The Tennessee Department of Education rolled out its much-anticipated School Letter Grades platform Thursday. The system is designed to provide the public with transparency into how well public schools are meeting state expectations by awarding each school with an A through F grade.Parents can use the dashboard to look up the letter grade for each public school in the state.

The Tennessee Comptroller’s Office of Research and Education Accountability (OREA) released a new report that found students who face language, disability, and economical challenges have significantly higher dropout rates than their peers in Tennessee.This disparity is especially a concern for English language learners (ELL) who have a dropout rate of 30 percent in 2021-22, exceeding the state rate by nearly three times.

A heated debate at recent Williamson County School Board meetings will be moving to the Tennessee General Assembly next year.Representative Gino Bulso, R-Brentwood, is sponsoring legislation to prohibit traditional public and public charter schools from displaying any flag in the classroom that isn’t the official United States flag or the official state flag of Tennessee. This legislation would effectively ban all pride flags in public schools.Representative Bulso told the Tennessean he was encouraged to file the bill by parents in his county and a school board member who were concerned about “political flags.”

The association that oversees middle and high school sports in Tennessee will now allow church-related schools to become members.The Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association’s (TSSAA) Legislative Council approved several changes to its bylaws this month, including allowing Category IV schools, which are church-related schools, to join. Previously, the TSSAA only allowed Category I (public schools), Category II (private schools), and Category III (regionally accredited) schools to become members.

A new report by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute found both Memphis-Shelby County Schools and Metro Nashville Public Schools are facing more competition for students than most other large school districts.The study ranked both districts 21 out of the top 125 school districts for the percentage of students in grades 1 through 8 that attend public charter, private, or home schools instead of district run schools.

Tennessee’s education system must do more to help minority and economically disadvantaged students earn postsecondary degrees in order to meet the state’s workforce needs, a report by an education policy and advocacy organization warned.The State Collaborative on Reforming Education’s 2024 report, released at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, lauded Tennessee students’ overall progress on standardized tests since the pandemic, and a rebound in the number of students attending college during that time. But the group noted that fewer students were finishing college within six years of graduating high school.

Tennessee’s education system must do more to help minority and economically disadvantaged students earn postsecondary degrees in order to meet the state’s workforce needs, a report by an education policy and advocacy organization warned.The State Collaborative on Reforming Education’s 2024 report, released at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, lauded Tennessee students’ overall progress on standardized tests since the pandemic, and a rebound in the number of students attending college during that time. But the group noted that fewer students were finishing college within six years of graduating high school.

When the founders of Nashville Classical proposed the new public charter school in 2013, acquiring facilities was a huge challenge.School leaders had to meet with future parents in church basements and parks.Addressing that charter facility gap is among the priorities the Tennessee State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE) announced it plans to advocate for in 2024. Tennessee SCORE unveiled its annual State of Education in Tennessee report Tuesday morning and made the case that charter facilities are one key area Tennessee needs to address to ensure school support meets student needs.

Underperforming Indiana third graders who are held back show significant progress for the next five years, a research study has found.The study examined data from 2011-12 to 2016-17 and found that students who were retained in third grade scored about 18 points higher in English language arts and math in fourth grade than low-performing peers who were not retained. The gains continued through seventh grade, through at a slower rate.

When Governor Bill Lee unveiled his proposed program to offer taxpayer funded private-school scholarships Tuesday, Tennessee House Education Administration Chair Mark White, R-Memphis, was among the supporters who made the trip to Nashville to be in attendance.White says he plans to support the Education Freedom Scholarship Act as he believes competition will improve education in Tennessee.

When Governor Bill Lee unveiled his proposed program to offer taxpayer funded private-school scholarships Tuesday, Tennessee House Education Administration Chair Mark White, R-Memphis, was among the supporters who made the trip to Nashville to be in attendance.White says he plans to support the Education Freedom Scholarship Act as he believes competition will improve education in Tennessee.

About 3,500 social studies teachers converge on Nashville this weekend for their annual national conference, but not without some pushback for meeting in a state with multiple laws aimed at classroom censorship and restrictions related to discussing race and gender.“Some of our members have worried that this could be a hostile environment for them,” said Wesley Hedgepeth, a social studies teacher in Henrico County, Virginia, and this year’s president of the National Council for the Social Studies.

Arieale Munson says the private school her 12-year-old son Steven attends in Memphis is putting him on the path to his dream of becoming a paleontologist.St. George’s Independent School provides Steven with an outdoor club where he looks for fossils and archives. Munson says the school also provides her son with access to extra-curricular activities like Lacrosse, tennis, and swimming.

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee plans to unveil the details of a proposed statewide expansion to the Education Savings Account (ESA) program Tuesday.The current ESA pilot program allows qualifying economically disadvantaged students who attend Memphis-Shelby County Schools, Metro Nashville Public Schools, Hamilton County Schools, or a school that was in the Achievement School District on May 24, 2019, to apply state and local dollars toward education expenses at private schools.

More than 5,200 students are currently enrolled in the state’s Teaching as a Profession (TAP) apprenticeship program and the Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) anticipates that number to increase with the implementation of a new pre-apprenticeship pilot program.The state-certified pre-apprenticeship program aims to provide high school students with hands on teaching experience in their local communities.“TAP courses are a valuable opportunity for students to get hands-on classroom experience while still in high school and this new pilot program will help to better prepare them earlier on to enter the teaching profession,” said TDOE Commissioner of Education Lizzette Reynolds.

Over the course of 6 meetings, state lawmakers on the Joint Working Group on Federal Education Funding have heard testimony from education experts who’ve either asked them not to recommend rejecting federal education funding or cautioned about the uncertainties and challenges of doing so.That changed Wednesday afternoon when lawmakers heard from Sal Nuzzo with the conservative Florida think tank the James Madison Institute and Steve Johnson with the Center for Practical Federalism.

A leader of the panel exploring whether Tennessee can reject federal education funding says he doesn’t expect the state to do so, even if it can find a way.Sen. Jon Lundberg, who co-chairs the special legislative committee looking into the idea, said that based on what the panel has learned during two weeks of hearings that ended on Wednesday, it would be premature to make big changes in the funding streams for Tennessee students.

A legislative panel exploring whether Tennessee should reject federal funding for its K-12 students isn’t allowing public testimony from Tennesseans about how federally funded programs are run or how they affect their children.And it’s not hearing from Tennessee-based advocacy groups either.

The Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) is recognizing the impact apprenticeship programs are making in the lives of students this week by celebrating National Apprenticeship Week.The department operates 45 pre-apprenticeship programs that prepare high school students interested in transitioning to one of seven different registered apprenticeship programs across 15 different areas of coursework.