When policymakers and state leaders talk about implementing the Common Core State Standards, you often hear about the instructional shifts that will need to occur in classrooms to ensure that the standards have their intended impact: preparing all students for college and the workforce. The Common Core standards are drastically different from what we currently…
In SCORE’s 2009 Roadmap to Success, we recommended that Tennessee ensure that an effective teacher was at the front of every classroom. We made this recommendation based on research that shows effective teaching is the number one school-based factor in improving student achievement. One way we recommended that the state achieve this goal was by…
Includes Successes, Concerns, and Recommendations Following the First Year of Implementation (Nashville) – The State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE) today released a report, Supporting Effective Instruction in Tennessee, regarding Tennessee’s teacher evaluation system. The report follows a five-month listening and feedback process SCORE led on the evaluation system to identify what is working well,…
During the Spring of my second year teaching it was announced that Tennessee was one of two states to win the federal Race to the Top grant competition. As a teacher who would irresponsibly study the current education policy landscape during times when I should have been supervising my students outside of the classroom, I…
More than 3 million jobs are open in America today at a time of persistent unemployment because applicants lack necessary skill sets. Last Thursday, a panel of leaders convened at the Center for American Progress in Washington, DC to discuss the role of partnerships between private enterprise and public sector institutions in support of educational…
I’ve learned a lot over the last 18 months about what it takes to implement the Common Core State Standards in a state. Press around Common Core generally highlights the aspirational components of the standards. The fact that these standards, in comparison to the standards that many states had in place before, will make our…
In our last post, we talked about how we are building a system of schools that values flexibility at every level of the organization. This gives our leaders the agency to make critical decisions that increase student achievement. It is our belief that when teachers and school leaders have the flexibility to make these decisions,…
The Common Core has the power to enrich data-driven decisionmaking at all levels Implementation of the Common Core State Standards has begun, and new aligned assessments are on the horizon. Nation-wide state departments of education, teachers, principals, superintendents, have been working to ensure that educators are ready to teach based on the new standards. Meanwhile,…
On Tuesday, leaders from across Tennessee gathered in Nashville to engage in a broad-ranging discussion about better preparing Tennessee’s students through the Common Core State Standards. Governor Bill Haslam, Tennessee Commissioner of Education Kevin Huffman, and SCORE’s Founder and Chairman, Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, all led portions of the program. SCORE hosted…
Last week, students across Tennessee began taking their annual TCAP exams. In a few years, however, those tests will be replaced by computer-based assessments taken by students across a consortium of two dozen states: the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC. As students were taking their exams, higher education leaders…
This Op-Ed co-authored by Candice McQueen and Jamie Woodson originally appeared in the 5/2/12 Tennessean. What will the end of the story be? We ask ourselves that question daily as we make progress toward Tennessee’s bold goals in public education. It is a question we must answer collectively as we visualize a day when all Tennessee children graduate from…
Last week, Senator Frist wrote an important op-ed highlighting the need to improve all areas of the teacher pipeline (that is, pathway teachers take from choosing to become teachers to the classroom). He could not be more correct that we must focus “on the start of the teacher pipeline and growing the pool of better-prepared…
In our last post, we outlined the scope of work for the Achievement School District and our goals of transforming the bottom 5% of schools into schools that perform among the top 25% in the state. As both an operator and authorizer, the ASD is working urgently to ensure that we provide our students with…
Please join The Education Trust, the State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE), Stand for Children, Tennessee, and United Ways of Tennessee on Thursday, April 26 from 2-3 p.m. CDT for an informative webinar on the recently approved Tennessee waiver plan for the No Child Left Behind Act. The accountability portion of this approved plan presents…
“The Common Core standards will only have a chance of raising student achievement if they are implemented with high-quality materials, but there is currently no basis to measure the quality of materials.” This sobering assessment by Matthew Chingos and Russ Whitehurst of the Brookings Institution opens a strong argument for greater focus on instructional materials…
This Op-Ed originally appeared in the 4/10/12 The Week. Consider Laura. When she entered the third grade, she couldn’t understand the stories all her friends enjoyed. She was even too embarrassed to read aloud. Why? She could only read at a first grade level. Laura’s hardly alone — but that’s small comfort. A recent study from the…
The Achievement School District (ASD) represents an unprecedented effort to improve public education opportunities for Tennessee students and families. Created with bi-partisan legislation as part of Tennessee’s successful application for Race to the Top funding, The ASD is a statewide organization dedicated to taking schools currently in the bottom 5% of academic performance and within…
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This post originally appeared on the Tennessee College Access and Success Network blog. A low-income/first-generation high school graduate with a 3.6 grade point average appears at a selective private college to sign up for classes. When the administration looks up her records in the computer, they discover that she is not on their list of…