Inspired by my students, I founded the Future Educator Leader Academy (FELA). FELA is a teacher-nominated leadership academy for students who are recognized as great potential educators. The goal is to expose a diverse group of students to the tremendous difference they can make with a career in education.
Dear Friends, 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…
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. For the last eight years,…
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…
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…
Dear Friends, “Great leaders create great school culture where students want to come to learn. One of the opportunities for growth for Tennessee education is to ensure that we have the correct leadership aligned to every school to make sure we have success in every school.” – Dexter Murphy, Upper School Dean, Emerald Academy Public…
With the start of school in Tennessee only a few weeks away, many students are excited to meet their teachers for the new school year. Teachers are so important to students’ experiences and success in the classroom, but there are additional educators in the building who are also critical to setting a positive culture of…
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…
As part of our research on school leadership this year, SCORE has partnered with the Wallace Foundation to learn about national practices that can better support the leader pipeline. The work that the Wallace Foundation is leading with states and districts across the country could help inform Tennessee’s own policies to better prepare and support…
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. Principals are now expected to recruit, hire, and support strong teachers as well as deeply engage with families and communities. Even while the role of…
As I arrived to begin my first year as a ninth-grade English teacher, my principal spent an hour of his busy schedule bringing me on a campus tour. At the end of the tour, we stopped in front of the auditorium in the 60-year-old campus and he told me simply, “If you have any questions,…
“No Latin – we cannot find a certified teacher…” “No AP – there is not a large enough enrollment…” “No art class – you are missing a history credit…” Are you tired of saying no? With today’s technology, the Niswonger Foundation has been able to work with large and small school systems throughout Tennessee to help…
A student who is a strong reader and writer has the foundational building blocks to excel not only in school but also in postsecondary studies and jobs. Research has shown that literacy is vital for students’ lifelong success. For instance, low literacy levels often prevent high school students from mastering and completing other subjects. In…
Dear Friends, “We rise by lifting others” – Robert G. Ingersoll Educators devote their professional lives to lifting others, and strong leadership is crucial to providing the support necessary for accomplishing great things for students. As SCORE prepared the report, Excellence For All: How Tennessee Can Lift Our Students To Best In The Nation, we…
Honesty is the best policy, especially when we are talking about student achievement. In separate reports, Harvard University researchers and the nonprofit organization Achieve, have identified Tennessee as a national leader in erasing the gap between measures of student proficiency on statewide assessments and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Eleven years ago, such…
Principals’ jobs are changing. While principals once mostly focused on making sure their schools were staffed and running efficiently, they now take on a new and diverse set of responsibilities with an even greater focus on improving student learning. Whether it is providing feedback on a lesson or working with community stakeholders to address chronic…
Tennesseans want our students to graduate with the skills needed to succeed in the “real world.” Work-based learning (WBL) in Tennessee provides students with invaluable real-world work experience with local employers while earning school credit. WBL programs bridge the gap between classroom coursework and in-demand careers. As a student, Sydni was very interested in accounting…
NASHVILLE – Thirty-seven educators have been selected for the 2018-19 class of the Tennessee Educator Fellowship, the State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE) announced today. “The Tennessee Educator Fellowship has brought together dynamic and talented educators who are passionate advocates for education policies and practices that can improve student achievement,” SCORE Executive Chairman and CEO Jamie…
“If you went to a college and you thought, ‘This is what I’m going to do and this is how it’s going to be,’ and then it turned out to be wrong or that’s not really what you wanted, I feel like you would be questioning every other decision you made before that. And that…
I want to be a teacher. I haven’t always, but over the course of my undergraduate career at the University of Notre Dame, I’ve realized that my whole life has led up to this profession. I’ve always loved learning, especially through reading. I’ve always loved being in school, talking to teachers, and discussing education. At…