Culleoka Representative Scott Cepicky drew cheers from public school teachers when he proposed legislation this year to provide them with $500 for classroom supplies.Tuesday Cepicky walked that number back in the House K-12 Subcommittee, by amending his bill to offer less assistance.

The Tennessee Senate approved a bill to include Hamilton County in the state’s ESA voucher program. The bill now moves to the House for discussion.

The Tennessee Department of Education is now offering Tennessee Teacher Apprenticeship candidates free access to “Keys to the Classroom.” The suite of prep materials is designed to help aspiring teachers pass Tennessee’s licensure tests.These resources are available through the Tennessee Grow Your Own Center in partnership with Study.com.

Lee stated he will propose an additional investment of $350 million into TISA which would include $125 million for teacher pay raises.

Like many school districts across the country, Elizabethton City Schools entered the 2020/2021 school year with a new hybrid schedule that allowed students to split time learning remotely and in the classroom.The schedule was designed to address COVID-19 concerns and for elementary school students, it meant virtual learning every Wednesday.Dr. Tammy Markland says teachers at her Westside Elementary School quickly noticed challenges.

A new survey finds Tennessee teachers support the key academic initiatives the state has launched to recover learning and accelerate student achievement.That was one finding of the results of its 2022 Tennessee Educator Survey (TES) shared by the Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) Friday

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.

Legislation to make the HOPE Scholarship accessible to graduate students received support from two key education leaders in the State House on Monday.

The Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement (TISA) cleared an important hurdle Monday morning that ensures its eventual implementation for school districts across the state next school year.The Tennessee General Assembly’s Joint Government Operations Committee provided a positive recommendation to new rules that will govern TISA when it replaces the Basic Education Program (BEP) in the 2023/2024 school year.

LEAD Public Schools announced LEAD Neely’s Bend will be the first public charter school in Nashville to exit the state-run Achievement School District (ASD) and move under the authority of the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission.The ASD is a school system in Tennessee created to provide academic intervention for the state’s lowest performing schools. LEAD Neely’s Bend qualified to move out of the ASD through improved academic performance during the 2021-22 school year.

Memphis schools Hawkins Mill Elementary and Trezevant High have been on the state’s priority list since the list’s formation in the 2011-12 school year. This means their students are consistently in the bottom 5% of state tests or have less than 67% graduation rate.

There may not have been a single piece of legislation that was more impactful in 2022 than the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement Act.TISA as it was called, invested a billion dollars into K-12 education and fundamentally changed the way public schools are funded to be based on individual student needs.Still, the chair of the Tennessee Senate Education Committee says he wasn’t entirely sold on TISA at first.

The Tennessee Department of Education announced two additional educator preparation providers (EPP) are now available to provide teacher apprenticeships through the state’s Grow Your Own (GYO) initiative.The University of Memphis will offer a bachelor's teacher apprenticeship pathway and Arete Memphis Public Montessori will offer a licensure-only pathway through Grow Your Own.

Tennessee students may soon be able to use their HOPE Scholarship to obtain a master’s or other advanced degree.Legislation filed earlier this month by State Representative William Lamberth and State Senator Bo Watson would open the scholarship program to students who’ve completed their first baccalaureate degree early.

Newly elected Republican Representatives William Slater and Kevin Raper don’t even have their pictures posted yet on the Tennessee General Assembly website, but both are now occupying leadership positions in key House Committees.Tennessee Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton appointed Slater as the Vice-Chair of the House Education Administration Committee Thursday and assigned Raper to be the House Education Instruction Committee Vice-Chair.

State Senator Dawn White was always going to make an impact on education. The Murfreesboro legislator says even as a young child growing up in Eagleville Tennessee, she was attracted to teaching. “I mean my mother will tell you the stories of when my sister and I would play when we were little kids, I would always be the teacher so it’s just something that I always had a passion for and a heart for,” said Sen. White.