 children, thanks to a major state investment in the program.

The State Department of Human Services announced Tuesday its $30 million investment in Tennessee’s Read to Be Ready Summer Grant program.

The State Department of Education launched Read to be Ready a year ago to give its youngest students a foundation in reading — and boost the state’s lagging literacy rates. Only a third of its fourth-graders earned a proficient score on the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress, also called the Nation’s Report Card.

As part of Read to be Ready, the state awarded grants to local school districts and universities to operate summer literacy programs in their communities. Bolstered by a $1 million, three-year grant from the Dollar General Literacy Foundation, it provided up to 20 grants to applicants across the state. The DHS investment should increase the number of programs to as many as 350 this year, officials say.

“We know the ability to read translates to academic success while equalizing opportunities for all students,” McQueen said. “The investment from DHS to the Read to be Ready work is a stellar example of state agencies working collectively to support a strong vision.”

Outgoing DHS Commissioner Raquel Hatter said the reading investment aligns with her department’s efforts to improve the wellbeing of Tennessee families. “Read to be Ready is an absolute game changer,” she said.

First lady Crissy Haslam, who has made early literacy her primary cause, praised the DHS for investing in summer reading, which aims to counter the summer slide that occurs when students fall behind during the school break.

“Literacy is essential to success in life, and it is not acceptable to have less than half of Tennessee students reading proficiently,” Haslam said. “Bill and I are thrilled for TDHS’s tremendous investment in the Read to be Ready summer program and the potential it has to impact thousands of students and move Tennessee closer towards the statewide reading goal.”