Improving Student Outcomes Together

In 2022–23, SCORE saw early promising signs that aligning literacy intervention to Tier I instruction might accelerate learning more effectively than adding more time, materials, or staffing. Students in SCORE’s high-dosage tutoring network achieved stronger gains when tutoring was instructionally coherent with classroom instruction, especially among students performing in the lowest 10%. Building on this evidence, SCORE sought to further study the impact of instructional coherence, specifically for students who need the most support. To test the hypothesis that instructionally aligned intervention could be more impactful than the traditional RTI² approach, SCORE partnered with Knox County Schools (KCS) to embed a randomized control trial (RCT) into an early literacy pilot during the 2024–25 school year.

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is advancing quickly, and Tennessee has an opportunity to lead the way in integrating it meaningfully into teaching and learning — starting with English language arts (ELA). Our memo examines how identifying the AI literacy skills and competencies that align with Tennessee’s ELA standards can help students build future-ready skills while supporting teachers with clear expectations and practical tools.

Tennessee’s teacher evaluation system has long been recognized as a national model — both for the reforms that created our multiple-measure evaluation design and for its impact on student achievement and teacher effectiveness. Built to deliver meaningful instructional feedback, the system has driven lasting gains in math and English language arts proficiency. Still, there are opportunities to advance Tennessee’s teacher evaluation system. Because teacher quality is the single most important in-school factor for student success, Tennessee must continue refining this critical tool.

This memo outlines three areas of opportunity and key recommendations — presented on August 20, 2025, to the Tennessee General Assembly’s Joint Advisory Committee on Innovations in K-12 Education — to ensure our teacher evaluation system continues to drive instructional growth and student success. 

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. This series examines the challenges facing Tennessee’s educator labor market and highlights innovative practices to strengthen it.

Over the last several years, Tennessee has passed legislation and guidance around adoption, purchase, training, and use of high-quality instructional materials in early grades literacy. These efforts have been grounded in research on how students best learn to read — through a focus on systematic, explicit phonics instruction and regular opportunities to build knowledge through reading and responding to complex texts.