With the election season finally behind us, I find myself returning to two key themes after some reflection. First, the national electorate, and its preferences, has fundamentally realigned over the last decade. Our country and our state spoke decisively last Tuesday, and we must listen.

Second, as I reflect on the tremendous progress our state has made in public education over the last twenty years, I look to the future. As Tennesseans, we will all play a part in writing this future, and we will need to make choices.

Despite the fact that the U.S. Department of Education funnels more than $800 million into Tennessee alone, some leading Republican legislators have signaled support for President-Elect Donald Trump’s promise to eliminate the department altogether.

There have been some mixed reactions to Tennessee lawmakers’ efforts to reintroduce school choice legislation for vouchers that allow public tax dollars to be used for private school enrollment.

Black students in schools and universities across Tennessee and the nation have reported a slew of racist text messages evoking slavery in the days following former President Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election this week.

Despite witnessing a decline in first-time freshmen enrollment, overall enrollment has increased across Tennessee’s public colleges and universities, according to recent data from the Tennessee Higher Education Commission.

Voters in Colorado, Kentucky, and Nebraska have decisively rejected efforts to implement school voucher programs that would allow families to use tax dollars for private school enrollment.

Testing didn’t receive a lot of headlines during the debate earlier this year over Governor Bill Lee’s plan to let families use taxpayer dollars to send their children to private school, but it played an important role in why the legislation failed. Members of the State House and Senate advanced different versions of the Governor’s Education Freedom Scholarship, sometimes called vouchers, and couldn’t come to a compromise on those differences. One of the biggest involved a provision in the House version of the legislation that would reduce the number of tests students in public school are required to take.

The Governor’s new voucher plan unveiled Wednesday includes no reduction in testing and additionally requires participants in grades 3 through 11 to either take a nationally standardized achievement test or The Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program.

Republicans will retain their same majority control in the State Senate following this week’s Election Day results.  

None of the 16 even numbered seats up for vote Tuesday had a result that was closer than 16,000 votes, leaving Republicans in control of 27 Senate Seats and Democrats holding six.

Going into Tuesday night’s general election, Tennessee Democrats had high hopes of whittling into the Republican supermajority by winning a handful of House seats that are currently held by Republicans.  On the flipside, GOP leaders targeted growing their supermajority by flipping three Middle Tennessee seats currently held by Democrats.

Neither came to fruition, but one came close.

Last year, the Tennessee General Assembly attracted headlines when members held multiple hearings on the possibility of rejecting up to a billion dollars in federal education funding. Lawmakers ultimately didn’t go forward with that idea, but that doesn’t mean it’s dead. Republican House District 27 candidate Michele Reneau said in a recent interview that she’s open to the possibility of rejecting federal education dollars.

A record-breaking number of students applied for the Tennessee Promise program, with over 67,000 applicants from the Class of 2025, an announcement from the Tennessee Higher Education Commission (THEC) said.

Over the course of their presidential campaigns, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have focused most of their rhetoric on their differences in topics relating to immigration policy, the economy, gun laws, and reproductive rights. However, the two candidates also have notable differences when it comes to education.

The State Board of Education has selected 21 educators from across the state to join its Educator Advisory Team (EAT) to review Tennessee’s current English Language Arts standards, a recent announcement said.

A new study published by Brown University’s Annenberg Institute indicates that middle school students in the state’s two primary school turnaround models have made very little academic progress in recent years.

Tennessee Democrats continue to report strong fundraising by multiple challengers in closely watched House races.

Leading the pack is House District 75 challenger Allie Phillips who reported $46,915 in contributions on last week’s Pre-General Campaign Report.  Phillips is running to unseat Representative Jeff Burkhart, R-Clarksville, who reported $18,700 in contributions.

Despite criticizing Gov. Bill Lee’s plan previously as “terrible,” Representative Scott Cepicky’s, R-Culleoka, expects lawmakers to iron out their differences about school choice legislation next year.

After several tense discussions and debate in recent weeks about how to evaluate Superintendent Dr. Marie Feagins’ tenure, the Memphis-Shelby County Schools Board of Education managed to come to an agreement on evaluation metrics. Learn more about the criteria.

New data from Metro Nashville Public Schools says the district has achieved a 4.5 percentage point year-over-year growth in the district's graduation rate, bringing it to 85.7 percent for the 2023-24 cohort.

Students for Education (SFE), a Tennessee-based nonprofit dedicated to encouraging youth civic engagement, is expanding its national footprint as part of a broader effort to help soon-to-be voters advocate for their own education and influence public policy.

Dr. Andrea Poynter says her work establishing a new nursing based public charter school in Nashville is in full “overdrive” right now. Poynter is the process of filling leadership positions at the future Nurses Middle College Nashville, while also finalizing negotiations for a temporary space to use when the school opens next fall to an initial class of 125 ninth-graders interested in a career in nursing.