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  • Letter From Jamie Woodson: A Pause On Student Assessment? A Big Step Back For Students.

    August 14th, 2018 by

    Tennessee has long believed that an annual statewide assessment is central to student achievement growth. When Tennessee aligned annual assessment with our high academic standards, we saw unprecedented growth in student achievement. Recently, we have been discouraged by calls to pause or stop Tennessee’s annual assessment. Although there have been significant challenges, now is not the time to turn back. It is time to refocus attention on ensuring seamless implementation.

  • Tennessee Educator Survey – Three Key Takeaways From 2018

    August 10th, 2018 by

    The work of Tennessee’s educators is vital. Teachers are the single most important in-school factor for raising student achievement, and school leaders are the next. For this reason, Tennessee educator voices are valuable to state-level leaders and policymakers for greater understanding of what occurs daily in diverse schools and classrooms.

  • Findings From The Field: What School Leaders Think About School Leadership

    August 2nd, 2018 by

    Throughout the summer, SCORE conducted focus groups with principals across the state to hear honest, on-the-ground perspectives of what school leaders are seeing and experiencing in their schools. Hearing from educators in schools is critical work for SCORE so that we can incorporate these voices into our annual report and ensure that the needs of all Tennessee educators are met.

  • Learning From Tennessee Principal Preparation Programs

    July 27th, 2018 by

    Tennessee is home to 18 leader preparation programs and they collectively help prepare about 500 candidates each year. The work these programs do to ensure that our school leaders are ready for the complexity of being a principal is critical. Here, we profile two programs, Lipscomb University and University of Tennessee-Knoxville, and their leaders about their approach to preparing principals.

  • Letter From Jamie Woodson: Developing Principals Who Can Lead People And Drive Learning

    July 26th, 2018 by

    To improve student achievement, principals must prioritize instruction and the development of a team of highly effective educators. To do this, Tennessee must ensure that leader preparation programs are preparing and supporting principals for their roles as leaders of instruction and people, as well as the other diverse responsibilities inherent in school leadership.

  • Better Reporting And Accountability For School Leader Preparation Programs

    July 23rd, 2018 by

    Because the role of the school leader is so important to student achievement, the Tennessee State Board of Education is updating its policies on leader preparation and working with the Tennessee Department of Education to improve reporting and accountability for leader preparation programs in Tennessee.

  • Responding To Student Achievement Data With Focus And Urgency

    July 19th, 2018 by

    When Tennessee began setting higher expectations in the classroom, student-focused advocates knew it was important to have an aligned annual measure of progress. The release of the 2017-18 TNReady scores is a good time to recall how statewide assessment data helped Tennessee students make some of the biggest student achievement gains in the nation over the past six years and to think about what to do now.

  • The Importance Of Education Leadership: What Experience And Evidence Say

    July 19th, 2018 by

    For the past 18 years, The Wallace Foundation has been working to improve education leadership on the assumption that effective leaders are essential for the success of efforts to improve schools. What was a “big bet” in 2000 has now been proven. Of course, we have a long way to go in our support and development of leaders so every school has effective leadership. However, we know a lot more now than we did in 2000.

  • Improving Principal Diversity In Tennessee

    July 16th, 2018 by

    In the past decade, the role of the principal has changed from that of a building manager to an instructional leader who sets the tone and vision of the school. Even while the role of the principal has evolved, one thing that has not changed is the lack of racial and ethnic diversity among administrators. This issue has received considerable attention in Tennessee, especially as we think about how to ensure that our schools recruit and retain more teachers of color.

  • Tennessee Data Show Strong Principals Keep Strong Teachers On Board

    July 9th, 2018 by

    The impact great school leaders have on teachers and students is the focus of a new report from the Tennessee Education Research Alliance (TERA), a partnership between Vanderbilt University and the Tennessee Department of Education that researches how to drive improvement in Tennessee schools. Recently, TERA released a research brief that demonstrates the important role principals like mine play in hiring and retaining effective teachers.

The SCORE Sheet is the online conversation on public education reform in Tennessee and is hosted by SCORE. The blog mirrors SCORE’s collaborative nature and features contributors from Tennessee and across the country including students, parents, teachers, policymakers, community groups, and members of SCORE’s team. Regardless of perspective, contributors share a common goal: that every child graduates from high school prepared for college or the workforce.

Posts on The SCORE Sheet are the opinions of the individual contributors and are not necessarily reflective of the opinions and positions of the State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE).