Resources

Teachers & Leaders | Data Insights | K-12 Success

Understanding The Educator Labor Market: A Look At Tennessee’s Data

February 26, 2024

Access to highly effective teachers is essential for student achievement. However, growing evidence suggests students have unreliable and inequitable access to effective educators, with many school districts reporting high levels of teacher vacancies. SCORE partnered with 15 school districts and the Tennessee Education Research Alliance (TERA) to understand the broader trends behind educator labor market challenges.

Teachers & Leaders | Education Finance | K-12 Success

Modernizing Education Funding To Support Every Tennessee Student

January 20, 2022

Over the last decade, Tennessee leaders have implemented strategies grounded in the conviction that setting high expectations for all students, measuring progress, and holding adults accountable can improve student success. Indeed, Tennessee has made great strides in student achievement, rising from one of the lowest-performing states on the National Assessment of Educational Progress to reach the national average in less than a decade, with high standards, assessment, and accountability.

Teachers & Leaders

COVID-19 Impact Memo 1: Teacher Preparation

May 26, 2020

There are 39 educator preparation providers (EPPs) across the state of Tennessee that produce more than 3,000 teacher candidates every year. The Tennessee State Board of Education reports on multiple performance metrics for a three-year cohort of early-career teachers who were prepared by any State Board-approved educator preparation provider in the annual Educator Preparation Report Card.

2012-2013 State of Education

January 1, 2013

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.

Teachers & Leaders | Data Insights | Innovative Models | K-12 Success

2010-2011 State of Education

December 6, 2010

Since the release of SCORE’s “Roadmap to Success” report in October 2009, Tennessee has transformed into a national leader for education reform. State and local leaders from both parties have repeatedly emphasized their commitment to ensuring that every Tennessean graduates from high school prepared for the global economy. The state has passed its most significant piece of education legislation in more than two decades. The state has received more than $710 million in philanthropic and competitive federal grants to support the implementation of its ambitious reforms. Although Tennessee’s student achievement levels remain in the bottom quarter nationally, recent reforms have begun to create the political, policy, and funding conditions to ensure that Tennessee’s schools become number one in the Southeast by 2015.

Teachers & Leaders | Data Insights | Innovative Models | K-12 Success

2009 State of Education

January 1, 2009

Education is the key to both Tennessee’s future and the future of every individual who lives in our great state. In a recent speech to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, President Barack Obama said, “We know that economic progress and educational achievement have always gone hand in hand in America…Let there be no doubt: the future belongs to the nation that best educates its citizens.” The same is true for states – the future belongs to the states that best educate their citizens. These states will be more successful recruiting businesses and will be better able to control the costs of healthcare and other social services. Citizens living in these states will have more opportunities and live healthier and more prosperous lives.

Creating Stronger Pathways From K-12 To Postsecondary

August 26, 2022

This Friday’s Focus features panelists from Greater Together Clarksville, an exciting new partnership between Clarksville-Montgomery County Schools, Nashville State Community College in Clarksville, the Tennessee College of Applied Technology Dickson, and Austin Peay State University. Greater Together Clarksville’s goal is to strengthen and streamline the student pipeline from high school to higher education.

How School Leader Ratings And Measures Can Predict Outcomes Like Student Academic Growth

November 19, 2021

Effective principals are integral to school, teacher, and student success. However, it can be difficult to create common definitions of principal leadership, develop hiring criteria for highly effective principals, and identify common metrics to measure principal effectiveness. Fortunately, the field is beginning to identify some promising markers of principal effectiveness, particularly from teachers’ survey-based feedback and practice ratings provided by supervisors as part of principal evaluations.

Teachers & Leaders | Data Insights | K-12 Success

Strengthening The Educator Labor Market: A Look At Tennessee's Data Webinar

February 26, 2024

Access to highly effective teachers is essential for student achievement. However, growing evidence suggests students have unreliable and inequitable access to effective educators, with many school districts reporting high levels of teacher vacancies. SCORE partnered with 15 school districts and the Tennessee Education Research Alliance (TERA) to understand the broader trends behind educator labor market challenges. This webinar highlights key findings from TERA’s research along with insights from district leaders and experts from across the state.

Postsecondary Success | Education-to-Career Pathways

Building a Vision of Opportunity for All Tennesseans: Measuring Credential and Degree Outcomes

June 20, 2024

Economic development in Tennessee has increased career opportunities, but we need to ensure students are earning degrees and credentials that prepare them for those jobs and enable them to benefit from this economic opportunity. This report offers a vision for measuring what success looks like for Tennessee students entering the workforce.

Education-to-Career Pathways

Funding Student Opportunity Through Tennessee’s Outcomes-Based Formula

August 12, 2024

Postsecondary education leads to improved earnings and employment on average, but not all credentials and degrees yield meaningful economic returns. There’s also a persistent shortage of educated Tennesseans to meet our workforce needs. The outcomes-based funding formula is one among a series of important strategies to ensure the state’s education systems drive students toward career success and steer Tennessee toward economic growth. It’s time to align the outcomes-based funding formula to include measures that show whether students are prepared for careers that enable economic independence.

Unlocking AI: A Primer for Educators

September 24, 2024

As of fall 2023, more than half of all U.S. workers use artificial intelligence (AI) for work. The education field is no exception to this trend, as teachers across the nation are exploring ways AI can transform their work and help students learn. Despite the incredible promise of this new technology, many educators are still at the starting line — nationally, over half of teachers have never used AI. The opportunity that generative AI (GenAI) — programs that can generate text, images, and other media — brings to Tennessee’s classrooms, however, is worth the exploration. Our memo outlines two readily available tools for teachers to either dip a toe in the water or take a full-on first dive into AI to experience the possibilities and limitations of AI in its current state.