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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.
