To help families, school leaders, and policymakers better understand school performance, in 2016 Tennessee law established a school letter grade system. The state began releasing letter grades on the state report card using its current methodology in 2023, and with the release of the 2024-25 results, Tennessee now has three consecutive years of comparable data, enabling the analysis of multiyear trends in school performance over time.
Each year, nearly all public schools in Tennessee receive an A-F letter grade assessing their students’ academic achievement, Tennessee Value-Added Assessment (TVAAS) growth, and TVAAS growth of the students in the lowest quartile of performance on state assessments. Letter grades for high schools also include an indicator for the college and career readiness of graduates. Schools receive scores from 1 to 5 for each indicator, which are then combined using different weights to generate a final grade. Across all schools, student achievement carries the greatest weight, accounting for half of a school’s overall grade.
In addition to this state accountability system, Tennessee also operates a separate and parallel federal accountability system that uses different indicators and weights to identify schools in need of additional support. To learn more about Tennessee’s dual systems of accountability, explore SCORE’s 2025 memo: Federal and State School Accountability in Tennessee.
As the Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) actively considers how to better align Tennessee’s federal and state school accountability systems, the latest A-F letter grade data provide an important opportunity to reflect on what the A-F system is currently capturing. The following five insights highlight both encouraging progress across Tennessee schools and opportunities to improve how school performance is measured.
Data Insights
1. Statewide, school letter grades have improved steadily each year. In 2025, the average school letter grade score in Tennessee was 3.37 out of 5 possible points, up from 3.26 in 2024 and 3.22 in 2023. The state average has remained a C over the past three years but has continued to rise to near a B average. This upward trend has occurred alongside the consistent gains students statewide have made on the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) in recent years.
2. Most Tennessee schools either maintained or improved their letter grade from 2024 to 2025, indicating steady improvement in school performance statewide. Nearly 78% of schools held steady or moved up at least one letter grade, including 30% (510 schools) that improved by one letter grade or more. At the same time, 22% (376 schools) moved down by one letter grade or more. Looking across all three years of available data, no school that received an A then received an F in the following year, or vice versa, suggesting that while the system is responsive to change, it is not prone to dramatic swings. This steady movement is also reflected in the overall distribution of grades. Since 2023, the share of schools receiving a D or F has declined by over 16%, while the number of A- and B-rated schools has steadily increased. In 2025, nearly half of all eligible schools earned an A or B, including 65 more schools receiving an A than the prior year — a 21% increase.
3. High schools saw notable improvement in the college and career readiness (CCR) indicator. This indicator recognizes high school graduates who earn postsecondary credit, complete certain industry credentials, or achieve qualifying ACT or Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB)/Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) scores. The average CCR score across Tennessee’s high schools increased from 3.6 in 2023 to 4.2 in 2025, signaling progress in preparing students for postsecondary education and workforce pathways. Despite the importance of postsecondary readiness and workforce preparedness as state priorities, the CCR indicator currently accounts for just 10% of the total A-F letter grade calculation for high schools. Increasing the weight of the CCR indicator would better align accountability measures with the state’s long-term education-to-workforce goals, while ensuring schools are being recognized and incentivized for expanding access to postsecondary and career pathways. Barriers to accessing and completing opportunities like dual enrollment also need to be addressed, particularly for low-income students and students of color.
4. Statewide, letter grade scores for the charter school sector increased steadily from 2.88 in 2024 to 3.08 in 2025 out of 5 possible points. The number of charter schools that received an A letter grade more than doubled, increasing from five schools in 2024 to 13 schools in 2025. Statewide, 12% of charter schools are A-rated. In the Nashville area alone, over 50% of charter schools earned an A or B grade, more than twice the rate of Nashville-area noncharters. At the same time, however, the total number of D- and F-rated charter schools rose, even as the number of F-rated charter schools slightly decreased. This pattern highlights growing variation within the charter sector, with more schools at both the top and bottom of the performance distribution. Charter schools trailed their district and state peers in letter grade results, but earned higher TVAAS growth scores while serving higher shares of economically disadvantaged students and students of color.
5. School letter grades in Tennessee continue to be correlated with school poverty and racial demographics. In the typical A-rated school in Tennessee, less than one in four (23%) students are economically disadvantaged, compared to more than half (58%) in the typical F-rated school. Economically disadvantaged students often enter school with less academic preparation and face continued barriers to learning once in school, resulting in persistent achievement gaps by income level. F-rated schools — which serve higher concentrations of economically disadvantaged students — tend to encounter greater structural challenges as well.
An analysis by the Tennessee State Board of Education comparing F-rated schools to A-rated schools found that F-rated schools’ average chronic absenteeism rates were more than twice as high, teacher retention rates were 22 percentage points lower, the share of inexperienced teachers was more than double, and the share of teachers with an emergency credential was nearly seven times greater.
Because achievement accounts for 50% of a school’s overall letter grade, the current system risks sorting schools by their demographics rather than capturing the impact schools have on student learning. In contrast, the TVAAS growth indicator — which tracks how students improve over time — is not significantly correlated with how many economically disadvantaged students a school serves. Schools across Tennessee with varying levels of economically disadvantaged student enrollment have earned high growth scores for meaningfully improving student performance. Both achievement and growth are important ways of assessing student performance, and balancing the weights of the achievement and growth indicators could better reflect the contributions of educators and schools on student outcomes.
Conclusion
Tennessee schools have continued to make steady progress over the past three years, as reflected in improving school letter grades statewide. The data reveal encouraging trends: Most schools are maintaining or raising their ratings, the number of D and F schools is declining, and gains in college and career readiness are helping more students prepare for success after high school graduation. These gains are the result of sustained efforts by educators, school leaders, and students, supported by a statewide commitment to accountability, transparency, and continuous improvement.
To build on this momentum, Tennessee has the opportunity to streamline its dual accountability systems. Increasing the weight of the college and career readiness indicator and decreasing the weight of the achievement indicator would help ensure that letter grades reflect the true impact schools have on student outcomes — particularly for schools serving students with the greatest needs.
A note of thanks to Lawand Yaseen, SCORE’s senior data and research analyst, for the data analysis and insights highlighted here.