Dear Friends, Sometimes, it is important to reflect on where Tennessee started in its path to prepare all students for postsecondary education and the workforce. In 2007, our state acknowledged that our work in education was not working for our students. It was the year our state got an F for “Truth in Advertising” from the U.S….
The State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE) announced today that 26 teachers have been selected for the 2015-16 class of the Tennessee Educator Fellowship and an experienced teacher from Shelby County Schools will lead the program in its second year. “Teachers are the most important in-school factor for increasing student success, and their insight is…
No one is teaching to the middle at Hillsboro Elementary/Middle School, winner of the 2014 middle school SCORE Prize. Core academic courses are levelled – in each middle school grade, as many as five different levels of rigor are offered in separate classes. A flexible, creative master schedule provides extra time for students needing subject…
There’s a scoreboard in every fourth-grade classroom at 2014 SCORE Prize finalist Highland Park Elementary in Lenoir City. Sure, the displays could also be called data boards. But Principal David Clinton, a former high school football coach, likes to infuse the school’s data-rich culture with language that is both motivating and meaningful. Highland Park staff…
Before joining SCORE, I taught fourth grade at an elementary school in Nashville. As a fourth-grade teacher, I used data from classroom assessments, district benchmark assessments, and state Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) assessments to better understand my students’ progress toward mastery of our fourth-grade standards. My classroom assessments asked students to explain their thinking…
As eighth-grade students arrive in Scotty Hicks’ classroom at Maryville Junior High, they each pick up an assigned laptop and move to their desks. They know the routine. Students log into the online learning management system, find their daily work, and get to it. They see notes to go over during the lesson, and a…
What is your level of effort? What is the best that you can give? These are questions asked of students daily at SCORE Prize winner Dresden Elementary, according to fourth-grade teacher Honey Cantrell. Students are encouraged to give “their absolute.” And in classrooms driven by creative, engaging, and differentiated instruction, teachers know that students’ best…
Dear Friends, To improve academic achievement for students, Tennessee took an important step by raising expectations in the classroom. To be sure that students are learning more, Tennessee is entering a new era of measuring student learning. This spring, students across the state are taking Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) exams in math and English…
Behind each great student is an even greater teacher. Capturing what makes these special teachers so unique can be difficult to describe. In some cases it may be attributed to a natural talent and passion, in others to years of experience, but rarely are good teachers described as “well-trained.” SCORE has recognized this gap in…
Sewanee. Vanderbilt. Georgetown. The homeroom names at KIPP Academy Nashville, a SCORE Prize finalist school, have a familiar ring to them. Howard. Belmont. Georgia Tech. The names were carefully chosen to represent schools with high rates of college completion for Hispanic and black students. Some of these schools are familiar and close to home for…
Grady McGinnity, a senior at SCORE Prize finalist Ravenwood High School in Brentwood, wasn’t persuaded to take an advanced placement (AP) class by a teacher or guidance counselor. It was another student. At the time, Grady was a freshman just learning to navigate his large new high school. An upperclassman connected with him through Ravenwood’s…
Dear Friends: As a state, Tennessee has been committed to dramatically improving academic outcomes for all students. In order to achieve our ambitious goals, it is vital that we not only highlight the schools and districts that are leading the way in student learning but also explore the specific strategies that lead to success for…
Luis Gerardo Carmona moved from Mexico City to Manchester, Tenn., two years ago, with his wife and two young sons. To call it a big transition would be an understatement. Relocating from a city of 25 million people to a town of 10,000 was change enough, to say nothing of taking on a new language…
I coach high school debate, where we utilize a concept called a counterplan. The counterplan lets the opposing team propose an alternative course of action that they believe would be better than what the other team is proposing. This is a high-level concept, and so we try to explain it through a simple, if somewhat…
Assessment isn’t bad. Whew! I got that off my chest. And before you take a breath to agree or disagree, let me explain why I threw that out there. My recent thumbing through various social media platforms proves that assessment is THE hot topic in the current education debate. From YouTube videos to #TwitterChats to…
Dear Friends, Over the past several years, the collaborative efforts of educators, policymakers, parents, and students have helped Tennessee become the fastest-improving state in the nation for academic achievement, second only to the District of Columbia. Our educators and students have shown us what is possible when we set the bar high. We are seeing the…
SCORE President and CEO Jamie Woodson sent a letter about the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) to members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions on February 4, 2015. Here are excerpts of that letter, which calls for continuing the annual assessment requirement: Tennessee has made notable…
The Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) has announced the launch of a new program, the Hope Street Group Tennessee State Teacher Fellowship, to elevate educator voices and improve teacher leadership opportunities. TDOE is partnering with Hope Street Group, a national nonprofit organization known for its teacher engagement work, plus the Tennessee Education Association (TEA) and…
One of the most important goals of Tennessee’s public education system, and one of the many changes and improvements that have surrounded this system over the past several years, is to ensure that our students graduate from high school ready for college and career. Does that mean that students who opt not to attend college…
(NASHVILLE) – The State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE) has released the 2014-15 State of Education in Tennessee report, a comprehensive review of Tennessee’s recent work to improve K-12 student academic achievement that identifies four priorities for public education in 2015. The 72-page report was released by SCORE’s founder and chairman, Senator Bill Frist, M.D., at…