EFI Charter School Report: Tennessee charter school sector ranked in middle of the pack

Tennessee ranks 14th out of 30 states included in a recent report from the Education Freedom Institute that measures the quality and accessibility of states’ public charter school systems.

According to the institute’s third EFI Charter School Ecosystem Rankings report, academic programming in Tennessee's charter school sector stacks up well when compared to states with significant charter sectors, such as Texas and California. The report examines four sets of criteria to determine rankings, such as how accessible charter school programs are, as well as reading and math test scores compared to traditional public schools. Information on accessibility was pulled from public data from the 2021-22 school year, while the academic information was pulled from the Center for Research on Educational Outcomes’ (CREDO) 2023 National Charter School Study.

The report said EFI was only able to rank 30 states, since some states do not have charter schools, some states chose not to share their test score data with the CREDO researchers at Stanford University, and because some states had too few charter schools or only had charter schools that were too recently created to be incorporated in CREDO’s analysis with requisite historical data.

Tennessee Charter School Center Interim CEO and Chief Policy Officer Elizabeth Fiveash noted in an email to Tennessee Firefly that while Tennessee’s rankings in academic success are among the top 10 for both reading and math, the state does fall lower in accessibility.

She said this demonstrates the need to expand access to high quality public charter schools in more communities across Tennessee, which currently serve many underserved students in the state and are 95 percent made up of students of color.

“While we’re happy to see that the hard work of TCSC’s team and our coalition have created a strong charter sector in Tennessee, our goal is to continue to work towards making Tennessee’s sector not only the best environment to operate a public charter school, but also, as this report considers, the charter sector achieving the best outcomes for students,” Fiveash commented about the report.

To read the report in its entirety, visit www.efinstitute.org