Shining a light on education & government in TennesseeShining a light on education & government in TennesseeFlight Scores: A composite measure of how well Tennessee high schools prepare students for life after graduation
Flight Scores combine four equally weighted metrics into a single composite score from 0 to 100, giving a clear picture of post-secondary readiness at each high school.
Four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate. Measures the percentage of students who earn a regular diploma within four years of entering high school.
The percentage of graduates who enrolled in a post-secondary institution within the fall semester following graduation.
Average composite ACT score and the percentage of students meeting the college-ready benchmark of 21 or higher.
The percentage of graduates who earned Ready Graduate status through ACT scores, EPSOs, industry certifications, or military enlistment.
Top-tier schools excelling across all post-secondary outcome measures.
High-performing schools with strong college and career readiness outcomes.
Schools meeting state expectations for post-secondary preparation.
Schools making progress toward readiness benchmarks.
Schools with significant room for improvement across outcome measures.
A Flight Score is a composite metric developed by Tennessee Firefly that measures how well a high school prepares students for post-secondary success. It combines graduation rate, college-going rate, ACT performance, and Ready Graduate certification into a single 0-100 score.
Each of the four components (graduation rate, college-going rate, ACT performance, Ready Graduate rate) is normalized to a 0-25 scale and then summed. The result is a composite score from 0 to 100 that places each school in a performance tier from Growing to Elite.
Schools scoring 75 or above are classified as Strong. Scores of 90 or above earn the Elite tier. The state median hovers around 62, placing most schools in the Ready tier. A score below 45 indicates significant room for growth across multiple outcome measures.