While recent results from the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) exam indicate that students across the state achieved “record-high” proficiency rates in English Language Arts (ELA) and made some notable progress in math, analysts from the State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE) say more work is needed to address performance gaps affecting non-white and economically disadvantaged students.

For nearly 15 years, the Memphis Grizzlies Preparatory Charter School has leveraged community partnerships with the Memphis Grizzlies NBA team to provide boys with hands-on learning and a focus on literacy and math. Now leaders want to extend those opportunities to girls.

The State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE) has released a pair of memos highlighting how annual teacher evaluations and assessments have worked together to significantly impact student success in Tennessee.

The Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) Board of Education celebrated gains made across grade levels and subjects in this year’s Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) tests at Tuesday’s board meeting.

This week’s release of state-level Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) results is providing some good news for the 44,000 children who attend public charter schools in the state, especially those who are from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

The vast majority of Tennessee school districts are seeing improvement on state testing for the 2022/2023 school year.According to district level data released Tuesday by the Tennessee Department of Education, 132 of 147 school districts improved their proficiency rate on the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) compared to the prior school year.While the percentage of results hasn’t returned to pre-COVID levels, new Department of Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds praised the improvement.

Tennessee students showed improvement in all subject areas on this year’s 2022/2023 Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP), with more than a 3 percent proficiency rate growth in math and science and English language arts proficiency exceeding pre-pandemic scores.The Tennessee Department of Education released the statewide results Thursday afternoon.

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.

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.

Early state test results show Memphis third graders improved in reading this year, and more students in the cohort are mastering state reading goals.But about three-quarters of third graders in Memphis-Shelby County Schools are still not meeting expectations, which means they could face more tests, tutoring, and summer school this year. Unless they hit certain marks along the way, they could be held back.

The Tennessee Department of Education says 60% of third graders scored “below” or “approaching” proficiency on the English language arts (ELA) portion of the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP).

When House Speaker Cameron Sexton recently floated the idea of Tennessee rejecting U.S. education dollars to free its schools from federal rules and restrictions, he made the pivot sound as simple as making up the difference with $1.8 billion in state funds.“I don’t think the legislation would be too hard to do,” he said last week after publicly declaring his desire to “do things the Tennessee way” at a Tennessee Farm Bureau reception on Feb. 7.

Few educational issues have generated more disagreement this year than Tennessee’s Third-Grade Retention Law.The legislation was designed in 2021 to ensure that students who a need additional help in reading would receive it before being promoted to the fourth grade.Wednesday afternoon Reginald Nash with advocate organization the Education Trust told members of the State House Education Instruction Committee that any tweaks need to include an emphasis on building the literacy foundations both at the start of third grade and much earlier.

Despite promising scores in this year’s Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP), Tennessee students continue to show the same signs of learning loss as their peers across the country in national testing.Tennessee's National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores released today mirror a historic national drop in the first testing following the pandemic.  While students in the Volunteer state are roughly at the national average in math proficiency and just under that in reading, proficiency in both subjects dropped to their lowest levels since 2011 with significant drops for students of color, English learners, and students with disabilities.

This year’s Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) results were rightfully cheered for the gains Tennessee students made, but it’s important to keep in mind achievement gaps still persist.This is especially true for students who are English Language Learners (ELL). These students scored 15 points lower than the state average in English Language Arts and 10 points lower in Math.As our state looks for solutions to the inequities that create these achievement gaps, we can learn much from the model that’s currently serving Memphis students at Compass Community Schools.