2012-2013 State of Education

Over the last several years, Tennessee has become a national leader in education reform by enacting bold policies to ensure that all students graduate from high school prepared for college and the workforce. Beginning in 2011, wide scale implementation of those policy commitments began. This made the last year Tennessee’s opportunity to prove whether it would be able to ensure that the policies we have passed – from raising academic standards to evaluating principals and teachers in new ways – would lead to positive impacts for our students. The hard work of a broad range of stakeholders has helped Tennessee’s students make the most academic progress in the state’s history. While Tennessee has shown that it was up to this reform challenge, much work remains to accelerate these improvements and ensure that all our students are graduating with the skills they need to compete in the global economy.