Chalkbeat

Tennessee TCAP testing time to increase in 2027 due to new, unscored writing test

2026-09-01T21:42:39+00:00

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The amount of time Tennessee students spend taking state standardized tests next spring will increase significantly due to an additional writing test that won’t actually be scored.

Tennessee is adding an unscored field test writing subpart to the English Language Arts section of the 2027 Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program. It will increase total test time by more than an hour for older children and 40 minutes for lower grades.

Field testing is not unusual in standardized testing. Testing companies and administrators often use unscored prompts or questions as trials to determine their efficacy before using them on scored exams. Tennessee previously administered writing field tests at other times of the school year.

But some Tennessee teachers say they are concerned about adding a significant block of testing at the beginning of an already high-stake testing window next spring.

“I feel powerless at times because we see what these weeks of testing do to the kids,” said Chantel Kluemper, a middle school English teacher in Knox County. “The teachers really care about the kids. It’s not that we just don’t want to do tests. It’s that this couple of weeks is draining, and it’s hard to bolster motivation for kids.”

A Tennessee Department of Education spokesperson confirmed the state will add the writing field test during the 2027 TCAP and high school end-of-course exams.

“The state has always and will continue to field test items as a necessary component of constructing a valid, reliable test,” TDOE Director of Media Amanda Chin said. “We made small adjustments to the testing calendar to give schools more flexibility.”

For grades 6 and above, this means an additional 85 minutes in ELA testing. That brings the total ELA testing time for higher grades to 315 minutes.

Grades 4 and 5 will have an additional 80 minutes of testing time with the new field test.

Grade 3, which faces the high-stakes reading retention law, will now have six separate subparts in the ELA test with the additional 40-minute writing field test. Third graders will now take three separate writing subparts, all 40 minutes, in addition to three additional reading-focused subparts. In total, third graders will have 220 minutes of ELA testing next spring.

Tennessee requires schools administer the TCAP within a specific testing window, and the state has established a standalone writing testing window from April 7 to 14. A second testing window, for the remainder of the ELA portion and other TCAP subjects, is slated for April 19 through May 6.

Kluemper said she believes standardized testing can be very beneficial for educators, particularly with assessments that provide real-time benchmarks to track student progress and tweak teaching strategies to directly align with what is working and what isn’t.

The TCAP scoring formula doesn’t provide individualized feedback for teachers, Kluemper said, in the way that district-led formative and summative assessments do.

“I don’t feel teachers feel good about this because it’s just more, more, more,” Kluemper said. “We don’t get information from TCAP that I think is genuinely beneficial and specific for us to know how we can do better, how we can teach that standard better.”

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

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.

Should Tennessee fully fund special education pre-K programs?

2026-08-25T19:48:10+00:00

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A top committee of Tennessee educators wants lawmakers to include special education prekindergarten students in the state’s public school funding formula.

The recommendation follows pleas from school boards and superintendents who say they’ve been saddled with the price tag of an unfunded mandate because federal and state laws require local school districts to serve students with disabilities as young as 3.

“The problem is, they’ve legally compelled us to serve kids for whom they’re not proportionally funding us,” said Bob Nardo, the executive director at the Libertas School, a Memphis charter school, during a TISA Review Committee meeting this month.

Lawmakers established the committee last year. Made up of top education officials and public school leaders from around the state, the committee is tasked with recommending revisions to the state’s overarching K-12 funding formula and will issue its first report later this fall.

A survey completed this summer showed the majority of committee members ranked special education pre-K funding as a top priority, in addition to revising how the state identifies economically disadvantaged students.

“Early childhood education is widely recognized as an important factor in long-term academic success,” committee member Ron McPherson said in the summer survey. McPherson serves as the finance director at Knox County Schools.

Reworking TISA, the state’s funding formula, would require legislative action. The formula currently only funds Tennessee K-12 students.

“Change the rules about who we’re required to serve, or fund us for the kids we’re required to serve,” Nardo said, noting that his school has an “acute population” of special education students with “severe” needs.

It’s not clear how much weight the TISA Review Committee’s recommendations will carry with state lawmakers.

A previous legislative effort to fold these pre-K students into public school funding stalled in 2025, likely over funding concerns. The legislature estimated that fully funding the programs could cost the state more than $159 million annually.

On Thursday, state Board of Education Chairman Bob Eby sent a formal list of TISA recommendations to Gov. Bill Lee.

The pre-K funding recommendation wasn’t included in the official list, but Eby noted it at the end of the letter.

“This topic, being outside the K-12 formula, was omitted from the list, as it is not necessarily authorized by the statute creating this Committee; however, we wanted you to know of this high level of interest from the committee members,” Eby wrote.

West Tennessee school leaders said last year that they’ve encountered “fundamental” misunderstandings of how special education pre-K programs work and are funded, even among state officials responsible for education oversight.

Tennessee has an $18 million grant fund for special education pre-K costs. But district leaders say the grant program is less stable than recurring funding streams, and it’s still not enough to cover the costs of their special education pre-K classrooms.

“Yes, the grant program exists, and I’m very grateful for it,” Nardo said. “But it’s not actually proportional to the need.”

Special education costs for pre-K classes can balloon quickly, school leaders say.

Lakeland School System in Shelby County currently has 29 special education students to whom it is federally required to offer pre-K services, including specialized teachers and therapies.

But these students must also be educated alongside general education peers to meet federal and state class size and inclusivity regulations. Lakeland is serving an additional 30 general education students in those pre-K classrooms as peer models for its 29 special education students.

Lakeland’s 59 students are spread across four classrooms, each with a special education teacher and two special education assistants.

The cost to run those classrooms? More than $621,000, according to data provided by the district. The district is receiving $15,058 in federal funding and another $124,660 from the Tennessee special education preschool grant, which together cover about 22% of Lakeland’s total costs.

That means Lakeland must dip into its TISA funding — calculated and intended for K-12 students — to pay the remaining $481,282.

Other district officials said the existing funding models do not factor in the costs of peer students and the enrollment increases they bring.

“That’s where we’re getting in a bind,” said TISA Review Committee member Eddie Pruett, the director of schools at Gibson County Special School District. “We have to provide this, and don’t have the funding we need to do it with.”

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

Where the 2026 Tennessee gubernatorial candidates stand on education issues

2026-08-21T11:00:01+00:00

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Where do Tennessee’s governor candidates stand on education issues?

Tennessee voters this month tapped Republican U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn and Democratic Memphis City Council member Jerri Green to face off in the November general election.

In a Chalkbeat candidate survey, both candidates outlined their education platforms and positions on policies such as the state’s third grade reading retention law, teacher retention concerns, and the growing school choice landscape.

Departing Gov. Bill Lee will leave office next year after significantly altering education policy in Tennessee. A staunch school choice advocate, Lee championed earlier universal school voucher programs and created the Education Freedom Scholarship program, which now uses public funds to pay for 35,000 students to attend private schools in the state.

The school choice debate is likely to dominate education policy discussions even after Lee leaves office. Blackburn and Green both pointed to it as the biggest education issue Tennessee faces, though they offered sharply different approaches.

For Blackburn, school choice and expanding the EFS program is a top priority in Tennessee’s education system, which she said “is not built to address the unique needs of every student.” She is also considering altering charter school regulations in the state, criticizing “senseless red tape” she says is complicating charter school operation.

“Tennessee should be the best place in the country to start a school, choose a school, and go to school,” Blackburn said. “It’s my hope that my legacy is that no child is trapped in a school that doesn’t meet their needs.”

Public school funding is top of mind for Green, who pledged to defund the voucher program if elected in November. Green said she would direct that funding to Tennessee public schools to raise teacher pay and expand access to support staff such as counselors and nurses.

“As we continue to take money away from our public school system via the voucher scheme, our teachers are finding resources even more limited, students are losing access to supports they need, and the educational gap in Tennessee is widening,” Green said.

Read Blackburn and Green’s full responses to the Chalkbeat Tennessee survey here:

Should Tennessee expand school vouchers?

Blackburn pledged to expand the EFS program to all Tennessee families if elected governor. The program opened last year with 20,000 scholarships before GOP lawmakers expanded it this year to 35,000.

“Parents know best when it comes to their children’s education, and this program ensures a child’s success is not determined by their zip code,” Blackburn said. “As governor, I will fight to expand Education Freedom Scholarships until no parent has to win the lottery to give their child the education that best suits their unique needs.”

Green said continued voucher expansion makes her worry for “our next generation and rural towns.”

“I’ve been on the road and some of these rural, small towns only have one school,” Green said. “When you take money from that school, which is often the community’s biggest employer, you take money from that community’s future. We’re robbing our children of opportunities to give families who can afford private school welfare.”

With her pro-voucher platform, Blackburn bested two other Republican candidates in the August primary: U.S. Rep. John Rose and state lawmaker Monty Fritts. Fritts opposed vouchers, while Rose supported school choice but called for accountability measures to ensure programs work as intended.

School choice accountability

Students receiving vouchers are not required to take the same state assessments as public school students, making it difficult to determine if students are achieving at the same level as their public school peers.

Green called the program an “unaccountable” system that creates a “glaring, unfair double standard.”

“We are forcing our public school teachers and students to meet rigorous, often unrealistic benchmarks while handing over millions of public taxpayer dollars to private institutions with virtually zero oversight or transparency,” Green said. “If a school accepts public funding, they must be held to public standards. Period. Parents and taxpayers have a right to know exactly how their money is being spent and whether students are thriving.”

Blackburn said she is happy with how the system is set up currently, arguing there is “no greater accountability than a parent’s decision” to choose the right fit for their child.

“Data is important because it ensures accountability and transparency, and I support high standards in testing,” Blackburn said. “The private schools receiving EFS funding have to be accredited by our Department of Education or State Board of Education. That being true, the parents can hold private schools accountable, and we as a state can trust parents to hold private schools accountable.”

How should Tennessee strengthen the educator pipeline?

Tennessee districts are struggling to fill classroom positions with fully credentialed and trained teachers. While vacancies have dropped in recent years, the number of emergency credentialed educators has skyrocketed.

Green proposed creating a new fellowship to recruit young teachers into high-demand areas like special education while increasing support for veteran teachers.

“To keep our veteran teachers from burning out, we must immediately raise teacher pay and hire more support staff — like counselors and nurses — to ease their workload,” Green said. “By properly funding our classrooms, we can give educators the respect and resource-rich environments they deserve to stay in the profession long-term.”

Blackburn pledged to reconsider Tennessee’s current teacher licensure requirements to ensure the state doesn’t lose out on potential educators.

“While we need to hold our teaching professionals to the highest standard, we also need to make certain that our licensing processes aren’t causing us to miss out on individuals who would be great teachers,” Blackburn said.

Third grade reading retention law and state testing

Tennessee’s third grade reading law has sparked controversy over the high-stakes consequences tied to students’ performance on the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP. The law, which requires significant interventions like summer school or even retention for students who underperform on the ELA assessment, has yielded results. Nearly 45% of Tennessee third graders met or exceeded expectations on the state’s reading assessment this year, the highest performance in nearly a decade.

Green, in response to a Chalkbeat question about whether the law is working as intended or needs reform, criticized the policy for forcing “educators to teach strictly to the test.”

“The pressure is so high that in Memphis, students — including my own son’s classmates — had to retake the exam multiple times on their last day of third grade just to meet rigid requirements,” Green said. “We need reform to eliminate single-test retention, trust our teachers’ professional judgment, and invest in early interventions like universal pre-K. True reading proficiency comes from properly funding our public schools.”

Blackburn praised the state’s “great educational progress” and said literacy interventions should be considered for students before third grade.

“The numbers prove it, programs like the third-grade retention reading law work,” Blackburn said. “Early reading and writing proficiency is essential to keep kids learning in schools and on the right track. By creating checkpoints so that no student falls through the cracks, we can make certain that all Tennessee students are receiving the world-class education they deserve. But certainly, ideally intervention would occur earlier than third grade to have the necessary fundamental literacy skills.”

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

Are major changes coming to Tennessee teacher licensure requirements?

2026-07-08T05:03:22+00:00

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Significant changes could be on the horizon for Tennessee teaching licensure testing requirements.

The Tennessee State Board of Education is considering a policy to create alternate pathways to pass specialty area content assessments like the PRAXIS exam and other content assessments, including the National Evaluation Series.

This change would join a new policy, effective this month, that exempts trainee teachers working in state-approved student teaching placements from the edTPA, a previously required portfolio-based assessment that demonstrates readiness to lead a classroom.

Supporters of the proposed policy, including teacher advocacy organizations in Tennessee, say the change could make it easier for aspiring teachers to enter and stay in the profession.

The change would apply to aspiring teachers as well as current educators looking to advance or reactivate a lapsed license.

High turnover and attrition continue in part to drive Tennessee’s teacher pipeline issues, and fewer aspiring teachers have entered the workforce in recent years. In the past five years, Tennessee has increasingly relied on staffing classrooms with unlicensed teachers working on emergency credentials.

But some critics of the proposed policy change are concerned about relaxing expectations for licensure.

While the speciality area assessments would still be required for licensure for some teacher candidates, those who fail on the first attempt would no longer have to retake the entire exam. Instead, they could pass shorter assessments covering only the material they previously failed to master.

The state board in May advanced the proposed policy for further discussion, but it could introduce more changes before a final reading.

While at least one state board member expressed concern about relaxing licensure requirements, teacher advocates in Tennessee say the new policy could provide flexibility in a state grappling with teacher shortages and educator pipeline challenges.

At a state board meeting earlier this summer, board member Krissi McInturff said she worried the proposal goes “too far” and questioned if it is in the best interest of students to alter the standards.

“I feel like we’re watering down what a teaching certificate would look like if we allow teachers to not be able to pass the content they’re supposed to be teaching and be masters of,” said McInturff, the principal of a Washington County elementary school.

Tennessee teacher advocates appear supportive of the proposed changes.

Tonya Coats, executive director of the Tennessee Education Association, said earlier this summer that the organization appreciates a willingness from state officials to explore different options for aspiring teachers to prove their competency in light of teacher vacancy issues.

“At the same time, any change to licensure requirements must be approached carefully and deliberately,” Coats added. “Tennessee students deserve educators who possess strong content knowledge and are fully prepared for the classroom. Flexibility cannot come at the expense of quality or weaken confidence in the profession.”

Though teacher vacancies have declined since 2023, the state has become increasingly reliant on teachers with emergency credentials, temporary permits that allow unlicensed teachers to work in the classroom.. The number of temporarily credentialed teachers has increased by more than 300% over the last five years.

The Tennessee Department of Education issued more than 6,000 emergency credentials in the last school year alone.

Correction: An earlier version of this story previously stated that the Tennessee State Board of Education was considering a proposed policy to exempt some students from the edTPA. That policy was implemented on July 1.

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-Shelby County Schools sue Tennessee over state takeover

2026-06-19T13:05:57+00:00

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Memphis-Shelby County school leaders are suing top Tennessee Republicans in an effort to stop a new takeover law from diverting power away from the locally elected school board to a new board of political appointees.

The district, alongside the Shelby County Commission and all nine individual MSCS board members, filed a lawsuit in federal court late Thursday night – hours after the Republican-appointed oversight board met for the first time in Nashville.

Gov. Bill Lee, who’s named directly in the lawsuit, signed the takeover legislation into law in late May.

“Every child deserves the opportunity to succeed, and throughout the Lee Administration, we’ve made significant investments to ensure students in Shelby County receive a quality education,” a Lee spokesperson said Friday. “Gov. Lee remains committed to strengthening outcomes and expanding pathways to success for students and families.”

With the law in effect, top Republican lawmakers appointed a nine-member oversight board that will seize control of key district decisions. That intervention “dismantles” local education systems and strips the county government of its authority to approve school budgets, MSCS argues in the lawsuit.

It also violates the Fourteenth Amendment and the Tennessee Constitution, according to the new filing. Local leaders are seeking a preliminary injunction to stop the takeover board from making any decisions once their term starts in less than two weeks.

“Once the Oversight Board is constituted and acts, the consequences cannot be undone,” the lawsuit says. “The democratic right of Shelby County’s voters to elect representatives who actually govern cannot be restored through damages or retrospective relief.”

House Speaker Cameron Sexton and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, who chose the other four oversight board members, are also named in the lawsuit, alongside the state education commissioner.

Board members and local residents have criticized the MSCS takeover for usurping power from the local school board elected by Memphis voters. The new oversight board will have final say over superintendent and staff contracts, along with MSCS’ annual budget.

The local board approved a $1.7 billion budget draft in late May, but it’s unclear whether that will be subjected to the oversight board’s intervention. The new oversight board plans to meet again in less than three weeks, and they’re waiting for full results from a billion-dollar forensic audit that may guide their initial decisions in the district.

Not all Memphians are opposed to the state takeover. Intervention advocates cite years of academic underperformance and leadership instability in the district, which some say came to head after the local school board suddenly fired former Superintendent Marie Feagins in January 2025.

MSCS has had four superintendents in the past five years. And while the district has earned the highest score in state measures of student growth for the past four years, over 75% of Memphis students failed to achieve proficiency in reading and math last year.

Some community members told Chalkbeat they are doubtful a lawsuit will succeed in reversing the takeover legislation, a sentiment echoed by GOP lawmakers who sponsored the effort. The Shelby County Commission will front the cost of the lawsuit because of a law passed in late April that prevents the school district from funding a lawsuit against state accountability measures.

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

Former Memphis-Shelby County school board chair will lead new oversight board

2026-06-18T17:41:40+00:00

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Former Memphis-Shelby County school board chair Billy Orgel will chair the new Memphis schools oversight board as it prepares to take over most major decisions from the locally elected school board.

The oversight board met for the first time at the state Capitol in Nashville on Thursday to elect officers and form standing committees. The board’s work officially begins on July 1, marking a new era in Tennessee public education where political appointees will control budgets, leadership, and broad academic controls in certain underperforming school districts.

Orgel said Thursday the new oversight board can demand change from the school system, which “will have to answer to us.”

“We answer to the students of this community and our responsibility to them,” Orgel, who served on the MSCS board between 2011 and 2022, said.

Memphis, the state’s largest school district, will now operate under two governing bodies, the new oversight board and the existing, elected school board. But the oversight board has the authority to essentially overrule the elected board on most major decisions, in addition to exerting control over the superintendent’s contract and other staffing decisions.

Though the first meeting was largely procedural, Orgel signaled the board may consider accelerating school closures in the district, noting underenrolled schools are limited at what they can offer their students.

Current Superintendent Roderick Richmond has spearheaded an ongoing plan to close 15 schools by 2028.

“That’ll be up to us to decide if that’s quick enough,” Orgel said.

Richmond’s plan is a more conservative approach to underenrollment and languishing facilities issues than some district leaders, including new oversight board member Dorsey Hopson, have recommended. Hopson, who served as superintendent of the district while Orgel was on the school board, recommended the district close almost 30 schools. That plan was never implemented after Hopson left the district.

Two recent state takeovers in Texas, which Tennessee proponents have often said they want to use as models for MSCS, led to early school closures.

The new board will soon have a comprehensive plan to make needed changes in the district, according to Tennessee Comptroller Jason Mumpower. The Tennessee-funded external audit of district finances and governance is nearly finished, Mumpower said Thursday, and he expects the full 700-page audit to be released in the coming weeks.

Mumpower and Republican lawmakers released interim findings this spring from the ongoing audit, in part to accelerate the pending state legislation that established the new oversight board.

The audit, which was only 25% complete when the interim results were released in April, found more than $1.1 million in contract and payroll transactions that auditors say are “consistent with waste or abuse.” Another $1.7 million in transactions violated district policies but did not rise to the level of waste or abuse, according to the comptroller’s office.

That total is less than 1% of the Memphis district’s operating budget over the three-year period the audit covered.

A lingering question for the new oversight board is whether it is considered a state board or a local board, which will affect certain rules around meetings. State officials did not have an answer at Thursday’s meeting, though it mirrored a state board meeting in a Tennessee Capitol conference room.

Supporters of the new board, including Lee and other Republican lawmakers, have argued the new board represents local intervention into the state’s largest school system. All but one of the new board members are longtime Memphis residents, and at least four members have teaching or administrative experience within the school system.

The oversight board members can be removed from the board at any time, for any reason, by the governor and two legislative speakers. The governor and lieutenant governor are both leaving office next year.

The board committed to holding future meetings in Memphis, making them more accessible to MSCS families. It is eyeing July 7 as the next meeting date, though the board has several large administrative tasks to tackle to become fully operational.

The board has the authority to hold its meetings in the MSCS district office building. Nisha Powers, who was named the board secretary, questioned if it was “appropriate” to begin meetings on district property, a nod at potential tensions between the new board and an elected school board that has vowed to sue over the takeover.

Still, the new oversight board was applauded on Thursday by several community groups including parent advocacy organization Memphis Lift .

“Y’all are going to have to get rid of some folks, point blank,” Memphis Lift Executive Director Sarah Carpenter said. “Y’all need to know the community is going to cover y’all.”

The new oversight board members are:

Chair Billy Orgel, a local developer and former Memphis-Shelby County school board member.
Vice-Chair Shanea McKinney of Cigna, who is a member of the University of Tennessee’s board of trustees.
Secretary Nisha Powers, who leads a Memphis civil engineering firm and has served on the Tennessee board of regents.
Dorsey Hopson, a former district superintendent.
Dedrick Brittenum Jr., a Memphis lawyer and former councilman.
Beverly Robertson, a marketing executive and former president and CEO of the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce.
Tyrone Burroughs, a Memphis CEO who sits on the Tennessee Lottery Commission and the Youth Villages board of directors.
David Mansouri, the sole board member who is not a Shelby County resident. Mansouri is the Nashville-based leader of one of Tennessee’s most influential education advocacy organizations.
Karen Vogelsang, a former Memphis teacher and 2014 Tennessee Teacher of the Year who now runs a literacy nonprofit.

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

Former Teacher of the Year tapped for Memphis schools takeover board ahead of first meeting

2026-06-16T20:15:11+00:00

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Former Tennessee Teacher of the Year Karen Vogelsang was appointed Tuesday to the final seat on the incoming Memphis schools oversight board, which will soon wield sweeping authority over the state’s largest school district for the next four years.

House Speaker Cameron Sexton selected Vogelsang, a former mortgage banker turned educator, two days before the board is scheduled to hold its first meeting Thursday.

Vogelsang received the state’s top teacher honor in 2014, when she was teaching at Keystone Elementary School. She taught in Memphis-Shelby County elementary schools for 15 years, ending her tenure in 2018.

“The first time I had the opportunity to teach it was electrifying; I knew then I had made the right decision to become a teacher,” Vogelsang told Chalkbeat in 2015.

She now works as a self-employed early childhood literacy consultant and served as director of the Memphis tutoring nonprofit ARISE2Read in 2024.

Vogelsang is the third appointee to the board that has direct experience working with Memphis-Shelby County Schools in the classroom or at the administrative level.

The nine-member board, appointed by the state’s top Republican lawmakers, will soon take decision-making power from the locally elected school board on district issues ranging from the superintendent’s contract and overall budget to curriculum decisions.

The oversight board also includes:

Billy Orgel, a local developer and former Memphis-Shelby County school board member.
Dorsey Hopson, a former district superintendent.
Dedrick Brittenum Jr., a Memphis lawyer and former councilman.
Shanea McKinney of Cigna, who is a member of the University of Tennessee’s board of trustees.
Nisha Powers, who leads a Memphis civil engineering firm and has served on the Tennessee board of regents.
Beverly Robertson, a marketing executive and former president and CEO of the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce.
Tyrone Burroughs, a Memphis CEO who sits on the Tennessee Lottery Commission and the Youth Villages board of directors.
David Mansouri, the sole board member who is not a Shelby County resident. Mansouri is the Nashville-based leader of one of Tennessee’s most influential education advocacy organizations.

All but one of the appointees live in Shelby County, as required under the law Tennessee General Assembly Republicans passed this year creating oversight boards for districts with academic performance and administrative issues.

Republican supporters of the plan have argued it is not a state takeover of the local school district because most of the board’s members are local residents. Still, lawmakers have repeatedly pointed to Houston’s state takeover as a model for Memphis.

The Memphis-Shelby County school board earlier this year vowed to sue the state over the effort. Opponents argue the General Assembly has unfairly targeted Memphis by seizing authority from local elected leaders to give to political appointees.

Republican lawmakers say they hope to solve Memphis’ low academic achievement with the takeover. Last year, over 75% of Memphis students failed to achieve proficiency in reading and math, though the district earned high marks in academic growth, a measure of improvement over time.

One of the oversight board’s first responsibilities will be conducting a comprehensive assessment of MSCS staff, students, and buildings to develop a transformation plan. It’s unclear whether the new board will have any control over the 2026-27 budget, which has been approved by the school board but has not been finalized by the Shelby County Commission.

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

Federal lawsuit over Tennessee religious charter school ban will move forward

2026-06-11T19:33:07+00:00

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A Tennessee lawsuit challenging the Knox County Board of Education over the state’s religious charter school ban is heading to trial after a federal judge denied the board’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

The Wilberforce Academy of Knoxville sued the school board last year after the local district asked it to affirm it planned to open a non-religious school, per state law.

In federal court filings, the school board argued Wilberforce never actually submitted a charter school application, nor has it targeted state officials in its lawsuit, despite the school board following state law enforced by the Tennessee Department of Education. The board had asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit entirely.

But U.S. District Judge Charles E. Atchley, Jr. in late May ruled Wilberforce didn’t have to submit an actual application to challenge an “allegedly unconstitutional barrier” to applying.

Neither party has commented on the lawsuit.

Tennessee officials have left the Knox County board on its own to defend the state law, which Atchley noted in his May opinion.

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti declined to intervene in the lawsuit earlier this year, months after he published a legal opinion that argued there was “no compelling interest” in excluding religious charter schools from participating in a “public benefit.”

Skrmetti’s office is also currently paying Wilberforce’s main attorney $400 per hour in a separate case to help Tennessee defend its criminal abortion ban against ongoing legal challenges.

The legal fight over religious charter schools in Tennessee – and the lack thereof from state officials – signal major changes may be on the horizon for the state’s charter landscape.

This spring, lawmakers signed off on a new state law that now allows religious colleges and universities to operate public charter schools. Though the new law currently blocks those institutions from providing religious curriculum in their charter schools, it opens the door to a new class of charter operators in the state that could quickly stand up religious charters if the state’s religious charter ban law were to fall.

And now public dollars are flowing to private religious schools through Tennessee’s voucher program, which is paying millions in private school tuition.

In its lawsuit, Wilberforce focuses in part on this program, arguing the public education funds now funding private religious tuition support the case that religious charters should be included in public funding.

“This enshrined hostility to religious charter schools stands in marked contrast to Tennessee’s recent support of religious schools through its Education Freedom Scholarship Program,” a Wilberforce attorney argued in court documents last year.

A full trial on the lawsuit is scheduled for January 2027, and a group of Tennessee parents and non-religious charter school officials have also intervened in the lawsuit to oppose Wilberforce’s claims.

They have argued opening the door to religious charter schools will result in charter schools being “classified and treated as private schools,” which could effect on things like Tennessee’s public school funding formula and disability protections.

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

Tennessee SCORE president to join Memphis schools oversight board

2026-05-26T20:48:19+00:00

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The Nashville-based leader of one of Tennessee’s most influential education advocacy organizations will soon have a significant role in guiding the state’s largest school district.

David Mansouri, president and chief executive at Tennessee SCORE, has been appointed to the new nine-person oversight board that will seize control of Memphis-Shelby County Schools in a state-led takeover.

House Speaker Cameron Sexton appointed Mansouri to the board on Tuesday, one of the speaker’s two appointees on the board. Sexton has not announced his final pick.

Mansouri will be the only member of the new board who is not a Shelby County resident after Sexton negotiated for the opportunity to appoint a non-resident when Republicans passed the takeover legislation earlier this spring.

“This is an opportunity to take a comprehensive look at the public education system and make certain it delivers what every student and family in Memphis deserves: a world-class education, strong outcomes, and a clear path to success,” Mansouri said in a statement to Chalkbeat.

He joined SCORE soon after it was founded by former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist in 2009. The organization has significant influence with policy makers and is often credited for producing a roadmap for school improvement when Tennessee schools ranked among the worst in the nation.

The top elected Republicans in the state are appointing the new oversight board, which will control key district decisions for the next four years. Both Gov. Bill Lee and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally announced their appointments in recent days.

The oversight board also includes:

Billy Orgel, a local developer and former Memphis-Shelby County school board member.
Dedrick Brittenum Jr., a Memphis lawyer and former councilman.
Shanea McKinney of Cigna, who is a member of the University of Tennessee’s board of trustees.
Nisha Powers, who leads a Memphis civil engineering firm and has served on the Tennessee board of regents.
Beverly Robertson, a marketing executive and former president and CEO of the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce.
Tyrone Burroughs, a Memphis CEO who sits on the Tennessee Lottery Commission and the Youth Villages board of directors.

Under the state takeover bill signed into law last week by Lee, the GOP-appointed board will have final say over MSCS’ budget and contracts over $50,000, as well as the hiring and firing of the superintendent.

The school board has signaled it may sue over the politically appointed takeover board, which will significantly dilute the authority of the locally elected board.

Republican lawmakers have argued the oversight board does not amount to a state takeover of Tennessee’s largest school district, because the majority of the board will be local residents. However, the political appointees will serve at-will terms and can be removed and replaced at any time, for any reason.

Lawmakers frequently pointed to a state takeover of Houston schools as a model for Memphis success.

Bill sponsors hope to solve Memphis’ low academic achievement with the takeover. Last year, over 75% of Memphis students failed to achieve proficiency in reading and math.

Still, the district earned the highest possible score in academic growth, or student improvement on state tests, for the fourth year in a row.

One of the first responsibilities of the oversight board will be to conduct a comprehensive assessment of MSCS staff, students, and buildings to make a “transformation plan.” It’s unclear whether the new board will have any control over the 2026-27 budget, which is set for a final vote from the elected school board on Tuesday night.

The oversight board can direct or prohibit the superintendent to take any action and can fire the school leader with cause if they refuse. It can require the same of local board members and act on behalf of the MSCS board if they refuse to follow instructions.

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

Former Memphis school board member, local lawyer tapped for new schools oversight board

2026-05-26T16:36:27+00:00

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Former Memphis-Shelby County school board member and local businessman Billy Orgel has been appointed to the nine-person oversight board that will seize control of Memphis-Shelby County Schools in a state-led takeover.

On Tuesday, Lt. Gov. Randy McNally appointed Orgel and Memphis attorney Dedrick Brittenum, Jr. to the board, joining five appointments Gov. Bill Lee made last week. Their official appointment letters state their terms on the board begin immediately.

House Speaker Cameron Sexton will make the two remaining appointments.

Orgel, the president and CEO of Tower Ventures, began serving on the newly merged Memphis-Shelby County school board in 2011, at one time chairing it. He held the East Memphis District 8 seat for more than a decade before deciding not to seek reelection in 2022.

Orgel’s time on the board overlapped with the tenure of then-Superintendent Dorsey Hopson. The governor appointed Hopson, who served as Memphis superintendent from 2013 to early 2019, last week to serve on the board. Hopson is a partner at the City Fund, an organization founded in 2018 to promote the portfolio model of running schools that promotes school choice and charter school expansion.

Brittenum has been a Memphis business and property lawyer for decades and opened his private practice in 2012. He served as the District 4 representative on the Memphis City Council from 2005-2007 and led the Memphis Light, Gas and Water board of commissioners in 2012. He was also the chair of Memphis’ Civil Service Commission.

The governor’s other four appointees are Shanea McKinney of Cigna, who is a member of the University of Tennessee’s board of trustees; Nisha Powers, who leads a Memphis civil engineering firm and has served on the Tennessee board of regents; Beverly Robertson, a marketing executive and former president and CEO of the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce; and Tyrone Burroughs, a Memphis CEO who sits on the Tennessee Lottery Commission and the Youth Villages board of directors.

Those oversight board members will control key district decisions until June 2030, when their terms are set to expire. Under the state takeover bill signed into law last week by Gov. Bill Lee, the GOP-appointed board will have final say over MSCS’ budget and contracts over $50,000, as well as the hiring and firing of the superintendent.

The school board has signaled it may sue over the politically appointed takeover board. But Rep. Mark White, a Republican from Memphis who sponsored the takeover bill, said he’s confident that legal action will fail.

The state-appointed board can also fire any MSCS employee with or without cause, including tenured teachers and principals, without giving them proper due process.

The oversight board appointments come as Memphis voters are in the middle of a local board election, with incumbents Michelle McKissack and Joyce Dorse-Coleman winning their seats in a May 5 primary. The Democratic nominees for Districts 6 and 8, T.L. Harris and Tanya Frey respectively, will face an independent challenger in an Aug. 6 general election. Their terms begin Sept. 1.

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

Gov. Bill Lee taps former superintendent, UT trustee for Memphis schools takeover board

2026-05-22T18:14:33+00:00

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Gov. Bill Lee announced his five appointees for a new Memphis schools oversight board that will have sweeping authority over Tennessee’s largest school district for the next four years.

The choices came on Friday just after Lee signed the oversight board legislation into law, which authorizes the governor and the top two Republicans in the General Assembly to appoint the nine-person board.

The governor’s appointees include at least one member with intimate knowledge of the district’s inner workings: Dorsey Hopson, who served as Memphis superintendent from 2013 to early 2019. Hopson is now a partner at the City Fund, an organization founded in 2018 to promote the portfolio model of running schools that promotes school choice and charter school expansion.

The other four appointees are Shanea McKinney of Cigna, who is a member of the University of Tennessee’s board of trustees; Nisha Powers, who leads a Memphis civil engineering firm and has served on the Tennessee board of regents; Beverly Robertson, a marketing executive and former president and CEO of the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce; and Tyrone Burroughs, a Memphis CEO who sits on the Tennessee Lottery Commission and the Youth Villages board of directors.

The board will have nearly unlimited power to dive into district records, from teacher evaluations to curriculum reviews. It also will control the district’s largest financial decisions, the operating budget, and superintendent’s contract. Its power even extends to the Shelby County Commission, which will be blocked from approving the MSCS annual budget until the oversight board gives its approval.

The oversight board must begin its work by July 1, per the new law. Lt. Gov. Randy McNally and House Speaker Cameron Sexton, both Republicans, get two picks each in addition to Lee’s appointments.

A spokesperson for McNally said he planned to make his appointments in “the very near future.”

Eight of the nine oversight board members must be Shelby County residents under the law. However, Sexton negotiated an arrangement that the House speaker can appoint one oversight board member who does not reside in Shelby County, as long as they live in the state. Political leaders can remove and rename board members at any time, for any reason.

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

Tennessee governor signs Memphis schools takeover into law

2026-05-22T15:58:09+00:00

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Gov. Bill Lee has signed legislation that will give political appointees sweeping authority over Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

The new law is an unprecedented effort to seize local control of Tennessee’s largest public school district through a nine-person oversight board appointed by the state’s top three Republicans, including the governor.

Lee announced his appointments shortly after signing the legislation, tapping five Shelby County residents, many of whom already sit on Tennessee governing boards.

The governor’s appointees include at least one member with intimate knowledge of the district’s inner workings: Dorsey Hopson, who served as Memphis superintendent from 2013 to early 2019.

The takeover effort now goes into effect just weeks after Memphis voters cast their ballots in the 2026 school board primary, an election for four contested board seats that now have significantly less power. And expected legal challenges to the takeover will also collide with another Republican supermajority effort to seize Tennessee’s last Democratic congressional district through a controversial redistricting measure that now significantly dilutes Memphians’ voting power.

The takeover oversight board has been tasked with conducting a comprehensive review of the district’s academic challenges. Republican supporters of the takeover have argued that progress is unacceptably stagnant after years of academic underperformance in the district that serves more than 100,000 students.

Last year, more than 75% of Memphis students failed to achieve proficiency in reading and math based on state standardized tests. However, Memphis schools earned the highest possible score in academic growth, or student improvement on state tests, for the fourth year in a row.

Opponents of the takeover have pointed to systemic socioeconomic issues in Shelby County as an inextricable factor in MSCS academic performance. Democrats have also argued the district has been harmed by the whiplash of state-imposed policies over the years, such as the failed Achievement School District, a previous state takeover of Memphis’ lowest performing schools.

The new oversight board will have nearly unlimited power to dive into district records, from teacher evaluations to curriculum reviews. It also will control the district’s largest financial decisions, the operating budget, and superintendent’s contract. Its power even extends to the Shelby County Commission, which will be blocked from approving the MSCS annual budget until the oversight board gives its approval.

The effective takeover of the district comes amid increasing tensions between Tennessee Republicans, a majority-white party with supermajority power in the state, and local leaders in Memphis, a longtime Democratic stronghold with a majority-Black population. Last year, Republicans imposed a state and federal law enforcement surge because of immigration and crime concerns, and GOP lawmakers in May rushed to split the county’s congressional district to better favor Republican candidates.

A Memphis school board member in April called the oversight law “racist” as Tennessee Republicans, all of whom are white, will seize control from the locally elected school board, the majority of whom are Black. Memphis parents have expressed concern about funding and support for a predominantly Black school district.

The school board is considering its legal options to challenge the takeover and a companion law that effectively blocks them from using district funds to pay for legal action.

Not all Memphians are opposed to an oversight board after years of academic underperformance and leadership instability, which some say came to head after the local school board suddenly fired former Superintendent Marie Feagins in January 2025. There have been four MSCS superintendents in the last five years.

The school board last month finalized a permanent contract for then-interim Superintendent Roderick Richmond, potentially saddling the district with a nearly half-million dollar payout if he is fired without cause, often a first step in district takeovers.

But the oversight board law may provide the new board a loophole to avoid a payout. The oversight board can fire MSCS’ superintendent and appoint a new one with up to a four-year contract if they find any example of him contributing to “deficiencies in the management, accounting, or internal controls” of the district.

Per the new law, the oversight board must begin its work by July 1. The governor will appoint five board members, the majority of the board. Lt. Gov. Randy McNally and House Speaker Cameron Sexton, both Republicans, will get two picks each.

A spokesperson for McNally said he planned to make his appointments in “the very near future.”

Under the law, political leaders can remove and rename board members at any time, for any reason.

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

Majority of new Tennessee vouchers awarded to higher-income families

2026-05-12T13:39:26+00:00

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The majority of Tennessee’s new vouchers for the upcoming school year were awarded to higher-income families, despite new income rankings meant to prioritize lower-income families.

In February, the Tennessee Department of Education said nearly 17,500 new families applied for income-based Education Freedom Scholarship vouchers for private schools for the upcoming school year. New data shows that only 3,970 vouchers — just one-quarter of newly available vouchers — were awarded to those in the lowest income category, indicating that relatively few lower-income families applied or were eligible to participate in the program.

Republican Gov. Bill Lee quietly signed the expansion of the Education Freedom Scholarship into law on May 7, adding 15,000 seats to the program that started with 20,000 students this school year.

New income categories kicked in for the 2026-27 school year when applications opened up earlier this year. Lawmakers said the new categories would prioritize families with the highest financial needs.

But the latest data on new voucher recipients could fuel ongoing debates about the extent to which vouchers should help relatively well-off families, including those who’ve already sent their children to private schools without vouchers. The General Assembly this spring passed a law requiring the Tennessee Department of Education to provide lawmakers with more data about families in the program in the coming months.

Using 2024 federal data to determine student eligibility for free and reduced-price lunch, the state said that families of four earning less than $57,720 could apply for the vouchers under the lower-income category.

The new categories from highest to lowest priority for 2026-27 EFS vouchers were:

Priority 1 - Renewal applicants.
Priority 2 - Students whose family income does not exceed 100% of the free or reduced-price lunch income level, and students eligible for Tennessee’s other small voucher programs.
Priority 3 - Students whose family income does not exceed 300% of the free or reduced-price lunch income level.
Priority 4 - Current Tennessee public school students or incoming kindergarteners.
Priority 5 - All other eligible students.

The majority of the new vouchers – 9,360 – went to students in the Priority 3 category, where a family of four could earn up to $173,160 and still qualify to receive a voucher, which is valued at more than $7,500 for the upcoming school year.

Tennessee awarded the final 3,117 vouchers to Priority 4 applicants, which means at least 18% of newly available vouchers will be going to either first-time kindergartners or students leaving public schools.

Education officials announced 18,553 vouchers for the 2026-2027 school year will go to returning EFS students.

Previous school enrollment has been a major question mark in the universal voucher program’s first year. Education officials did not explicitly ask first-year applicants if they were switching from public to private schools or had previously attended a private school.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle previously criticized the lack of transparency in the program about students’ previous enrollment. They said it left taxpayers in the dark about whether the program significantly expanded private school access for public school students, or sent millions to students already enrolled in private schools.

But due to changes state lawmakers made to the program this year, the education department is now required to annually report the number of applications received from each county, the number of eligible applicants who were enrolled in public school, and details about applicants’ annual household income.

The department is required to submit its first annual Education Freedom Scholarships report by June 1 including student data from the 2025-26 school year. It will submit another report on Oct. 1 with data for the 2026-2027 school year. It’s not yet clear if the department, which denied multiple media requests last year for 2025-26 school year data on EFS students’ previous school enrollment, will now produce that data to state lawmakers.

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

Tennessee rolls back testing requirements in early voucher program

2026-04-23T18:09:24+00:00

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Tennessee Republicans have rolled back testing accountability measures in the state’s initial voucher program but backed down on a House plan to significantly expand the program to thousands of new students.

House Bill 1881, which passed both the Senate and House on Thursday, allows private schools receiving Education Savings Accounts funds to offer students the nationally normed reference test of their choosing instead of the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program.

Private schools can still offer the TCAP if they wish, though state testing requirements have for years been resisted by many private schools considering participating in Tennessee’s growing voucher programs.

Now, ESA accountability measures are aligned with the Education Freedom Scholarships program. While private schools will be required to submit some anonymized testing results, it will be difficult to determine an apples-to-apples comparison of student educational outcomes for the more than 40,000 Tennessee students using public funds to attend private schools.

Republicans pushing the legislation argue schools should be allowed to choose a test that aligns with their curriculum, which can vary widely by schools. Rep. William Slater, a Republican from Gallatin, said Thursday some ESA students are being tested twice to meet both the school’s and state’s requirements and deserve to have a streamlined process.

Slater acknowledged the state “can’t compare apples to oranges,” and public testing won’t be able to be compared to private testing. But Slater said private school student achievement can be measured against a cohort of students taking the same test in the state.

“This is not a public versus private, not a TCAP versus a nationally normed reference test. This is not rich versus poor,” Slater said. “This is simply fairness for these students whose parents have applied for the ESA and sent their children to these chosen schools.”

Democrats sharply criticized the measure. House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Ray Clemmons of Nashville said Thursday that lawmakers promised comparable accountability when the ESA program was pushed to lawmakers years ago.

A Tennessee Comptroller report from last winter that found ESA recipients continue to trail their public school peers in academic achievement, with exceptions in Memphis-Shelby County schools. Some Democrats have suggested Republicans are trying to sidestep similar reports in the future.

“You’re scared. You’re scared that this experiment is failing,” Rep. Sam McKenzie, a Knoxville Democrat, said. “Experiments are great. You get your hypothesis, and you perform your experiments. That’s a good thing, that’s the scientific way. But sometimes the measurement does not align with your hypothesis.”

Republicans tabled a last-minute amendment to use the bill to drastically expand the ESA program that appeared this week in an attempt to relieve the waitlist for students in the Education Freedom Scholarships program. The ESA program has been historically underutilized, in part because fewer private schools participate due to the testing requirements.

The amendment, which would have dropped all enrollment caps and expanded to Knox County, appeared to spook some in the GOP caucus as it circulated the Capitol. The Senate bill failed to pass on Wednesday as news spread of the expansion effort.

The legislation moved forward on Thursday after both the Senate and House sponsors repeatedly assured their colleagues that the bill would not expand the ESA program in any way.

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

Tennessee Republicans vote to take over Memphis-Shelby County schools

2026-04-23T00:13:59+00:00

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Tennessee Republicans have passed an unprecedented intervention of the Memphis-Shelby County school system that gives political appointees sweeping authority over the locally elected school board and the state’s largest school district.

The appointed oversight board will have four years to address what Republicans argue is untenable academic underperformance and administrative instability in the district, which serves more than 100,000 students.

The new law gives the oversight board, which could be appointed at any time and must convene for the first time before July, broad latitude to set performance metrics for the district. It could also control everything from firing and hiring a superintendent to textbooks and classroom curriculum. The new body would have final say over the district’s $1.7 billion budget and major decisions like school closures and zoning.

Tennessee Senate and House Republicans voted on the measure Wednesday. Gov. Bill Lee must sign the legislation into law before oversight board members can be appointed.

A Memphis school board member on Tuesday called the law “racist” because Tennessee Republicans, all of whom are white, will seize control from the locally elected school board in a majority Black and Democratic county.

The school board is considering its legal options, though Memphis Republicans pushed a new law to block school districts from funding lawsuits against accountability measures.

Takeover advocates argue intervention is needed to move the needle on Memphis test scores. Last year, more than 75% of Memphis students failed to achieve proficiency in reading and math. But the district earned the highest possible score in academic growth, or student improvement on state tests, for the fourth year in a row.

Democrats argue academic underperformance is affected by systemic socioeconomic realities of MSCS students and the whiplash of district changes over the years, like the failed Achievement School District enforced by the state.

Though Memphis takeover advocates say the new law is aimed squarely at MSCS, it could affect other Tennessee school districts down the line. The law will apply to any schools that meet four of six criteria: academic underperformance, chronic absenteeism, D or F school grades, and priority school status, financial mismanagement as determined by the Tennessee education commissioner, and leadership instability.

Officials from the Tennessee Department of Education this week testified 80% of Tennessee schools already meet two of the academic underperformance standards, with less than 50% of students scoring proficient or higher on state English and math tests.

In addition to MSCS, six other school districts meet three out of the six criteria, including two school districts operated by the state.

“This bill is not about any one district, any one city or county,” Memphis Republican Rep. Mark White, the bill sponsor, said. “It’s an important component in our statewide accountability framework that applies uniformly to every local education agency in the state of Tennessee.”

For now, only MSCS meets the leadership instability and financial mismanagement criteria, in large part due to an ongoing state-funded audit that hasn’t yet been completed.

A legal challenge of the bill will likely hinge in part on these provisions. House Democrats on Wednesday argued the targeted legislation violates the Tennessee Constitution.

“While this bill is written like it applies broadly, in fact it narrows and narrows until it lands on Memphis-Shelby County schools. It is targeted application,” Memphis Democratic Rep. Antonio Parkinson said.

Parkinson proposed a pared-back advisory board that would maintain local governance while providing an accountability structure, though it was voted down by Republicans. Parkinson called the politically appointed oversight board “complete unchecked power.”

Before the vote Wednesday night, MSCS General Counsel Justin Bailey said the district was waiting for a final bill decision to move forward with a lawsuit.

Bailey said the law that prevents the district from using its own funds to legally challenge state-imposed accountability measures doesn’t clearly define “accountability” — so the parameters it applies to are unclear.

Bri Hatch contributed to this report. Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

5 key takeaways from the Memphis schools takeover bill

2026-04-21T22:54:37+00:00

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The Memphis-Shelby County Schools takeover legislation is expected to get its final sign off from Tennessee Republican leaders on Wednesday, ushering in a state-appointed oversight board to control the district.

After two years of deliberation, state lawmakers advanced a unified plan Monday to create an MSCS board of managers that would control local budget and staffing decisions. Memphis school board members voted unanimously Tuesday to hire a lawyer to challenge that legislation.

But it’s unclear whether their effort will be stumped by a pending bill that would prevent districts from using public funds to sue over state accountability measures.

The takeover bill could ensnare other Tennessee school districts in state interventions. But right now, MSCS is the only local district that meets all six of the bill’s criteria focused on academic underperformance and management issues.

House Speaker Cameron Sexton and Senate leader Randy McNally need to approve the drafted legislation before it can go to the governor’s desk for signing.

In the meantime, here’s what you need to know about the takeover bill:

Oversight board would have sweeping power over district

The politically appointed oversight board would have sweeping authority over practically every aspect of Tennessee’s largest school district, from school building to textbook and curriculum issues.

It also could access student disciplinary records, annual teacher evaluations, and employment contracts.

The board could close or consolidate schools and would have final say over charter school decisions.

Lawmakers want the board to conduct a “comprehensive needs assessment” that would include evaluating district textbooks, curriculum and other teaching materials. This assessment would be used to set performance goals, which the legislation does not explicitly set for the board.

The oversight board would also have veto power over the district budget and the ability to craft its own budget for the district under certain circumstance.

Board members could shift with political winds

The legislation currently allows Tennessee’s top three elected Republicans to choose the entire board. Gov. Bill Lee would appoint five members of the board, Lt. Gov. Randy McNally would appoint two members, and House Speaker Cameron Sexton would appoint two members.

But those appointments are tied to the political offices, not the politicians themselves. Lee and McNally are both in their final months of office, with McNally retiring and term-limited Lee leaving office.

A new governor and lieutenant governor could decide to make their own appointments. The legislation allows board members to be replaced at any time for any reason.

New board could be appointed immediately

The oversight board could be appointed almost immediately.

In 2023, lawmakers vacated the Tennessee State University board of trustees over financial mismanagement concerns. Within hours of signing the legislation into law, Gov. Bill Lee appointed a new board.

A similar timeline could play out in Memphis, which could muddy ongoing school board races as voters determine who will hold exactly what power over Memphis-Shelby County schools. Early voting is ongoing in four school board district primaries ahead of the May 5 election day.

Lawmakers this week indicated they already have a list of board members in mind.

While lawmakers initially required all oversight board members to reside in Shelby County, that is no longer the case.

House sponsor Rep. Mark White requested that Sexton get an exception for one of his picks. While eight members of the board must be residents of Shelby County, Sexton would get to appoint one member from anywhere in the state of Tennessee.

White argued Sexton needed the flexibility to appoint outside of Shelby County in case there was an expertise gap to fill.

Superintendent Richmond’s contract could be on the line

The takeover bill gives the oversight members the power to fire MSCS’ superintendent with or without cause and appoint a new one with up to a four-year contract. That was the first step taken by state education leaders in Houston, a 2023 school takeover that Tennessee Republicans have frequently cited as a model.

Superintendent Roderick Richmond earned a three-year contract from the current school board on March 31. If he is fired without cause, MSCS would be forced to pay him nearly half a million dollars.

But the takeover legislation would make it easier for the oversight board to fire Richmond with cause, nullifying any required payout. The board could cite as cause for termination any refusal to follow their directives, or any example of him contributing to “deficiencies in the management, accounting, or internal controls of the LEA.”

State control could last up to six years

According to the takeover legislation, the state-appointed oversight board would be established by July 1.

Republican Governor Bill Lee would appoint five of the nine members, with the House and Senate speakers choosing two members each. An amendment added during the conference committee Monday allows one of those members to be a non-Shelby County resident, contradicting previous claims from takeover advocates that the oversight board would be made up of only district residents.

Those nine members will hold district authority for four years. But the takeover bill says that if MSCS continues to meet four or more of the criteria for intervention, lawmakers will choose a new set of nine representatives to lead MSCS for two more years.

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

Tennessee Republicans push for significant last-minute ESA voucher expansion

2026-04-21T17:07:57+00:00

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Tennessee Republicans want to drop all enrollment caps and expand eligibility to the state’s initial voucher program, effectively merging Tennessee’s two voucher programs as Gov. Bill Lee pushes lawmakers to provide state dollars to all families who applied to the Education Freedom Scholarships program this year.

A last-minute amendment tacked on to House Bill 1881 would substantially alter the Education Savings Account program, the state’s initial voucher program that is currently available to 12,500 income-capped families in Davidson, Shelby, and Hamilton counties.

House lawmakers are expected to consider the new amendment on Tuesday. If a majority approves the new language, it will mark the second time in two weeks that the Republican majority has made major last-minute changes to Tennessee’s voucher programs.

The House floor amendments have allowed voucher-friendly Republicans to push forward significant changes in tight votes while bypassing a thornier committee process, where amendments are debated at length and require multiple voting rounds to advance.

If finalized, the ESA bill changes would usher in a monumental shift to Tennessee’s school choice policies. Last year, lawmakers were assured the state’s universal EFS program was tightly controlled from expansion, limited to just 5,000 new students a year.

Now, voucher proponents in the Republican supermajority have blown past that cap to expand the EFS program to 35,000 students and are attempting to drop all enrollment caps to the ESA program in Tennessee’s most populous counties.

House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Ray Clemmons criticized the last-minute amendment Tuesday morning.

“At the eleventh hour, Gov. Bill Lee and Republicans are attempting to put the final dagger in our public schools and blow up our state budget by eliminating all caps on the voucher scams and removing any accountability whatsoever,” Clemmons said.

The new amendment would include Knox County in the ESA program, opening it up to as many eligible students in the four counties as possible. The bill would also significantly roll back accountability measures and testing requirements on the ESA program.

Republicans also look to expand eligibility by increasing the income eligibility cap from 200% of the federal free and reduced price lunch threshold to 400%. This would be about $171,600 for a family of four, under the federal guidelines for the upcoming school year, well above Tennessee’s median family income.

The ESA program provides up to $9,787 per student this school year, nearly $2,000 more than the EFS voucher.

The ESA program has been historically underused, in part due to its testing requirements that require participating private schools to administer Tennessee state tests to ESA students.The testing requirement was a crucial reason the program passed the legislature by a single vote in 2018, as many lawmakers argued an apples-to-apples comparison was needed to determine student academic progress. But many private schools do not want to offer the state tests.

Now, some Republicans want to drop those testing requirements, which would likely encourage more private schools to participate in the ESA. Participating schools could either offer a “nationally norm-referenced” test, which can vary widely in their content, or offer the state standardized tests.

The new amendment also aims to stop requiring annual audits of the ESA program and drops the requirement that the state measure academic growth in the program with the same TVAAS scoring metrics public schools are held to.

Republicans backing the measure say ESA testing requirements need to be aligned with the EFS, and that private schools should have the flexibility to choose a test that aligns with their curriculum.

But the effort follows a Tennessee Comptroller report from last winter that found ESA recipients continue to trail their public school peers in academic achievement, with some exceptions in Memphis-Shelby County schools.

With the testing changes, it will not be possible to accurately compare and contrast academic progress among Tennessee students, Democrats opposed to the measure argue.

The House is expected to vote on the amendment on Tuesday, April 21, though schedules are shifting quickly as the General Assembly looks to wrap up its session this week. The Senate could take up its version at any time.

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

Memphis schools takeover push could target other Tennessee districts

2026-04-20T19:11:13+00:00

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Tennessee Republicans took one step closer to seizing major controls from the Memphis-Shelby County school district on Monday in a takeover effort that could eventually affect other school systems across the state.

The legislation would install a politically appointed oversight board in any Tennessee school district that meets four of six criteria of academic underperformance and management instability.

Republicans on Monday approved a conference committee bill, which will now move to full House and Senate votes this week.

The nine-person oversight board would be empowered to fire any district employee, including the superintendent, with or without cause. It would also have veto power over the district budget.

The bill would become law immediately if passed, meaning Tennessee Republicans could appoint an oversight board amid ongoing school board elections in Memphis.

Memphis takeover advocates have argued intervention is needed due to consistent academic underperformance in the state’s largest school district. But Tennessee Department of Education officials testified on Monday that a majority of school districts meet the same academic underperformance criteria, and seven school districts meet three of four performance standards.

Those districts include Campbell, Cocke, Madison, Lewis, and Shelby counties, in addition to the state-run Achievement School District and the Tennessee Public Charter School district.

Under draft legislation proposed by a conference committee this week, the state could install an oversight board in school districts where:

fewer than 50% of students earn proficient scores on state standardized math tests.
fewer than 50% of students earn proficient scores on state standardized English language arts tests.
25% or more of schools in the district earn a D or F letter grade from the Tennessee Department of Education.
and a 25% or higher chronic absenteeism rate.

Rep. Mark White, a Memphis Republican who is co-sponsoring the effort to intervene in Memphis schools, noted MSCS is the only state district that meets all of those criteria.

The final two designations include the commissioner of education, a political appointee, determining whether an audit shows deficiencies in district management, and whether the local board of education has employed more than two superintendents or directors of schools in the last four years.

Memphis is the only district in the state with an ongoing state-funded forensic audit managed by the Tennessee’s Comptroller audit, though school districts are routinely examined in lower-profile audits.

“It highlights that this legislation was written very surgically to apply only to Memphis and Shelby County schools,” said Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Memphis Democrat who called the intervention effort “heavy-handed.”

Takeover or intervention?

Memphis Republicans pushing for intervention argue the effort is not a state takeover of Tennessee’s largest district, as lawmakers or the Department of Education would not directly control decisions within the district. The majority of the oversight board members must be residents of Shelby County.

However, the new legislation gives elected Republicans in Tennessee broad authority to craft or even trigger an oversight board, given the commissioner of education authority included in the legislation. The governor would appoint five oversight board members, and the House and Senate speakers would get two appointees each.

The oversight board would seize major financial controls from the Memphis-Shelby County school board, whose primary authority is to set the district’s operating budget and manage the district’s superintendent.

Under the draft legislation, the school board would have to submit its proposed budget to the oversight body for approval. The oversight body could veto any or all line items in the budget.

The oversight board could even rewrite the entire district’s budget under certain circumstances, if the school board doesn’t meet the oversight board’s timeline for revising the budget.

The draft legislation also inserts some control over the local legislative body, which in Memphis’ case would be the Shelby County Board of Commissioners. It would block the local body from signing off on the district’s budget without the oversight board’s approval.

Tennessee Republicans frequently point to the 2023 state takeover of Houston public schools as a model for MSCS’ intervention, where state education leaders immediately fired and appointed a new superintendent.

The current MSCS board unanimously approved a three-year permanent contract for Superintendent Roderick Richmond on March 31. That contract puts the district on the hook for a nearly half-million dollar payout if the new state board decides to fire Richmond without cause.

But the new bill would make it easier for the oversight board to fire Richmond with cause. The board could cite as cause for termination any refusal of the superintendent to follow their directives, or contributing to “deficiencies in the management, accounting, or internal controls of the LEA.”

The legislation calls for the oversight board to conduct a comprehensive needs assessment that would essentially audit teacher staffing levels, including reviewing results of annual teacher evaluations. The board would be authorized to review any and all records from the district, including teacher evaluation records and student disciplinary reports.

The oversight board would then be tasked with developing a “transformation plan that identifies performance and operational goals” in the district.

The board could hire a contractor to draw up those assessments and plans.

The oversight board would be subject to Tennessee’s open meetings and public records law. No other criteria are outlined in the draft legislation. Oversight board members could be removed by the governor and legislative leaders at any time, for any reason.

Oversight board members must be compensated at the same rate as school board members under the legislation. They can hire up to three staff members total, in addition to reassigning a staff member from the district office. The district must pay for those salaries, but they can petition the Department of Education for some funding.

“It would almost be like you’re paying for two school boards,” Akbari said.

Costs rise for audit, intervention model

Intervention advocates, led by Memphis Republicans and party leaders like House Speaker Cameron Sexton, have funneled even more state dollars into the audit effort. Gov. Bill Lee is directing another $1.7 million to complete the audit in next year’s budget, which grows the total price tag of the audit to $8.7 million.

And it’s possible lawmakers could direct another $1 million to help fund a new oversight board.

The nearly $10 million in state funds far outpaces the potential fraud and waste findings revealed by the audit thus far. The ongoing financial audit, which covers a three-year period, revealed around $1.1 million in funds that auditors said could be potential waste and abuse. Another $1.7 million was flagged as spending misaligned with district policies that didn’t rise to waste and abuse thresholds.

That amounts to less than 1% of the district’s operating budget over the three-year period being audited.

Tennessee Republican leaders suggested the early findings were among the worst audit findings they had ever seen, pointing to mismanagement of employee paperwork and alleged cooperation issues with district officials.

Democrats on Monday pushed back on these assertions. Akbari, the Memphis Democrat, pointed to previous school audits in Maury and Polk counties, which found millions in mismanaged funds and major control failures. Neither of those audits triggered a state-funded forensic audit or state intervention.

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

Will TN voucher program expand by 15,000 or 20,000 seats? House and Senate are at odds on details.

2026-04-07T23:51:48+00:00

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The Tennessee General Assembly could vote on a proposal to expand the state’s school voucher program within days, though Republican lawmakers in the Senate and House are at odds on how large the program’s second-year expansion should be.

The legislation cleared its final House committee on Tuesday. Committee members voted to simplify the House bill just days after Republicans inserted a controversial student immigration tracking requirement into the bill.

The House version no longer includes any reference to immigration status tracking.

The Senate proposal, which could be scheduled for a Senate floor vote at any time, would expand the Education Freedom Scholarships program by 15,000 seats. With an existing 5,000-seat expansion already baked into the program for next school year, the Senate bill would increase it to 40,000 seats for the 2026-2027 school year.

In the House, where the legislation has moved more slowly, the bill would cap next year’s expansion at 10,000 seats plus the 5,000-seat expansion, for a total of 35,000 seats.

Republican leadership in the House and Senate have just a few weeks to align on the details if they want to significantly expand Gov. Bill Lee’s school choice program in its second school year. Lee has already carved out more than $303 million in public dollars next fiscal year to help send 40,000 students to private schools across the state. It’s one of his largest new spending priorities in his final year as governor.

Pulling back on Lee’s proposal would leave lawmakers more money to fund other legislation.

The House version also tweaks the “hold harmless” provision of the original EFS bill, which was created to provide stable funding to public schools if they experience disenrollment. Previously, public schools were able to maintain their funding floor for any disenrollment.

The new House bill would track students withdrawing from public schools to participate in the EFS program. Public schools would still receive hold harmless funding for those students, but not for students withdrawing for other reasons.

The House version also includes a transparency provision that the Senate bill does not have. Under the House bill, the Tennessee Department of Education would have to publish an annual report on the number of applications received from each county, the number of applicants enrolled in a public school, and data on applicants’ household income.

The Tennessee Department of Education last year faced criticism from voucher opponents and some lawmakers for its lack of timely data on who exactly is benefiting from the public program. The department has said the law establishing the program did not require them to track or report certain information, such as how many public school students were benefiting from it.

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

Tennessee elementary schools might limit classroom digital device use under pending law

2026-04-03T18:00:43+00:00

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Tennessee elementary schools could limit classroom digital devices under new legislation aimed at minimizing screen time for young students, even on educational electronic devices.

The General Assembly this week finalized legislation that will require schools serving kindergarten through fifth grade to develop a policy to limit the use of electronic devices and block any students from accessing social media during school hours.

Senate Bill 2310 was significantly dialed back from its original form, which sought to totally ban digital educational devices like Chromebooks for young students except in special circumstances, such as in individualized education programs for students with disabilities.

Some lawmakers and educators raised concerns about instructional tools already deeply integrated into the classroom, such as digital whiteboards. The legislation that passed would allow schools to set their own policies while prioritizing “in-person, teacher-led” instruction.

The Tennessee legislation, which still has to be signed into law by Gov. Bill Lee, gives local districts broad discretion to continue using devices as long as they believe the device serves an “instructional purposes for which such use provides a clear educational benefit.”

The pending law is part of a growing national backlash to educational technology that comes after an earlier push to ban recreational screen time for students. Last year, Tennessee required schools to enforce smart phone bans, though many school systems already had restriction policies in place.

Concerns about the effects of screen time for children have also coincided with a national decline in reading and math achievement in recent years, sparking a flurry of public debate about the use of educational technology inside the classroom.

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

House Republicans tie immigrant student tracking to Tennessee voucher expansion bill

2026-04-01T18:49:25+00:00

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Tennessee House Republicans have inserted a student immigration tracking requirement into a pending voucher program expansion bill, linking two of the most controversial policies affecting state public schools in recent years.

House Bill 2532, which passed a key House subcommittee on Wednesday with a new amendment that took many by surprise, would add public school administrative requirements while also funneling more public dollars for 35,000 students attending private schools.

The new version of the bill ties student immigration status to the voucher program’s hold harmless clause, which maintains current levels of public school funding even if there is disenrollment when students switch to private schools.

The clause essentially established a funding floor for Tennessee public schools, a key point that helped pass Gov. Bill Lee’s initial Education Freedom Scholarships program last year.

Under the newly amended House bill, public schools would only maintain their funding floor for disenrolled students they could prove held legal citizenship or immigration status.

“To comply with it, districts would have to collect immigration status on all students. That creates a really troubling challenge for districts from an administrative perspective. More importantly, it will have a chilling effect on immigrant students,” said Jenny Mills McFerron, an assistant director at EdTrust Tennessee.

“This bill will modify the floor and create transparency as it relates to those currently being funded in our TISA school systems,” said Chairman Ryan Williams, who sponsored the amendment.

Republicans’ goal this session of forcing schools to collect data on all public school students has otherwise failed or hit serious roadblocks with other pieces of legislation.

The immigrant student tracking issue has drawn heated pushback from education and immigrant advocates, as well as hesitancy from some Republicans wary of drawing children into an increasingly politicized debate over immigration issues.

Republicans in favor of tracking student status argue the data is needed to better understand how many undocumented students are attending state public schools, framing it as a resource scarcity issue. However, Tennessee schools are largely funded through local sales taxes, meaning any resident of a community is paying into the school system when buying groceries or gas.

“It is interesting that at the same time we’re passing this massive expansion of public funding for private schools, and continuing to invest even more dollars in that program beyond what was originally projected last year, we’re now tying it to this issue that has been focused on resource scarcity,” Mills McFerron said.

Another legislative effort underway for more than a year sought to challenge Plyler v. Doe, the longstanding U.S. Supreme Court decision guaranteeing a right to a public education to all children in the country. That effort may have permanently stalled, though, over disagreements between Senate and House Republicans about the best path forward.

Tying the documentation mechanism to the voucher expansion bill could also further complicate the governor’s plan to double the voucher program in its second year from 20,000 seats to 40,000.

The new House version passed on Wednesday dials back Lee’s plan slightly, offering up a total of 35,000 seats for next year’s expansion.

With the new House amendment, the lower chamber’s voucher expansion plan differs significantly from the Senate version, which is slated for a full floor vote any day.

The new version also includes a new reporting clause requiring the Tennessee Department of Education to collect data on students applying for the program, including whether they were previously enrolled in a public or private school. The department has said it didn’t collect this data in the first year because it wasn’t explicitly required to.

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

Is Memphis pulling too many students with disabilities from taking state standardized tests?

2026-03-30T12:00:00+00:00

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Tennessee education leaders say too many Memphis-Shelby County students with disabilities are being opted out of taking state standardized tests each year, stripping them of the ability to earn traditional high school diplomas.

Disability advocates caution that the increasing number of alternate test-takers is lowering expectations and future opportunities for students with disabilities. It also jeopardizes federal funding to Tennessee, which can trickle down to local districts.

Only students with “the most significant cognitive disabilities” are meant to take alternate versions of the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP, according to the state department of education. The federal government sets a cap for alternate tests at 1% of students in each state.

But MSCS leaders say the federal cap ignores difficult realities faced by the district.

In Memphis-Shelby County Schools, the figure of alternate test-takers is close to 2.4% – meaning just over 2,500 students take the modified test each year. That’s 1,500 more students than it should be, according to the federal cap.

MSCS Superintendent Roderick Richmond said the district is being “scrutinized” by the state for that discrepancy.

“People feel like disproportionately we have too many students being identified as having special needs,” he said in a district budget meeting earlier this month.

Tennessee education leaders can’t require local school districts to hit the 1% threshold. But when the state average exceeds that, the U.S. Department of Education can reject a state waiver and put conditions on Title I funding as it has for Tennessee in the past three years. The state’s percentage of alternate test-takers has hovered around 1.4% since 2017.

If Tennessee’s waiver keeps getting denied, there could be harsher funding consequences that would impact local districts, the Tennessee Department of Education said.

Plus, taking alternate state tests comes with significant consequences for students. They are taught a more limited curriculum, and can’t earn a traditional high school diploma, which stifles future job opportunities.

Karen Harrison, executive director of disability nonprofit TNSTEP, said over-identifying alternate test-takers sets up a “parallel system with lower expectations and fewer opportunities” for an already vulnerable population of students.

“What may begin as an attempt to support a student can, if misapplied, unintentionally restrict that student’s academic growth and future pathways,” Harrison said in an emailed statement.

That’s why districts need to be extra vigilant in following the qualification criteria, said Alison Gauld, manager of disabilities for the Tennessee Department of Education. Students who take alternate tests must have support needs that are “dramatically different” from their peers, she said in a 2024 presentation.

Richmond and other local officials argue that they are following state standards for identifying alternative test-takers. As the largest urban school district in the state, MSCS has high levels of students living in poverty and Black students, who are disproportionately diagnosed with disabilities.

“We’re being penalized for something that we can’t help,” said Shaunta Broadway, the district’s director of student support services, in the early March meeting. “If [students] are coming to us and they have to take the alternative assessment where they are, it’s going to be hard for us to get down to just 1% when they’re coming in at a rate faster than that.”

In an emailed statement, MSCS said its disability education staff meet with TDOE representatives every month to review progress in reducing the alternate test-taking numbers.

The district’s Department of Exceptional Education has also expanded training for all special education teachers and relevant administrators, who make the yearly assessments for who takes the alternative tests.

“Our goal is to increase students participating in the general education curriculum more than 80% of the school day and working toward a general education diploma,” the statement said.

The percentage of MSCS students taking the modified state tests increased from 1.9% in 2020 to 2.4% in the 2023-24 school year. It stayed steady in 2024-25, MSCS said in a statement. The district did not answer questions about what caused that increase.

But Angela Whitelaw, the district’s chief academic officer, said in the March meeting that she expects the percentage to increase this year.

“While our numbers aren’t extremely high, they’re much higher than the federal and state want them to be,” she said.

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

Tennessee state board committee recommends ‘corrective action’ for underperforming Memphis schools

2026-03-24T22:58:49+00:00

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Memphis-Shelby County schools that have received D or F school letter grades for at least two years are heavily reliant on unlicensed teachers, district officials testified Tuesday at a state accountability hearing.

More than half of the teachers at 14 schools that have received either a D or F in Tennessee’s school grading system are working on emergency or temporary permits, mirroring an ongoing state trend showing a rapid rise in non-credentialed teachers.

Memphis officials testified before a three-person committee of the Tennessee State Board of Education, which is holding a week of accountability hearings for 18 districts with schools that have received failing letter grades for at least two years in a row.

The committee recommended a “corrective action plan” for Memphis schools, a plan that could include state monitoring, needs assessments made by external third parties, and set performance targets. Details on the plan won’t be finalized for months as the accountability process plays out.

The district is already implementing “scripted” lesson plans and curriculum guides, in addition to deploying regional superintendents for curriculum “fidelity” checks in an effort to address student learning gaps at underperforming schools.

“The scripted lessons are particularly vital for supporting our influx of permit teachers, which are notably higher in these schools,” the district said in a strategic planning document submitted to the state board.

The hearing committee praised Memphis officials for their preparation and school-level data informing issues like chronic absenteeism and academic underperformance.

“Of all the districts we’ve interviewed so far, this district has presented its root causes better than any other we’ve heard,” State Board of Education chair Bob Eby said. “I think you understand what your challenges are.”

The MSCS schools facing a corrective plan include:

A.B. Hill Elementary, dropped from a D to an F
Carver College and Career Academy, two years of F grades
Douglass K-8, two years of F grades
Geeter School, dropped from a D to an F
Grandview Heights Middle, dropped from a D to an F
Hickory Ridge Middle, dropped from a D to an F
Kate Bond Middle, dropped from a D to an F
Kingsbury Middle, two years of F grades
Mt. Pisgah Middle, two years of F grades
Raleigh Egypt Middle, dropped from a D to an F
Robert R. Church Elementary, dropped from a D to an F
Sherwood Elementary, dropped from a D to an F
Treadwell Elementary, two years of F grades

Though Chickasaw Middle School was also on the list, board members voted earlier this year to close the school amid a long-term facilities restructuring in the district.

If the full Tennessee State Board of Education signs off on corrective action recommendations in May, local districts will work with the Tennessee Department of Education to design and implement corrective plans.

School districts will face more severe consequences, including audits and investigations, if they are called for subsequent accountability hearings.

“These conversations are not meant to be punitive in nature, not a ‘gotcha’ conversation,” said vice-chair Darrell Cobbins. “It’s more of a conversation about how do we get these schools off the list that they’re on and on an upward trajectory ensuring the students are successful and served well.”

Cobbins on Tuesday told Memphis officials the accountability committee had one of two options, either take no action or recommend a corrective plan. He appeared satisfied with the strategies Memphis officials shared and hoped the corrective plan would guarantee they were “codified” into district plans.

“Today’s hearing was a productive and important step forward,” MSCS board chair Natalie McKinney said in a Tuesday statement. “We appreciate the State Board’s thoughtful questions, their focus on students, and their willingness to work alongside Memphis-Shelby County Schools. Our Board is committed to strong accountability, strategic investment, and ensuring that every decision we make is centered on improving outcomes for our students. We are aligned on the urgency of this work, and now, the real work continues.”

It’s the first year schools have been subject to the hearings under a 2022 law establishing a state board-level accountability mechanism tied to its student funding formula and a 2016 state law that established the school grading system, which is tied to student performance on the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program.

The grading system was initially plagued by pandemic delays and systemic testing issues before it was completely revamped in 2023. In a controversial decision, state education officials chose to emphasize academic achievement, or proficiency, over academic growth.

Accountability hearings will continue through the week for Metro Nashville Public Schools, Hardeman County Schools, Fayette County Public Schools, Jackson-Madison County School System, Haywood County Schools, Robertson County Schools, Cocke County School District, Carter County Schools, Hamilton County Schools, Polk County Schools, Monroe County Schools, Knox County Schools, Sevier County School System, and Union County Public Schools.

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

GOP push to expand Tennessee voucher program to 40K students clears first hurdle

2026-03-10T20:12:10+00:00

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A GOP push to double the number of students in Tennessee’s voucher program cleared its first hurdle in the General Assembly on Tuesday.

Gov. Bill Lee and Republican leadership want lawmakers to sign off on a voucher expansion plan that would grow the program — which is in its first year — to 40,000 students. If Republican lawmakers are successful, the change could direct $303 million in public dollars to private schools in the state next school year.

The K-12 education subcommittee voted Tuesday morning 5-3 to advance House Bill 2352, the first official vote on the expansion leaders have been calling for since last fall. Subcommittee chair Kirk Haston, a Republican from Lobelville, joined two Democrats in voting against the bill.

Another vote is expected Wednesday in the Senate Education Committee.

The push to double the program’s size comes just a year after lawmakers passed the initial Education Freedom Scholarship — or EFS — legislation that included an annual cap on growth of 5,000 new seats, which voucher supporters at the time argued would prevent the program from growing too rapidly.

“This is the first year we’ve had this program, and we’re already doubling it because people applied for it,” said Rep. Sam McKenzie, a Knoxville Democrat who voted against the expansion on Tuesday. “This is not the time to expand a voucher program that’s not proven. We don’t have the data on it.”

In current law, Tennessee can legally expand the program from 20,000 students to 25,000 students for next school year, due to the number of applications it received for the program.

The Tennessee Department of Education last month reported 58,000 students applied for the program next year, including 18,644 students currently enrolled in the program who have applied for a renewal.

Last year, 10,000 vouchers were reserved for first-come, first-served applicants. The other half were limited to families who earned 300% or less of the federal income threshold for students to be eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.

“The vast majority of these went to hard-working Tennesseans that are struggling to just pay their bills,” House Majority Leader William Lamberth, a Portland Republican sponsoring the bill, said when answering questions about which Tennesseans are benefiting from the program.

The department has not released household income-related data about voucher recipients.

“They feel like — and I trust these parents to be able to make the best decisions for their child’s education — that their child should be able to take advantage of one of these scholarships,” Lamberth said.

Renewal applications for next school year were prioritized and accepted by the state, but families that applied for the program for the first time this year are now stuck in limbo. Their applications are pending but unable to move forward until lawmakers decide on expansion proposals and determine exactly how many vouchers will be available.

Lee has continually pointed to the high level of demand for the program as the sole reason to expand it. There is no data yet indicating the program leads to better outcomes for Tennessee students.

“As you know, we’ve only had those scholarships available for one year, so there’s no data yet that would be of any value,” Lee said last month.

The program requires participants to take a nationally standardized achievement test or the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program. Private schools accepting vouchers must report the test results in June to the Office of Research and Education Accountability, or OREA, in the Tennessee Comptroller’s office. Lawmakers are also set to be notified about test results annually.

While there are a few bipartisan efforts to enforce some accountability measures on the program, they have been knocked back by the Republican supermajority so far in the 2026 legislative session.

In February, Republicans voted down a proposal from McKenzie that would have required the OREA prepare a public report on student demographics in the EFS program and study how many vouchers went to students already enrolled in private schools.

The state education department has denied requests from the media and state lawmakers for data related to previous school enrollment, arguing it was not required to track students’ previous enrollment and therefore cannot report those numbers.

Lawmakers like Rep. Caleb Hemmer, a Nashville Democrat, have locked heads with the department over the issue. Hemmer is now pushing for a larger data transparency bill that could open the department up to more requests from elected officials.

Meanwhile, a Republican-backed bill would require the department to produce an annual report on the program including information on previous school enrollment, annual household incomes, and third-party contract administrative costs.

That legislation, House Bill 1544, could receive its first hearing this week. It is sponsored by Rep. Jody Barrett, a Dickson Republican who has publicly opposed voucher programs in the state.

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

Tennessee GOP effort to track K-12 student immigration status advances

2026-03-04T22:52:20+00:00

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Tennessee Republicans continue to advance legislation that would require public schools track and report the immigration status of their students despite heated pushback from local educators.

House Bill 793 would require schools to start tracking and reporting anonymized data on students’ immigration status as early as next school year.

But an amendment filed Wednesday indicates a controversial 2025 effort to either block undocumented students from enrolling in K-12 schools or charge their families tuition is dead for the year.

Bill sponsors previously wanted to use the legislation as a vehicle to challenge the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Plyler v. Doe that protects access to public education for undocumented students.

Senate Republicans passed Senate Bill 836, the bill to charge tuition, last spring (Tennessee has two-year legislative sessions). But its House companion bill stalled amid bipartisan concerns that it could have jeopardized more than $1 billion in federal education funding.

House Majority Leader William Lamberth, a Republican from Portland who sponsors the HB 793, has repeatedly said he was in discussions with the U.S. Department of Education for further guidance on the bill, including a guarantee it wouldn’t jeopardize Tennessee’s federal funding.

That guidance has not materialized, even after Republican leadership said it had worked closely with the Trump White House to develop a hardline immigration package this year.

Lamberth has instead dialed back the bill to a documentation bill at odds with the Senate version.

“We’ve sent several questions to them to try to get answers to a very straightforward question: Would the bill in the previous form endanger $1.1 billion? We have not been given a guarantee that it would not,” Lamberth said.

HB 793 passed out of a House finance subcommittee on Wednesday and is now headed for a hearing in the full committee next week.

The new House bill requires Tennessee public schools to collect documentation on either a student’s citizenship or immigration status. Schools would then be required to report that anonymized data to the Tennessee Department of Education, legislative leaders, and the Tennessee Immigration Enforcement office. That sparked concerns from some immigration advocates about data privacy.

It’s not yet clear if Senate Republicans would agree to changes to the bill. But even dialing back the legislation to a documentation effort could lead to a legal challenge to Plyer.

In 2012, a federal appeals court ruled a similar Alabama law requiring schools to check students’ immigration status when they enrolled was unconstitutional.

Tennessee educators have criticized the legislation, decrying it as both unfair to children and an impractical logistical burden to place on schools whose resources are already stretched thin.

The bipartisan Knox County Board of Education late last year voted to formally oppose immigration documentation requirements. On Wednesday, Knox County Board Member Katherine Bike testified against the legislation in a committee room packed with protesters.

Bike cited a report released this week by the Immigration Research Initiative that estimated requiring Tennessee schools to verify and track the status of 963,000 students could cost the state up to $55 million and require hundreds of new school employees. The legislature’s fiscal analysis has not determined an estimated cost to local districts.

However, the state’s documentation requirements for its recently implemented voucher program, which does not accept undocumented immigrants, show verifying special immigration status such as specialized visa documentation can be complex.

“Where are we going to come up with this money? Is that our special education services that are going to be cut ? Is that our Student Support department, our security budget?” Bike asked. “Where is it going to come from? We always make do but don’t make us do this. I urge you to vote no on this harmful bill.”

Meanwhile, a separate bill that could also require student tracking is progressing through the General Assembly. House Bill 1711 is set up as a trigger bill, meaning it would not be enforced unless the Supreme Court’s Plyler v. Doe ruling is overturned.

A Wednesday committee vote on HB 1711 was delayed until next week.

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

Tennessee teachers face new licensure test requirement under proposed bill

2026-03-03T22:38:25+00:00

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Could you pass a 100-question U.S. citizenship test?

Aspiring Tennessee teachers may soon have to do that to earn their state licensure under new legislation currently being considered in the General Assembly.

The Tennessee Civics Education Act would require aspiring Tennessee teachers to score 70% or higher on a 100-question U.S. civics test to earn their practitioner teaching license, adding a new testing prerequisite on top of existing licensure requirements like the PRAXIS exam.

The bill would require the Tennessee Department of Education to craft the test using 100 questions from the standard U.S. citizenship test, which requires applicants to answer 12 out of 20 questions correctly drawn from a 128-question pool.

Lawmakers have not settled on which Tennessee teachers the proposed law would apply to, though. While the Senate version of the bill would apply to all aspiring teachers, House lawmakers on Tuesday applied an amendment that would limit the test to teachers seeking licensure in grade 6 -12 in social studies, history, government, or civics subjects.

Tennessee would enforce the new testing requirement as early as January 2027, if the measure ultimately passes into law.

Tennessee Republicans have largely backed the bill, advancing it through its first committee hurdles last month and giving it another favorable vote in the House Education Committee on Tuesday.

Sen. Brent Taylor, a Memphis Republican who is sponsoring the Senate version of the bill, said any K-12 teacher in the state should have a “functioning understanding of what it means to be an American and how our system of government works.”

“I don’t think it’s too much to ask somebody who’s going to spend eight hours a day with our students, teaching them, that they understand American civics,” Taylor said.

Democrats have largely opposed the measure due to concerns with additional licensing burdens for Tennessee teachers.

“Teachers already have a lot of steps they have to take for licensure,” said Senate Minority Leader Raumesh Akbari, a Democrat from Memphis.

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

Immigration trigger bill would require Tennessee schools to track, report student status

2026-02-17T23:30:09+00:00

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A controversial proposed law that would require public schools to track and report the immigration status of their students advanced in the Tennessee House on Tuesday despite pushback from educators and immigrant advocates.

House Bill 1711 is the second piece of legislation currently in the Tennessee General Assembly that could require educators to report the legal status of public school students in the state.

It is not yet clear how the bills could be implemented without running afoul of federal education policy and endangering the more than $1 billion in federal education funding Tennessee currently relies on to help fund its public schools.

A 1982 U.S. Supreme Court case, Plyler v. Doe, established a longstanding legal precedent that it is unconstitutional to deny children access to a public education based on their immigration status.

Last year, Tennessee Senate Republicans passed Senate Bill 836, which was aimed at overturning the Plyler precedent, despite objections from Democrats and some Republicans who criticized the effort to draw children into a political debate over immigration issues.

The House companion bill stalled in committee over concerns it would jeopardize Tennessee’s federal education funding. The House sponsor, Majority Leader William Lamberth, requested further guidance from the U.S. Department of Education.

That guidance is forthcoming, Lamberth said earlier this year, and Republican leaders want to push forward with the bill this year.

The U.S. Department of Education has not returned a Chalkbeat Tennessee request for comment, though, nor has it taken a public position on the legislation over the past year as lawmakers have discussed the issue.

House Bill 1711 is written as a trigger law, which means Tennessee public schools would not be required to track and report the immigration status of students until the Plyler precedent has been overturned. Tennessee Republicans have passed similar trigger laws on other issues in the past, such as the state’s abortion ban that was inactive until the fall of Roe v. Wade.

Rep. Elaine Davis, a Republican from Knoxville, is sponsoring the legislation. Davis on Tuesday argued that local officials need to know the immigration status of people accessing public benefits, such as public education, social services, and public medical benefits for financial accountability.

“We are a nation of laws,” Davis said. “We have a social contract with each other. Part of that duty and responsibility is to make sure we’re not ripping each other off. If people are here taking advantage of services and dollars we have specifically set aside for our citizens and our communities, that to me is a violation of our laws.”

Tennessee public schools are largely funded through sales taxes, which are paid by all consumers in a community regardless of immigration status.

A Tennessee teacher testified against the bill on Tuesday, arguing the bill would “introduce fear and distrust in our schools.”

“Do you want schools to focus on positive student academic outcomes, or do you want schools to be an instrument of immigration enforcement?” said Betsy Hobkirk, who has been an elementary school teacher in Knox County for 15 years. “How would immigrant status data be collected in an educational system that is already overtaxed? It would divert resources away from our mission of educating children.”

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

Memphis students won’t have to make up snow days

2026-02-11T01:09:05+00:00

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Memphis-Shelby County Schools will not have to make up any of the 10 days the district was closed after a winter ice storm.

The The department’s communications director confirmed that the district received a waiver from the Tennessee Department of Education on Tuesday. MSCS students did not attend class for two full weeks after a winter storm on Jan. 24 caused unsafe road conditions.

That time off exhausted the district’s built-in snow days for this year, because there were only eight set aside for inclement weather. Without the waiver, MSCS students could have faced an extended school year or shortened breaks to make up missed class time.

In an emailed statement Tuesday, MSCS officials said the district met criteria for the waiver “due to the storm’s widespread effects and the district’s exhaustion of stockpile days.” The waiver specifically covers closures on Jan. 26 through Jan. 30, the week following the winter storm.

“These closures were necessary due to hazardous conditions caused by a significant winter ice storm that impacted campuses, transportation routes, and the overall safety of students and staff,” MSCS said in its statement. “The waiver fully covers the five affected dates and affirms that no additional instructional time will be required to compensate for the closures.”

Ricki Collins, director of communications for the state education department, said these emergency waivers are “a bit of a moving target and continually evolving.”

“We are actively supporting districts that require additional guidance,” Collins said in an email.

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

Gov. Bill Lee wants $155 million to fund 20,000 new vouchers

2026-02-03T00:05:16+00:00

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Gov. Bill Lee wants Tennessee lawmakers to invest more than $155 million into the state’s voucher program, which would double the Education Freedom Scholarships pool from 20,000 to 40,000 private school vouchers.

Lee’s proposed budget also would more than double the costs of the program and blow past the expansion cap lawmakers voted on last year, growing the program beyond its original limits despite little data to indicate the program is impacting student achievement.

If Lee achieves his goal, Tennessee would spend more than $303 million in public dollars next fiscal year to help send 40,000 students to private schools across the state.

“Last year, we gave families school choice with the Education Freedom Scholarship program, because parents know best,” Lee said Monday night at his final State of the State address. “Clearly, Tennesseans like freedom. Last year, we received more than 40,000 applications, and this year, 54,000 applications so far for 20,000 spots. That means, right now, 34,000 students are still waiting for a shot at Education Freedom. We owe it to them.”

The proposed EFS program costs would be a fraction of the overall $7.9 billion proposed for the K-12 education budget. But the voucher expansion would account for one-third of the state’s total year-over-year increase in education funding.

In his budget proposal released on Monday, Lee called for nearly $380 million of new funds for K-12 education in the state. Though the total K-12 budget has grown, it is the lowest proposed new spending infusion for education in the last five years.

Lee on Monday indicated voucher expansion will be a major legislative goal in his final year in office. He introduced special guest Milton Nettles, who is the principal of Lighthouse Christian Academy in Antioch.

“Once a public school teacher himself, he believes parents know best, and he’s seen hundreds of students find their fit at Lighthouse and parents who have a choice, at last,” Lee said, noting 77% of Lighthouse’s students are using EFS vouchers. “Still, he says, it isn’t enough, and I agree. Growing the program would open the doors of opportunity for thousands more children statewide.”

Despite the governor’s push to solidify his voucher legacy before leaving office, it may be an uphill battle in the legislature to achieve his aggressive goal, even among school choice-friendly Republicans.

The General Assembly will have little wiggle room in the upcoming budget and fewer dollars to spend on new initiatives. Lee’s proposed overall state budget is nearly 10% smaller than the current fiscal year’s, which finance officials said is largely due to expiring federal funds but is also occurring amid a slowing Tennessee economy.

Lawmakers would also have to alter their original plans for the program. Republicans last year approved the program with an expansion cap that only allowed the state to add 5,000 vouchers this year if there was enough demand in applications.

Lee wants those 5,000 new vouchers plus an additional 15,000, which will require new legislation to enact.

House Republican Caucus Chair Jeremy Faison, R-Cosby, said in January he thinks there’s support for the expected 5,000 new vouchers but was skeptical about a more aggressive expansion.

“There will be some spirited debate about growing it from that,” Faison, who is not seeking reelection this year, said. “I would say that it’ll just be a debate. I don’t necessarily see that taking place other than just following the groundwork that we laid last year.”

Lee’s budget proposal will bump up Tennessee teacher pay, increasing the minimum annual teacher salary from $47,000 to $50,000. This would achieve a 2023 pledge to increase their base pay.

Other K-12 budget increases include a $170 million infusion to the public education funding formula, $40 million for the charter school facilities fund, and a $2.6 million increase to reimburse local districts for paid parental leave.

Lee’s budget is also rolling forward $80 million for the public education funding formula from this fiscal year, which finance officials said was left over after public school enrollment was lower than expected this year.

Sen. Jeff Yarbro, a Democrat from Nashville, said he was concerned the increases to the public education funding formula isn’t keeping up with inflation increases in recent years.

“It’s deeply troubling to me that we’re talking about doubling the size of a program that is brand new, and we’re not even keeping public school funding up to par with inflation,” Yarbro said during a Tuesday budget presentation.

Lee also wants $5 million to fund summer learning camps. In November, Tennessee Department of Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds asked the governor for $30 million for the program, pointing to measurable academic gains for the 90,000 students enrolled last year.

School-based summer learning camps are one of several promotion pathways rising fourth graders can use to move on from third grade if they don’t hit the benchmarks required by the state’s third grade reading law.

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

What happens when Tennessee schools run out of weather days?

2026-01-30T22:04:26+00:00

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With icy roads and frigid temperatures lingering in much of Tennessee, many districts in the state have blown through their allotted inclement weather days with months left in the school year.

The extreme winter weather forced districts from Memphis to Nashville to close their doors the last week of January.

In Memphis, stubborn ice has complicated travel on local roads. There are widespread power outages in Nashville, with more than a dozen school buildings still without power as of Jan. 30. Many students in the Middle Tennessee region are also still without power and internet access at home, school officials say.

But exactly how many snow days do Tennessee schools get? And what happens if they run out before roads are accessible and power is restored?

The answer is a little complicated.

Tennessee law requires schools to have 6.5-hour school days for 180 days per school year. Schools usually have seven-hour school days, which allows districts to stockpile up to 13 extra days.

Districts use those stockpile days differently and build them into their calendars at the beginning of the school year, often allocating some days for professional development and reserving some for inclement weather.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools, for example, had eight days set aside this year. With the January winter storm week and its Feb. 2 closure, it is now down to two.

Rutherford County Schools, which have also been closed all week, allocated nine weather days and is now down to four, though the district has an upcoming staff development day it can use if needed.

“This is my 22^nd year with the school district, and during that time, we have never used all of our inclement weather days,” RCS Chief Communications Officer James Evans said. “One year we used all of them, but we did not go over.”

Rutherford announced late Friday they will reopen on Feb. 2.

In the more rural Cheatham County northwest of Nashville, a Cheatham County School District spokesperson said the district has one stockpile day remaining and it had not yet made a call on reopening schools as of Friday, Jan. 30.

Schools can use four days of hybrid instruction per year and up to five days of remote instruction per semester due to severe weather if they run out of stockpile days, a Tennessee Department of Education spokesperson said. But those options aren’t feasible during the widespread weather impacts many in Tennessee are facing this month.

“Many students throughout Cheatham County as of Friday, January 30 are still without electricity and internet,” said Tim Adkins, communications director for the Cheatham County School District.

Metro Nashville schools had six weather days this school year, and the district has now used all of them. Nashville officials announced Sunday afternoon the district would be closed on Monday, Feb. 2.

Districts are able to tack on make-up school days at the end of the school year if they run over on their stockpile days, or absorb stockpile days previously set aside for professional development.

Nashville will do just that. The district told families on Sunday that Feb. 16, previously an off day for students, will not be used as a regular instruction day.

But school districts could now be eligible for a special waiver granted by the Tennessee Department of Education in the event of a natural disaster. This would relieve districts of the 180-day instructional requirement under Tennessee law.

Previous TDOE guidance states waivers would only be granted as a “last resort in extreme circumstances,” though Gov. Bill Lee has declared a state of emergency due to the severe winter weather impacts.

MNPS spokesperson Sean Braisted said the district is consulting with TDOE about its waiver options “as remote learning options are not viable at this time due to extensive power outages throughout the city.”

The Tennessee Department of Education has not yet granted any waivers in the state due to the winter weather, a spokesperson said.

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

Tennessee GOP wants to track K-12 student immigration status

2026-01-15T19:49:00+00:00

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Tennessee Republicans want all students to verify their citizenship, residency, or immigration status as part of an aggressive immigration package they say was developed with the Trump White House.

But there were no details on how exactly the policy that top GOP leaders rolled out on Thursday would play out inside Tennessee schools.

No new legislation has been filed, though it’s possible lawmakers could use a 2025 bill to advance the issue.

Democrats and immigration advocates sharply criticized the proposed policies.

“Teachers don’t need to be worried about where their students are from or how they got here,” said Lisa Sherman Luna, executive director of TIRRC Votes, an immigration advocacy group.

Republican leadership did not say whether local schools or the Tennessee Department of Education would be responsible for verifying immigration status or where such data would be held.

Nor would they say whether the state would require that the immigration status of a student and potentially their family members be reported to federal or state law enforcement.

Republicans want to require local governments to report unverified immigration status of people seeking public benefits to ICE and Tennessee immigration enforcement.

Lawmakers also were unsure whether requiring this verification would jeopardize federal education funding, a concern that stalled a similar bill in 2025.

“I think we’re still waiting for the Department of Education at the federal level to send us some guidance from them on what it looks like on funding,” House Speaker Cameron Sexton, a Republican from Crossville, said. “That’s the biggest question remaining. We’re still working through the issues of what that would look like as far as collecting the data.”

Last year, the GOP supermajority sparked major protests when top Republicans pushed legislation targeting undocumented students in Tennessee schools.

Bill sponsors Sen. Bo Watson, a Republican from Hixson, and House Minority Leader William Lamberth, a Republican from Portland, said at the time they hoped to challenge longstanding U.S. Supreme Court precedent that protects public education access for undocumented children.

Initial versions of the bill would have allowed schools to block undocumented students from enrolling and later charge them tuition.

The sponsors argued that undocumented students could be draining school resources if more English language learners need specialized instruction, for example. Opponents countered that Tennessee schools are significantly funded through sales taxes, which undocumented immigrants pay.

The Senate passed SB 836, but it stalled in the House amid opposition from some Republicans and concerns it would jeopardize federal education funding. HB 793 is still technically live, though, and could move forward in the House at any time in 2026.

Last year, Lamberth said he requested clarification from the U.S. Department of Education about the bill and federal funding questions. Nine months later, it does not appear the state has received any clarification.

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

More Memphis schools are passing the state’s report card. Here’s a closer look.

2025-12-19T19:45:32+00:00

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Memphis-Shelby County Schools earned higher marks overall on this year’s state report card, with more schools earning a C or higher and fewer earning Ds in the 2024-2025 school year.

But the number of schools earning the lowest grade, an F, stayed relatively stagnant from last year at 23 total. That’s around 11% of the district’s schools. In a press release Thursday, MSCS leaders celebrated one school — Rozelle Elementary, an arts-focused school in Midtown — for climbing from an F grade to a B in one year.

“These ratings provide a meaningful snapshot of how schools are serving students and where strong progress is emerging,” the district statement said.

This is the third year that the Tennessee Department of Education has released school letter grades in an effort to give parents more easily accessible data on school performance. But the grading system has faced backlash because of its focus on proficiency instead of student growth. MSCS leaders have said that emphasis disadvantages schools serving predominantly students from low-income families.

And as of 2023, the grades can mean consequences. Schools earning Ds or Fs could face state Board of Education hearings, be required to submit corrective action plans, or undergo a state audit.

About half of MSCS schools earned the same letter grade as last year, while one-third improved by at least one letter grade. Two-thirds of the district’s schools earned a C or higher, representing an almost 6 percentage point increase from the 2023-2024 school year.

Sixteen MSCS schools earned As, the same number as last year, which lags behind the state average of one in five schools earning the top grade.

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

2024-25 letter grades are out for Tennessee schools. Here’s what they show.

2025-12-18T23:00:08+00:00

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About 1 out of every 5 Tennessee schools scored an A this year under a state assessment system and the number of schools receiving D- and F-grades decreased, according to data released on Thursday.

The Tennessee Department of Education announced the letter grades for 2024-25 on Thursday with the launch of an updated Tennessee Report Card.

Around 78% of Tennessee schools that met the school grading criteria received a C or higher, a slight increase over last year’s 75%.

A 2016 state law required the department to grade schools in part to give parents and communities insight into the quality of education at each school. But the grading system was initially plagued by testing issues and pandemic delays.

The grading plan was totally revamped in 2023 to emphasize academic achievement or proficiency over academic growth, a controversial decision that some opponents argued ignores socioeconomic realities in some communities.

The school grades are not just for parents. They can carry consequences for districts with “failing” grades.

School districts and charter authorizers can now face state Board of Education hearings for D and F scores. Schools might also have to submit corrective action plans or undergo a state audit.

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

Which students are eligible for Tennessee’s 2026 voucher program?

2025-11-25T21:21:36+00:00

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When new applications for Tennessee’s voucher program open in January, the state will change how it prioritizes applicants for next school year, though it’s not yet clear how many open seats will be available.

The Tennessee Department of Education announced last week that applications for the 2026-2027 Education Freedom Scholarships program will open on Jan. 13 and close on Jan. 20. Students currently enrolled in the program can renew beginning on Dec. 9.

Any student waitlisted for the 2025 school year must reapply, according to the department.

It’s also not clear how many new seats Tennessee will add to the program, which provided $7,295 in public tax dollars to 20,000 students this fall to use at private schools.

A mechanism in the state law will allow lawmakers to easily expand the program for 5,000 new students since the state received more than 40,000 applications, well above the expansion threshold set by state law. But Gov. Bill Lee and other Republican lawmakers say they want to expand the program even further.

But it’s unlikely the number of new seats will be decided on by the time applications close on Jan. 30, just days into the 2026 legislative session.

The state law outlines the order in which the education department must prioritize applications going forward. Previous recipients receive top billing and are almost guaranteed a spot in next year’s program.

In 2025, the 20,000 available spots were split between a universal category, open to any family of any income level, and an income-limited category open only to families who earned 300% or less of the federal free or reduced-price lunch guideline income, or around $173,000 for a family of four.

In 2026, that income limit will drop significantly.

After current EFS students, students whose household income equaled 100% or less of the federal guidelines will receive top priority, which is around $59,478 for a family of four.

Families earning 300% or less would be next on the prioritization list.

Fourth on the list would be public school students or rising kindergarteners. The state has courted criticism for not tracking how many first-year vouchers went to students previously enrolled in public schools, but it will now have to track this data to determine prioritization eligibility.

Any remaining spots in the program will go to eligible students on a first come, first served application basis.

Applications for the program will open as the state fights off a lawsuit over the program. A group of parents sued the governor and state education leaders last week over the new voucher law, alleging the program violates the state constitution by diverting public funds to private schools.

The governor’s office said Lee is “confident” the court will uphold the program that a “vast majority” of Tennesseans support.

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

Where do Memphis schools fall in the state ranking system?

2025-11-24T20:49:42+00:00

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The number of Memphis schools earning the state’s top academic status increased this year, even as 39 schools are performing at the lowest level, according to a list published by the Tennessee Department of Education on Friday.

Schools with low achievement, called “priority” schools, will face a new intervention model passed by state lawmakers in the spring. Those repeatedly found at the bottom of Tennessee’s performance ladder could be closed or converted to charters.

It’s unclear when those actions will be decided for the 2024-25 priority schools, which total over 100 statewide. Receiving that designation means schools either fall in the bottom 5% of student performance on state assessments or graduate less than two-thirds of their students each year.

“As Tennessee’s largest district, MSCS serves students who often face economic challenges, housing instability, food insecurity, and other barriers,” Superintendent Roderick Richmond said in an emailed press release. Priority status “reflects where more intentional support is needed, not the limits of our students’ potential,” he added.

See if your school falls on the priority list by searching the table below.

Tennessee leaders gave 44 MSCS schools the “reward” status this year, meaning students are performing or improving at the highest level in the state. That’s 10 more schools placing in that top category compared to last year, the Memphis district said. Statewide, the reward category increased by over 80 schools.

Find out if that’s where your school falls here:

According to the new state model, local districts create their own intervention plans for first-time priority schools. But those found again on the next priority list, which is typically released every three years, will now face state intervention.

Thirty-four of the MSCS schools identified as priority schools this year have borne that label before. That includes two of the four schools Richmond recommended for closure this year, Frayser-Corning Elementary and Chickasaw Middle, and Lucy Elementary, which Richmond recommended to transfer to Millington Municipal School District.

Seven MSCS schools are identified as “Comprehensive Support and Improvement” schools by the federal government, but not as state priority schools. That’s because they have yet to meet required exit criteria, the district said.

The new state intervention model comes on the heels of the dissolving Achievement School District, or ASD, which placed 33 Memphis and Nashville schools under state control in 2016. The district is largely considered unsuccessful, with research suggesting that ASD students actually did worse on high school tests.

MSCS leaders have to decide whether to close or take over control of the last two remaining ASD schools by June.

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

Tennessee graduation rate improves for third straight year

2025-10-28T17:28:44+00:00

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Tennessee has improved its high school graduation rate for the third consecutive year, with more than 92% of high school seniors graduating last spring.

State data released on Monday showed 92.3% of public school students in the class of 2025 graduated on time, a slight improvement over last year’s 92.1%. In total, 69,124 seniors graduated last spring.

Tennessee graduation rates had steadily risen for about 10 years before the COVID-19 pandemic and related disruptions triggered a three-year slide in the state. But the graduation rate began improving again in 2023.

“Year-over-year gains in the statewide graduation rate exemplify Tennessee’s commitment to ensuring students across the state make it to the graduation stage prepared for success after high school,” Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds said in a statement.

In all, 69 out of the state’s 147 districts improved their graduation rates.

Memphis-Shelby County schools had an 84.4% graduation rate this spring, a 1% increase over 2023. Hamilton County schools also increased their graduation rate to 94.2%.

Rates at the state’s other two largest school systems, Metro Nashville and Knox County schools, dropped slightly this year.

Knox County schools had a 92% graduation rate, compared to 93% in 2023. Metro Nashville schools’ graduation rate fell from 85.7% to 83.6% this year.

Search for your district’s graduation rate below.

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

Tennessee won’t track how many students with disabilities benefit from new voucher program

2025-10-02T14:15:05+00:00

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Tennessee isn’t tracking how many students with disabilities enroll in its new statewide education voucher program, the latest concern for education advocates who say the program needs to be more transparent.

The Tennessee Department of Education said disability documentation is not required in the law establishing the Education Freedom Scholarship program earlier this year.

The department also isn’t tracking how many first-year vouchers went to students already enrolled in private schools. Some advocates and lawmakers argue robust data is needed to determine who is benefiting from the program.

Equitable access for students with disabilities has long been a major point of debate in the Tennessee voucher conversation, particularly around private schools’ right to refuse enrollment of students with disabilities. A Republican majority in the Tennessee House this January voted down a proposed amendment to the voucher program that provided some protections for students with disabilities in private school enrollment.

Jeff Strand, a former special education teacher and assistant director of government relations at EdTrust-Tennessee, said school choice has been billed by some state leaders as a “silver bullet” for families dissatisfied with their local public schools, but the lack of reporting requirements makes that hard to verify.

“It makes comparison or even evaluation of the success of this program impossible,” Strand said. “That has a double impact for marginalized student populations like students with disabilities.”

National data gathered before Tennessee launched its voucher program showed students with disabilities, along with low-income families and students of color, are frequently left out of school programs because they have fewer options to choose from, among other issues. Private schools with specific special education programs may also charge higher tuition prices.

Students with disabilities who move to a private school also waive certain civil rights, such as the right to a free appropriate public education guaranteed under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

“I’d go so far as to say it’s not going to equally serve students with disabilities,” Strand said of Tennessee’s new program. “But we’re not going to be able to know. There’s nothing for us to learn from this. It’s a blank check to cherry pick and handpick your student population as evidenced you’re doing a good job. But you can say, ‘We’re not going to take the toughest kids.’ You can take the kids you’re going to serve with minimal resources.”

The state’s lack of data on disability status stands in contrast to some major voucher programs around the country, such as Florida or Arizona, which uses paperwork from a student’s previous school and information on voucher spending on disability-related services to track how many students with disabilities are using state tax dollars to attend a private school.

Some Tennessee families might have submitted evidence of their student’s individualized education program if they were vying for a specifically allocated voucher.

The EFS program gave some priority to students who were previously accepted into the Individualized Education Account program, an early school choice program Tennessee adopted for students with disabilities in 2015. Tennessee does not allow simultaneous EFS and IEA enrollment.

But the Tennessee Department of Education said in a statement that documentation submitted by former IEA recipients couldn’t capture the full scope of disability status for all EFS enrollees.

“At this time, we do not have the ability to determine the number of scholarships awarded specifically to applicants with IEPs,” Maggie Hannan, the department’s director of communications, said. “While eligible EFS applicants were able to upload documentation under the IEA category, not all of the documentation confirmed eligibility, nor would this likely have been reflective of all possible applicants with IEPs.”

Chalkbeat Senior National Reporter Kalyn Belsha contributed to this story.

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.

Tennessee won’t say how many students are enrolled in new voucher program

2025-09-17T15:34:57+00:00

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Months after Tennessee launched its first statewide voucher program, the Tennessee Department of Education won’t say how many students are using it to attend private school.

The department has declined to release basic information on enrollment, delayed public records requests, and blocked attempts by at least one lawmaker to gather data on the program approved by Republican lawmakers in January.

The lack of information has shrouded the rollout of Gov. Bill Lee’s signature voucher program, which is expected to funnel more than $146 million of taxpayer money to private schools, and makes it difficult to determine whether the quick implementation of the program is working as intended.

It’s also the latest transparency issue for the department, which drew criticism earlier this summer after Chalkbeat Tennessee reporting revealed Tennessee would not explicitly track how many vouchers will go to students already attending private schools.

Tennessee launched the universal voucher program application in May with significant fanfare. Lee, in a joint statement with the department, touted a “remarkable response” to the program, citing more than 33,000 applications submitted within hours of launch.

But since May, the department has refused to release further data. The education department did not respond to multiple Chalkbeat Tennessee requests this summer for specific numbers regarding acceptances, denials, and applications submitted in the “income-limited” category of the program.

Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds told reporters in July that additional data on Education Freedom Scholarships enrollment would be released in August. None was published.

On Tuesday, the department again declined to answer specific Chalkbeat Tennessee questions, including how many students were enrolled in the program as of Sept. 1 and how many are currently waitlisted.

A department spokesperson said additional information would be provided in “the coming days” and again pointed to numbers on applications, rather than data on actual enrollment in the program.

“The department looks forward to sharing data from the Education Freedom Scholarship (EFS) program for the 2025-26 school year in the coming days,” said Maggie Hannan, communications director for the TDOE. “It’s important to note that with more than 42,000 applications, approximately 50 percent were submitted by families with a qualified income. This remarkably strong response demonstrates what Gov. Lee has known all along: Tennessee parents want choices when it comes to their child’s education, regardless of ZIP code or income level.”

The department has delayed fulfilling Chalkbeat Tennessee records requests filed in early August, which are still outstanding. It also knocked down data requests filed by Rep. Caleb Hemmer earlier this summer.

Hemmer, a Nashville Democrat, said last week he is considering filing a lawsuit against the department to push for more transparency.

“It’s a continual theme of not following the law and having to take extreme steps to correct that. It’s so frustrating,” Hemmer said. “Our kids deserve better, Tennesseans deserve better. It overshadows the good work that the department and department employees do for our kids.”

The department has denied Hemmer’s request for residency data of student applicants. Hemmer said he filed a records request after learning the department was not collecting data on whether applicants already attended a private school when applying for the voucher.

“After getting the application and looking at it, I was surprised to learn that they left out this key piece of information,” Hemmer said. “So, I wanted to see for myself what the data looked like. I wanted to see how many of my constituents applied.”

The department has cited student privacy laws, though Hemmer believes the data could be released as “directory” data.

“Our education attorney’s review found that they had a different opinion of what should and shouldn’t be public,” Hemmer said.

Deborah Fisher, executive director for the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, said that while it’s not unheard of for a state lawmaker to “tangle” with a state agency to get information, it is not often that a lawmaker sues for the information.

But Fisher said the months of silence from the education department is “unusual.”

“To get just radio silence on the governor’s signature program is unusual,” Fisher said. “You should be able to get basic government data. This is government money, this is taxpayer money. You should be able to get basic information.”

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

Tennessee to give more average per-pupil funding to voucher participants than public school students

2025-08-19T20:47:58+00:00

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Tennessee public school students this school year will receive less state per-pupil funding than private school students using the state’s new voucher program, drawing sharp criticism from public education advocates and Democrats who argue the state is prioritizing voucher participants at the expense of other students.

Tennessee will spend an average of $7,023 per public school student in the state’s education funding formula, compared to the $7,295 given to students participating in the new Education Freedom Scholarship program.

Public school students will still receive more public funds, though, due to local government contributions to the formula and separate federal funds.

The 2025-26 funding formula allocation numbers, presented in a state board of Education meeting last week, have drawn criticism from opponents of Gov. Bill Lee’s voucher plan that launched this summer.

Tennessee Education Association President Tanya Coats said Monday that vouchers “shortchange” public education and the TEA is “deeply concerned” the state is providing more per-pupil funding for vouchers than in per-pupil public education funding.

“This disparity makes clear that Tennessee’s leaders are prioritizing private school subsidies over strengthening the public schools that serve the overwhelming majority of children in every community,” Coats said. “Rather than closing resource gaps, the state is growing disparities by sending more money to private schools while public schools continue to struggle with overcrowded classrooms, outdated materials, and educator shortages.”

Tennessee law requires that public school students are funded at a higher amount than the voucher program.

The governor’s office and Tennessee Department of Education this week noted state and local governments must contribute to the formula, known as the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement (TISA).

With local contributions, the average per-pupil TISA allocation is $9,810, more than $2,000 higher than the voucher amount. TISA funding increased by about 3% this year.

“The EFS scholarship amount is $7,295 and is fully state funded, requiring no contribution from local governments,” said Maggie Hannan, communications director at TDOE. “Moreover, the state has made unprecedented investments in public education during the Lee administration, totaling over $2 billion since 2019.”

The financial responsibility of local governments vary, with economic drivers like Nashville funding proportionally more of their local formula while the state shoulders more of the burden for smaller, rural counties.

Public school enrollment still dwarfs voucher participation in Tennessee. Tennessee estimates more than 966,000 children will be enrolled in Tennessee public schools this year, amounting to nearly $6.8 billion in funding from the state and nearly $2.7 billion from local governments.

The education department has blocked data requests and declined to answer questions about how many and which students have been accepted into the voucher program, but the program is limited to 20,000 participants this year.

Still, mechanisms in the law mean Tennessee will likely expand the program every year going forward by up to 5,000 new students, a move an EdTrust analysis found could cost the state more than $892 million in the first five years alone.

House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Ray Clemmons on Tuesday criticized historic education funding levels in recent years and warned local governments would have to raise taxes to keep up with their local share.

“Bill Lee’s legacy will be destroying public education and undermining opportunity for every child in the state of Tennessee,” said Clemmons, a Nashville Democrat. “They have proven, time and again, to bend and stretch the law to fit their false narrative in support of these voucher scams to the detriment of public education across the state of Tennessee.”

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

Students with disabilities can more quickly be removed from class under a new Tennessee rule

2025-08-19T14:48:28+00:00

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Tennessee schools can now more quickly remove some students with disabilities from their classrooms.

The state Board of Education on Friday approved an amended state rule allowing schools to temporarily remove students to an environment such as a special education classroom or even into an alternative school before a formal behavioral assessment is completed or even started.

A 2022 state rule required Tennessee schools to perform an FBA, a comprehensive assessment required by the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, when a student is engaging in dangerous or “highly disruptive” behavior.

But Tennessee education officials told the board earlier this year that educators interpreted the 2022 rule to mean a student could not be removed until the assessment was completed, which could mean a lengthy waiting period for districts with limited resources.

Board Vice-Chair Darrell Cobbins said he fielded multiple emails and calls from concerned parents and advocates on the issue. He had questions about how the policy would be used, but said he was satisfied that it provides protections from “one individual” making a swift decision to remove a student.

Instead, a student’s Individualized Education Program team would have to make the decision to move a student to a more restrictive environment.

“This should not be a first resort, and there’s a process in place both for the decision being made but also parent empowerment,” Cobbins said. “If they feel like it has not been done in a way that was conducive for that child, there’s a route for that to be addressed.”

Earlier this summer, disability advocates advised caution when implementing the rule change and expressed concern that it could be used too frequently, but acknowledged there are circumstances where removal is needed for everyone’s safety.

Allison Oliver, an Austin Peay State University assistant professor with a specialty in special education, said she thinks more emphasis should be on teacher training and staffing support when supporting students with disabilities.

Before entering higher education, Oliver worked nearly two decades in K-12 special education, including as a behavioral specialist responsible for writing the functional behavior assessments at a 32-school district in Mississippi.

Oliver said she is concerned about using exclusion, whether it’s moving a child to a special education classroom or into an alternative school setting, as a response to challenging behavior, though she acknowledged removals are necessary at times.

“One of the largest barriers I saw as a behavior specialist were teachers who were just not prepared for the type of behaviors being presented in class, and some of the ways trauma is being presented in classrooms,” Oliver said. “You have teachers in all capacities, and one might deem certain behavior as severe while others would deem it as at-risk. Behaviors can be disproportionately dealt with across the region.”

Under federal and state disability protections, students must be educated in the “least restrictive environment” deemed appropriate under their individualized education program.

The goal is to educate all students in a general classroom with their peers, but a more restrictive environment might mean a student receives special education programming throughout the day, is placed in a separate classroom, or attends a specialized homeschool or residential program.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act requires a functional behavioral assessment if an IEP team thinks a student should be moved to a more restrictive environment, but how and when states actually implement the assessments varies.

In May, state board member Jordan Mollenhour raised concerns about the timeline to perform formal behavioral assessments. Some states require districts to complete the assessments in a certain time period.

TDOE General Counsel Taylor Jenkins said there is not a definitive time limit for completing the assessments, but the department guidance has “typically” been that 45 to 60 days is appropriate.

The August 15 rule change did not impose any new time limits for assessments.

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

$118M in Tennessee K-12 funding is held up in Trump federal funding review

2025-07-08T11:00:01+00:00

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More than $118 million for Tennessee schools and educational programs is in limbo after the Trump administration froze federal funding last week that had been approved by Congress.

Withheld funds or potential cuts could heavily impact Tennessee education programs, where it’s primarily been used to pay for teacher development, after-school programs, and other child care initiatives.

In a statement, Memphis-Shelby County Schools district officials say 100 teacher and staff positions could be impacted if some $17 million is withheld.

The district planned to use more than $14 million of the impacted funds for teacher development and recruitment efforts across 38 positions, according to district budget proposal documents. Another $1.6 million was earmarked for English language learner support to supplement 46 school-based translators.

“While this situation presents significant challenges, MSCS is actively developing thoughtful contingency plans to minimize disruption and ensure students, families, and staff continue to receive the support they need,” the district said. “In the event the funding is not reinstated, the district may be required to make difficult decisions, which could include program adjustments or use of reserve funds intended to protect long-term financial stability.”

The Tennessee Department of Education hasn’t commented on the funding freeze or how it’s communicating developments to school districts in the weeks before Tennessee students return to the classroom, though other states have provided breakdowns of projected impacts on local schools.

Congress approved the funding in March, and school districts expected the money to be released at the beginning of the fiscal year on July 1. The federal funding included $890 million for English language learners, $2.2 billion for teacher training, $1.4 billion for before- and after-school programs, and $1.3 billion for enrichment programs like college counseling nationwide.

A smaller pot of money — $375 million — was supposed to pay for academic support for the children of migrant farmworkers.

Several Democrat-led states have called for the funding to be released and have threatened legal action. The Trump administration has said the freeze is part of an ongoing review of federally funded programs.

An Office of Management and Budget spokesperson said its initial findings showed that grant funds have “been grossly misused to subsidize a radical leftwing agenda,” including issues around immigration, though the office did not provide Chalkbeat with any documentation of the allegations.

In Tennessee, less than 2% of this federal funding allocation went to “migrant education,” according to a review by the Learning Policy Institute. The institute estimated Tennessee stands to lose more than $106 million under the freeze, slightly less than the $118.9 million total provided by U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, the Democratic vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee who also sits on the Senate Education Committee.

Nashville Metro Schools did not receive any money last year from Title I-C, which funds migrant education, while MSCS was projected to receive less than $60,000 for the upcoming year, a tiny portion of the district’s $1.9 billion budget.

In Nashville, the district said it does not anticipate any immediate impacts on programming but is following the issue closely.

“These congressionally mandated programs support essential services for our students—including those who are learning English, need additional academic support, or benefit from extended learning opportunities—and help ensure we have effective educators in every classroom,” district spokesperson Sean Braisted said in an email. “We support efforts to fully fund these programs at or above previous levels.”

Child care advocates are raising alarms about the funding freeze’s effect on before- and after-school programs, which are vital in states like Tennessee with skyrocketing child care costs. Last week, Boys & Girls Club CEO Jim Clark warned the loss of 21st Century Community Learning Center funding, which supports extracurricular programs, could decimate hundreds of clubs across the country.

Tennessee received more than $23 million to support these programs last year, according to the AfterSchool Alliance, with about $3.2 million going to local Boys & Girls Clubs. Those clubs are not likely to close their doors but could be forced to pull back on programs such as additional tutoring and enrichment experiences.

Bart McFadden, the interim executive director for the Boys & Girls Clubs in Tennessee, said no clubs in the state are exclusively federally funded, and they will be able to withstand the freeze.

“This is a pause, and we don’t know what it’s ultimately going to mean as we get into the school year. We’re hopeful these funds are released,” McFadden said. “If they’re not, plans are in place to mitigate the impact so that our blue doors, as we call them, are open for kids.”

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

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

Gov. Bill Lee downplays transparency concerns about Tennessee school voucher program

2025-07-01T23:54:58+00:00

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Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee defended the state’s new private-school voucher program amid questions about its application process, which does not require families to report where their students went to school before.

“It’s not required by the legislation, so it’s not necessary to have,” Lee said Tuesday, reaffirming comments his office made last week about the legislation that established the program. “What we hope for is universal school choice where every family, regardless of their child’s past education history, has access to a scholarship. Ultimately, that would be the goal.”

But it will be nearly impossible for Tennessee to determine whether the new program, a longtime passion project for Lee, is actually expanding access to private schools for all Tennesseans or providing taxpayer funds mainly to families whose children are already enrolled in private schools.

How Tennessee’s expansive, expensive school voucher law made it to the finish line

Chalkbeat Tennessee reported in late June that Tennessee is not asking families to report their student’s prior enrollment. This is a frequently asked question in other state voucher programs and was a required question on the application for Tennessee’s first voucher initiative, the Education Savings Account program.

Tennessee is also not collecting data on the household income of tens of thousands of applicants vying for a “universal” voucher, the vouchers open to any Tennessee resident, regardless of family income.

In the first year of the program, half of the state’s 20,000 vouchers are subject to income limits. They are reserved for families who make under 300% of the federal income threshold to qualify for free or reduced price lunch. A family of four, for example, would be eligible for the income-capped voucher if they made less than $173,160.

When asked how he would respond to criticism that a lack of data could hamper accountability and oversight measures of the program, Lee said he didn’t think it would be an issue. He also said he wasn’t concerned about tracking whether the program is indeed expanding access to private schools for families who had previously been enrolled in public schools, which has long been Lee’s stated goal for the program.

“With half of the families being low-income families, I think that problem is being solved,” Lee said.

Lawmakers who opposed Lee’s voucher plan have raised questions about the data collection. State Rep. Jody Barrett, a Republican from Dickson, has called for an independent board to oversee the program, according to a Tennessee Lookout report.

Meanwhile, Rep. Caleb Hemmer, a Nashville Democrat, has been seeking answers and data from the department about the program. Hemmer sharply criticized the department on Tuesday and said that the vouchers should be called “Education Fraud Accounts.”

“We are distributing over $125 million in taxpayer funds in $7,300 increments, yet there appears to be no meaningful oversight or basic data collection,” Hemmer said. “Common sense would dictate that we ask fundamental questions and track how this money is being used and who really is receiving it.”

Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds last week declined Hemmer’s request for demographic information on students who had applied for the program.

Though Lee on Wednesday said he was encouraged that “Tennesseans of multiple backgrounds and economic diversity” want to participate in the program, the department has released very limited information about the program so far.

It is not yet clear how many applicants have been accepted into the program. The TDOE has not responded to multiple Chalkbeat Tennessee requests this summer asking how many applicants have been accepted or provided specific information on whether the department has filled 11 positions the legislature funded to help administer the voucher program.

“We’ve already seen the consequences of unchecked voucher programs in other states — most recently in Florida, where funds were used to purchase more than 5,000 theme park tickets, including to Disney World,” Hemmer said. “I am currently working with the Legislative Attorney’s Office to explore all legal avenues to access this publicly available data and ensure this program is operating within the bounds of the law and in the best interest of taxpayers.

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

Memphis schools lost millions in federal pandemic funding. Now, they’re getting it back.

2025-07-01T19:30:03+00:00

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Memphis schools have access again to more than $55 million in federal funding after the U.S. Department of Education reversed course and unfroze millions of pandemic relief funds last week.

Tito Langston, Memphis-Shelby County Schools’ assistant superintendent of operations, and a Metro Nashville Public Schools spokesperson confirmed to Chalkbeat Tennessee that the Tennessee Department of Education informed school districts of the federal reversal on June 27.

“Receiving the full $55.6 million allows us to move forward with planned projects and expenditures that had been placed on hold,” Langston said. “It significantly strengthens our financial position and enables us to maintain a healthy fund balance going into next year.”

The decision frees up millions for schools across Tennessee.

States originally had until March 2026 to spend a final round of COVID relief money. But Education Secretary Linda McMahon informed states on March 28 that they had run out of time to spend the money.

The freeze on those funds impacted MSCS finances, as the district had intended to use them to upgrade roofs and fund long-awaited heating and cooling repairs in school buildings. District leaders were also forced to rethink the upcoming school year budget, while other Tennessee districts like Nashville’s were left holding the bill on expenditures they thought would be reimbursed.

The decision to unfreeze the funds is a welcome infusion back into the Memphis schools’ budget as leaders consider an overarching — and likely very expensive — facilities plan to address years of deferred maintenance that have ballooned to a $1 billion price tag for the district.

Langston says district leaders can now access funds “already tied to eligible, documented expenses,” most notably capital projects they hoped to complete by the end of the school year.

The Tennessee Department of Education has not responded to a Chalkbeat Tennessee request for comment about the change and its notifications to school districts.

Other Tennessee districts had outstanding funds and reimbursement requests affected by the funding halt in March, though MSCS’ balance was one of the largest in the state.

Metro Nashville Public Schools had around $9 million in funds that had been allocated but not yet reimbursed when the federal government froze the funds in March. The district had already spent about $7 million of that amount and were left without reimbursement.

“We appreciate the USDOE revisiting this matter and look forward to following the guidelines necessary to seek reimbursement for these programs and services that have already been implemented and supported students,” said Sean Braisted, communications chief for MNPS.

The U.S. Department of Education’s reversal followed a lawsuit filed by New York and more than a dozen other Democratic state attorneys general.

In May, a federal judge ordered the federal government to honor a spending extension and restore the relief funding to 16 states and Washington D.C.

The federal government fought the injunction, but a federal appeals court on June 20 denied a request to stay the injunction.

However, because Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti did not challenge the loss of funding, Tennessee schools did not receive relief from the ruling.

The result was an uneven funding pattern for states, which McMahon acknowledged in a June 26 letter informing them of the funding reversal.

“The original intent of the policy announced on March 28 was to treat all states consistently with regards to safeguarding and refocusing their remaining COVID-era grant funding on students,” McMahon wrote. “The ongoing litigation has created basic fairness and uniformity problems — many states, such as yours, have continued to be covered by the March 28 policy, while the plaintiffs in the New York litigation have not been subject to that policy due to events in the litigation.”

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

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

Tennessee lawmakers vote to replace failed Achievement School District turnaround program

2025-04-22T00:26:09+00:00

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After more than a decade of state takeovers and contentious charter conversions, Tennessee is set to shut down the state-run Achievement School District and create a new model of intervention for low-performing schools by the start of the 2026-27 school year.

Legislation to replace the failed ASD cleared the House 75-15 on Monday, sending the bill to Gov. Bill Lee, who has indicated his support.

“Tennessee needs a support system for priority schools that contains accountability but also provides school districts more local flexibility in determining which interventions will be most effective,” a Lee spokesperson told Chalkbeat in a statement.

The ASD removed low-performing schools from local control and placed them under a state-run district, with the goal to push Tennessee’s bottom 5% of schools to the top 25%. Many of the schools were turned over to charter operators to run under 10-year contracts.

Research showed the ASD led to high teacher turnover, and did not generate long-term improvements for students. The district also faced community backlash for taking over schools in districts that served mostly low-income communities and predominantly Black student populations. The ASD cost taxpayers over $1 billion. Only three schools remain in the ASD.

The new model creates a tiered system, with escalating levels of intervention for schools that do not academically improve. Schools identified for intervention for the first time would start at the first tier. The Tennessee Department of Education then will review each school’s performance annually to decide whether to change the level of intervention.

Tier 1 would give districts the option to direct their own intervention plans or partner with a turnaround expert.

In Tier 2, districts can choose between conversion to a charter school, transfer of operations to a higher education institution, or the replacement of some or all school leadership and specific staff. There is also the option to implement an intervention committee – made up of school board members, school employees and parents – to develop a plan with a turnaround expert.

Tier 3 involves school closures or replacement of school leadership and instructional staff under the direction of the state department of education.

All strategies would require state approval.

The new model applies to “priority schools” across the state, defined as:

The bottom 5% of schools in performance. Federal law requires states to intervene in public schools in the bottom 5%.
All public high schools that fail to graduate one-third or more of their students.
Schools with chronically low-performing student groups that have not improved after receiving additional support.

Democratic Rep. Antonio Parkinson of Memphis, who has previously brought legislation to end the ASD, celebrated its sunset.

“We finally end this catastrophe of an experiment in education, served on the backs of our communities,” said Parkinson. “Just when we thought the schools couldn’t perform any worse, because they’re at the bottom of the 5%, the Tennessee Achievement School District came and proved us wrong.”

However, he said the bill’s new model was a “remix” of the ASD and cautioned that the legislation could expand charter conversion.

Republican Rep. Debra Moody of Covington, who sponsored the bill, said charter conversion is one option among many that the district could choose.

The legislation now heads to the governor’s desk for signature.

Last schools in Tennessee’s shrinking Achievement School District seek to make their move

2025-02-21T00:33:23+00:00

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The operator of the last charter schools in Tennessee’s waning Achievement School District is seeking to continue managing them as part of their original school system in Memphis.

A decade ago, the State of Tennessee took over Kirby Middle and Hillcrest High schools due to low academic performance and assigned them to a charter management group called Green Dot Public Schools, now known as IOTA Community Schools.

The schools didn’t improve enough to exit the ASD on their own under a turnaround plan that was never meant to last more than a decade.

But now, with its 10-year contracts with the ASD soon to expire, IOTA has applied with Memphis-Shelby County Schools for new charter agreements to manage the two campuses in southeast Memphis beginning with the 2026-27 school year.

IOTA already is transitioning Wooddale Middle, the third and final Memphis school leaving the ASD, to reopen this fall under a new contract between IOTA and the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission.

Last fall, the commission authorized IOTA’s new charter after overturning the Memphis school board’s decision to deny its application to continue operating Wooddale.

Planning for the future of the Achievement School District’s last three schools — and its 1,352 students — foreshadows changes ahead for the state’s most ambitious and aggressive school turnaround model, which had 33 schools in its portfolio at its peak in 2016.

The initiative, created under a 2010 state law as part of Tennessee’s federal Race to the Top initiative, has been marred by painful takeovers of neighborhood schools, contentious handoffs to charter networks, and mostly abysmal student performance on state tests.

Last year, a proposal to eliminate the ASD passed the Tennessee Senate but a different version to revamp the program stalled in the House, even as several of the GOP-controlled legislature’s top Republican leaders acknowledged that the model has failed and should be replaced.

Gov. Bill Lee’s administration is expected to propose changes this year, but neither his office nor the state education department has said what that might look like.

Elizabeth Lane Johnson, the governor’s press secretary, confirmed Thursday that Lee’s administration was “working with stakeholders to consider legislation around the Achievement School District.”

A potential successor could be the likely expansion of a small pilot turnaround initiative that began in 2022 with five low-performing schools. It has received generally positive reviews.

The antithesis of the Achievement School District, the pilot model emphasizes collaboration over takeover and does not use charter management organizations to lead its turnaround work. Instead, low-performing schools partner with an independent turnaround expert and a locally appointed committee to create and implement an improvement plan emphasizing data, coaching, and making adjustments in real time.

In Memphis, Trezevant High School and Hawkins Mill Elementary have shown marked improvement under the pilot program with the aid of turnaround consultant Cognia.

Other schools still in the pilot are Jere Baxter Middle School in Nashville and Lincoln Elementary in Jackson-Madison County, both using Ed Direction as their turnaround consultant, with mixed results. Orchard Knob Middle, in Chattanooga, dropped out of the program before it started after Hamilton County school board members said an existing improvement plan was already working.

Fate of the last two ASD schools is uncertain

The future of the last two schools exiting the ASD will be decided this year after staff with Memphis-Shelby County Schools reviews IOTA’s applications and recommends whether to approve them.

Both campuses serve mostly students of color, more than half of whom are considered economically disadvantaged. According to the state’s most recent school report card, Kirby Middle made average progress for its students in 2023-24 and was graded an F by the state. Hillcrest High made below-average progress for its students and was graded a D.

If the Memphis school board denies IOTA’s applications, the network could appeal those decisions to the state commission, which has the power to transition more ASD schools from one state-run district to another state-run district — just as it’s in the process of doing with IOTA’s Wooddale Middle.

Adding to that discussion could be a new charter-friendly proposal from the governor to create ways for charter operators to bypass their local elected school boards and apply directly to the state commission for authorization.

If the legislature passes the governor’s bill, beginning July 1, any school board whose decision to deny a charter application is overturned by the state three times within three years could be bypassed, allowing a charter operator to apply directly to the state commission for authorization during the next five years.

Appealing to the commission isn’t a slam dunk, however. Since it began hearing appeals in 2021, the panel has sided with local school boards on half of their application denials.

State commission is familiar with ASD’s last charter operator

The commission already has one IOTA school in its portfolio.

Bluff City High School opened in Memphis in 2017 when IOTA was part of the Green Dot Public Schools network based in California. Last summer, the network’s charter schools in Memphis transitioned to IOTA, a new Tennessee-based network, after Green Dot ended its expansion efforts in Tennessee and Texas.

Asked Thursday whether she’d prefer to operate under the oversight of Memphis-Shelby County Schools or the state commission, IOTA Executive Director Jocquell Rodgers said she can’t compare them because the local district has never authorized one of the network’s schools.

Under Executive Director Tess Stovall, the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission has expanded its footprint and impact on Tennessee education.

“My goal has always been to forge a relationship with the local district because I believe we serve the same children,” Rodgers said. “But I will say that I’ve enjoyed working with the state charter commission. Their expectations are very clear, and our relationship has helped us build stronger processes as an organization and stronger academic outcomes for our students.”

For instance, when the commission put Bluff City High School on academic probation in 2022, the state was clear about necessary improvement steps, Rodgers said. Last month, in recognition of the school’s progress, the commission moved Bluff City off academic probation to a lesser intervention level.

The state Board of Education rated both the commission and Memphis-Shelby County Schools as “exemplary” in its most recent evaluations of charter authorizers in Tennessee.

The commission currently has six former ASD charter schools in its portfolio, most of which left the turnaround program under a 2021 state law letting higher-achieving ASD schools bypass their home districts to transition to the commission’s control:

Cornerstone Prep Denver
Cornerstone Prep Lester
Lester Prep
LEAD Neely’s Bend
Libertas School of Memphis
Promise Academy Spring Hill

All of those former ASD schools are in Memphis except LEAD Neely’s Bend, which is in Nashville.

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

Tennessee governor expects a quick launch after signing universal school voucher law

2025-02-13T01:32:25+00:00

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Gov. Bill Lee signed Tennessee’s universal school voucher bill into law Wednesday, officially kicking off the state’s push to roll out the program this year for up to 20,000 students.

With only about six months until the new school year, the state has a lot to do before eligible families can receive taxpayer funding to send their children to private schools.

The state Board of Education must develop and approve rules for Lee’s Education Freedom Scholarship Program. For instance, how can families appeal if the state denies them a voucher?

Tennessee’s education department will have to staff up — a projected 11 new positions — to oversee the program.

From bumpy road to fast track: How Tennessee’s universal school voucher law made it to the finish line

And perhaps most pressing, Lee’s administration must decide whether to seek a new vendor to automate application and payment processes for the statewide program, or use its current vendor, Indiana-based Student First Technologies, which manages the state’s two existing smaller school voucher programs.

Because the state’s 2023 contract with Student First requires the company to accommodate at least 20,000 users, the legislature’s financial analysts assumed the state would use Student First for the statewide program too.

But Lee said Wednesday that no decision has been made about a vendor, and he wouldn’t commit to ensuring that the state education department seeks competitive bids if it decides to pursue a new company.

“I’ll defer to the department on the procurement process,” he told reporters after signing the bill.

Last month, after the voucher bill passed during a special legislative session, the governor’s spokeswoman said the state was exploring its options.

“While we have had success with Student First Technologies, … our team has met with a number of experienced vendors to learn how other states have implemented universal school choice programs successfully,” said Elizabeth L. Johnson, Lee’s press secretary.

Tennessee bypassed the market leader when choosing its first voucher vendor

In 2023, Tennessee raised eyebrows by signing a $3.675 million, five-year contract with Student First, a young company with a small staff, modest cash flow, and no state-level experience managing education savings accounts.

The contract was signed after a competitive bid process, and after the state failed to reach terms with Florida-based ClassWallet, Tennessee’s first choice to run its education savings account program for Davidson, Hamilton, and Shelby counties, as well as a smaller voucher program for students with disabilities. Within a year, Student First launched its electronic platforms in Tennessee.

But several other states using Student First say the company has not kept up with demand as private school voucher programs have expanded nationally.

Last fall, Arkansas terminated its Student First contract after the company failed to meet deadlines and created faulty platforms, according to that state’s education department.

In West Virginia, which awarded Student First a $10 million contract to manage purchases and payments for its education savings accounts, the system struggled to keep up as enrollment climbed.

Tennessee’s education department has not fulfilled Chalkbeat’s public records request, submitted last June, to inspect correspondence and other documents that would show how Student First platforms have performed, including the thousands of transactions that the company manages on behalf of the state with ESA participants.

Mark Duran, the company’s founder and chief executive officer, did not respond Wednesday to Chalkbeat’s request for comment.

Meanwhile, other companies in the school-choice marketplace are interested in pursuing a new contract for Tennessee’s statewide program, including ClassWallet, which scored highest in the 2023 competitive bid process and currently has voucher contracts with 12 states.

“ClassWallet would welcome the opportunity to bring our mission to Tennessee and maximize the impact of school choice for families and students there,” Jamie Rosenberg, the company’s founder and CEO, told Chalkbeat.

He added that ClassWallet has experience and capacity to launch a state-level education savings account program in a matter of weeks.

“Families tell states that our software is straightforward and easy to use,” he said Wednesday.

Governor is confident of a 2025 launch

Voucher opponents criticized Lee for including his proposal in a special legislative session in late January that also addressed disaster aid and immigration policies. But Lee argued that passage in early 2025 would be necessary to launch the voucher program in time for the upcoming school year.

Gov. Bill Lee is surrounded by students as he signs the Education Freedom Scholarship Act on Wednesday.

After signing the bill Wednesday, Lee said he told Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds to “get started on implementation.”

He wouldn’t speak about the details of a rollout, but said he’s confident of a 2025 launch.

“You’ve got to remember, we already have an education savings account plan in place in this state for our three largest school districts, so we have some expertise within the department in how to implement this plan,” Lee told reporters.

While no timeline was immediately available, the department will have to open the application window soon to determine which private schools will participate. Then comes the application window for families who want access to the vouchers, which provide about $7,200 toward the cost of private education services.

“We will partner with the State Board of Education as they promulgate rules and are collaborating with the state’s Central Procurement Office to explore all options to implement the program in compliance with state procurement laws and rules,” said department spokesman Brian Blackley.

Also at issue: How will the state confirm legal residency for participating students?

While the initiative is touted as a “universal” program for anyone in Tennessee — the family income limits disappear after the first year — Republican leaders included a provision in the law saying the state education department “shall deny” any school voucher application from families that “cannot establish the eligible student’s lawful presence in the United States.”

The provision appears to conflict with a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that requires states to offer public education programs to all children, regardless of their immigration status. The Tennessee program pays for private-school education, but it uses public funds.

“What’s most important to know,” Lee told reporters, “is that this language doesn’t change anything about the state’s obligation as it currently stands to educate children.

“But for this scholarship,” he added, “it’s only available to Tennessee citizens.”

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

How Tennessee’s expansive, expensive school voucher law made it to the finish line

2025-01-31T21:15:03+00:00

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and fellow school voucher proponents have finally claimed their ultimate prize: a state law that will ultimately allow for families all over the state, rich and poor, to use taxpayer funds to send their children to private schools.

The Education Freedom Scholarship Act, approved by the legislature in a special session of the legislature Thursday, will launch this fall with up to 20,000 students statewide, and continue to grow each year, with income limits disappearing after the first year.

In the special session, the bill sailed through committees stacked with voucher supporters, and cleared the House and Senate with comfortable margins. Lawmakers batted away amendments seeking to strengthen the bill’s accountability provisions and protections for disabled people.

But Tennessee’s embrace of school vouchers for all was never a foregone conclusion. Slimmed-down versions of the idea died many times in the legislature before one finally squeaked through on a controversial vote in 2019. A group of parents and local governments sued to block it, and the courts initially declared the plan unconstitutional.

The detractors and skeptics continued to push back on the plan when Lee proposed the expansive program in 2024, with more than 50 school boards on record opposing it. That bill stalled last year in the Senate finance committee.

Also, the research hasn’t supported the case for vouchers as a way to improve academic outcomes. Recent studies find little evidence that vouchers improve test scores. In fact, they’ve sometimes led to declines. Polls show that public support for vouchers in Tennessee is generally split.

Even now, after its passage, big questions loom about the cost of the statewide program, and whether it meaningfully advances the cause of school choice. The Education Freedom Scholarship Act is projected to cost taxpayers more than $1 billion over the next five years. And because of the high income thresholds, 65% of the vouchers will end up going to students who already attend private schools, the state projects.

Meanwhile, students of color, kids from low-income families, and those with disabilities are often left out of school choice programs due to the locations and supply of private schools, transportation challenges, and the high cost of tuition, national data shows.

So how did vouchers take on an air of inevitability in Tennessee, just a few years after they were staring down defeat?

It was a combination of political swings, judicial shakeups that led to a string of court victories, and a pandemic that ignited culture wars and shook faith in public schools. Also, credit behind-the-scenes lobbying and political maneuvers and heavy influence from out-of-state groups with deep pockets.

In 2019, for example, a questionable parliamentary move led to the passage of the limited program, prompting several calls for a federal investigation. Two years later, the death of a Tennessee Supreme Court justice, just months after hearing arguments in the case, tipped the high court’s balance of power, likely contributing to the ruling that upheld the law.

At the center of the effort was Lee himself, who was determined to get universal vouchers across the finish line before the end of his second term in 2027. The governor used hardball tactics and welcomed spending from deep-pocketed out-of-state groups seeking to influence the outcome. He also loaded the bill with more spending to mollify public school advocates, and bundled funding for his plan with money for disaster relief and immigration in the wake of Hurricane Helene and President Donald Trump’s election.

Below is a closer look at where the march to universal vouchers began, and how it arrived at its destination in Tennessee:

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

Thomas Wilburn is the senior data editor for Chalkbeat. Contact him at twilburn@chalkbeat.org.

Project credits:

Photography and illustrations: Elaine Cromie
Editing: Krishnan M. Anantharaman, Tonyaa Weathersbee

Editor’s note: This project has been updated with developments from the 2025 legislative session.

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 universal school vouchers would cost at least $1.1 billion in first 5 years, state projects

2025-01-27T19:50:26+00:00

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Gov. Bill Lee’s universal private school voucher plan, if approved by Tennessee lawmakers in a special session that begins Monday, would cost taxpayers at least $1.1 billion during the first five years, according to a state analysis.

During the program’s first year in 2025-26, the cost would be about $350 million, based on the analysis released ahead of the session by the legislature’s independent fiscal review staff.

Those costs would include:

Nearly $146 million to provide vouchers of $7,075 each for 20,000 recipients to use toward their private education costs;
$198 million to pay public-school teachers one-time bonuses of $2,000 each;
$3.3 million to reimburse public school systems for funding they are projected to lose if students disenroll to use a voucher; and
$2.7 million to administer and staff the program.

After the first year, the program would cost more than $191 million annually, the analysis says.

However, the governor and the legislature’s GOP leaders are seeking even more funding for the program’s first year than the legislative analysis identifies, even as state revenues are down due to corporate tax breaks enacted last year by Lee’s administration.

Appropriation bills filed ahead of the session by Sen. Jack Johnson and Rep. William Lamberth, the majority leaders in their respective chambers, seek $447 million to launch the Education Freedom Act, including $226 million in recurring funds and $198 million in nonrecurring funds. The recurring funds figure includes the $144 million in unused voucher funds that the legislature set aside for the program last year before the bill bogged down in finance committees.

Disaster relief and enforcement of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies are also on the agenda for the special session. Lee proposes to spend another $470 million on flood relief for northeast Tennessee, including $20 million to rebuild a high school in Carter County. Information released thus far does not specify funding for supporting the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

Here are other notable assumptions and projections about the statewide voucher plan based on the analysis released by legislature’s fiscal review staff:

Student eligibility: Income limits would end after first year

Each voucher would pay $7,075 during the first year to up to 20,000 eligible students. (That’s $4,597 less than the average annual cost of private schools in Tennessee, which is $11,672 annually, according to tuition information gathered by Private School Review.)

It’s expected that all vouchers will be awarded, allowing the state to expand the program by 5,000 participants each year, potentially doubling the program’s size by the 2029-30 school year.

During the first year, half of the vouchers would be reserved for students whose families fall below an income limit that is set at 300% of the amount required to qualify for free or reduced-price meals, or $173,160 for a family of four. The other half would have no income restrictions.

Because of the high income thresholds, it’s assumed that 65% of the vouchers would be awarded to students who already attend private schools, with 35% going to students switching out of public schools. The 65-35 split is expected to continue in subsequent years.

It’s assumed that no student who is currently receiving a voucher through the state’s smaller education savings account and individualized education account programs will opt to participate in the new statewide voucher program, since their current benefits are higher.

Accountability: A choice of tests

While private schools accepting the new vouchers would have to give voucher recipients national or state tests annually, those schools are likely to opt for using national tests that they currently use instead of using the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP, which is based on state academic standards.

Test results would be incorporated into an annual state report that the state comptroller’s Office of Research and Education Accountability would deliver to the legislature’s education committees.

Incentives for public schools: Teacher bonuses, district reimbursement

An estimated 86,000 public school teachers would be eligible to receive the one-time bonuses during the current school year.

A proposed school building improvement fund for public schools would receive over $77 million annually, or 80% of tax collections from the sports betting industry, which currently go to lottery-funded college scholarships.

In the first year, 12 public school systems are expected to meet the state’s criteria to receive reimbursements from the state for funding lost when students disenroll to participate in the voucher program. In the second year, 15 districts are expected to qualify for the reimbursements.

The reimbursements would be completely paid for by the state, not from local governments.

Program administration: Current vendor likely to continue

Student First Technologies, the current vendor for the state’s smaller voucher programs known as education savings accounts and individualized education accounts, likely would serve the statewide program, too. The Indiana-based company’s contract runs through May 2028 and requires it to be able to accommodate at least 20,000 users.

In addition, the state expects to hire 11 people to administer the statewide program. The current ESA program has 22 employees providing oversight.

You can read the bill and track its movement 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.

2023-24 letter grades are out for Tennessee schools. Here’s what they show.

2024-12-19T23:12:15+00:00

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About 3 out of every 4 Tennessee schools eligible to receive letter grades under a state system scored a C or better this year, about the same as last year, newly released data show.

The Tennessee Department of Education announced the letter grades for 2023-24 on Thursday while launching an updated Tennessee Report Card, an online data dashboard.

This is the second year the state’s schools have received letter grades under a revamped formula that emphasizes academic achievement, or proficiency, over academic growth — a change that spurred disagreement over how to best measure school performance.

The median grade-eligible school earned a 3.3 out of a possible 5 points, or on the high end of the C range, according to a Chalkbeat analysis. Last year, the median score was 3.2 points.

This year’s report card on the 1,693 Tennessee schools that met the criteria for getting graded read as follows: 290 A’s, 484 B’s, 508 C’s, 330 D’s, and 78 F’s.

Lizzette Reynolds, the state education commissioner, said in a statement that the report card “provides valuable insights into the performance of public schools and districts across Tennessee, giving families and communities the tools they need to advocate for their students.”

In a statement, Memphis-Shelby County Schools, the state’s largest school district, highlighted its improvements on the top scale of the grading system: The number of schools earning A’s increased from nine to 16 this year, while the number of schools earning A’s or B’s rose from 40 to 57.

While the number of MSCS schools receiving F’s decreased from 41 to 22, the number of schools that received D’s rose from 43 to 55. Eleven percent of eligible schools in MSCS earned failing grades, the largest proportion of F’s among districts with 50 or more schools.

Like last year, C is the most common grade for a school in the Memphis district.

“Our focus on improving outcomes for every student is unwavering,” Memphis-Shelby County Schools Superintendent Marie Feagins said in a statement. “These results are a step forward, and we will continue to push for even greater success in the years to come.”

The results come as Feagins is fighting an effort to terminate her contract for “professional misconduct,” as alleged in a school board resolution. A divided board this week pushed the resolution discussion to next month. Feagins has vehemently denied the accusations.

New Tennessee charter school law for at-risk students draws interest in Memphis and Nashville

2024-12-12T22:28:52+00:00

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Three aspiring charter operators are interested in opening schools in Memphis and Nashville under a new state law aimed at creating options for youth considered at risk of becoming disconnected from traditional public schools.

Labeled “opportunity” charter schools, the campuses would serve middle or high school students. At least 75% of each school’s students would have to be documented as dealing with any of a range of challenges such as juvenile crime, substance abuse, chronic absenteeism, teen pregnancy, getting held back in several grades, dropping out of school, or experiencing abuse or neglect.

The schools likely would put a greater emphasis on career and technical education and be built around trauma-informed and restorative practices and social and emotional learning.

They also would be held to different standards than other public charter schools in Tennessee that must show a certain level of achievement in order to remain open, as well as for traditional public schools that are evaluated under the state’s A-F grading system.

Next week, the state Board of Education is expected to decide exactly what those expectations will be. Tennessee’s education department has proposed exempting opportunity charter schools from receiving a letter grade during their first year of operation. In subsequent years, measurements of success would emphasize continuous enrollment and college and career readiness.

The aspiring operators — two in Memphis and one in Nashville — are among 17 groups that recently submitted letters to state and local education officials indicating their interest in applying by next Feb. 1 to open a charter school for the 2026-27 school year.

But it’s the opportunity charter school category that is new to the mix under the 2024 law sponsored by House Speaker Cameron Sexton of Crossville, a longtime charter advocate, and Sen. Ferrell Haile of Gallatin, both Republicans.

Interested operators for opportunity charter schools are:

An organization known as Memphis Mentors and led by teacher Carlos Shaw, which is exploring opening Memphis at Work Charter School to emphasize work-based learning in partnership with Memphis-Shelby County Schools;
A group led by businessman and attorney Anthony Canada that is interested in opening Legacy Day Academy in Memphis’ Frayser neighborhood, starting with grades 6-10, in partnership with Memphis-Shelby County Schools;
An organization formed by Middle Tennessee charter leader and school administrator Ahmed White that is interested in opening The Rock Academy of Nashville, starting with a ninth grade class and eventually serving as a full high school, in partnership with Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools

None of the three groups expressed interest in opening a residential school, which is allowable under the new law but would be costly to operate. During legislative debates this spring, some critics questioned the wisdom of putting a large number of at-risk students together in a residential setting.

In addition, the state received no interest this year in the possibility of converting an existing charter or traditional public school into an opportunity charter school.

Many of Tennessee’s at-risk youth who have been suspended or expelled from schools for disciplinary problems currently attend alternative education programs run by their local school systems. Those are short-term placements until the students can move back to their traditional public schools.

Opportunity charter schools would provide a long-term option that is designed specifically around the needs of at-risk students.

“The intent of the legislation was to open the door for expert educators and community leaders to find better solutions for kids who are struggling in traditional school models, and that’s what’s happening in both Memphis and Nashville,” said Greg Lippman, CEO of New York-based Groundswell Network, a nonprofit group supporting local work on alternative education models across the nation.

Educators and community leaders attend a meeting in Nashville on May 8, 2024, to learn about alternative education options under Tennessee's new opportunity charter school law. (Photo by Marta W. Aldrich / Chalkbeat)

Bobby White, the founder and CEO of Frayser Community Schools charter network and president of Leadership Memphis, expects wider interest in applying in 2026 to open opportunity charter schools in Memphis beginning with the 2027-28 school year. Educators and community leaders need more time, he said, to study the law and the state’s expectations, and to develop their plans.

Last month, White hosted a meeting at a church in the Raleigh-Frayser community as part of his work with Groundswell to identify potential charter leaders and neighborhoods in need in the Memphis area.

“I want people to dream it, vision it, then build it,” White told Chalkbeat on Thursday. “When our first opportunity charter schools open, they should be exemplars in our city. People should be wowed.”

He added: “There absolutely needs to be one school like this in every community that has high crime and high poverty.”

In all, Memphis-Shelby County Schools received the most letters of intent to open charter schools in the 2026-27 school year, followed by districts in Nashville, Hamilton County, Rutherford County, and Jackson.

Typically, about half of groups that submit letters of intent follow through and apply during the same charter cycle.

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.

Tennessee’s high school graduation rate sets another record high

2024-11-01T00:26:31+00:00

Tennessee has set a state record for high school graduations for a second straight year.

About 92.1% of public school students in the Class of 2024 graduated on time this spring, surpassing the previous year’s record by 1.5 percentage points, according to data released Wednesday.

The latest milestone comes two years after Tennessee’s graduation rate returned to pre-pandemic levels after a three-year slide amid COVID-related disruptions to schooling and mirroring national trends.

Before that, Tennessee had logged a decade of incremental increases in the graduation rate totaling more than 4 percentage points under a workforce and economic development initiative prioritized by former Gov. Bill Haslam.

“The achievement reflects the dedication of our district leaders, educators, and families working together,” said Lizzette Reynolds, education commissioner under Gov. Bill Lee.

In all, 78 out of the state’s 147 districts improved their graduation rates, including all four large urban school systems.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools, the state’s largest district, increased its rate to 83.4%, up 1.9 percentage points. Among Hispanic students there, the rate surged 7.5 percentage points to 80.2%.

Nashville’s rate jumped by 4.5 percentage points to 85.7%, while Hamilton County’s went up 3.7 points to 93.2%. The rate for Knox County Schools was 93%, up by 1.1 points.

English learners saw a 12-point increase in their graduation rates statewide, from 67% to 79%.

On Thursday, state Democratic leaders pointed out that the record-high rates came after a $4.5 billion federal emergency investment in Tennessee’s K-12 schools amid the pandemic, plus targeted state increases for student funding.

“Together, these resources helped our schools deliver on their promise to educate every child, regardless of background or zip code,” said Sen. London Lamar of Memphis, who chairs her chamber’s Democratic caucus.

“However, with the end of this emergency federal support, Tennessee will again rank among the bottom ten states in per-pupil funding," Lamar warned. “As a result, we risk losing the momentum we’ve worked so hard to build.”

Earning a high school diploma has long been an important marker of student achievement. High school graduates not only generally earn more money during their lifetime than those who drop out, but also tend to lead longer and healthier lives, according to the American Public Health Association.

Below, you can look up to see how your district did.

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 statement from Sen. London Lamar of Memphis.

Governor says Tennessee has money for both Hurricane Helene recovery and universal school vouchers

2024-10-11T19:24:00+00:00

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Gov. Bill Lee said Hurricane Helene’s massive destruction in northeast Tennessee, plus a growing backlog of public infrastructure needs statewide, won’t prevent his administration from pursuing a universal private school voucher program during his final two years in office.

He also suggested that there’s no need to tap into the $144 million set aside for his Education Freedom Scholarship Act to beef up the state’s disaster response. That money currently is not being used, because his proposal stalled in the legislature this year.

“We don’t have to choose one or the other,” Lee said Thursday during a media briefing about the state’s emergency response and recovery work.

Ongoing and potential new initiatives like statewide vouchers remain possible, he said, because of strong fiscal management by the state in the last 20 years.

“We have resources. We have an economy. We have the ability to invest in … infrastructure and education both,” Lee added.

The governor sought to quell suggestions from some lawmakers that state leaders rethink Tennessee’s budget priorities, not only to help northeast Tennessee recover from potentially $1 billion-plus in damage to its public infrastructure, but also to address a growing backlog of at least $68 billion needed statewide to improve roads, bridges, water systems, schools, firehouses, and more, according to the state’s latest assessment.

One of his administration’s top priorities is to give public funding to any family across Tennessee who wants to send their children to private school. This summer, Lee said his office was crafting a new bill after his 2024 proposal stumbled in legislative committees this spring due to disagreements among Republicans.

Last week, Rep. Mark White, a Memphis Republican and voucher supporter who chairs a House education committee, said the state’s new first priority should be “taking care of our neighbors in East Tennessee” and helping them recover from the deadly storm.

“Can we do universal vouchers, too? I don’t know,” White continued. “But East Tennessee has got to be our top focus.”

On Thursday, Lee said his administration is already prioritizing recovery and rebuilding for the region.

He announced a $100 million fund to help 13 hurricane-ravaged counties remove debris and repair water and wastewater systems immediately. Those counties eventually can seek reimbursements from the federal government to repay the fund, but need no-interest loans up front, Lee said.

On Friday, the chairperson of the House Democratic caucus issued a scathing critique of the governor’s plan to loan counties money, instead of providing state funding outright to supplement federal assistance. He also criticized Lee for tapping shared state-federal Medicaid funding to provide the loans.

“Gov. Lee has established a solid reputation for fiscal mismanagement and callous decision-making during his term, but this loan program beats anything I’ve ever seen,” said Rep. John Ray Clemmons, of Nashville.

Clemmons said the state should be pulling from its reserves, or the unused $144 million voucher allocation, to provide disaster assistance.

Schools have been closed since the storm flooded the rural, mountainous region in late September, washing out roads and bridges, damaging drinking water and wastewater systems, and battering school campuses.

In addition to overseeing repairs, school officials have been revamping bus routes for the return of students, many of whom already had fall breaks planned for October. Daily bus commutes likely will lengthen to more than an hour for many children. At a Carter County high school that’s expected to be declared a total loss, students will be relocated to a former school building that houses district offices.

Meanwhile, officials with the state education department said they are working with local school leaders to provide flexibility and assistance to school systems affected by Helene.

That may involve granting waivers so schools can provide more instruction remotely than normally allowed, or to reduce the required number of instructional days. The state also will work with districts as needed regarding fall high school and ACT testing, a spokesperson said.

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 response from House Democrats.

Tennessee students’ results improve on reading, math tests, extending post-pandemic recovery

2024-06-25T19:54:10+00:00

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Tennessee students showed slightly better performance on this year’s state standardized tests in reading and math, continuing their recovery from post-pandemic lows.

About 39% of students met or exceeded expectations in reading on the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Test, according to data from the state’s education department released Monday. That’s up a point from 38% in 2023.

The gains reflect steady improvement since 2021, the year TCAP resumed after the pandemic closed schools in 2020. Only 29.6% of the state’s public school students tested proficient in reading then.

“The 2023-24 TCAP results demonstrate student performance remains steady or shows growth and improvement across tested grades and subjects,” the state education department said in a statement.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools, the state’s largest school district, also recorded improved performance in reading, with 22.4% of students meeting or exceeding expectations on TCAP reading, compared with 20.7% in 2023. In 2021, the figure was just 13%.

MSCS officials also highlighted a few promising data points in the reading scores. The percentage of third, fourth, and fifth graders who scored proficient in reading rose to 26%, from 23.2% in 2023, according to the district’s preliminary calculations.

That’s consequential because third grade is when students face the prospect of being retained or sent to summer school if they don’t meet — or show progress toward — TCAP reading standards.

It’s also noteworthy because MSCS used $100 million in federal pandemic relief funds to hire 750 specialized education assistants to help bolster literacy instruction for students in kindergarten, first, and second grades — the years before they enter third grade.

But that money is drying up this year.

The district also cited improvements in math for third, fourth, and fifth graders: 23.7% met or exceeded the math standard on the TCAP this year, compared with 20.9% in 2023.

“We celebrate this positive momentum and are confident that we will continue to move in this direction,” MSCS Superintendent Marie Feagins said in a statement.

Statewide, preliminary data indicates that around 40% of students in grades 3 to 8 met or exceeded TCAP expectations in math, about a 2-percentage-point increase from 2023. Because of standards revisions for high school math, those scores are not included in the state’s initial summary, though they have been in past years.

In 2021, 28.4% of students statewide scored proficient on TCAP math.

In MSCS, the overall math proficiency rate rose to 20%, up from 17% in 2023 and vastly ahead of the post-pandemic rate of 7.4% in 2021.

Still, those gains — as well as the reading gains — left MSCS significantly below than the statewide math and reading averages. And Black and Hispanic students, as well as students from economically disadvantaged households, still lag behind white and wealthier counterparts in proficiency.

These graphs offer further insight into how various groups of MSCS students fared on the TCAP, as well as how MSCS students’ performance compared with the rest of the state.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Reach her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat data and graphics reporter Kae Petrin and Chalkbeat data intern Mia Hollie contributed to this story

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.

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.

Teachers can challenge Tennessee law limiting instruction on race, gender, and bias, judge rules

2024-05-09T21:45:13+00:00

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Tennessee teachers can move forward with their lawsuit challenging a 3-year-old state law restricting what they can teach about race, gender, and bias.

U.S. District Court Judge Aleta Trauger denied the state’s motion to dismiss the case.

The Nashville judge also sided with educators over questions of whether they have legal grounds to sue the state, plus whether the federal court is the appropriate jurisdiction to take up complaints about the 2021 state law.

And in a 50-page memorandum to explain her single-page order, Trauger was frequently critical of the statute, which restricts teachers from discussing 14 concepts that the Republican-controlled legislature deemed cynical or divisive. She also cited shortcomings of related rules, developed by the state education department, to outline the processes for filing and investigating complaints, appealing decisions, and levying punishment that could strip teachers of their licenses and school districts of state funding.

“The Act simply invites a vast array of potentially dissatisfied individuals to lodge complaints based on their understanding of those concepts and then calls on the Commissioner [of Education], as a sort of state philosopher, to think deeply about what equality, impartiality, and other abstract concepts really mean and enforce the Act accordingly,” Trauger wrote in her May 2 memorandum.

Meanwhile, educators are at the mercy of the personal biases of authorities, which is “exactly what the doctrine of unconstitutional vagueness is intended to guard against,” she said.

The so-called prohibited concepts law was among the first of its kind in the nation that passed amid a conservative backlash to the racial-justice movement and protests prompted by the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis.

Among its prohibitions are classroom discussions about whether “an individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, is inherently privileged, racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously.”

The law’s defenders note that it permits an “impartial discussion of controversial aspects of history,” or as Rep. John Ragan, the House sponsor, described it: “facts-based” instruction.

But teachers say they don’t know how to be impartial when teaching about the theories of racial superiority that led to slavery and Jim Crow laws. The resulting confusion has influenced the small but pivotal decisions they make every day about how to prepare for a lesson, what materials to use, and how to answer a student’s question, ultimately stifling classroom discussion, many critics of the law assert.

Last July, lawyers for five public school educators and the Tennessee Education Association, the state’s largest teacher organization, filed a lawsuit in federal court in Nashville.

The suit says the language of the law is unconstitutionally vague and that the state’s enforcement plan is subjective. The complaint also says the statute interferes with instruction on difficult but important topics included in state-approved academic standards, which dictate other decisions around curriculum and testing.

Trauger, who taught school for three years before entering law school, suggested that the ambiguity could lead to a lack of due process for educators under the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment.

“That does not mean that a law has to be wise or perfect or crystal clear, but it must mean something concrete and specific that a well-informed person can understand by reading its text,” she wrote in her memorandum.

Kathryn Vaughn, a Tipton County teacher who is among the plaintiffs, called the judge’s decision an important early step in the legal challenge.

“I’m thrilled that the judge listened to our concerns as educators and seemed to understand that this law puts teachers in an impossible position,” she told Chalkbeat on Thursday.

A spokesperson for the state attorney general’s office, which filed a motion for dismissal last September, declined to comment on the new development.

The judge set a June 17 scheduling meeting with attorneys in the case to discuss how to manage the litigation going forward.

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 show the state attorney general’s office declined to comment.

Tennessee’s at-risk youth could see a new education option under charter school bill

2024-04-10T14:00:00+00:00

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A proposal to create new education options for at-risk youth in Tennessee is drawing interest from charter school networks, both inside and outside the state.

Labeled “opportunity” charter schools, the campuses would serve middle and high schoolers dealing with a range of challenges, such as substance abuse and juvenile crime, chronic absenteeism, teen pregnancy, getting held back in several grades, or being at risk of dropping out.

“We’re very interested in the proposal, because it’s directed at a lot of students we already serve,” said Jocquell Rodgers, executive director of Green Dot Public Schools in Memphis, which views the network’s Hillcrest High School campus as a good candidate to become an opportunity charter school. Green Dot’s charter contract to run Hillcrest ends in 2026 under the state’s Achievement School District, or ASD, which appears to be on its way out.

Rodgers likes that the Republican-sponsored bill calls for the state education department to develop different expectations for opportunity charter schools. Those measures likely would focus on college and career readiness instead of academic proficiency.

“It’s very hard to get some of our students to proficiency, which was the promise of the ASD. But we can give them job training and workforce development and make sure they’re on track to graduate, get a job, or go to college or a trade school,” Rodgers said.

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools views alternative education programs — for students who are struggling to attend and succeed in traditional public schools — as a growth area for the sector, especially if accountability expectations are adjusted. Nationally, charter schools already serve 42% of students who are enrolled in alternative education campuses.

Under the legislation by House Speaker Cameron Sexton and Sen. Ferrell Haile of Gallatin, enrolling in an opportunity charter school would be a matter of choice. At least 75% of the school’s students would have to be classified as at risk, and the school also could include a residential setting.

That would be significantly different from most of Tennessee’s current alternative education schools, which were created as mandatory short-term learning programs for students who were suspended or expelled from their traditional public school.

“It has worked in some other states,” Sexton told reporters recently about his charter school proposal. “We think it gives us another public option that could help kids in bad situations.”

Not everyone is on board with the idea.

Even some Republicans are wary of the prospect of opening the door to residential charter schools — a new type of publicly funded but independently run school of choice — or the potential of commingling at-risk student populations on one campus.

And leaders of traditional public schools say they’d prefer to meet the needs of at-risk students in existing local settings. They just need additional money to hire more teachers, counselors, behavior specialists, and social workers, they say, not new programs that divert funding from their school systems.

“We’ve said time and again that districts want to provide our students with more behavioral and mental health supports,” said Gary Lilly, executive director of the state superintendents organization.

Despite those tensions, the opportunity charter school legislation has advanced quickly since sponsors introduced it last month.

Last week, it passed the full Senate 19-7 along mostly partisan lines. It’s scheduled to be taken up Wednesday by the House’s finance subcommittee.

Sexton’s bill is narrower in scope than his 2023 charter proposal

A longtime charter school advocate, Sexton introduced a much broader charter bill last year that riled up the home school community and quickly stalled. That legislation proposed charter schools to serve home school students, in addition to a charter boarding school component.

Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton, a Republican from Crossville, answers reporters questions on April 4, 2024, at the state Capitol.

It also would have allowed operators to apply directly to the state-appointed charter commission without going through local school boards, prompting pushback from leaders of traditional public schools.

This year, Sexton’s proposal removed any reference to home schools. And operators would have to apply directly to the local district for authorization. As under current law, they could appeal to the state charter commission if their application is rejected locally.

“We’re hopeful,” Sexton said last week when asked about the prospects for this year’s bill. “We tried to pass it last year. We had some opposition. We worked through some issues, and I think now we’re in a pretty good place on the House side.”

Proposal goes beyond temporary placement

Tennessee already has hundreds of alternative education schools and programs, mostly through local public school systems.

State law requires at least one alternative school or program for grades 7-12 in each district to serve students who are suspended or expelled, until they can return to a regular school setting. School systems have the option of creating alternative programs for students in grades 1-6. And some districts also have choice-based schools or programs to provide an alternative path for students who, for whatever reason, don’t fit well into a traditional school environment.

Sexton’s opportunity school legislation takes cues from charter school laws in dozens of other states, including California, Florida, New York, and Texas.

“It’s not a temporary placement like under Tennessee law, where students are mandated to attend for a period of time. It’s a choice, where the school becomes a student’s new home school to try to go and learn,” said Greg Lippman, a former California charter leader who recently founded the New York-based Groundswell Network to support local work on alternative education models across the nation.

Last fall, Lippman was in Memphis to talk with educators and nonprofit and community groups during a gathering organized by Bobby White, founder and CEO of the Frayser Community Schools charter network.

And next month, Groundswell will convene a national conversation at Nashville’s Belmont University to discuss school models to serve youths who are overaged and undereducated, involved in the juvenile justice system, foster kids, or facing other educational barriers.

Lippman said that his group is not the source of Sexton’s legislation but that he supports it, as does the Tennessee Charter School Center.

“Many states have a more expansive definition of alternative schools than under Tennessee’s current model,” he said. “It’s not surprising that the speaker’s office would find interested partners with expertise in this area.”

Funding would come through TISA

Under the bill, opportunity charter schools would receive funding through Tennessee’s new K-12 education formula known as the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement, or TISA. The formula allocates more funding for students with higher needs, and the money follows the student to the school where they’re enrolled.

That’s a concern for the bill’s detractors, who say that dividing a finite amount of funding and resources for the same population of students won’t lead to better outcomes.

“Diverting funds to charter schools only rips funding from educational institutions that are constantly exploring ways to meet the needs of all students,” said Mary Jo Holmes, board president for the Tennessee Alternative Education Association.

“What will a charter school do that is better serving than current practices?” she asked, noting that Tennessee’s alternative education approach is based on collaboration among parents, educators, and disciplinarians.

“It is a team decision, not a menu item,” Holmes said.

Connor Grady, a spokesman for Sexton, said that, in addition to TISA funding, opportunity charter operators could partner with philanthropists or apply for federal grants, just as traditional schools and districts can.

Asked for examples of potential opportunity charter operators, Grady listed Goodwill’s Excel Center and groups in Colorado and Massachusetts.

Haile, the bill’s sponsor in the Senate, has said he doesn’t expect many opportunity charter operators to create residential schools due to the cost of such an endeavor. But it’s an option under the bill.

For Rodgers, the Green Dot charter operator in Memphis, the goal is to continue to do “transformation work” in a city with a large number of at-risk youth.

“Memphis-Shelby County Schools doesn’t have enough alternative schools to serve its own population, so maybe this could be a win-win,” Rodgers said. “It’s an opportunity for us to work together to address a big challenge in our community.”

You can track the bill’s status 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 Senate passes bill to do away with the Achievement School District

2024-04-02T00:27:56+00:00

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A proposal to shift low-performing schools from Tennessee’s sputtering takeover and turnaround district to other state-approved but locally managed intervention models passed unanimously Monday in the full Senate.

The bill, which is awaiting action in the full House, seeks to phase out the Achievement School District, the state’s most ambitious and aggressive school improvement model, by the end of 2025-26 school year.

It also would strip the state education commissioner’s authority to take over neighborhood schools that are performing academically in the bottom 5%. Under the ASD, the state typically assigned those schools to charter operators to run.

In place of the ASD, the bill would create a school improvement model designed to foster more collaboration between the local district and the state education department.

Tennessee’s education chief would have authority to direct a local district to choose from three turnaround approaches — under a charter operator, a public university, or an independent turnaround expert — for each of its low-performing “priority” schools.

The turnaround work would be locally managed, but with state oversight. For starters, the state would have to approve local districts’ turnaround choices.

“The ASD has not worked for some time, which we can all agree (on),” said Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Memphis Democrat who is co-sponsoring the legislation with Rep. Antonio Parkinson, also of Memphis.

“This will put the control back in the hands of the locals,” she said on the Senate floor.

The bill is one of several legislative proposals seeking to address the failures of the ASD, created under a 2010 state law as part of a package that helped Tennessee win a $500 million federal grant in the Race to the Top competition.

Parkinson’s companion bill has similar goals.

Meanwhile, GOP leaders in the House are pressing for a massive private-school voucher bill that includes a provision to phase out the ASD on July 1, 2026.

All three measures advanced this year after several top Republicans in the GOP-controlled legislature acknowledged that the state-run district isn’t working and should be replaced.

Not only did removing struggling schools from local governance fail to improve student outcomes, but most ASD schools also performed no better than low-performing schools that received no intervention, according to researchers. Among the challenges, the state-run district struggled with high teacher turnover and significant community backlash, especially in Memphis, which became the hub of the ASD’s work.

The ASD, which had a peak of 33 schools in 2016, continues to shrink, especially since 2022, as schools began to complete their prescribed 10 years under the model. Currently, 13 schools are left in its portfolio, the last of which will complete their charter contracts at the end of 2025-26 school year.

“We’ve got to do something different,” Akbari said before Monday’s vote. “This bill would create a partnership between the local district and the state education department to make sure priority schools are receiving meaningful interventions that give it a chance for turnaround.”

How much those interventions might cost is unknown. School turnaround work is expensive, but the legislature’s fiscal analysts said the cost will depend on which turnaround methods and contractors are used for the work.

Akbari and Parkinson have been working with the education department to develop a new school turnaround strategy that doesn’t include the heavy-handed takeover tactics that put the ASD at odds with the districts that previously ran the schools, and their communities.

They also want to keep Tennessee in compliance with the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, which requires each state to have a rigorous improvement plan for schools that are struggling the most.

Some details of Akbari and Parkinson’s companion bills differ. For example, Akbari’s proposal could apply to any of the state’s approximately 95 priority schools, at the direction of Tennessee’s education commissioner.

Parkinson wants to create a hub of school improvement tools for any Tennessee public school to access, no matter how much it falls short or in what area. He wants to avoid adding negative labels to schools beyond existing state or federal designations that are based on their overall achievement, or the achievement gaps among certain student groups.

“You kill the esteem of the school, the teachers, the students, parents, when you label a school as being part of the ASD, or whatever you want to call it,” Parkinson said. “The fact that our state already gives priority designations to schools is enough.”

Even so, Parkinson said his and Akbari’s proposals “aren’t that far apart,” especially on the most important issues.

“There will be no state takeover under either version,” he said. “That’s been a dismal failure for our state. In the process, we’ve wasted over a billion and a half taxpayer dollars. And we’ve fallen short when it comes to some precious years in the lives of ASD students.”

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

University of Memphis could become its own K-12 school district under new legislation

2024-03-11T23:26:06+00:00

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The University of Memphis, which operates three high-performing schools for K-12 students on its campus, could become its own school district under new legislation from two Republican lawmakers from Memphis.

Rep. Mark White and Sen. Brent Taylor want the elementary, middle, and high schools on the college campus to come under the supervision of a university-led district and shift out of the purview of Memphis-Shelby County Schools, the state’s largest school system.

Under their proposal, the university also could create more schools, including using charter operators, without having to go through MSCS, with which the university has a contractual arrangement. Those new schools could be located throughout Greater Memphis.

White, who plans to introduce the proposal Tuesday in the House K-12 education subcommittee, said he wants to give the university authority to replicate school models that are generating some of the best academic results in Tennessee. While none of the schools have an academic requirement for entry, all three recently received A grades and reward-school designations from the state for student growth.

But a statement Monday from Memphis-Shelby County Schools suggested the district wants to keep its current arrangement.

“We value our longstanding partnership with the University of Memphis and believe Campus School, University Middle School, and University High School are important parts of the district’s educational options,” the statement said. “We look forward to continuing our partnership.”

Proposal envisions a new university-led governance system

The legislation, called the Innovative School District Act, seeks to introduce a new school governance model using public universities to scale up proven innovations in K-12 teaching and learning. The new pathway would remove oversight by traditionally elected school board members who represent the community’s voice in public education. The measure could have statewide implications if other universities pursue the same track.

Under the legislation, Tennessee’s education commissioner could approve a university-based K-12 school system. School governance would be handled by the university’s board of trustees, which also could appoint several of its members as a committee to perform the functions of a school board.

Not just any higher education institution could seek to become a school district, though. The university would be required to have a comprehensive doctoral program and operate a collection of training schools that offer clinical teaching experiences and mentoring for future educators beginning with pre-kindergarten. Such institutions also typically conduct and publish research on effective teaching techniques.

Currently, the University of Memphis, which serves students from pre-K through high school, is the state’s only public university that meets that standard. In addition to its three campus schools, the university partners with Porter-Leath, one of the city’s largest providers of preschool services, to operate an early childhood academy in the city’s Orange Mound neighborhood. Several other Tennessee universities operate training or laboratory schools, but do not serve the full continuum of students from pre-K through graduation.

White, who chairs the House Education Administration Committee, has talked for years with leaders at the University of Memphis about ways to expand its K-12 work. After opening a high school in the fall of 2022, the university warmed to the idea.

“We did not pursue this legislation,” said Sally Parish, the university’s associate vice president for educational initiatives. “Chairman White approached us about scaling our academic model and our academic success to serve more children. We now have a full compendium of pre-K through 12th grade, and the timing feels right.”

Students concentrate on their classwork at Campus Elementary School, one of three schools operated by the University of Memphis on its campus near midtown Memphis.

Why the shift would matter for MSCS

If the legislation becomes law, the shift to a university-based school system would not be immediately noticeable. While Memphis-Shelby County Schools is their district of record, campus schools already contractually operate under the oversight of the university’s board of trustees. The university has its own policies and procedures, employs all of the schools’ teachers and staff, and provides classroom facilities.

But Memphis-Shelby County Schools, one of Tennessee’s lower-performing districts, would not be able to report the high-achieving campus schools’ scores as part of its own academic data.

Eventually, the university wants to expand beyond its ZIP code.

“One of our challenges is that we have more children on our waitlist than we have in our schools,” said Parish, who oversees the university’s campus schools. “We know there’s a local demand; we just haven’t been allowed to meet it. Our contract with the district caps enrollment at 1,050 students.”

The enrollment cap was part of the contract approved by Memphis’ school board in 2021 to allow the university to open a high school recently on campus to prepare students for college and career. The university’s elementary school opened in 1912 and serves over 400 students. University Middle was founded in 2019 as a project-based STEAM school and serves about 270 students.

School leader sees a chance to diversify enrollment

Campus school programs have faced criticism for not reflecting the diversity of Memphis, where 64% of residents are Black, and nearly a fourth are deemed impoverished. The student population of Memphis-Shelby County Schools is 93% Black and 57% economically disadvantaged.

According to the latest state data, Campus Elementary School’s student population is 24% Black and 7% economically disadvantaged, while students at University Middle School are 48% Black and 10% economically disadvantaged. The state’s demographic data is not yet available for University High School.

Parish believes that with more autonomy and the ability to recruit charter operators to open schools in other parts of the city, the university can diversify its K-12 population and create academic tracks that are more responsive to local workforce needs.

Currently, she said, about 20% of the schools’ students are the children of university faculty and staff; 30% are from families who live within a 2-mile radius of the university; and the rest from the larger Memphis community.

“We’re not shying away from serving a diverse community,” Parish said. “We serve children in every single local ZIP code, but we don’t provide transportation to get to the university, and that’s a barrier that we want to eliminate. Currently, we’re limited in how we can serve students based on what the district allows.”

Having the ability to authorize charter schools would help the university expand to other parts of Greater Memphis, she added.

Tennessee now has 141 traditional school systems operated as city, county, or special school districts. Any of them can authorize a charter school under a 2019 law that created the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission.

The Tennessee Charter School Center, which advocates for charters, is not the driving force behind the new legislation but is consulting with its sponsors.

“What’s most important to TCSC is ensuring that any authorizer in Tennessee is high quality, follows national best practices, and is evaluated by the Tennessee State Board of Education,” said Elizabeth Fiveash, the group’s chief policy officer. “We are working with the sponsors to make sure that is reflected in their proposed language.”

You can track the legislation 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 universal school voucher bill clears two more legislative hurdles after contentious debate

2024-03-07T03:30:14+00:00

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Gov. Bill Lee’s proposal to create a statewide school voucher program easily cleared its first Senate hurdle Wednesday, but took a split vote and five-plus hours of often contentious debate to pass out of a House committee.

The legislation — the most ambitious and controversial education plan of Lee’s five-plus years in office — passed 7-1 out of the Senate Education Committee, with the panel’s lone Democrat casting the dissenting vote.

In the House Education Administration Committee, the measure advanced 12-7, including four Republicans voting against it in the GOP-controlled legislature. Passage came even as Maryville City Schools Director Mike Winstead, a 2018 finalist for National Superintendent of the Year, called vouchers “a bitter pill, maybe some would say a poison pill” that he believes will destabilize K-12 education across Tennessee in the long run.

“You can coat that with a lot of good things and make it go down a little easier,” Winstead testified before the panel. “But in the end, we’re being asked to ingest a poison pill.”

Meanwhile, supporters pounded on the theme of parental choice.

“This is about parents finding the best learning environment for their students,” said Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds.

Lee’s Education Freedom Scholarship Act must clear more committees in each chamber before it can be voted on by the full House and Senate. The House bill now heads to that chamber’s government operations committee, while the Senate bill will be heard next by its finance panel.

Both proposals would start a new voucher program this fall with up to 20,000 students who could use taxpayer funding to attend private schools. Lee wants the program opened up eventually for any K-12 student, regardless of their family income.

The pieces of legislation remain vastly different, however, both in cost and scope.

The Senate bill, starting this year at $95 million and jumping to $333 million in the program’s second year, requires voucher recipients to take some type of tests that can be used to compare and rank students, but not the same rigorous standards-based tests that public school students have to take under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, known as TCAP. The legislation also would allow public school students to enroll in any district, even if they’re not zoned for it, provided there’s enough space and teaching staff.

The House version, starting at $398 million and growing to $425 million in the program’s second year, has no testing requirement for voucher recipients. It includes a long list of enticements aimed at public school supporters, including reducing testing time for students, increasing the state’s contribution toward health insurance costs for teachers, requiring fewer evaluations for high-performing teachers, and giving districts an extra $75 per student — or about $73 million in all in the first year — to help with building costs.

Rep. Chris Hurt, a Halls Republican who voted against the bill, expressed concern that the public school measures could get “stripped out” of the final legislation if Senate and House negotiators head to a conference committee to work out their differences.

And Rep. Charlie Baum, a Murfreesboro Republican who sits on the House Finance Committee, worried about the proposal’s high cost. He noted that Tennessee’s government faces a $400 million shortfall in its current budget.

Rep. Charlie Baum, a Murfreesboro Republican, flagged the high cost of the House voucher bill during a committee meeting but eventually voted for the measure.

“I understand that we’re adding the additional sections to make the bill more enticing, maybe to sweeten the pot,” said Baum, who later voted for the measure. “But it seems like in order to pass a $140 million freedom accounts [voucher] bill, we’re spending an additional $350 million” for public schools.

Baum asked sponsors to consider separate bills to vote on the private school voucher and public school provisions based on their costs and merits. But Rep. Scott Cepicky, a Maury County Republican who is carrying the bill for House Majority Leader William Lamberth, declined.

The voucher proposal, Cepicky said, was the right “vehicle” to address long-standing challenges for public educators.

Rep. Antonio Parkinson balked at that statement though. The Memphis Democrat said lawmakers have the power any time to create legislation to address matters related to public education.

“For some reason, we’ve chosen to create a lemon,” said Parkinson, seizing on the same automotive analogy. “And that vehicle now has all of these great options that are in it, but is tied to four flat tires.”

The House debate waded into the potential for voucher money going to undocumented students or to private schools teaching atheist, Satanic, or Muslim curriculum.

Questions also were raised about whether federally required services for students with special needs would lead to new federal regulations on private schools that accept vouchers. There was little discussion, however, about whether voucher recipients with special needs would receive adequate services from private schools.

Chairman Mark White, a Republican from Memphis, also received complaints from several people who weren’t allowed to testify.

While two people each spoke for and against vouchers, pro-voucher voices included Robby Starbuck, a video director and conservative political activist, and Walter Blanks Jr., a spokesperson for the American Federation for Children advocacy group. White declined to hear testimony from voucher opponents Eric Welch, an elected school board member from Williamson County, and Matt Steinhauer, a Franklin pastor and parent.

In the other chamber, Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Democrat from Memphis, questioned why the Senate bill doesn’t require voucher schools to be held to the same accountability standards as public schools, including TCAP tests, Tennessee’s third grade retention law, and the state’s new A-F designations for schools.

“If the majority of students in that [private] school who are taking these public dollars are performing poorly, will the school face any action based on what’s written in this legislation, where they can no longer accept students who have these vouchers?” Akbari asked.

Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg, who drafted the Senate’s version, responded no.

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

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee contributed to this report.

Tennessee lawmakers are increasingly ready to ditch the Achievement School District. What’s next?

2024-02-23T11:00:00+00:00

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After a decade of painful takeovers of neighborhood schools, contentious handoffs to charter networks, and mostly abysmal student performance, Tennessee’s Achievement School District appears to be on its way out.

Several of the GOP-controlled legislature’s top Republicans are acknowledging that the state’s most ambitious and aggressive school turnaround model has failed — and should be replaced eventually with a more effective approach.

Meanwhile, Democrats continue to push for legislation designed to end the so-called ASD, created under a 2010 state law aimed, in part, at transforming low-performing schools.

“I expect we will move in a different direction,” Sen. Bo Watson, the powerful chairman of his chamber’s finance committee, recently told reporters.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Bo Watson

The Hixson Republican called the charter-centric school turnaround model an “innovative” idea that fell flat, at least in Tennessee. It would be foolish, Watson added, to keep spending money on an initiative that isn’t working and already has cost the state more than $1 billion — a sentiment echoed by Lt. Gov. Randy McNally and House Speaker Cameron Sexton.

But if the legislature decides to shutter the ASD and Gov. Bill Lee signs off, important questions remain about how Tennessee will support thousands of students in its lowest-performing schools.

How quickly will the shutdown occur?
What will happen to ASD school communities? Currently, the district serves 4,600 students in 12 schools in Memphis and one in Nashville.
Will the state honor remaining contracts with charter operators, the last of which end in 2026?
What statewide improvement strategy will replace the ASD for schools in the state’s bottom 5%? Ninety-five schools currently fall in that category and many have undergone a variety of interventions, with limited success.
And will the U.S. Department of Education approve the change as part of Tennessee’s plan for complying with the 2015 U.S. law known as the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA?

In order to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in federal education funding to support Tennessee students and schools, the state is required to have a rigorous improvement plan for schools that are struggling the most. Since Tennessee’s ESSA plan was approved in 2017, the ASD has served that purpose.

The turnaround district “serves as our most intensive intervention for priority schools,” declares the 401-page plan, the state’s guiding document for K-12 accountability policies. It also commits Tennessee to making school turnaround a priority.

“Students can’t wait,” the plan says. “Schools that have been historically underperforming and are not showing adequate growth must have state intervention.”

Brian Blackley, a spokesperson for the state education department, said scrapping the ASD would require two things: a change in state law and an amendment to Tennessee’s ESSA plan.

If the legislature changes the law, ESSA revisions are doable, according to a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Education.

“Tennessee has the ability to make changes to the design and structure of its local educational agencies, including the Achievement School District, without first seeking approval from the U.S. Department of Education,” the spokesperson told Chalkbeat.

That said, because the ASD is central to Tennessee’s federal accountability plan, the state would have to submit an amendment to the federal government, and “the department will work with the state as needed,” the spokesperson said.

The process likely would take months, since a period of public engagement on potential changes is required.

ASD brought high hopes, hard lessons

While the ASD’s demise has been looming, its birth was filled with hope when Tennessee passed the First to the Top Act, a sweeping education reform package that was the cornerstone of its winning federal Race to the Top grant application.

Taking cues from the successful turnaround of schools in New Orleans and using tens of millions of federal dollars to pay for the rollout, Tennessee’s new law created a state-run district with the power to take over struggling schools and recruit charter management organizations to run them, giving those operators autonomy to design and implement plans for curriculum, instruction, and school leadership. KIPP and Green Dot Public Schools were among national networks that signed on, and the model inspired several local charter groups to form and join the work.

Unlike incremental academic gains associated with school improvement, school turnaround calls for dramatic gains in a short period of time. Founding ASD leaders set an extraordinarily ambitious goal: to move those schools from the bottom 5% to the top 25% of performers within five years.

But the large academic gains never came.

Removing schools from local governance didn’t improve student outcomes. In fact, most ASD schools performed no better than low-performing schools receiving no intervention, according to researchers.

High teacher turnover was a constant challenge, and it became increasingly hard to recruit high-quality charter networks to do school turnaround work.

Community backlash was also significant, especially in Memphis, which became the hub of the ASD’s work and has a long history of charged racial dynamics. ASD critics viewed the takeover of neighborhood schools — and introduction of charter operators who often came from out of state — as another example of racism and reckless social engineering.

The level of poverty in Memphis was another major challenge.

“I think that the depth of the generational poverty and what our kids bring into school every day makes it even harder than we initially expected,” founding superintendent Chris Barbic told Chalkbeat in a 2015 interview. “We underestimated that.”

Chris Barbic, a former charter school leader in Texas, was the founding superintendent of Tennessee's Achievement School District.

The ASD has been shrinking for awhile

The state-run district had a peak of 33 schools after taking control of its last four campuses in Memphis in 2016.

While there’s been no official decision on its future from lawmakers or new recommendations from Lee’s administration, the ASD has been unwinding on its own, especially since 2022, as schools began to complete 10 years under the model.

Originally, the state promised to return ASD schools to their home districts in better shape than when they left. But that policy changed over time, and now there are multiple ways to exit, and even remain a charter school, depending on academic performance.

Some non-charter ASD schools began returning to Memphis-Shelby County Schools, while three charter schools pivoted to the oversight of the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission, another state-run entity, after showing enough improvement to exit on their own. The Memphis district also regained control of a charter school and placed the campus in its own turnaround program known as the Innovation Zone, an initiative created in part to keep the ASD from taking over more schools.

As for remaining ASD campuses, the charter contracts for operators of seven schools are scheduled to expire this summer; two schools after the 2024-25 school year; and four schools at the conclusion of the 2025-26 school year.

But the pandemic complicated an already complex exit process by disrupting state testing. ASD leadership also turned over frequently and downsized staff in the summer of 2022. The chaotic unwinding has put thousands of students, families, and school staff in limbo.

Of the contracts expiring this year, for instance, only two charter schools are set to continue operating in Memphis. Journey Coleman will stay with Journey Community Schools through a new agreement with the Memphis district, while Cornerstone Lester Prep will continue to be run by Capstone Education Group through the state-run charter school commission.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools plans to close MLK College Prep High School, currently run by Frayser Community Schools, and those students are still deciding where they’ll attend school in the fall.

Fairley High School, which lost its bid to remain with Green Dot Public Schools, is expected to return to MSCS oversight. Green Dot has other schools still in the ASD, and the network’s executive director in Tennessee, Jocquell Rodgers, expects their charter contracts will be honored.

“Has it been emotional? Absolutely,” Rodgers said of the lengthy unraveling.

School turnaround work is a difficult and time-intensive process that requires constant engagement with families and the community, Rodgers said. Ideally, there should be collaboration with the local district, she added.

“It is extremely important to bring something to people that they really want, but at the same time, really help them understand what they need,” Rodgers said.

If not the ASD, then what?

Tennessee has doggedly stuck with the ASD, even as its performance has been mostly lackluster.

But January’s abrupt departure of Bren Elliott, Tennessee’s first statewide turnaround superintendent who was hired last August after a three-year search, cast doubts about the future of the state’s school improvement work, especially regarding its most intense intervention tool.

And GOP leaders such as Sexton, the speaker of the House, fueled speculation by hinting that a mechanism for closing the ASD could be part of upcoming legislation for creating a new statewide school voucher program.

There’s little consensus, however, on a replacement strategy for supporting struggling school communities — a requirement under federal ESSA law.

RELATED: School turnaround lessons from Memphis zero in on the need for collaboration at all levels

Rep. Antonio Parkinson and Sen. Raumesh Akbari, both Memphis Democrats, have proposed legislation to prevent the state-run district from taking over more low-performing schools. Instead, the ASD would become a resource hub for school improvement work across Tennessee.

Rep. Antonio Parkinson has been one of the ASD's most vocal critics.

But the measure, which has cleared two key House committees, may not meet ESSA’s standard for a comprehensive school turnaround strategy. Akbari said this week that she’s working on changes before introducing their proposal in Senate committees.

Sen. Ferrell Haile, a Republican from Gallatin, has pointed to Tennessee’s small school turnaround pilot project, approved by the legislature in 2021, as one possibility. Two private vendors, Georgia-based Cognia and Ed Direction of Salt Lake City, Utah, are working with two schools in Memphis, two in Nashville, and one in Chattanooga, as part of the five-year initiative.

But it’s uncertain whether that program can scale statewide. And while four of the schools have shown promise, Hamilton County lawmakers say it hasn’t gone well in Chattanooga. They are shepherding a bill to pull Orchard Knob Middle School before the pilot ends in 2025.

Tennessee Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds, who has the authority to take over more schools and place them in the ASD under current law, has not commented publicly about the district’s future, or a potential new strategy.

If the legislature lets the state-run district run its course through the 2025-26 school year, when charter contracts expire for its last four schools, her department would have more time to develop a plan. The agency would then work with the U.S. Education Department to revise Tennessee’s ESSA plan accordingly.

One important step, according to federal ESSA guidance, is to give the public opportunity to comment on the proposed revision. And educators who are doing turnaround work hope state leaders will take their observations to heart.

Bob Nardo was an early ASD staff member who left to operate Libertas School of Memphis, one of the state-run district’s few success stories.

Just because the ASD didn’t work, he said, doesn’t mean the state should walk away from trying to address persistent challenges that led to its creation. Nardo believes one question should be central to discussions when developing a new plan.

“Are the most vulnerable and at-risk children in our society getting the best opportunity to transform their lives?”

Nardo worries the state could shift to piecemeal interventions, such as grant programs aimed at small-scale improvements, that wouldn’t be as effective as a comprehensive, schoolwide turnaround strategy.

“We have to confront the paradox here that this is both a critically needed and indispensable type of work,” Nardo said, “with the sobering reality that most efforts have not been successful” in Tennessee and across the country.

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

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

Future of Tennessee school turnaround work uncertain with departure of first statewide leader

2024-01-31T00:17:47+00:00

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Six months after Tennessee hired its first leader to manage school improvement work statewide, the position is now vacant.

On Tuesday, the state education department confirmed the departure of school turnaround superintendent Bren Elliott, one of Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds’ first major hires. A spokesperson for the agency declined to comment further or answer questions about whether the vacancy will be filled.

When Elliott stepped into the powerful new position, which took multiple searches across three years to fill, she was tasked with overseeing school improvement work in hundreds of schools in urban, suburban, and rural districts as well as Tennessee’s high-profile Achievement School District, or ASD.

Her abrupt departure raises questions about the future of school improvement work in a state that was once considered a turnaround pioneer, thanks in part to a $500 million award in 2010 from the federal Race to the Top competition to implement various education reforms.

The ASD, the state’s most intensive intervention model, was launched in 2012 using mostly charter school operators, and its lackluster performance has dimmed Tennessee’s star considerably in school turnaround circles.

Elliott’s hiring, announced last August, had been viewed as a way to jumpstart the work.

Elliott had been the school improvement chief for District of Columbia Public Schools since 2017. She also worked as a school administrator in Nashville from 2001 to 2007.

In her new job, chief among Elliott’s responsibilities was overseeing the ASD, which at one time had more than 30 schools in its portfolio but has since dwindled to 13 campuses and 4,600 students, mostly in Memphis.

State officials informed ASD operators last week that Elliott was leaving and that Shannon Gordon, the department’s chief operating officer, will assume her responsibilities.

“They did not say anything about … reposting that same position by that name,” said Brett Lawson, executive director of Frayer Community Schools, a Memphis-based charter operator with three ASD schools.

Drew Sippel, chief executive officer of longtime ASD operator Capstone Education Group, was also on the call.

“[Gordon] took all the operators’ questions and committed to giving schools the support and resources needed to be successful,” he said.

Elliott also was responsible for supervising interventions for all of the state’s so-called priority schools — those that score in the state’s bottom 5% academically — as well as schools needing targeted support due large gaps in test scores among groups of historically underserved students, such as English language learners, students with disabilities, or those from low-income families. That encompasses nearly 300 schools.

ASD is at a crossroads

Rep. Antonio Parkinson, a Democrat from Memphis, said Tuesday that Elliott’s swift departure highlights “disarray” in the education department, especially regarding its oversight of the ASD.

Most ASD schools have performed no better than low-performing schools receiving no intervention, according to researchers.

“It’s incredibly alarming given that we’ve invested over a billion taxpayer dollars in a failed experiment,” he said. “We’ve had superintendent after superintendent after superintendent of the ASD. And yet, it has the highest teacher turnover rate and the lowest graduation rate of any district in our state.”

Last year, Parkinson sponsored a bill that would prevent the state-run district from taking over more low-performing schools. Instead, under his legislation that cleared two House education committees, the state would turn the initiative into a resource hub for school improvement work across Tennessee.

Parkinson said he hopes Elliott’s departure will garner more legislative support for his bill, which is co-sponsored by Sen. Raumesh Akbari, also of Memphis.

“What we’re doing now just isn’t working,” he said.

Rep. Mark White, a Memphis Republican who chairs a House education committee, declined to comment when asked about the personnel change and the future of Tennessee’s school improvement work. He said he wanted to confer with agency officials first.

The ASD hasn’t taken over new schools since 2016. Meanwhile, the district is expected to shrink by half later this year as schools reach the end of their 10-year charter agreements and either exit the ASD or close.

There have been at least five ASD superintendents in a decade. The district’s lack of steady leadership has complicated the complex exit process, creating uncertainty for students, staff, and families in ASD schools in Memphis and Nashville.

Another issue is whether or how the state-run district will grow in the future.

State law gives Reynolds, as education commissioner, the authority to identify schools for takeover and place them in the ASD. But since starting her job last July, Reynolds has not publicly discussed her plans for the turnaround district.

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

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

Tennessee House report on federal education funding targets food waste in school cafeterias

2024-01-25T16:00:00+00:00

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Tennessee House members looking into the feasibility of rejecting federal education funding aren’t recommending taking that dramatic action, but they do want a comprehensive study of food waste in school cafeterias under federally funded child nutrition programs.

They also want their chamber to begin reviewing any new federal rules and directives sent to the state education department. And they want to conduct annual hearings into federal requirements for student testing.

The actions are among a handful of recommendations outlined in a 13-page report submitted Jan. 19 by House members to legislative leaders.

During five days of hearings in November to study what federal money Tennessee receives for its K-12 students and schools, House members frequently zeroed in on food waste through school programs funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Rep. John Ragan, an Oak Ridge Republican, suggested that Tennessee could do a better job of overseeing such programs to improve their efficiency, but that more information is needed.

Anderson County Schools, which is located in Ragan’s district near Knoxville, has studied food waste at one of its schools. But few other Tennessee districts have, and there’s no statewide data measuring the amount of uneaten food in cafeterias.

Milk and vegetables tossed in the trash

Nationally, about 41% of milk and 31% of vegetables were discarded from lunch trays, according to the Agriculture Department’s 2019 School Nutrition and Meal Cost Study.

“When you have a $480 million program (in Tennessee), 31% waste is a lot of money that could be devoted to hiring more teachers, buying more classroom supplies, fixing the roof, whatever,” Ragan told Chalkbeat after the hearings.

He said his goal is “not to starve children, but to optimize these programs.”

The House report recommends that the state agriculture and education departments evaluate food waste in public schools, and determine whether to contract with an outside agency to develop an improvement plan.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a list of recommended strategies to encourage students to consume more of the food they take — seemingly simple things like giving students choices, extending lunch time, and letting students save nonperishable foods to eat later.

In Tennessee, some schools have used other strategies such as offering breakfast in classrooms and letting students share unopened, wrapped foods with peers at “share tables,” Debby Thompson, assistant state commissioner of federal programs and oversight, told the lawmakers in November.

Meals under school nutrition programs are served free or at reduced cost to eligible students, and cafeteria operators must comply with federal nutritional requirements.

Meanwhile, in response to a rise in childhood obesity and other diet-related diseases during the pandemic and to improve the health of children and adolescents, the Biden administration has been rolling out more stringent nutrition standards for school meals. The policies reinstate health goals that were rolled back during the Trump administration.

How House and Senate reports on education funding differed

The House report came nearly two weeks after Senate members of the joint legislative panel on forgoing federal education funding issued their own report, citing disagreements with their House colleagues about their findings and recommendations.

The plan had been for the panel to submit a single report about exactly what federal money Tennessee receives for its students and related federal requirements.

The Senate report was cautionary, and much of it mirrored analysis from the nonpartisan Sycamore Institute. It highlighted the risks associated with rejecting about $1.3 billion in federal money and trying to fill the gap with state revenues. Most of the funding goes to support low-income students, English language learners, and students with disabilities.

The House report was more action-oriented and offered recommendations, some of which may not require legislation, said Connor Grady, a spokesperson for House Speaker Cameron Sexton, who has been pushing the conversation for nearly a year.

“The House agreed with the Senate’s options for consideration. However, the Senate would not agree with the House’s actionable recommendations moving forward,” Grady said. “Each body will be moving forward with their own recommendations.”

Sen. Jon Lundberg, co-chair of the legislative panel, said the House recommendations, if followed, could add bureaucratic layers to state government and slow down the work of the education department.

“That’s why we have a (state) Department of Education, to deal with these kinds of issues,” the Bristol Republican said Wednesday.

But Sexton’s office says more oversight is needed on the acceptance of federal funds.

“Allowing the federal government to pass down rules onto Tennesseans with no oversight is our main concern.” Grady said. “The General Assembly and Tennesseans need to know what federal rules are being passed down onto them. We should do everything that we can to be whole and autonomous and independent from the federal government.”

Discussion is not over

Both reports were called “preliminary” by the panel’s leaders, who said the group may continue to meet.

While not in its recommendations, the House report suggested the legislature could get involved in processes for renewing federal grants.

The legislature could “implement a process for legislative authorization of grants, such as requiring grant applications to go before a legislative committee before an agency can submit an application,” the report said.

The House report was submitted by all four Republican representatives on the panel, but not the lone Democrat. Rep. Ronnie Glynn, of Clarksville, refused to sign the document, saying that movement toward rejection of federal funding would be “fiscally irresponsible and discriminatory.”

“The hearings made clear how harmful such a move would be to Tennessee’s school children and how detrimental it would be to taxpayers and our state’s budget,” said a statement about Glynn’s position, issued Thursday by the House Democratic Caucus.

Below, you can read the full House report.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to show that Rep. Ronnie Glynn, a Democrat, did not sign the report.

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

Tennessee education chief Lizzette Reynolds challenged by Democrats over job qualifications

2024-01-22T17:44:45+00:00

House Democrats called Monday for the ouster of Lizzette Reynolds as Tennessee’s education commissioner over questions about whether she meets the state’s legal requirements for the job.

Reynolds has nearly three decades of policy and legislative experience in education at the state and federal levels. But she has no teacher’s license or experience leading a classroom, in apparent violation of a century-old state law requiring the commissioner to be a person “of skill and experience in school administration” and “qualified to teach in the school of the highest standing over which the commissioner has authority.”

Rep. John Ray Clemmons of Nashville, who chairs the House Democratic caucus, and Rep. Sam McKenzie of Knoxville, chairman of the legislature’s Black caucus, said Reynolds should step aside.

“There is no vagueness in this statute,” Clemmons said during a news conference at the state Capitol. “Commissioner Reynolds is legally unqualified, and she must resign.”

If she does not, McKenzie said, Gov. Bill Lee should fire Reynolds and hire a leader who understands the method of teaching, in both theory and practice.

“There are plenty of qualified people out there to lead this great education system we have,” McKenzie said.

Calling for the resignation of Lizzette Reynolds, Rep. John Ray Clemmons points out language in state law listing Tennessee’s requirements to be education commissioner. Clemmons, who is a Nashville Democrat, was joined by (from left) Rep. Ronnie Glynn of Clarksville and Rep. Sam McKenzie of Knoxville.

Reynolds, who has a political science degree from Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, was hired last year to succeed Penny Schwinn.

Her job pays $255,000 a year, up from $236,000 when she started in July. The average salary of a licensed Tennessee teacher was $58,594 in 2021-22, according to the department’s most recent annual statistical report.

Reynolds previously was chief deputy education commissioner in Texas and most recently served as vice president of policy for ExcelinEd, founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to pursue education policies that he believes improve student learning and lessen inequities.

The challenge to Reynolds’ credentials comes as she works to implement multiple sweeping policy initiatives passed by Tennessee lawmakers during Lee’s first term in office.

Tennessee is in its first year of operating under a new education funding formula, and also must enforce a controversial 2021 reading law under which thousands of fourth-graders are expected to be held back this year, based on projections for state test results this spring. In addition, the state is overseeing large-scale tutoring and summer programs in response to learning losses during the pandemic. And Lee is seeking a massive statewide expansion of vouchers to let families use government money to send their children to private schools or some home schools.

Asked about the Democrats’ assertions, a spokesperson for the governor defended Reynolds’ experience, saying her credentials qualified her to serve as commissioner.

“We’re proud of the work she’s doing to accelerate academic achievement and support all Tennessee students,” said Elizabeth Lane Johnson, Lee’s press secretary. “Additionally, though not explicitly required by statute, Commissioner Reynolds is currently enrolled in the [University of Tennessee]-Martin Education Preparation Program to expand upon her previous experience.”

In an interview with Chalkbeat last July, three weeks after starting her job, Reynolds said Lee hired her for her ability to roll out policies.

Asked then about her lack of teaching credentials or experience, she talked about her public school experiences as a student and a parent.

“As a parent of public school kids, I’m as close to the classroom as you’re going to get, because I’m a consumer of the public school system,” she said.

The vast majority of Tennessee’s top education officials have been longtime educators with deep knowledge of and experience in the practice of teaching.

For example, Candice McQueen was the dean of Lipscomb University’s College of Education, which the state rates among its top teacher training programs, when Republican Bill Haslam chose her in 2014 to lead the state education department during his second term as governor. She had won multiple awards for her teaching at both the K-12 and college levels.

Lana Seivers, who served as Democrat Phil Bredesen’s education chief from 2003 to 2008, was a teacher, principal, and district superintendent in Tennessee for most of her career. She also served on a long list of state and regional boards related to K-12 and higher education.

Both McQueen and Seivers held multiple graduate degrees in education.

Several other recent commissioners had backgrounds that, like Reynolds, leaned more toward policy and politics. But they also had some non-traditional teaching experience. Schwinn, who preceded Reynolds in the Lee administration, and Kevin Huffman, who was Haslam’s education chief during his first term, started their careers in the classroom through Teach for America. Schwinn also had a brief stint as administrator over a charter school in Sacramento, California.

JC Bowman, executive director of Professional Educators of Tennessee, called Lee’s hires to lead the education department a “troubling trend,” even as he praised Reynolds for giving access to stakeholders.

“This governor has spurned people from Tennessee from key roles in state government,” he said. “There are highly qualified people from this state who know this state well.”

Leaders with the the state’s largest teacher organization said the governor should respond to questions that are being raised.

“It is Gov. Lee’s responsibility to know Tennessee state law and the requirements to serve as commissioner of education,” said Tanya T. Coats, president of the Tennessee Education Association. “In appointing the current commissioner, it appears his focus may have been on finding someone who would be on board with his privatization agenda and would enforce policies like A-F school grades that undermine our strong public schools.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with comments from the governor’s press secretary.

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

Q&A: Public school leaders sound the alarm about vouchers, Lee’s education agenda

2024-01-04T23:39:40+00:00

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Tennessee state officials finally released their long-delayed letter grades for schools last month, just before the holiday break, using a new formula championed by Gov. Bill Lee’s administration.

But even before they knew their grades, leaders of a high-performing suburban Memphis school district denounced the system as a sham.

“This is all an attempt to paint Tennessee public schools as failing, thus ushering in a new era of vouchers for all,” a statement from Arlington Community Schools said. It was signed by Superintendent Jeff Mayo and school board members, including Dale Viox, president of the Tennessee School Boards Association.

Meanwhile, other suburban Memphis school districts have begun lining up against private-school voucher expansion, too, another key part of Lee’s education agenda. Lee’s voucher program uses taxpayer money to help families fund private school tuition, and the proposed expansion is expected to be a top legislative priority when the General Assembly returns on Jan. 9.

Lee’s proposal would remove income limits and ultimately extend the program statewide. It would be a huge leap forward for a program that was once billed as a pilot project and barely survived challenges in the legislature and the courts.

Viox said the TSBA is already instructing its members to pass formal board resolutions opposing vouchers. And it’s urging school boards to promote the strengths of their public schools and appeal directly to lawmakers.

“I think you’re going to find more and more people want to speak out about it,” Viox told Chalkbeat, “because there’s a lot of people in this area that I know personally and across the state that care a great deal about public education and doing right by students.”

Mayo and Viox talked with Chalkbeat about their opposition to the voucher program, and why they believe Tennessee’s new letter grade system is part of an attack on public schools.

This interview was conducted on Dec. 11 before school letter grades were released on Dec. 21. It has been edited for length and clarity.

What is it about the A-F letter grades and proposed voucher legislation that warrants the kind of statement you made?

Mayo: The best way that I’ve been able to describe the A-to-F grading system is it’s sort of the appetizer to what’s to come with the voucher system. And I think … if the state or the governor, or (the Tennessee Department of Education) — whomever is pushing for this — can paint the picture that school districts that are successful, high-performing, such as ours, are failing, then that sets the tone for support of the voucher expansion program, which, you know, ultimately, takes money away from public education. …

Jeff Mayo, superintendent of Arlington Community Schools, criticized Gov. Bill Lee for his proposal to expand a private-school education voucher program without plans to hold private schools to the same evaluation metrics as public schools.

We are held accountable for every penny that we receive from the state. … Every dime of it we have to say, ‘How is that contributing to students’ growth, or students’ achievement,’ whereas in a private school, that’s not the case. … They’re not held under the same state accountability that we are. There is no teacher evaluation accountability model that I’m aware of. …

And so to say that it’s going to even the playing field is inaccurate. And that’s the whole reason we’re calling this whole thing a sham. … I believe expansion of this has been part of the roadmap since day one.

Viox: It’s a bad idea to take taxpayer money and give it to private entities. … We know that across the nation … voucher programs are just rife with misuse. … And then if you want to talk about inclusivity and diversity: A private school can refuse you for any reason whatsoever. … So as many kids as you may think that you’re going to be able to include, you’re going to exclude twice as many under this program, because private schools are not going to take them, either for their religious beliefs or sexual orientation or whatever. …

You ask why it’s such a strong statement. Because we’re in a strong position. We have high-performance students, we have a very high-performance district, and this is probably not going to trickle down to us for a long time. But what it does do is it affects our educational partners in Shelby County. And if you think you can just forget about public education in Shelby County, and just focus on Arlington, Tennessee, you’re wrong. Because failing Shelby County schools will impact every one of these districts, and everyone in the state. … Across the state of Tennessee, we need to build up public education to what it can be, and not take money away and give it to private companies.

What do you hope the statement accomplishes?

Mayo: It’s debacle after debacle that we’re dealing with, with no guidance, no real assistance from TDOE when these new mandates are handed down. … My staff has to stop, they have to decide: ‘How are we going to do this? What are we going to do to help our students get on the other side of this?’ …

We keep piling on more ineffective accountability measures to pulverize public schools.
Jeff Mayo, superintendent of Arlington Community Schools

Even if we get an A, that doesn’t change my stance on this. It’s still, it’s a broken process. And instead of scratching that and rebuilding it, we keep piling on more ineffective accountability measures to pulverize public schools. That’s why this statement from my vantage point needed to be as strong as it is. … TDOE asks for input, but we never see our input in the end product of any of these new laws or mandates … . And so it’s exhausting.

Viox: At this point, it is difficult to ignore what the state is doing to attack public education. … And like he said, they’re tired. And as an advocate for public education, I am as well.

Is there any set of accountability metrics that would move you more in favor of voucher expansion?

Viox: Not me. … These guys can go out and raise money for anything they want in any way they want. And public schools can’t do that. … (TSBA is) going to the state to try and say, ‘Hey, look, at least let our PTAs and people do lotteries, because … we can’t do that now.’ But private schools can raise money however they want. ... And what we see with other voucher expansions throughout the U.S. is the private schools are turning around … and raising their tuition for those public school kids by that same voucher amount. So essentially, they’re double dipping.

Mayo: I think it’s a long range plan to continue to siphon money from public schools. … It’s not uncommon for the … TDOE to deliver down mandates that are unfunded, that districts are expected to scramble around and find the money to, you know, make it happen. So if you’re looking at, you know, already being very low-funded when you compare to the nation, what our state funds for education, and then this continuation of vouchers siphoning money away from that, you know, that’s the whole mantra behind this being a sham.

Viox: If you’re this … bent on getting a voucher program, fund it separately. We would have no problem with that. And I think if you look at across the nation, people that have expanded their voucher programs, it’s come with a really hefty price tag.

Dale Viox, the president of the Tennessee School Boards Association, said the organization is encouraging its members to push back against the governor's proposal to expand eligibility of private-school education vouchers.

Can you talk to me more about what specifically that (separate funding) would look like? … If Arlington loses any students, you are losing funding by a declining enrollment.

Viox: If you come to any of our schools and can’t find something you’re interested in, in the various clubs, and school sponsored sports, and all of the things that we offer — just hundreds and hundreds of activities for students. I feel like we would not necessarily lose students to … private schools. … As long as the funding is there and completely separate, that’s honestly not a concern for me. Now, that’s not to say it won’t be a concern for other school districts that are struggling. … There’s always going to be private schools. Any specific government money to help them expand, I wouldn’t be in favor for. …

When you look at all these other states, I don’t know what their oversight is, but I think Arizona in their first year before they expanded their voucher program, on the surface found almost a million dollars, it was over $700,000 in misappropriated funds. … And never forget, that if they give him a year’s worth of public funding, and they live within your district, and they go to that private school, and either don’t make it or don’t actually use it for those (school) funds, they come back to us, and we are going to educate those kids.

If the voucher expansion were to pass as it’s been proposed ... what challenges could you immediately see for Arlington’s district?

Mayo: It will not be immediately impactful to us. But as I stated earlier, I believe the expansion is to continue. I think that is the long-range plan. So eventually, we could be faced with losing students, which impacts funding, which impacts teacher layoffs, it impacts the diminishing of programs that we’ve invested a lot of money in through our capital improvement projects. …

I’m a long-range planner. And I think those are things that you have to look at.

Viox: I’m also a higher level view guy: If it affects Metro Nashville, and it affects Shelby County, then it will affect us. The greatest impact is going to be on them. They are our brothers and sisters in public education, and we cannot just completely discount how it’s going to affect them. Because as it affects Shelby County, it will trickle out into the municipalities as businesses leave.

Private schools are turning around … and raising their tuition for those public school kids by that same voucher amount. So essentially, they’re double dipping.
Dale Viox, Tennessee School Boards Association leader

Mayo: The A-to-F distinction that I don’t think we’ve really talked a lot about is the impact it has just on our local community. Because let’s face it, Arlington is growing because of our schools. Businesses are coming here. Parents are moving here, you know. And then if all they have to go by is they pull up our website … and they see that Arlington, well, looks like a really good community and everything, but their school district has an F. That’s the only piece of information that parents have, if they’re not familiar with what’s been going on in the state of Tennessee.

Is there anything this conversation is missing?

Mayo: It really takes creativity away sometimes from the school district, because I know we’re in the process of developing our 2025-26 school year calendar. …One of the people in the group said, ‘You know, have we ever thought about a year round school?’ ... If we wanted to do that, how could we ever do that, if we’re having to offer learning camps and all of that as a product of third grade retention? … If we wanted to be innovative and wanted to be creative and experiment with that, how could we do that? We couldn’t.

Correction: Jan. 4, 2024: A previous version of this story said Dale Viox is the president-elect of the Tennessee School Boards Association. Viox is the president of the association.

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

Tennessee issues its first letter grades for schools, after revamping formula

2023-12-21T18:31:43+00:00

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The typical Tennessee school received a high C under a new formula the state used to assign its first-ever letter grades to schools, according to data released Thursday.

The long-delayed letter grades from the Tennessee Department of Education satisfy the requirements of a 2016 school accountability law, which has been embraced by Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds as a simple, familiar way for families to assess local schools.

But just before the first grades were issued, Reynolds led a revamp of the grading formula to emphasize academic achievement, or proficiency, over academic growth. The earlier formula, which was never used to publicly assign grades, was more focused on growth.

The late change angered many educators across the state. Schools serving lower-income families in rural and urban communities have been particularly concerned about the prospect of earning lower marks under the new formula.

Schools that receive D’s or F’s do not receive any additional support from the state, but they are expected to face more scrutiny.

Among Tennessee’s 1,690 schools that received letter grades, 3 out of every 4 received a C or better. A Chalkbeat analysis showed that the median grade-eligible Tennessee school earned a 3.2 out of a possible 5 points, or toward the higher end of the C range.

For now, there is no way to directly compare this year’s letter grades with what they would have been under the old formula. The education department has not yet published the state testing data it used to calculate its letter grades.

An analysis from Memphis-Shelby County Schools, the state’s largest district, showed that sticking to the original formula “would have been more favorable,” said Bill White, the district’s director of planning and accountability. He said the district’s analysis also showed that low letter grades matched up to schools with higher proportions of low-income students.

“Many of our students face significant challenges outside of the classroom …,” said MSCS interim Superintendent Toni Williams. “So we need a more comprehensive assessment system that recognizes student growth, family engagement, and the unique context of each school and its students.”

The education department stood by its new formula when announcing the letter grades Thursday. Reynolds called it a “clear rating system” that gives families “a snapshot of how their child’s school is performing.”

Student academic growth is still a component of the new formula, but it is measured differently now. In the new calculation, Tennessee removed the option for schools to increase their grade by meeting individualized academic benchmarks, rather than the statewide targets.

Only 5% of Tennessee’s graded schools received F’s. Half of these schools are located in Memphis, a Chalkbeat analysis found. Most are within Memphis-Shelby County Schools, and six are charter schools operated under agreements with the state-run Achievement School District or the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission.

MSCS accounted for the largest share of F’s among districts with at least 50 schools, but the most common grade for district schools was a C, according to Chalkbeat’s analysis.

Metro Nashville Public Schools received mostly B’s, C’s, and D’s.

School letter grades are published on Tennessee’s State Report Card website. The dashboard offers additional information about how each school scored across the three or four categories that contribute to the overall grades.

Some schools were not graded because they lacked sufficient test data or served only adults.

You can search for grades by school in the table below.

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

Kae Petrin is data and graphics reporter for Chalkbeat. Contact Kae at kpetrin@chalkbeat.org.

A-F grades come out this week for Tennessee schools. Here’s what to know.

2023-12-18T11:00:00+00:00

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This week, for the first time under a 2016 law, Tennessee will give each of its public schools an A-F letter grade.

The goal, says Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds, is to help families, educators, communities, and policymakers understand how their local schools are doing.

And what better way, she says, than by using a letter-grade system that families are familiar with from their student’s report cards.

But the policy has been controversial since lawmakers began debating its merits nearly a decade ago, and local school leaders worry the grades will actually create confusion for parents and harm school communities.

They say a single grade is more simplistic than simple, and can’t fully capture the quality of learning and support that’s happening in a school, especially for communities where students face extra challenges before even walking into the classroom.

Local concerns escalated when the state education department recently revamped its grading formula in a way that will make it harder for certain schools to get an A or a B.

Here’s what you should know about the upcoming school letter grades, which the state is scheduled to release on Thursday.

What exactly will the grades measure?

As required by state law, the grades must take into account student performance and improvement, as demonstrated on annual tests under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, also known as TCAP. High schools will also be judged on their students’ college and career readiness, based on measures such as ACT scores, postsecondary credits, or industry credentials.

How will the grades be calculated?

The formula weights student proficiency the heaviest, according to the department’s recent presentation to the State Board of Education. Next comes growth, or how much a school’s students improved from one year to the next. A separate factor seeks to assess how well schools are helping their lowest-performing quartile of students to improve.

The formula factors in test scores for English language arts, math, and science for elementary schools, and for all four core subject areas for middle and high schools. But some subjects count more than others.

The state has not publicly released the thresholds for what constitutes an A, B, and so on, based on its tallies of all the data.

Will the grades matter?

Yes, and not just in terms of public perception of a school’s quality. Under Tennessee’s new funding formula for K-12 education, school districts or charter authorizers can face hearings before the state Board of Education if their schools are rated D or F, beginning with the 2024-25 school year.

Ultimately, administrators could be forced to submit a corrective action plan or undergo a state audit of spending and academic programming at the school.

School ratings also can affect the price of real estate in a school’s neighborhood, as well as teacher and student morale. Studies have shown that ratings such as those given by third-party websites frequently are biased and can steer families toward schools serving more affluent, white, and Asian students.

Why is Tennessee grading its schools?

Legislators who voted for the law said A-F school grades would provide a common-sense aid to parents trying to navigate an increasingly complex school choice system.

Big supporters included ExcelinEd, an advocacy group founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, plus other groups that favor giving taxpayer-funded vouchers to families to send their children to private schools. (Gov. Bill Lee recently proposed a statewide expansion of Tennessee’s voucher program, which operates in three counties and has fewer than 2,000 enrollees. The state is not grading private schools that receive vouchers.)

School letter-grading policies were also promoted by the American Legislative Exchange Council, also known as ALEC. Its members are mostly conservative state lawmakers, and its funding comes from foundations, trade groups, and some corporations, according to research from the Center for Media and Democracy.

The law passed in 2016. Why are schools just now receiving their first grades?

The initial grades were to come out in 2018 but got delayed repeatedly, mostly because technical glitches and the pandemic disrupted state testing.

This year, soon after assuming her new job as Tennessee’s education chief, Reynolds prioritized the rollout of A-F grades and launched a process to revise the grading formula, which will use results from tests that already have been administered. The goal of the overhaul, she said, was to generate grades that signify meaningful differences in school performance in a way that makes sense to Tennesseans.

How did the formula change, and what effects will the revisions have on the final grades?

Previously, Tennessee’s grading formula skewed toward growth, which refers to the progress or improvement that schools made toward helping their students meet certain academic standards over the course of a year.

The new formula puts greater emphasis on achievement, or proficiency. Achievement is basically a snapshot of how much students in a school know, and whether enough of them are meeting grade-level standards on their state tests.

The changes will likely mean fewer A’s and generally worse grades than previously expected for many schools, especially those serving students from lower-income families in rural and urban communities.

More broadly, the shift marks a change of course for Tennessee, which was an early adopter of using growth data to evaluate how its students, teachers, and schools are doing. Educators have mostly embraced this model as ultimately the best way to gauge the quality of learning in their classrooms and schools.

Do other states issue A-F letter grades for schools?

As of late 2021, 11 states had such grading measures in their accountability systems, according to the most recent data from the Education Commission of the States.

But several states, including Georgia, Indiana, Michigan, and Utah, have since rolled back those policies. And in Texas recently, a judge blocked the state education agency from issuing grades after several districts sued. The districts charged that the agency had unfairly recalibrated its formula and waited too long to communicate those changes.

Where will Tennessee’s grades be published?

As of last week, state officials had not shared exactly how they plan to release this week’s grades. Chalkbeat continues to track and report on the topic.

Eventually, the department plans to publish all grades, along with school-level TCAP scores from the 2022-23 school year, on the State Report Card. The online tool should be ready to go live with the latest data in January, according to several spokespeople for the department.

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

Memphis-Shelby County Schools graduation rate improves slightly

2023-11-21T21:58:41+00:00

The high school graduation rate for Memphis-Shelby County Schools students rose to 81.5 % in 2022-23, according to the Tennessee Department of Education, continuing a rebound from the pandemic years.

MSCS still lagged behind the statewide graduation rate of 90.6%. But the results reflected a 1.4% improvement from the previous year’s rate of 80.1%, and a big turnaround from 2019-20 and 2020-21, when the graduation rate sank to 77.7%.

Fourteen high schools — including six charter schools — posted graduation rates of 90% or higher, while 21 high schools increased their graduation rate by at least one percentage point.

“We commend our educators, students, and families for their hard work and we are proud of the gains we continue to see in our graduation rates,” interim Superintendent Toni Williams stated in an MSCS press release.

MSCS officials credited strategies such as Project Graduation, in which students can earn elective credits in the evening, as well as expanded tutoring with federal stimulus money and funding to hire graduation coaches.

TDOE officials pointed out areas of improvement across the state. Twenty-nine school districts boosted graduation rates for economically disadvantaged students by five percentage points or more, while 37 school districts improved graduation rates for students with disabilities by five percentage points or more, according to a department press release.

“Tennessee’s continuous commitment to ensuring students are successful in graduating from high school on time is demonstrated in this year’s statewide graduation rate and is a direct result of the hard work of Tennessee directors of schools, administrators, and educators have done with our families and students,” Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds stated in a press release.

MSCS high schools with 2023-24 grad rates of 90% or higher

Charter schools are indicated by an asterisk.

*City University School of Independence, 100%
Hollis F. Price Middle College, 100%; East High, 98%
*Memphis School of Excellence, 96.6%
*Power Center Academy High, 96.6%
Middle College High, 95.9%; Germantown High, 95.3%
*Crosstown High, 93.9%
*Memphis Academy of Science Engineering Middle/High, 93.3%
Whitehaven High, 92%
*Soulsville Charter School, 91.8%
White Station High, 91.2%
Ridgeway High, 90.6%
Central High, 90.2%

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Reach her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

Tenn. hearings on federal school funding leave out parents and local advocacy groups

2023-11-15T11:00:00+00:00

A legislative panel exploring whether Tennessee should reject federal funding for its K-12 students isn’t allowing public testimony from Tennesseans about how federally funded programs are run or how they affect their children.

And it’s not hearing from Tennessee-based advocacy groups either.

However, two conservative advocacy groups from outside the state are set to weigh in on the discussion Wednesday as the panel wraps up five days of hearings.

Steve Johnson, a former member of the Michigan House of Representatives, is scheduled to speak to the GOP-led committee on behalf of the Center for Practical Federalism, part of an association of state-level free-market think tanks. The group’s website says it seeks to educate people on the benefits of federalism, which it describes as a system of government where “some authority belongs to the national government, and much more resides with states, communities and the American people.”

Also on the agenda is Sal Nuzzo, senior vice president of the James Madison Institute, a Florida-based think tank that lists “limited government” among its guiding principles. His biography says he was appointed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to serve on that state’s government efficiency task force. He also has worked with longtime antitax activist Grover Norquist, the bio says.

The testimony will mark a departure from proceedings that have been mostly fact-finding presentations during the previous four days of hearings with established nonpartisan researchers, school district leaders, and state officials.

The panel, created by the speakers of the House and Senate in September, is to report back to Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature by Jan. 9 on its findings and recommend strategies for rejecting potentially millions of U.S. education dollars in order to avoid federal regulations that cover everything from mandated student testing to civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ students.

If Tennessee opts to forgo any federal funding for its students, it would be the first state to do so. Federal dollars typically make up about a tenth of state education budgets and provide additional support for students who are from low-income families, have disabilities, and are learning the English language. The money also provides targeted support for certain needs ranging from rural education to technology and charter schools.

Estimates of the impact of federal education funding in Tennessee have varied from $1.1 billion to $1.9 billion since House Speaker Cameron Sexton first floated the idea in February. On Tuesday, officials with the state education department attributed the variance to additional federal education relief in recent years due to the pandemic.

For the current fiscal year, they said, Tennessee is projected to receive about $1.3 billion from the federal government, or about a tenth of the total spending on the state’s K-12 students. The rest of the money comes from the state and local governments.

State officials also reported that all 148 Tennessee school districts receive one or more federal grants, affecting a wide swath of the state’s nearly 1 million public school students. Of those, nearly 152,000 students are considered economically disadvantaged; about 129,000 receive special education services; and more than 66,000 are learning the English language.

Sexton and other GOP leaders have said Tennessee would continue services currently funded by the federal government and would fill the gap with its own funding if it decides to go that route.

Advocates for people with disabilities weren’t invited

Sen. Jon Lundberg and Rep. Debra Moody, who chair education committees in their respective legislative chambers, co-chair the special legislative panel and set the agenda for meetings that began on Nov. 6.

Rep. Debra Moody and Sen. Jon Lundberg, both Republicans, co-chair the joint legislative panel exploring whether Tennessee can replace the money it receives from the U.S. government with state funds so it won’t have to comply with mandates tied to the federal funding.

Last week, Lundberg told Chalkbeat that his committee has not allowed testimony from parents or education advocacy groups in Tennessee because the focus of the hearings is on efficiency and federal requirements for accepting federal dollars, not whether the state will continue to provide those services.

“Our charge is not to look at eliminating programs, or adding programs,” said Lundberg, a Bristol Republican. “It’s about, if we say we don’t need the federal government to provide X program, can we as a state do it more efficiently and serve this student population more effectively?”

Among the groups left on the sidelines was the Tennessee Disability Coalition, an alliance of organizations and individuals that advocate for full and equal participation of people with disabilities in school and all other aspects of life.

Sen. Raumesh Akbari of Memphis, one of two Democrats serving on the special legislative committee, had asked the panel’s co-chairs to invite the coalition to give a presentation about the intricacies of the federal Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act, known as IDEA, and the services it covers for students with disabilities. However, the coalition received no invitation, said Jeff Strand, the group’s coordinator of government and external affairs.

None of the panelists who have testified thus far have spoken in depth about IDEA, its services, or impacts.

“Some panelists have even mischaracterized the tenets of IDEA that are codified in (Tennessee state law), with one even saying that IDEA is in the code in its entirety,” Strand said.

Committee leaders also declined a request from Tennessee parents to testify on behalf of Rise & Shine, a grassroots advocacy group organized after a mass shooting in March left three children, three adults, and the shooter dead at a private school in Nashville.

“It’s hard for me to see this as a neutral facts analysis that’s not political when they’re talking to outside organizations and not more Tennesseans who have a perspective and experiences with these federal programs,” said Maryam Abolfazli, a Nashville mom and the group’s founder.

“It feels like they view our voices as emotional pleas, rather than a way to get insights into how these programs and funding work for Tennessee families,” she told Chalkbeat.

School leaders and education commissioner air concerns

Moody, the House co-chair, declined to comment Tuesday when asked why testimony is needed from the two out-of-state groups, or whether it’s appropriate before a fact-finding panel.

Johnson, with the Center for Practical Federalism, did not respond to questions from Chalkbeat on Tuesday asking how and why he got on the agenda. But Nuzzo, with the James Madison Institute, said through a spokesperson that he was invited to speak by Rep. John Ragan, an Oak Ridge Republican serving on the committee. “He inquired whether the James Madison Institute had relevant expertise that could be helpful for the legislative panel to consider,” said the spokesperson, who said the institute provides research, legislative education, and testimony in Florida and throughout the country.

Those testifying so far have been researchers with the state comptroller’s office; the legislature’s fiscal review committee; and the Sycamore Institute, a nonpartisan research group and think tank in Tennessee.

The committee also heard from Austin Reid, the legislative director of the National Conference of State Legislatures; and from four school district superintendents who said Tennessee schools could use more funding if the state has the resources to reject federal funding and fill the gap with state revenues.

Many of those testifying warned that Tennessee will enter uncharted territory if it opts to reject federal money. And Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds, who started her job in July, echoed those concerns on Tuesday in her first testimony before state lawmakers.

“Many federal requirements are also codified in Tennessee state law, and the issue of accepting or rejecting federal education funding is a complicated one, with numerous legal implications and uncertainties,” Reynolds said.

“For these reasons, it’s hard to project exactly how decisions (to opt out of federal funding) would play out,” she added.

Possible ramifications could include budget cuts or tax increases during a future shortfall or recession; protracted court battles over federal requirements that may still exist for schools even if funding is refused; and Tennesseans having to pay federal income taxes for education support that would go to other states.

Correction: Nov. 17, 2023: A previous version of this story said Sal Nuzzo, with the James Madison Institute, did not respond Tuesday to questions from Chalkbeat asking how and why he got on the agenda. The story has been corrected to include a response from an institute spokesperson, which was emailed to Chalkbeat Tuesday night.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Marta 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.

Tennessee’s first A-F letter grades for schools will stress proficiency

2023-11-03T00:01:41+00:00

After months of asking Tennesseans how the state should judge its public schools when giving them their first A-F letter grades, Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds mostly ignored the feedback.

In her first major initiative since taking the helm of the state education department in July, Reynolds chose a school grading system that elevates the importance of proficiency — whether students are meeting certain academic standards on state tests — over the progress that schools make toward meeting those standards over the course of a year.

Her plan, unveiled on Thursday, will mark a sharp change of course for Tennessee, considered a pioneer in emphasizing growth measurements to assess its students, teachers, and schools.

It’s also significantly different from what Tennesseans have asked state officials for since Reynolds announced in August that an overhaul in the state’s grading system was coming. The overwhelming feedback at 10 town halls, meetings with stakeholders, and in nearly 300 public comments was for keeping the calculation focused on growth, as it has been the last five years.

Reynolds’ plan is similar to the model backed by ExcelinEd, the education advocacy group founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and where Reynolds previously served as policy director.

It will still include improvement as a factor, as required by a 2016 Tennessee law, but achievement will get more weight than under the original formula — and there won’t be a way for schools to meet the achievement criteria by meeting certain improvement goals, according to a presentation to the state Board of Education.

“This version is recalibrating that balance point and is going to say more about where the kids are in those schools right now,” said David Laird, assistant commissioner of assessment and accountability in the education department. “It is less of a referendum on maybe what the school’s impact has been, but it’s more clearly articulating their challenges right now.”

The department also announced that the grades will be released in mid-December, a month later than previously planned. State officials say they need more time to verify data going into the grades.

This is the first time the state will issue its letter grades since the 2016 law requiring them took effect. Previous attempts were called off because of testing glitches and the pandemic.

There are several other changes to the calculation.

The formula will factor in test scores for science and social studies, although not as much as for math and English language arts, which were the focus of the original model.

Gone is data related to chronic absenteeism. A new factor will be how well schools are helping their lowest-performing quartile of students to improve. For high schools, college and career readiness will be included, based on measures such as ACT scores, postsecondary credits, or industry credentials.

The debate about growth vs. proficiency was the biggest concern for school leaders who have been waiting and planning for grades for five years.

Focusing on proficiency likely will mean fewer A’s and generally worse grades than expected for many schools, especially those serving students from lower-income families in rural and urban communities.

Beyond the stigma of getting a D or an F, officials representing those schools eventually may face hearings before the state Board of Education or audits of their spending and academic programming.

Several board members worried that teachers could flee schools graded D or F, exacerbating the challenges faced by schools in high-poverty areas, where students face extra challenges before they even walk into a classroom.

“It’s a struggle for me to think about saying everyone should pull themselves up by their bootstraps, when some folks have a closet full of boots, and some have none,” said Darrell Cobbins, who represents Memphis on the board.

Many education advocates worried the state could return to an era when schools with many affluent students coasted to the top ratings, while doing little to show they were helping students improve. Meanwhile, schools in high-poverty areas will have little chance to earn an A or B, they told Chalkbeat.

“Measuring only absolute proficiency for 50% of a school’s grade will most certainly disadvantage our highest poverty schools,” said Erin O’Hara Block, a school board member for Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, who served on the working group giving input to the state.

“I’m not sure what this system is supposed to motivate for schools, nor how it will truly inform parents on differences in what various schools can offer to their children,” she said.

Reynolds said the letter grades are a tool to provide families and school communities with information they can use to make decisions, not necessarily to incentivize schools to improve.

“We want to tell the truth about whether or not our kids are actually achieving,” she said.

But Gini Pupo-Walker, director of the Education Trust in Tennessee, is hopeful the grades will somehow be tied to extra resources to help struggling schools.

“We look forward to learning more about how the state plans to support schools that receive D’s and F’s,” she said, “and ensure schools are paying attention to the success of all students.”

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

Tennessee rushes to revamp its A-F letter grades for schools. Educators cry foul.

2023-10-26T10:00:00+00:00

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It was supposed to make things simpler.

A 2016 Tennessee law required the state to assign each public school a letter grade, A to F, based mostly on student test results. The intent was to give parents and communities an easy way to assess the quality of education at each school.

Nothing about it has been simple, though. Since the law took effect, the state hasn’t issued any grades, mostly because of testing glitches and the pandemic.

And now there’s a new complication: As the state prepares to finally issue its first grades in November, the education department and its new leader are revamping the grading formula. The changes likely will mean fewer A’s and generally worse grades than expected for many schools, especially those serving students from lower-income families in rural and urban communities.

The rollout will be a jolt to many Tennessee public school leaders, who have been waiting and planning for these grades for five years, thinking they understood what the criteria would be. And beyond the stigma, the grades could have real consequences: Officials representing schools that get D’s or F’s eventually may face hearings or audits of their spending and academic programming.

“It almost seems like we’re trying to change rules after the game’s already been played,” said Brian Curry, a school board member in Germantown, during an August town hall in Memphis to discuss potential changes with state officials.

Why the letter grades for schools matter

Tennessee’s 2016 school report card law didn’t include consequences for schools that get low grades.

That changed last year, when Tennessee passed a new system for funding K-12 education.

Under the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement Act, or TISA, school districts or charter authorizers can face hearings before the state Board of Education if their schools get D’s or F’s on the state report card, beginning with the 2024-25 school year.

Ultimately, administrators could have to submit a corrective action plan or undergo a state audit of spending and academic programming at the school in question.

State board member Darrell Cobbins, whose district includes Memphis schools, acknowledges that the increased funding that came with TISA warrants additional accountability. But he wonders about the feasibility of what the law asks of the all-volunteer board. Holding hearings for potentially hundreds of schools will be a “major undertaking,” he said.

The board is working with a consultant, Bellwether Education Partners, to develop a review process that Cobbins hopes will be logical, consistent, and explainable.

At the crux of the state’s late change is a long-running debate over proficiency vs. growth — whether students should be judged based more on whether they meet certain academic standards, or on how much progress they make toward those standards. Where the state lands in that debate is especially important for schools where students face extra challenges even before they walk into a classroom.

But many public school leaders believe there’s a larger political motive behind the sudden drive by Gov. Bill Lee’s administration to change the rules: advancing his school choice agenda.

Under a 2019 voucher law pushed by Lee, Tennessee now provides taxpayer money to help some families send their children to private schools. But the program has fewer than 2,000 students enrolled in the three counties where it operates, significantly below this year’s 5,000-seat cap. Lee wants to expand enrollment and eventually take the option statewide.

“School choice has got to be part of what’s driving all this,” said Mike Winstead, director of Maryville City Schools and a former Tennessee Superintendent of the Year.

“Think about it,” he continued. “If you have an A or B school in your community, that may not motivate parents to want to pull their kids out of public schools to use a voucher.”

Several other district leaders brought up the same concern to state officials at town halls hosted by the department in August and September to get public feedback about revising the grading formula. But state officials flatly deny there’s a connection between the voucher law and changes to the grading formula.

The grading law “was passed to promote transparency, and families should be able to know and to understand how their students’ schools are performing,” a department spokesman said in a statement to Chalkbeat.

Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds said the goal of the new formula is to generate grades that signify meaningful differences in school performance in a way that make sense to Tennesseans, whether they reflect proficiency, growth, or other criteria that are ultimately chosen.

“Whether you are a student, parent, teacher, policymaker, or an interested community member, school letter grades will empower all Tennesseans with the information they need to support K-12 public education and our local schools,” she said.

Tennessee initially adopted growth-focused model

State law requires that Tennessee’s model for grading schools take into account student performance and improvement, as demonstrated on annual state tests, and it allows inclusion of other reliable indicators of student achievement. The statute directed the education department to come up with a formula to turn those results into a single letter grade for each school, to be published online on the State Report Card.

When developing the calculation under former Republican Gov. Bill Haslam’s administration, the department stressed achievement and growth in math and English language arts. And it created two pathways for schools to demonstrate achievement.

One way was based on what the state calls “pure achievement,” meaning that a certain percentage of a school’s students demonstrated a required level of proficiency, skill, or knowledge. By this metric, a school that started the school year with a high proficiency rate was likely to receive an A even if it had not improved student learning during the school year.

The other way rewarded schools that met certain goals to move their students toward proficiency from one year to the next. The idea was that all schools, especially those serving low-income students or that have historically performed poorly, should have an opportunity to get an A as long as they make strong progress toward the state’s achievement goals.

So even the achievement part of the grading formula could be fulfilled with strong growth. In this way, Tennessee was an early adopter of a growth-heavy model when developing its accountability system.

“All means all!” became the mantra of then-Education Commissioner Candice McQueen as she worked with education stakeholders for nearly a year to design a system to incentivize improvement for all students — whether they are considered low, average, or high achievers — as well as for all schools, regardless of their demographic makeup.

Tennessee had modest success with that approach, even though the actual letter grades were never issued. Before the pandemic hit in 2020, students were showing incremental growth in math and reading based on some of the nation’s highest proficiency standards.

But state lawmakers have become increasingly impatient with the pace of improvement, especially in reading. About a third of the state’s students meet grade-level standards on the English language arts test, which requires students to demonstrate the ability to read closely.

“School choice has got to be part of what’s driving all this. Think about it. If you have an A or B school in your community, that may not motivate parents to want to pull their kids out of public schools to use a voucher.” — Mike Winstead, Maryville City Schools director

“At the end of the day, I want to know: Can you add, subtract, multiply, and divide, and can you read, regardless of how much you have grown from one year to the other?” said Rep. Mark Cochran, an Englewood Republican, during one legislative hearing about the state’s emphasis on growth.

Meanwhile, the legislature has sought to provide more options for families dissatisfied with the performance of traditional public schools by introducing private school vouchers and allowing charter schools to open statewide.

Now as Tennessee revamps its school grading system, Lee’s administration is poised to shift weight in the equation from growth to pure achievement. Reynolds wants the state to do that by eliminating the growth pathway for demonstrating achievement. Growth would still be a component of the overall grade, as dictated by state law, but a much smaller part.

“I want to be very clear that when we’re talking about academic achievement, we’re talking about academic achievement,” Reynolds, the new education commissioner, said at an Oct. 12 meeting of education stakeholders.

State hears strong calls for retaining growth focus

Reynolds, who was sworn in to her post in July, launched the reevaluation of the grading system about a month later as her first major initiative. She invited Tennesseans to weigh in on how the state should measure a school’s academic success. At the time, state officials said all options were on the table.

At town halls, meetings with stakeholders, and in nearly 300 public comments from Tennesseans, state officials heard a common theme: Keep some kind of growth option as part of the achievement calculation. Measuring student performance with a single letter grade requires nuance, many educators said, and the growth-based model allows that.

“Is having a campus that has only 15% reading proficiency really a B school, if those kids cannot read?” — Lizzette Reynolds, Tennessee education commissioner

A formula that’s weighted too heavily toward pure achievement, they warned, would produce grades that essentially mirror the economic profiles of the schools — with high-income communities getting the A’s and B’s — and families wouldn’t be able to use the grades to differentiate the performance of one high-poverty school from another.

“Given the strong correlation between achievement and poverty, I think it’s really difficult to talk about just achievement in isolation. We really need to balance this with growth,” said Madeline Price, policy director for the State Collaborative on Reforming Education, at an Oct. 5 meeting of the stakeholders group.

“All schools, especially low-income and traditionally low performing schools, should have a very real opportunity to receive an A” if they significantly improve student performance, the leaders of Tennessee’s school superintendent organization wrote in a letter to Reynolds.

Meaghan Turnbow, who coordinates programs for English language learners in fast-growing Rutherford County Schools, south of Nashville, noted pitfalls in a model that emphasizes proficiency over growth.

“We have students come to our district from all over the world with various education levels and English levels,” she wrote in a public comment. “Year to year they grow, but it may be several years before they are considered meeting or exceeding expectations.”

Tennessee Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds speaks to a gathering of school superintendents in September. Reynolds has signaled that she wants to narrow the way the state judges student performance.

But soon after asking for public feedback, Tennessee’s new education chief signaled that she wanted to narrow the way the state judges student performance.

During an Aug. 29 town hall in Chattanooga, Reynolds acknowledged that the education department, before scuttling plans to issue grades in the fall of 2022 under former Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn, had run the numbers but didn’t like what it saw. For instance, she said, a school with 80% of its students reading on grade level might have received a B, but so might a school that had only 15% of students reading on grade level, while also demonstrating high growth.

“Is having a campus that has only 15% reading proficiency really a B school, if those kids cannot read?” Reynolds asked.

“We should celebrate growth,” she continued. “We should also celebrate achievement, because at the end of the day, kids can grow. But if they never get on grade level, they don’t have much of a future, particularly when it comes to reading and math.”

How a single school could get conflicting evaluations

The A-F grading system, as required by the state, was billed as a simple, common-sense tool to help parents understand how their child’s school is doing and compare schools.

But changes the department is making could add a new layer of complexity for school communities.

When Tennessee developed its accountability plan in 2017, it opted for a single system to satisfy both the state law and a 2015 federal accountability law called the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA. That way, “we’re not sending different messages to parents and the general public,” said Winstead, the Maryville schools director who served on the state task force that developed the plan.

ESSA doesn’t require A-F grades, but it directs the state to use its own criteria to identify schools that are academically in the bottom 5%, plus other schools showing low performance or significant disparities across groups of students who are Black, Hispanic, economically disadvantaged, or English learners, or have learning disabilities. Such schools become eligible for additional federal funding.

Because of the link between the two laws, the schools that would earn the lowest grades under Tennessee’s current formula are the same ones that would get federal support to help them improve. And educators would work with a common set of goals, priorities, and incentives.

Changes that the Tennessee Department of Education is making could create two separate accountability systems, producing conflicting assessments of how a school is doing.

Under Reynolds, the Tennessee education department appears ready to decouple the state’s A-F system from its federal compliance plan. The change would result in Tennessee having two accountability systems, potentially producing conflicting assessments of how a school is doing.

For example, if the new state formula places less emphasis on certain student groups than the federal system does, a school that has big racial or economic disparities in student performance could still earn high grades from Tennessee based on overall proficiency rates. Meanwhile, a school with low proficiency rates would get a D or an F, even though it may serve certain groups of students better than an A or B school.

Mary Batiwalla, former assistant commissioner of assessment and accountability in Tennessee, says what’s going on here has parallels in Texas, where Reynolds used to be chief deputy commissioner. Officials there changed their grading criteria this year to apply to schools retroactively. However, after some school districts sued that state over the changes, Texas delayed the release of its grades.

Texas lawmakers are also in the midst of a special session on vouchers to debate whether students should be able to use public dollars to attend private schools. Batiwalla worries that officials in both states are hijacking the grading systems for political aims, not to incentivize school communities to improve.

“If you want to do vouchers, do vouchers,” said Batiwalla, an outspoken critic of Reynolds’ efforts. “Don’t take away this policy tool that has the potential to drive improvement from the rest of the public schools.”

Proficiency focus could shortchange some students

Other tweaks are likely when Tennessee releases its new equation in the days or weeks ahead, just before giving schools their first set of grades.

“If you want to do vouchers, do vouchers. Don’t take away this policy tool that has the potential to drive improvement from the rest of the public schools.” — Mary Batiwalla, former assistant commissioner, Tennessee Department of Education

The department has heard calls to include social studies and science scores in the calculation, as well as data related to third-grade reading, participation in tutoring programs, and postsecondary indicators like dual enrollment and career and technical education offerings, just to name a few. There’s also a growing consensus around ditching student absenteeism data, which is a factor in the current equation.

But most educators have their eye on the growth vs. proficiency debate. They worry that greater emphasis on proficiency will motivate schools to focus on improving “bubble kids” — those scoring just under proficiency — instead of working to improve students at all levels of achievement.

“You’re incentivizing bad choices that serve just a few kids instead of all kids,” Winstead said.

Winstead’s suburban school system should be fine. Maryville City Schools, near Knoxville, is one of the state’s highest-achieving districts and stands to benefit if Tennessee’s revamped grading formula puts more weight on proficiency. But Winstead philosophically disagrees with the approach that the state appears to be taking.

“This is going to demoralize a lot of school communities,” he said, “teachers, kids, and parents — folks who have done incredible things to move kids forward.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org. Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee hires leader to jump-start school turnaround efforts statewide

2023-09-01T01:00:09+00:00

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Tennessee has appointed a school improvement leader to manage all of its school turnaround work under a powerful new position that will touch urban, suburban, and rural districts.

Bren Elliott, who was a Nashville school administrator from 2001 to 2007 and has been school improvement chief for District of Columbia Public Schools since 2017, will begin her job as state turnaround superintendent on Tuesday.

The Tennessee Department of Education announced Elliott’s hire on Thursday, three years after launching its first search to fill the job. The position is considered key to jump-starting school improvement work in Tennessee, which has helped pioneer several turnaround models with limited success.

Bren Elliott, Tennessee’s new school turnaround leader, returns to the state from Washington, D.C., where she was a school improvement leader. Elliott has previously been a teacher, principal and administrator in Nashville.

She is among the first major hires for Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds, who started her job on July 1 with an early focus on school accountability.

Elliott’s experience in school improvement “will be an asset to the state and provide intentional support to these schools to ensure all students receive a high-quality education,” Reynolds said in a statement.

Chief among Elliott’s new responsibilities will be overseeing the Achievement School District, the state’s most aggressive lever for improving low-performing schools. The state-run district, which takes over schools and assigns them mostly to charter operators to manage, has itself struggled, with little to show so far for its turnaround efforts over the past decade.

Elliott also will be responsible for supervising interventions for all 95 of the state’s so-called priority schools — those that score academically in the bottom 5% — as well as schools that need targeted support due to large achievement gaps among groups of historically underserved students such as English language learners, students with disabilities, or those from low-income families.

In all, nearly 300 Tennessee schools fall in those categories.

She will also work closely with local leaders of district-level turnaround initiatives, from the Innovation Zone in Memphis and Nashville to the Partnership Network in Chattanooga.

“I look forward to working with our schools most in need of support and intervention, including the Achievement School District, to improve student achievement and help all students in these schools succeed,” said Elliott.

Turnaround efforts are at a crossroads

For many local school improvement leaders, the education department’s naming of a statewide turnaround chief came as a surprise. Under Gov. Bill Lee, the department launched multiple searches to fill the job, even naming three finalists in 2021. But those searches stalled due to the pandemic, budget issues, and uncertainties about what direction the state wanted to take its turnaround work.

Victoria Robinson, the department’s spokeswoman, said making the hire was a priority for Reynolds.

“Dr. Elliott was identified several months ago as a potential candidate, and since that time has completed the interview, hiring and other processes with the state, including with Commissioner Reynolds and TDOE leadership,” Robinson said.

Reynolds has not said what she has planned for the ASD and other turnaround work. State law gives the commissioner the authority to identify schools for state takeover and place them in the ASD.

Under Reynolds’ predecessor, Penny Schwinn, the department unveiled a new vision for the ASD that would have had a “smaller footprint” and new takeovers, but none of the updates materialized.

The ASD, which launched in 2012, has been mostly a disappointment. Under charter management, its schools typically performed no better than low-performing schools receiving no intervention. As a result, Tennessee has not taken control of a neighborhood school since taking over four in Memphis in 2016.

Most of the ASD’s schools are Memphis, with a few in Nashville, but the district has shrunk by more than half to just over a dozen schools in recent years. A few have closed, some have returned to their local districts, and many that have shown the most improvement have moved under the oversight of a new state commission for public charter schools.

A lack of steady leadership in the ASD has complicated the complex exit process for schools once their charter contracts expire. The district’s last leader, Lisa Settle, departed in summer 2022. Since then, other staff with the education department have managed it.

Elliott has Tennessee ties

Elliott, who is a member of Chiefs for Change, an influential national education leadership network, is a native of North Carolina and no stranger to Tennessee.

She was a teacher and administrator in Nashville public schools for 15 years, and spent her last year at the district as a director focused on priority schools. She earned her master’s degree from Tennessee State University.

In 2020, Elliott lost a bid to become director of Metro Nashville Public Schools to Adrienne Battle, who was the interim leader at the time. This summer, Elliott was a superintendent finalist for Huntsville City Schools in Alabama, which also picked its interim leader instead.

Before joining the Washington, D.C., school district, she spent eight years as an administrator for two school districts in North Carolina, where she focused on support services for students in Wake and Guilford counties.

As the state’s overarching turnaround leader, Elliott also will work with local officials who manage district-run turnaround models.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools operates the Innovation Zone with funding assistance from the state. The so-called iZone gives its schools autonomy over curricular, financial, scheduling, and staffing decisions, similar to charter schools.

State officials also have worked closely with Hamilton County Schools’ Partnership Network, a model that seeks greater collaboration between the state and the local district.

But the ASD is the state’s most scrutinized turnaround program.

This spring, state Rep. Antonio Parkinson received bipartisan support for a bill that would revamp the state’s turnaround model and halt school takeovers altogether.

On Thursday, the Memphis Democrat said the department needs a school turnaround leader, whether his legislation passes or not next year.

“We need to be utilizing and putting our efforts and resources behind those practices that actually work,” Parkinson said, “and stop feeding millions and millions of dollars into the practices that didn’t work.”

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

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

Teachers sue over Tennessee law restricting what they can teach about race, gender, and bias

2023-07-26T18:58:23+00:00

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Tennessee’s largest teacher organization has joined with five public school educators to legally challenge a 2-year-old state law restricting what they can teach about race, gender, and bias in their classrooms.

Their lawsuit, which was filed late Tuesday in a federal court in Nashville by lawyers for the Tennessee Education Association, maintains the language in the 2021 law is unconstitutionally vague and that the state’s enforcement plan is subjective.

The complaint also charges that Tennessee’s so-called “prohibited concepts” law interferes with instruction on difficult but important topics included in the state’s academic standards. Those standards outline state-approved learning goals, which dictate other decisions around curriculum and testing.

The lawsuit is the first legal challenge to the controversial state law that was among the first of its kind in the nation. The law passed amid a conservative backlash to America’s reckoning over racism after the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis and subsequent anti-racist protests.

Rep. John Ragan of Oak Ridge, one of the Republican sponsors of the legislation, argued the law was needed to protect K-12 students from being “indoctrinated” with social concepts that he and other lawmakers considered misguided and divisive such as critical race theory. That academic framework, which surveys of teachers suggest are not being taught in K-12 schools, is more commonly found in higher education to examine how policies and the law perpetuate systemic racism.

Tennessee’s GOP-controlled legislature overwhelmingly passed the legislation in the final days of their 2021 session, just days after the bill’s introduction. Gov. Bill Lee quickly signed it into law, and later that year, the state education department set rules for enforcement. If found in violation, teachers can be stripped of their licenses and school districts can lose state funding.

Only a small number of complaints have been filed and no penalties levied during the law’s first two years on the books. But Ragan has introduced new legislation that would widen eligibility for who can file a complaint.

The lawsuit seeks to overturn the law and asks for a court order against its enforcement.

The complaint claims the statute fails to give Tennessee educators a reasonable opportunity to understand what conduct and teachings are prohibited.

“Teachers are in this gray area where we don’t know what we can and can’t do or say in our classrooms,” said Kathryn Vaughn, a veteran teacher in Tipton County, near Memphis, and one of five educators who are plaintiffs in the case.

“The rollout of the law — from guidance to training — has been almost nonexistent,” Vaughn added. “That’s put educators in an impossible position.”

The lawsuit also charges the law encourages arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement and violates the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which forbids any state from “depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.”

“Laws need to be clear,” said Tanya Coats, president of the teachers group known as TEA, which is leading the litigation.

She said educators have spent “countless hours” trying to understand the law and the 14 concepts banned from the classroom — including that the United States is “fundamentally or irredeemably racist or sexist;” or that an individual, by virtue of their race or sex, “bears responsibility” for past actions committed by other members of the same race or sex.

TEA says the ambiguity of those concepts has had a chilling effect in schools — from how teachers answer a student’s question to what materials they read in class. To avoid the risk of time-consuming complaints and potential penalties from the state, school leaders have made changes to instruction and school activities. But ultimately, it’s students who suffer, Coats said.

“This law interferes with Tennessee teachers’ job to provide a fact-based, well-rounded education to their students,” Coats said in a news release.

The 52-page lawsuit gives specific examples of how the ban is affecting what nearly a million public school students are learning — and not learning — daily across Tennessee.

“In Tipton County, for example, one school has replaced an annual field trip to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis with a trip to a baseball game. In Shelby County, a choir director fears that his decades-long practice of teaching his students to sing and understand the history behind spirituals sung by enslaved people will be perceived as ‘divisive’ or otherwise violative of the Ban,” the suit says. Other districts have removed books from their curriculum as a result of the law.

The governor’s office typically does not comment on pending litigation, but Lee’s press secretary, Jade Byers, provided this statement on Wednesday in response to the lawsuit: “The governor signed the legislation because every parent deserves transparency into their child’s education, and Tennessee students should be taught history and civics with facts, not divisive political commentary.”

Tennessee targeted anti-CRT policies early

Tennessee was among the first states to pass a law limiting the depth of classroom discussions about inequality and concepts such as white privilege.

In March, Tennessee’s education department reported that few complaints had been filed with local school districts based on the law. And the department had received only a few appeals of local decisions.

One was from the parent of a student enrolled in a private school in Davidson County. Because the law does not apply to private schools, the department found that the parent did not have standing to file an appeal under the law.

Another complaint was filed by a Blount County parent over the book “Dragonwings,” a novel told from the perspective of a Chinese immigrant boy in the early 20th century. The state denied the appeal based on the results of its investigation.

However, Blount County Schools still removed the book from its sixth grade curriculum. And the lawsuit described the emotional toll of the proceedings on a 45-year teaching veteran who was “entangled in months of administrative proceedings, with her job on the line, because of a single parent’s complaint about an award-winning work of young adult literature that the Tennessee Department of Education approved and the local elected school board adopted as part of the district’s curriculum.”

The department also declined to investigate a complaint from Williamson County, south of Nashville, filed soon after the law was enacted. Robin Steenman, chair of the local Moms for Liberty chapter, alleged the literacy curriculum “Wit and Wisdom,” used by Williamson County Schools in 2020-21, has a “heavily biased agenda” that makes children “hate their country, each other and/or themselves.”

A spokesman said the department was only authorized to investigate claims beginning with the 2021-22 school year and encouraged Steenman to work with Williamson County Schools to resolve her concerns.

Department officials did not immediately respond Wednesday when asked whether the state has received more appeals in recent months.

Meanwhile, critics of the law worry about new legislative efforts to broaden its application.

Under the state’s current rules, only students, parents, or employees within a district or charter school can file complaints involving their school. Ragan’s bill, co-sponsored by Sen. Joey Hensley of Hohenwald, would allow any resident within a public school zone to file a complaint.

But critics argue such a change would open the door to conservative groups, like Moms for Liberty, to flood their local school boards with complaints about instruction, books, or materials they believe violate the law, even if they do not have direct contact with the teacher or school in question.

The prohibited concepts law is separate from 2022 Tennessee law that, based on appeals of local school board decisions, empowers a state panel to ban school library books statewide if deemed “inappropriate for the age or maturity levels” of students.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include comments from the governor’s office and one of the plaintiffs.

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

Tennessee’s new education chief says implementing policy is her strength and the governor’s priority

2023-07-24T10:00:00+00:00

Three weeks into her job as Tennessee’s education chief, Lizzette Gonzalez Reynolds says her charge from Gov. Bill Lee is to implement existing major policy changes — from how reading is taught to the continued rollout of private school vouchers — not to craft new initiatives.

She feels prepared for that role, having overseen state-level education policy work in Texas for nearly a decade, including six years as its No. 2 administrator. She also has years of policy and political experience at the federal level, and most recently led policy work for the advocacy group ExcelinEd, founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

“Implementation is kind of my sweet spot,” Reynolds said. “When I was chief deputy commissioner in Texas, that’s what I did.”

Among her priorities in Tennessee: executing new programs to develop stronger readers; troubleshooting the switch to a new K-12 funding formula as of July 1; strengthening school models to prepare students for success after high school; and operating and expanding Lee’s controversial voucher program that gives taxpayer money to eligible students to attend private schools.

Meanwhile, much of the work to roll out a comprehensive new school safety package, approved this spring after a mass school shooting in Nashville, has shifted under a new law to the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security.

Since her official start on July 1, Reynolds’ schedule has been packed with meetings with staff, lawmakers, government officials, and education stakeholders.

Among the latter is JC Bowman, executive director of the Professional Educators of Tennessee, who described Reynolds as “straightforward and direct.”

“She made it clear that she is here to serve students and educators in Tennessee. … I think she will do well here if she will stay above the political fray,” said Bowman, who was a frequent critic of Reynolds’ predecessor, Penny Schwinn.

This week, the new commissioner travels to Memphis, home to the state’s largest school district, for introductions with local officials and community leaders.

Last week, in her first media interview since Lee announced her hiring in May, Reynolds sat down with Chalkbeat to talk about her background, priorities, and leadership style. Since she’s on a learning curve in a new state, questions about policy specifics were off the table.

But she was open about her own K-12 experiences as a public school kid growing up in Harlingen, Texas, a heavily Hispanic community in the Rio Grande Valley near the U.S.-Mexico border.

She described how, as a Hispanic American and a female, she experienced discrimination. As a first-generation college graduate and the oldest of four children of working-class parents, she benefited from scholarships and financial aid. And, as a parent of three children, one of whom was diagnosed with a disability in elementary school, she tapped both public and private schools to find the best fit for her family.

Reynolds said she jumped at the chance to join the administration of Lee, a Republican businessman who pushed for sweeping changes to education in his first term and was easily reelected last year.

“Tennessee has always been the bellwether state of doing things that challenge the adults in the system to continue to do better,” she said. “I want to be part of that story.”

Below are highlights of Chalkbeat’s interview, which has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

Getting to know you on a personal level, describe your own education experience. Did you go to public schools? Private schools? How did they shape you?

My only early experience in a private school was attending a Catholic school in pre-K. From kindergarten through 12th grade, I went to public schools in Harlingen.

From an early age, my mom drilled into me that “you got to go to college.” So I was always in a competition to be at the top of my class. I was going to be an astronaut, by God!

“I was going to be an astronaut, by God!”

I loved math but, when I took trigonometry in high school and it wasn’t connecting, my teacher was like, “You know, you’re a girl. You really don’t need to be doing this. You probably should just drop my class.” So I did.

I was shy and I couldn’t wait to get out of Harlingen. I was blessed with a great school counselor. When I told her I wanted to go to college, she said, “OK, here’s what you need to do.”

I got a merit scholarship to attend Southwestern University, where people in the financial aid office became my best friends and I was able to cover tuition increases through a combination of work-study and Pell grants. By then, I wanted to become an accountant. But after taking a political science class with a truly dynamic professor, I changed my mind. I wanted to save the world.

Your selection was announced by the governor’s office on the same day that Schwinn’s impending departure was announced. How did you come to this job?

A lot of the work I did for the Foundation for Excellence in Education (ExcelinEd) was not only to advocate for its policy agenda but to work across the country with other advocates and supporters and philanthropy. I was on the proverbial “list” of people across the country who might be interested in being a state-level deputy or chief. And I’ve paid my dues. I had thought maybe I might lead the Texas Education Agency someday. But I wasn’t actively looking. I’d been at ExcelinEd almost seven years and loved my job.

This spring, the governor’s office here called and wanted to talk about Tennessee’s chief position and I said, ‘Of course I’ll talk.’ What a great opportunity to meet Gov. Lee, who had a great relationship with Gov. Bush. (During the week of April 11) I came to Nashville and met with (Chief Operating Officer) Brandon Gibson and then interviewed with the governor the next day.

“Tennessee has always been the bellwether state of doing things that challenge the adults in the system to continue to do better.”

When I walked into his office, everybody was so awesome. Gov. Lee looked at me and said, “Why do you want to be commissioner of education in Tennessee?” I basically said, “Who wouldn’t want to be commissioner here?” Tennessee has always been the bellwether state of doing things that challenge the adults in the system to continue to do better. It’s still strong in accountability and assessment. There’s great work passed in this administration and previous administrations. And then, just the fact that the governor really cares about education, that it’s a priority.

Tennessee is just a good place to be. I want to be part of that story and the continued success of this state with kids. At this agency, we don’t touch kids every day, but we help influence what happens in the classroom because of the supports and resources that we provide.

When I walked out of the governor’s office, I said to myself, ‘I want to work for that man and I’m going to be really disappointed if I don’t get the offer.’

About a week and a half later, I got the offer.

What did you and Gov. Lee talk about in your interview? Why do you think he picked you?

Bottom line, this job was going to be about implementation and execution of the agenda passed through the legislature and through his leadership and (Penny Schwinn’s) leadership at the agency. A lot has already been done. Now the hard work is the implementation piece and that is kind of my sweet spot.

“Tennessee is where reform really percolated and expanded and continues to live.”

When I was chief deputy commissioner in Texas, that’s what I did: Making sure resources are there, thinking about the right resources, bringing folks in to support those implementation efforts — all the pieces of the puzzle that need to come together to ensure that kids and educators get what they need to be successful.

But sometimes implementation also requires you to say no to some things or to certain vendors.

Because of your policy work with ExcelinEd, with its focus on school choice and privatization, many stakeholders think your selection suggests that voucher expansion and advancing choice programs are Job One for you under this administration. How would you respond?

First of all, it’s not about privatization. Our No. 1 priority at ExcelinEd was to improve the system because we know that about 90% of our kids are in a public school system. Second priority is the options outside the system, which includes ESAs (education savings accounts, a kind of private school voucher), charter schools, open enrollment, public school choice, letting parents go where they want to go in the public school system. Third priority is reimagining the system, so really thinking about what other ways we can develop these comprehensive high schools. That’s how we think at ExcelinEd, and that’s why I think I was a good candidate for this job.

Yes, ESAs are part of the package, but it’s not the only package. There is no silver bullet when it comes to education. ESAs are great, but they’re not for everybody. It all depends on the parents and the families and what they want to do and what options they want to pursue.

It wasn’t that long ago that a Tennessee governor wouldn’t think of choosing an education commissioner who didn’t have teaching experience. But you don’t, nor do you have a teaching license. How will you have “street cred” with educators here, given that your background is primarily in policy and politics?

As a parent of public school kids, I’m as close to the classroom as you’re going to get because I’m a consumer of the public school system. To say that my experience is irrelevant, I don’t think it’s very fair. But in that vein, I also want to listen and learn. Earlier today, for instance, I met with folks at the Tennessee Education Association (the state’s largest teacher group).

I’ve got to come at it with empathy and support. Have I done their job every day? No, I haven’t. But we’re all in this together. I’m going to listen. I’m going to engage and implement in a way that is fair and where the decision-making is transparent.

The department has had a number of significant departures in recent months, including Chief Academic Officer Lisa Coons and Deputy Commissioner Eve Carney, who was a veteran manager responsible for many of the state’s biggest education programs and initiatives. How are you building out your cabinet and filling out gaps in leadership? Will you look inside or outside of the state?

I’m looking for the best qualified folks, but my preference is to find people in Tennessee. We just hired Kristy Brown from Jackson as our chief academic officer. We need to fill the role of chief program officer, and I’d love to find a Tennessean for that. I don’t feel the need to look outside of the state because I think there’s a lot of qualified people here. Tennessee is where reform really percolated and expanded and continues to live.

Have you and your family officially moved from Texas to Tennessee, or do you plan to?

I’m here and I’m moving soon into a place in East Nashville. My husband is staying in Austin with our youngest son, who’s a rising junior, until he finishes high school. Our son wants to look at colleges here, so I’m super excited.

I don’t know if I’ll go back to Austin to live. We’ll see.

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

TCAP scores are in for Tennessee school districts. Look up how your district did.

2023-07-18T21:14:52+00:00

Most Tennessee school systems increased their students’ proficiency rates in math and English language arts last school year, according to district-level test scores released Tuesday by the state.

The latest scores generally mirrored statewide data released last month that showed gains across all core subjects and grades, even exceeding pre-pandemic proficiency rates in English language arts and social studies.

But large learning gaps remain, especially for historically underserved students including children with disabilities, those from low-income families, and students of color.

The results are an important marker as school systems work to recover from steep learning losses in 2021, when the first test scores from the pandemic period declined dramatically across Tennessee and the rest of the nation.

The scores also give a localized snapshot of how school districts are doing with tutoring, summer school, and other programs designed to accelerate learning after the pandemic.

Below, you can look up how your school district performed in English language arts and math in 2022-23 under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP.

You also can delve further into local results, including scores in science and social studies, via Tennessee’s new online dashboard on its State Report Card.

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

Thomas Wilburn is Chalkbeat’s senior data editor. Contact him at twilburn@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee’s TCAP test scores climb for second straight year after pandemic

2023-06-29T19:00:00+00:00

Tennessee’s third set of test scores from the pandemic era improved again across all core subjects and grades, even exceeding pre-pandemic proficiency rates in English language arts and social studies.

State-level results released Thursday showed an overall increase in proficiency since last year for public school students, and a surge since 2021, when the first test scores from the pandemic period declined dramatically across the nation.

But the performance of historically underserved students — including children with disabilities, those from low-income families, and students of color — still lags. Those groups of students, who already trailed their peers before disruptions to schooling began in 2020, also spent the longest time learning remotely during the public health emergency caused by COVID-19.

The latest scores continue the state’s upward trend of pandemic recovery, based on standardized tests under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, also known as TCAP.

The academic snapshot suggests that Tennessee’s early investments in summer learning camps and intensive tutoring are paying off to counter three straight years of COVID-related disruptions.

Gov. Bill Lee called the results “encouraging,” while interim Education Commissioner Sam Pearcy praised educators, students, and their families for their hard work.

“These gains signal that we’re focused on the right work to advance student learning,” Pearcy told reporters during a morning call. “And as a result of that, we know that we will all continue to keep our foot on the gas to keep this momentum rolling.”

Beginning in the third grade, Tennessee students take TCAPs in four core subjects. This year’s students exceeded pre-pandemic levels in English language arts and social studies, while improving in math and science.

As previously reported, Tennessee’s third-grade proficiency rate jumped by over 4 percentage points to more than 40% on tests given this spring. Many of the other 60% have to participate in learning intervention programs to avoid being held back a year under a new state law.

Results for historically underserved student groups reflected both good and bad news.

The good news: Improvement for students of color, children from low-income families, those with disabilities, and those learning to speak English mostly paralleled the gains of their more affluent, white, or nondisabled peers.

The bad news: Tennessee isn’t closing those persistent gaps. Our analysis below focused on overall performance in English language arts.

The statewide data is available online by clicking “2023 State Assessment” on a new dashboard of the Tennessee Report Card.

District-level results, which are being reviewed by district leaders, are scheduled to be released in July.

And for the first time under a long-delayed change to the state’s accountability policies, this year’s TCAP results will be used to help calculate A-to-F grades this fall for Tennessee’s 1,700-plus public schools. The state has deferred the new accountability measure for five years because of testing and data disruptions, most recently caused by the pandemic.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with graphics and analysis.

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

Kae Petrin is a data and graphics reporter for Chalkbeat. Contact Kae at kpetrin@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee teachers group sues over new law banning local payroll deductions for dues

2023-06-13T22:07:05+00:00

Tennessee’s largest professional teachers organization is challenging the constitutionality of a new state law that prohibits school districts from making payroll deductions for employees’ professional association dues.

The Tennessee Education Association filed its lawsuit Tuesday in Davidson County Chancery Court on behalf of its local education associations and 41,000 members statewide. The complaint names Gov. Bill Lee’s administration, which pushed for the change, and the state education department as defendants. Several local education associations have joined the suit.

The law passed in April after Lee proposed legislation linking the controversial ban on payroll dues collection to a popular provision aimed at raising teacher pay.

That link is the crux of the problem, according to TEA leaders who charged that the strategy violates the state constitution’s single-subject requirement for laws.

“Sliding a payroll dues deduction ban in a bill to raise the minimum pay was a cynical attack on Tennessee teachers,” TEA President Tanya Coats said in a statement. “We look forward to our day in court.”

Lee, speaking with reporters during a school visit Tuesday afternoon in Sumner County, said he had no misgivings about a law that both gives to teachers and takes away.

“The intent of that was to give teachers a pay raise and to make sure that taxpayer dollars are used appropriately and not inappropriately,” Lee said. He contends that districts bear costs for administering a dues deduction program.

The lawsuit is the latest volley between Lee’s administration and the influential teachers organization, which has criticized many of the Republican governor’s policies. The TEA has channeled teacher concerns about a 2021 law that, beginning this year, puts students at risk of having to repeat third grade if they don’t score as proficient on a single standardized test used by the state to gauge reading levels. The group also has opposed Lee’s efforts to expand private school vouchers and charter schools in Tennessee.

Lee’s proposal singled out the TEA

In filing its lawsuit, the TEA asked for a restraining order, as well as temporary and permanent injunctions on the payroll dues deduction ban, which is set to take effect on July 1.

In addition to challenging the law’s breadth, the complaint charges that it negates current negotiations and legal contracts between school districts and local teacher associations that include provisions allowing dues deductions for thousands of members.

Steve McCloud, the TEA’s chief attorney, said more than half of Tennessee’s teachers work under such agreements.

“The law is unconstitutional, and we filed suit to protect the rights of our membership to have their voluntary dues dedicated from their paychecks, something they have been able to do for many decades as a matter of convenience and at no cost to school districts,” McCloud said.

Supporters of the policy change said it doesn’t prevent teachers from joining the TEA or electronically paying their dues directly to the organization.

Automatic dues deductions “are a thing of the past,” Republican House Majority Leader William Lamberth declared this spring when arguing for the bill on the floor of his chamber.

But critics from both sides of the aisle noted that the law singles out teachers as the state’s only public employees prohibited from having their dues collected through payroll deductions.

“The state actually takes dues out for different organizations. … Let’s be consistent,” Republican Rep. Gary Hicks, of Rogersville, told the House when urging members to strip the dues deduction provision from the legislation.

Sen. London Lamar, the Memphis Democrat who chairs her party’s caucus, said Tuesday that the law’s ban on dues deductions will further diminish the collective power of Tennessee educators.

“All workers, including teachers, deserve the freedom to organize for better pay, benefits and working conditions — without interference from politicians,” Lamar said in a statement.

Dues provision survived challenge in the legislature

Lee’s annual state address in February drew mostly polite applause — until he promised legislation to increase teachers’ minimum salary from $41,000 to $50,000 over the next four years.

His brief comments about teacher compensation prompted two standing ovations from lawmakers in a state that ranks toward the bottom in K-12 funding and where many teachers have to work 10 to 15 years to reach a salary of $50,000.

Once unveiled, the governor’s proposal — to increase minimum pay to $42,000 this year and $50,000 by the 2026-27 school year — included a surprise provision targeting the TEA and its longstanding process for collecting membership dues.

“Both of these items, the governor believes, are good public policy,” said Brent Easley, the governor’s legislative director, when pressed about including a dues ban in a teacher pay bill.

The legislation stayed intact, despite an initial House vote to remove the dues language. Many opponents eventually backed off in the legislature’s rush to adjourn for the year.

It’s uncertain whether the policy change could lead to a drop in the number of teachers on TEA rolls. The organization already has lost significant power over the last half century.

In 1978, lawmakers banned teachers from striking and in 2011 did away with their collective bargaining rights. No teacher is required to join the organization as a condition of employment.

Still, TEA maintains a strong grassroots network and makes contributions to both Republican and Democratic candidates through its political action committee. That PAC, which is funded through separate contributions and not through dues, has given $1.3 million to state candidates and causes over the last four campaign cycles, according to the Tennessee Journal.

The Professional Educators of Tennessee, a rival organization, already uses its own collection systems for membership dues.

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

Key Tennessee education official Eve Carney resigns amid leadership transition

2023-06-05T23:30:24+00:00

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The leadership transition at the Tennessee Department of Education accelerated this week with the resignations of two high-level officials, including a veteran manager responsible for many of the state’s biggest education programs and initiatives.

Deputy Commissioner Eve Carney will step down on June 30, a department spokesperson confirmed Monday.

The departure of Meghan McLeroy, the department’s chief officer responsible for supporting schools and districts statewide, is effective Aug. 1, the spokesperson said.

A staff member with the department since 2008, Carney currently oversees state-level work involving federal programs, school choice, testing, accountability, school improvement, and the state-run Achievement School District for low-performing schools. She is among the deepest wells of institutional knowledge within the department.

Her resignation comes at a critical time as Lizzette Gonzalez Reynolds prepares to take the helm of the department on July 1 after Penny Schwinn ended her four-year tenure as commissioner last week.

Carney — who is one of four remaining members from Schwinn’s original cabinet — was expected to play a key role in helping Reynolds as the new commissioner from Texas faces myriad challenges.

Tennessee is shifting to a new education funding formula on July 1, enforcing a controversial new third-grade retention policy for struggling readers, operating large-scale tutoring and summer learning programs to help students catch up from the pandemic, expanding its private school voucher program to a third major city, and fortifying its school buildings after a Nashville school shooting left three students and three staff members dead on March 27.

The state also is scheduled to start giving A-to-F grades to its 1,700-plus public schools this fall after delaying the new accountability policy for five years because of testing and data disruptions, most recently caused by the pandemic.

A former Tennessee high school teacher and former chief of districts and schools for the department, Carney became Schwinn’s go-to manager to oversee high-level, high-profile programs.

She often stepped in to provide oversight amid employee turnover in Schwinn’s first months on the job. And last summer, when the Tennessee Supreme Court lifted a 2-year-old order to let the state resume work on its new private school voucher program, Schwinn turned to Carney to launch the rollout in a matter of weeks.

Carney was viewed as a possible successor to Schwinn, especially after Chiefs for Change, a national network of education leaders, named her in January to its latest cohort of “future chiefs,” considered a springboard for administrators seeking top jobs.

But in May, when Schwinn announced plans to step down at the end of the school year, Gov. Bill Lee went out of state to find his new education chief. Reynolds has political and policy experience in Texas and Washington, D.C., and most recently oversaw policy for the advocacy group ExcelinEd, founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

Lee also named Sam Pearcy, the department’s deputy commissioner of operations, to serve as interim education commissioner until Reynolds’ arrival. Pearcy was sworn in on June 2, after Schwinn’s last day on June 1, said department spokesperson Brian Blackley.

An alum of Teach for America, Pearcy joined the department in 2011 as part of the team overseeing school reform work under Tennessee’s $500 million award for the federal Race to the Top program.

McLeroy, another early member of Schwinn’s cabinet, has been with the department since 2011. She also initially helped to lead the state’s Race to the Top work.

The department plans to reassign Carney’s and McLeroy’s responsibilities to existing staff by the end of June, Blackley said.

Earlier this spring, Lisa Coons, the state’s chief academic officer, left Tennessee to become superintendent of public instruction for Virginia’s education department.

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

Over 25,000 Tennessee 3rd graders retook reading test this week to try to meet new promotion policy

2023-05-26T21:44:49+00:00

More than half of Tennessee third graders at risk of being held back because of their reading test scores took another test this week to try to advance to fourth grade without summer school or tutoring.

The state began offering the retest on Monday. By Friday, 25,304 third graders had submitted a second reading assessment, said Brian Blackley, a spokesman for the state education department.

Preliminary scores from the initial test in the spring indicated that about 60% of Tennessee’s 74,000 third-graders could be at risk of being held back under a new state retention policy for third graders who struggle with reading. But that number is before factoring in exemptions under the law.

The testing do-over marks the end of a pivotal school year for third graders, who were kindergartners in 2020 when the pandemic shuttered school buildings and caused unprecedented learning disruptions.

A 2021 law enacted a tough new retention policy starting this school year for students who don’t test as proficient readers by the end of third grade. The law also created several learning intervention programs to help students catch up.

Since the 2022-23 retention policy is based on the results of a single test under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, retesting using a similar “TCAP-style test” was part of the state’s plan for giving third graders another opportunity to improve their score.

The retesting window continues through June 5, but schools were expected to complete most of the do-overs this week so families can get their students’ results back sooner.

State officials have pledged that test vendor Pearson will return new scores within 48 hours after submission.

To get promoted to the fourth grade, third graders who who score as “approaching” reading proficiency must either attend a summer program with 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.

Summer learning camps start as soon as next week at some schools, although the schedule varies by district. For instance, Nashville’s program starts on June 1, while Memphis-Shelby County Schools launches its summer learning academies on June 20.

This week’s retests, via the state’s online Schoolnet platform, started off bumpy in some districts due to technical issues but smoothed out after the first day, Blackley said.

There were “isolated tech issues” on Monday in some districts that were “fully resolved,” Blackley said. “Our testing vendor, Pearson, has been troubleshooting effectively to manage and will continue to do so throughout the entire window,” he said.

Blackley added that technical problems will not delay the return of scores.

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

Texan Lizzette Gonzalez Reynolds to lead Tenn. education department as Penny Schwinn exits

2023-05-01T20:01:44+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Sign up for Chalkbeat Tennessee’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the Shelby County public school system and statewide education policy.

Penny Schwinn will step down as Tennessee’s education chief at the end of this school year and be replaced by a former Texas administrator who currently oversees policy for the Jeb Bush-founded advocacy group ExcelinEd.

Lizzette Gonzalez Reynolds will become the first Hispanic American to lead Tennessee’s education department when she starts her job on July 1.

Meanwhile, Schwinn told reporters Monday that she plans to continue living in Tennessee and will share her next venture at a later date.

“It’s just the right time for me and my family,” said Schwinn, a mother of three young children, about leaving after more than four years as education commissioner.

The changes, announced Monday by Gov. Bill Lee, come at a critical time for the state’s 1 million public school students and just a few months into the second term of an administration that has been one of the most active in history on changing education policies.

Tennessee is shifting to a new education funding formula, enforcing a controversial new third-grade retention policy for struggling readers, operating large-scale tutoring and summer learning programs to help students catch up from the pandemic, expanding its private school voucher program to a third major city, and fortifying its school buildings after a Nashville school shooting left six people dead on March 27. Replenishing Tennessee’s teacher supply is also a priority.

Reynolds brings policy experience, if not classroom chops

In Reynolds, Lee has chosen a leader who is heavy on political and policy experience but who has little to no experience leading a classroom.

Lizzette Gonzalez Reynolds

In conjunction with her appointment, she will actively work toward her Tennessee teaching license.

“The governor has full confidence in her ability to serve Tennessee students, families, and teachers,” said Jade Byers, Lee’s spokeswoman.

Reynolds graduated in 1987 with a political science degree from Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, before embarking on nearly three decades of policy and legislative work in education at the state and federal levels.

In her home state, she was deputy legislative director for then-Gov. George W. Bush and later served as chief deputy commissioner for the Texas Education Agency.

At the federal level, she worked in the Bush administration under U.S. education secretaries Rod Paige and Margaret Spellings.

Since 2016, Reynolds has been vice president of policy for ExcelinEd, launched by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in 2008 to pursue education policies that he believes improve student learning and lessen inequities. They include emphasizing early literacy and school accountability, and giving families more education choices such as charter schools and vouchers.

She currently sits on the boards of several nonprofit education organizations, including KnowledgeWorks Foundation and the Texas-based charter school operator IDEA Public Schools. Her LinkedIn profile also lists advanced studies in education leadership from the Pahara Institute.

Schwinn leaves with a mixed record

Schwinn’s departure comes after more than four tumultuous years of overseeing schools during a global pandemic and while ushering in sweeping changes in how the state funds its schools and students, and how it teaches its students how to read.

The pandemic, she said, was easily her greatest challenge, spurring Tennessee to become a national leader in providing specialized programs to bolster learning for students who fell behind.

“When we look at the last four and a half years and the pretty incredible challenges that we’ve faced in education across this country, I cannot think of a state that has shown more leadership than Tennessee,” she said.

Schwinn was 36 when Lee hired her for one of his most important cabinet jobs days before his first inauguration in 2019.

She had been on a fast track after starting her career in 2004 in Baltimore with Teach for America and later founding Capitol Collegiate Academy, a charter school in her hometown of Sacramento, California, where she still serves on the board of directors. Schwinn served briefly in leadership roles for Sacramento’s school district and Delaware’s department of education before becoming chief deputy commissioner of academics for Texas in 2016.

Her tenure in Tennessee has been marked by both big wins and big controversies.

She helped Lee deliver a major victory last year with the rewrite of the state’s 30-year-old education funding formula to let funding follow the student, and set aside more money for students with higher needs. She also shepherded numerous major initiatives, including a comprehensive plan to improve literacy, help students recover from pandemic learning loss, and expand grow-your-own teacher training programs.

But in her first nine months on the job, nearly a fifth of the education department’s employees left, mostly from resignations. And early on, she frustrated lawmakers who said she rolled out initiatives and took administrative shortcuts without ample legislative input, review, or approval.

On Monday, Schwinn thanked Lee for “taking a chance on me,” adding: “It has been a very tough and very rewarding job.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with new information about Reynolds.

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

Tennessee legislature sends governor pared-down school voucher expansion bill, omitting Knox County

2023-04-21T19:45:13+00:00

Tennessee lawmakers agreed Friday to expand the state’s private school voucher program to Hamilton County — but not to Knox County — as they prepared to wrap up their legislative session for the year.

The House had approved a bill on Wednesday to add both counties to the program now operating in Shelby County and Metro Nashville to let eligible families use taxpayer money toward private school tuition.

But the Senate, which voted in February to extend vouchers to Chattanooga-based Hamilton County, rejected the wider House expansion bill on Thursday without explanation.

On Friday, the House voted 57-27 to concur with the Senate version and send the measure to Gov. Bill Lee for his signature.

The final bill, while pared down, marks the first major expansion of the private school voucher program, which launched last fall under a 2019 law that cleared a series of legal hurdles last year but still faces challenges in court.

With 44,000 students, Hamilton County Schools is one of the state’s largest districts.

Lee pressed for the law to give parents more education choices for their children. But detractors say that private school vouchers do not improve student outcomes and divert scarce resources from public schools that serve most students who are disadvantaged or have special needs.

Tennessee’s law caps enrollment at 5,000 students in the program’s first year. The program has significant room to grow, based on the latest numbers from the state education department.

As of April 14, the state had approved 705 applicants to use vouchers this school year to exit Memphis-Shelby County Schools and Metro Nashville Public Schools. Of that number, 453 applicants had submitted proof that they’ve enrolled in state-approved private school and are using their voucher of nearly $8,200 toward tuition.

While there was no discussion on the Senate floor about reasons fo rejecting the House’s proposed expansion to Knox County, none of the three Republican members who represent that area — Sens. Richard Briggs and Becky Massey and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally — supported it.

“I think we have a very good school system in Knox County and that parents already have a lot of choices,” Briggs told Chalkbeat last month.

He noted that students in his district have the option to attend magnet schools, a charter school, specialized learning academies, and international baccalaureate programs, and to transfer among the district’s 90 schools, as long as there’s space available.

“The last time we voted on (school vouchers) in the legislature, the majority of our Knox County delegation voted against it,” Briggs added. “And there’s definitely not support for them among our citizens.”

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

Bill to extend private school vouchers to Hamilton and Knox counties clears Tennessee House

2023-04-19T19:06:15+00:00

Tennessee’s House voted Wednesday for a bill to extend vouchers to Hamilton and Knox counties, just months after the purported pilot program launched in Shelby County and Metro Nashville to let some families use taxpayer money toward private school tuition.

The proposal passed 57-35 and now returns to the Senate, which voted in February to add Hamilton County before the House sponsor introduced an amendment to include Knox County, too.

If it becomes law, the wider expansion bill will bring Gov. Bill Lee’s education savings account program to all four of the state’s urban districts.

The push shows the Republican-controlled legislature’s desire to expand the program quickly after it cleared a series of legal hurdles that had delayed its launch as a pilot program under a 2019 law. The law still faces challenges in court from the Shelby County and Metro Nashville governments.

The state comptroller’s first report on how well the pilot is working isn’t due until Jan. 1, 2026, but that hasn’t stopped Republican lawmakers from pursuing a quick expansion.

“Why would you add two additional counties to an unproven, unsubstantiated program?” asked Rep. Sam McKenzie, a Knoxville Democrat, before voting against the bill. A pilot program, he argued, is designed to test an idea’s effectiveness on a small scale.

“This will actually help us collect more data by having more counties,” responded Rep. Mark White, a Memphis Republican who is co-sponsoring the measure with Sen. Todd Gardenhire of Chattanooga.

Critics say private school vouchers do not improve student outcomes and divert scarce resources from public schools that serve the bulk of students who are disadvantaged or have special needs — also leading to more segregated schools.

White said parents simply want more options for their children’s education. He added that he is seeking to add Hamilton and Knox counties at the request of several lawmakers who represent those areas, including Republican Rep. Michelle Carringer of Knoxville, who spoke on the floor in favor of the bill.

But several Democrats representing both counties said the support of some GOP lawmakers wasn’t good enough.

“The citizens of Knox County, the majority of them, do not want vouchers,” said Rep. Gloria Johnson of Knoxville.

Rep. Yusuf Hakeem, a Chattanooga Democrat, represents Hamilton County and previously served on the local school board.

Rep. Yusuf Hakeem, of Chattanooga, added: “What you’re telling us is that it’s not relevant what the parents think in those communities. It’s not relevant what the community leaders think.”

Tennessee’s voucher law caps enrollment at 5,000 students in the program’s first year, far above the current enrollment.

As of April 14, the state education department had approved 705 applicants to use vouchers this school year to exit Memphis-Shelby County Schools and Metro Nashville Public Schools. Of that number, 453 applicants had submitted proof that they’ve enrolled in state-approved private school and are using their voucher of nearly $8,200 to pay toward tuition, a department spokesman said.

The program is already poised to expand next school year under a separate bill passed earlier this session and signed into law Monday by Lee. That measure extends voucher eligibility to students who attended private or home schools during the last three school years. Previously, a student had to move directly from a public to private school.

You can track the bill to extend vouchers to Hamilton and Knox counties 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.

Changes in Tennessee retention law will come too late for third graders this year

2023-04-14T20:08:03+00:00

Tennessee lawmakers are moving toward a consensus on how to improve the state’s controversial new third-grade retention policy for struggling readers, but whatever they decide won’t be in time for this year’s class of third graders.

Those students, who were in kindergarten when the pandemic began, face the highest stakes when the state’s testing window opens next week for grades 3-8 under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP.

In a Senate finance committee this week, Republicans quashed Sen. Jeff Yarbro’s proposal to delay implementation of the strict retention policy for one year.

“We are too late for this year,” said Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg of Bristol when Yarbro, a Nashville Democrat, asked if anything in the proposed changes for next year would alleviate concerns about this year’s launch.

“I have significant concerns that we are not ready,” Yarbro countered, “and that, even more importantly, our schools and our families are not ready for the disruptions that this is going to cause this year.”

But the GOP-controlled committee stuck with its plan and advanced a bill under which, beginning next year, Tennessee would widen criteria for determining which third graders are at risk of being held back if they aren’t deemed proficient readers.

Unless the full legislature intervenes before adjourning in the next few weeks, this year’s decisions on who gets held back or sent to remedial programs will be based solely on TCAP reading test results. That’s the current criterion under a 2021 law that lawmakers passed in response to pandemic learning losses.

If the proposed revisions are approved as expected, the state would widen criteria beginning with the 2023-24 school year to consider results from a second state-provided benchmark test, too — but only for third graders who score as “approaching” proficiency on their TCAP.

The full Senate is scheduled to vote on the measure next Tuesday.

The 2021 law also established summer learning and tutoring programs to help struggling students catch up.

This year’s third graders who score as “approaching” reading proficiency must attend a summer learning camp and demonstrate “adequate growth” on a test administered at the camp’s end, or they must participate in a tutoring program during fourth grade.

Third graders who score “below” proficiency, which is the bottom category of results, must participate in both intervention programs. (There are exemptions. To learn more about Tennessee’s current retention and remediation policy, visit the state education department’s answers to frequently asked questions.)

The existing policy is expected to affect thousands of students this year.

Last fall, when the Tennessee Organization of School Superintendents examined TCAP data for the state’s 70,000 third graders in 2021-22, the group found that about 45% of them would have been affected if the new retention policy had applied to them, before any exemptions were considered.

And in Memphis-Shelby County Schools, the state’s largest district, officials estimate that more than 2,700 third-graders are at risk of being held back.

Chalkbeat spoke recently with Dale Lynch, executive director of the superintendents group, about implications of the learning and retention law, both this year and next year. Here are five questions and answers:

What should Tennesseans understand about the status of the state’s third-grade reading and learning support law?

Dale Lynch is executive director of the Tennessee Organization of School Superintendents

There’s a lot of misunderstanding about what’s happening in the legislature with this law. A lot of people think that someone is going to wave a magic wand and all of this will go away. But there’s no chance the legislature will completely do away with the law they passed in their special session in 2021. And nothing’s going to happen this year to change third-grade retention policies for this year’s students. We’re talking about next year.

What about this year, though? What’s happening now with our third-grade students, their families, and their teachers?

There’s a lot of anxiety, especially as TCAPs approach. Parents are feeling a great deal of stress, and the pressure being put on third-grade teachers is at an all-time high. Meanwhile, our superintendents are trying to figure out how to staff an appropriate summer school program to provide these interventions for more students. How many kids will we have? We don’t know yet. Districts are supposed to get the raw score data from TCAPs by May 19th, and most of the camps are starting in May. So I think a lot of school districts will go ahead and encourage students to plan to come, even if they don’t know their test results yet. That’s not necessarily bad. But it would be nice if we had some time to figure this out.

It’s one thing to provide learning interventions like summer camps, but they also need to be effective. What’s the best way to do that?

First, I want to emphasize that our organization likes and supports the parts of the law that add these supports for our students. We like the summer programs and tutoring and additional learning opportunities. Our state needs to continue doing this.

The best way to make them effective is to have your most effective teachers in there. So for this summer, district leaders are trying to figure out how to get their most effective teachers to extend 200 days of instruction to 220 or 240 days. That’s a challenge.

Is there any collateral damage as we try to help students catch up from pandemic disruptions?

I worry that we’re at risk of hurting our best teachers at a time when we’re looking for ways to retain them. There’s nothing more important in education for a student than a high-quality teacher. The best teachers produce the best results. But we can’t keep pushing more and more on teachers without them reaching a breaking point.

What else should we know as district leaders try to plan for more third graders participating in summer learning programs?

For school system leaders, the amount of money they thought they’d be getting for summer school programs is lower than they were anticipating. They’re also trying to figure out the budgeting process under TISA [the state’s new student funding formula that stands for Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement], which starts with the new school year. It’s a lot of big things happening at once.

This year’s TCAP testing window runs from April 17 to May 5. You can learn more about the testing program on the state education department’s website.

You can track the bills to revise the retention law 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 bill would widen who can complain about teaching of banned concepts

2023-03-17T21:17:43+00:00

Few complaints have been filed — and no penalties levied — since 2021 when Tennessee enacted a controversial law that seeks to regulate discussions on race and gender in K-12 classrooms.

But that could change under new GOP legislation that state lawmakers are scheduled to take up next week.

The bill, filed by Rep. John Ragan of Oak Ridge and Sen. Joey Hensley of Hohenwald, would allow any resident within a public school zone to file a complaint under Tennessee’s so-called prohibited concepts law, which restricts teachers from discussing 14 concepts that the legislature has deemed divisive.

Currently, only students, parents, or employees within a district or charter school can file complaints involving their school, which can lead to disciplinary action. If the state determines that educators have violated the law, teachers can even be stripped of their licenses and school districts can lose state funding.

The proposed change, which observers have dubbed “Prohibited Concepts 2.0,” could open the door to conservative groups like Moms for Liberty to flood their local school boards with complaints about instruction, books, or materials they believe violate the law, even if they do not have direct contact with the teacher or school in question. The organization, with chapters in seven Tennessee counties, has channeled the frustrations of conservative mothers to target issues like mask mandates and curricula that touch on LGBTQ rights, race, and discrimination.

Ragan says investigations should weed out unfounded claims and that he’s more concerned about “taxation without representation.”

“These people are taxpayers who are footing the bill for schools,” he said, “so they should have the right to file a complaint.”

However, the law’s detractors say the change would make a dangerous policy even more dangerous.

“This will place an even greater burden on district personnel to have to chase down complaints,” said Gini Pupo-Walker, state director for the Education Trust in Tennessee. “And it’s going to have another chilling effect on what teachers can teach and how they teach it.”

The legislation is the latest effort by Tennessee conservatives to tamp down on classroom discussions that veer into ideas like systemic racism, sexism, and gender identity, even as the law has generated few formal complaints thus far.

Critics say it’s another attempt to weaponize public education in the current political climate by using charged words such as “indoctrination” to stoke parents’ fears and inflame disagreements about which classroom discussions are appropriate and which ones cross the line.

Few appeals filed, no penalties levied so far

Tennessee was among the first states to enact a prohibited concepts law amid national fury from conservatives about critical race theory, an academic framework that’s sometimes studied in higher education to examine how policies and laws may perpetuate systemic racism.

After reviewing more than 900 public comments about the new law, the state education department developed enforcement rules for everything from how to file and investigate a complaint to how to appeal a decision and what penalties that teachers and districts could face if found in violation of the law. Those rules also set who is eligible to file a complaint.

Since the rules went into effect in late 2021, the department has received two appeals of local decisions, according to spokesman Brian Blackley.

One was filed by a Blount County parent over the book “Dragonwings,” a novel told from the perspective of a Chinese immigrant boy in the early 20th century. The state denied the appeal based on the results of its investigation, Blackley said.

The second was from the parent of a student enrolled in a private school in Davidson County. Because the law does not apply to private schools, the department found that the parent did not have standing to file an appeal under the law.

Blackley said the department was only authorized to investigate claims beginning with the 2021-22 school year and encouraged Steenman to work with Williamson County Schools to resolve her concerns.

State rules were set after lengthy public comment process

Steenman was also among hundreds of Tennesseans who wrote the department in 2021 about its pending rules. She asked the state to widen eligibility to file a complaint under the new law.

“Under this rule, our current complaint gets tossed out again (because) I’m not a parent of a currently enrolled student,” she wrote. “Never mind that I am speaking on behalf of hundreds of parents of currently enrolled students! And what about grandparents? How many grandparents are in this group in the defense of their grandchildren?”

Others urged the state to limit eligibility to those who interact directly with the educators they might complain about — criteria that the department went with in its enforcement rules.

But Ragan, the House bill’s sponsor, contends the department missed the mark on complaint eligibility.

“I wrote the original bill. I established the legislative intent. They ignored it,” he told Chalkbeat. “This newest bill would carry out what I originally intended.”

To address concerns of unfounded complaints, the bill says a resident who files a complaint must have “actual or constructive knowledge of the violation.”

Asked whether he’s concerned that time-consuming investigations could distract district personnel from their core duties, Ragan was unapologetic.

“Our system of government is not constrained by how long it takes or how tough it is on employees to do their job,” he said. “That’s what we hire them for.”

His legislation also would require districts and the state to publish on their websites the outcomes of their investigations, as well as “the department’s rationale for upholding or overturning” an appeal.

A chilling effect

The bigger goal, Ragan says, is to encourage teachers and school leaders to review and adjust their instructional practices before a complaint is filed.

While he has called for “facts-based teaching based on the state’s academic standards,” The Education Trust views Ragan’s bigger goal as essentially censorship.

“As a former history teacher, I can say that this law has teachers thinking very carefully about a whole list of topics in their classroom going forward,” said Pupo-Walker. “Portraying slavery in a neutral fashion or the Holocaust in a neutral fashion seems completely absurd, but that is the expectation of lawmakers who support this kind of legislation.”

For instance, after investigating the parent’s complaint in Blount County, the Knoxville-area district announced last August that excerpts from the novel “Dragonwings” would be optional for sixth grade teachers to include in instruction this school year.

In Williamson County, where local complaints about “Wit & Wisdom” led to a months-long review of English language arts curriculum in the its elementary schools, the district removed one fourth grade book, the Newbery Award-winning “Walk Two Moons,” and made “instructional adjustments” to seven other texts.

“Ultimately, this process is tearing at the fabric of connections between schools and communities and their families. It implies that you can’t trust teachers with your children,” said Pupo-Walker.

“Parents know implicitly that’s just not the case with the teachers in their children’s schools,” she added. “But this onslaught of bills is undermining people’s confidence in the intention and the integrity of our educators. It’s destructive.”

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.

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.

Tennessee House speaker proposes task force to look into rejecting federal education funds

2023-03-13T21:18:16+00:00

House Speaker Cameron Sexton wants to create a task force to study the feasibility of Tennessee rejecting U.S. education dollars to free its schools from federal rules and regulations.

The Crossville Republican filed legislation Monday that would create an 11-member exploratory panel, chaired by Tennessee’s education commissioner, who is currently Penny Schwinn. If the bill is approved by the state’s GOP-controlled legislature, the group would begin meeting monthly by Aug. 1 and would be charged with delivering a strategic plan to lawmakers and Gov. Bill Lee by Dec. 1.

The task force also would include six legislators, two school superintendents, and two teachers — all appointed by Sexton and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally.

The proposal provides the first details of how Sexton would pursue the idea he floated last month at a Tennessee Farm Bureau reception in Nashville.

Declaring his desire to “do things the Tennessee way,” Sexton said the state should stop accepting nearly $1.8 billion in federal education dollars — most of which supports low-income students, English learners, and students with disabilities — and make up the difference with the state’s own funding. He told Chalkbeat that Tennessee would still provide programs that the federal government supports, but that he believes the state could do it better.

The legislation says, “the task force shall develop a strategic action plan to guide the administration and general assembly on whether it is feasible for this state and the political subdivisions of this state to reject federal funding for educational programs or purposes.”

Sexton also is asking the panel to identify processes for rejecting federal funding, as well as for eliminating restrictions tied to receipt of U.S. education dollars.

Asked if Sexton would accept the panel’s findings if it recommended against a funding pullout, his spokesman, Doug Kufner, responded that “those questions can be answered after the task force finishes its work.”

State lawmakers could consider creation of a task force as early as this week. The legislation, which is co-sponsored by Sen. Bill Powers of Clarksville, is scheduled to be taken up Tuesday by the House’s K-12 subcommittee and on Wednesday by the Senate Education Committee.

No state has ever rejected federal funding for its students and schools, because states generally need the money. U.S. dollars typically make up about a tenth of a state’s budget for K-12 education.

But leaders in Republican-leaning states such as Oklahoma and South Carolina have talked about the idea. And Tennessee’s governor and the Senate speaker are open to exploring the possibility, according to their spokespeople.

Tennessee Democrats oppose the change, and many Republican lawmakers have questions about what a funding pivot would mean for Tennessee students.

The lion’s share of federal education funding goes to schools that serve disadvantaged students. And there are other programs and grants funded through the U.S. Department of Education that target certain needs ranging from rural education and English language learners to technology and charter schools. There’s also a variety of federal school grants that go through the U.S. Department of Agriculture to provide free meals to qualifying students.

“This funding lifts up underserved students and rural schools and ensures every kid gets warm meals during the school year,” Senate Minority Leader Raumesh Akbari, of Memphis, said in a statement. “No matter how many studies they do, there will never be a scenario where it’s a good idea to reject billions worth of federal funding for our students and teachers.”

Sexton has identified federally required tests as his main complaint about accepting federal education dollars, but he hasn’t listed others.

Critics suspect that his bigger objections are related to current “culture war” issues about curriculum and whether transgender students should be allowed to use school bathrooms or play sports consistent with their gender identity, which may not correspond with the sex that’s listed on their birth certificates.

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

Tennessee governor’s safety bill threatens penalties for schools if they don’t lock entrances

2023-03-08T22:42:41+00:00

Gov. Bill Lee is proposing sweeping changes to enhance school safety across Tennessee, requiring all K-12 public schools to keep their exterior doors locked, or risk losing escalating amounts of state funding with each violation.

Legislation from the Republican governor, introduced this week in several legislative committees, also mandates several new safety-related drills when students aren’t present; tweaks training requirements for armed and unarmed campus officers; and requires new security features for school buildings constructed or remodeled after this July 1.

In addition, Lee wants more top law enforcement officials on the state’s school safety team and proposes to transfer its oversight from the Department of Education to the Department of Safety, the agency responsible for homeland security and state troopers.

The governor’s proposal comes after the state fire marshal’s office identified 527 unlocked exterior doors during inspections of about 1,500 Tennessee public schools this school year, according to state officials.

Last June, Lee signed an executive order directing Tennessee school leaders and law enforcement to work together to double down on existing school safety protocols after a deadly shooting in Texas, where a gunman entered an elementary school through an unlocked door and killed 19 children and two teachers.

Lee also promised Tennesseans that state troopers and local police would conduct more unannounced security inspections of schools to make sure entrances are locked to prevent unauthorized access. More than 20,000 doors have been checked so far, state officials said.

Lee plans no new limits on firearms

Lee’s plan would continue Tennessee’s emphasis on fortifying its school campuses rather than reducing its number of firearms.

Despite having one of the nation’s highest rates of gun deaths, the state has enacted numerous laws under Lee’s leadership to loosen requirements for gun ownership. In 2021, he signed a law allowing most Tennesseans 21 and older to carry handguns without first clearing a background check, obtaining a permit, or getting trained on firearms safety.

This year, however, the governor’s administration is opposing several new bills from Republican lawmakers who want to loosen those regulations even further.

The new safety legislation fulfills a promise Lee made at his state address last month. “We’ve done a lot to make schools safer,” he said, “but I don’t want to look up months from now and think we should’ve done more.”

His proposal, outlined in a 14-page amendment, would require schools to keep all external doors locked when students are present and to limit access through one secure, primary entrance.

The legislation authorizes state and local law enforcement officers to inspect doors — and requires immediate actions to address any infractions. Written notifications describing violations must be sent within 24 hours to the school’s administrators, district leaders, the parent-teacher organization, and state officials in the departments of education and safety.

Tennessee schools are required to limit access to one secure, primary entrance.

If a campus does not have a law enforcement officer on site and violates the locked door requirements two or more times in a school year, local school officials would have to post a full-time officer there within 30 days of receiving notice and undertake a corrective action plan. If they do not comply, the legislation directs Tennessee’s education commissioner to withhold 2% of its annual state funds, escalating by 2% for each subsequent violation, up to 10%.

A campus that has a full-time officer faces similar financial penalties for its district or charter organization if it violates the locked door requirements.

“To be clear, the purpose of this proposal is to help schools resolve any security flaws and ensure students and teachers are safe,” said Jade Byers, the governor’s press secretary, in a statement to Chalkbeat on Wednesday. “School funding will only be temporarily withheld while the (district) takes corrective action to resolve the issue.”

School officials want a less punitive approach

Tennessee school leaders have lauded the governor’s prioritization of school safety and, in recent years, taken advantage of millions of dollars in state grants to upgrade building security and hire law enforcement for their campuses. For instance, a grant program championed by the governor in 2019 placed more than 200 SROs in schools.

But they say that more money is needed to hire more officers — and that the governor’s proposal doesn’t address their staffing challenges.

According to the state’s most recent school safety report, for the 2021-22 school year, fewer than 1,300 of the state’s 1,800-plus schools had a trained school resource officer, or SRO, on site.

“The attention and focus on keeping our schools safe is appreciated, but financial penalties will not help add the security measures needed,” said Dale Lynch, executive director of the state superintendents organization, which has lobbied for enough funding so every Tennessee school has an SRO.

Money isn’t the only challenge that districts face, according to Mike Winstead, director of Maryville City Schools, near Knoxville.

“One of the punishments under this bill is that you might have to hire an SRO within 30 days, but that’s easier said than done,” he said. “Many districts across our state have tried to secure SROs from their local police departments, but there’s a shortage of personnel. Police are losing a lot of officers to the federal government, where they can triple their salary.”

Lee also proposes to add annual drills — without students present — for emergency bus safety, and also to prepare school staff and law enforcement agencies on what to expect in an emergency situation at a school.

State law already requires schools to conduct periodic fire drills and annual armed-intruder drills, plus three additional annual drills to prepare for potential emergencies such as an earthquake or tornado.

Altogether, the legislation serves as “an additional meaningful step to secure schools and further enhance school safety,” said Byers, the governor’s spokeswoman.

But striking the right balance between school safety and educational climate is also a concern, says Winstead, a 2018 finalist for national superintendent of the year.

“We want our schools to be friendly and welcoming to students and their families,” said Winstead, “and we don’t want to make our kids feel like they’re going to school in a prison.”

He says collaborative working relationships between school officials and law enforcement are more productive than punitive ones. He’d also like to see more state investments to support student mental health beyond the governor’s $250 million student mental health trust fund, established in 2021 as an endowment to pay for future services.

“Drills are important, SROs are important,” said Winstead, “but the most important thing we can do is foster strong relationships between students and adults.”

You can track the bill’s progress on the legislature’s website.

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.