The Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) released letter grades for every school in the state for the first time this week, fulfilling the department’s obligations under a bill passed in 2016.
Letter grades are available for every school covering the last school year, the TDOE confirmed on Thursday. Commissioner of Education Lizzette Gonzalez Reynolds said the letter grades “will provide Tennessee families with a clear rating system” to understand how a given school performs over the years. She urged parents and other community members to “play a role in supporting the success of our students” regardless of a school’s letter grade.
The grades are calculated based on student achievement, academic growth, growth of “highest need students,” and college and career readiness. Schools are given a score between one and five for each category, which is then used to determine the letter grade.
Officials planned to release letter grades for the 2017/18 school year, but state testing issues and COVID-19 pandemic restrictions prevented the release of scores until this year.
Contrasting the letter grades with the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System during an October update to the State Board of Education (SBE), TDOE Chief of Staff Chelsea Crawford explained there are “large discrepancies” between their formula and the results provided by TVAAS. “Schools that scored a ‘B’ could have a TVAAS score in growth of 1, 2, or 3,” she explained, adding that the TVAAS formula does not provide meaningful data to parents.
The original letter grade system was created simultaneously with the federal implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSEA), which required states to develop a plan to differentiate their low-performing schools.
While the law requires states to identify those schools, it does not include requirements for how the schools are tracked or to provide data about every school. States are free to use their own categories. The calculation system TDOE used for the letter grades focuses primarily on academic achievement of each school, in contrast to a previous plan, which would have seen the letter grades largely reflect a school’s academic growth.
TDOE conducted a series of town halls beginning in September to gather public input over how the letter grades are calculated.
A total of 242 schools received D or F grades and could face corrective action from TDOE to increase their students’ academic achievement, while about 74 percent of schools received passing grades. An additional 210 schools were not eligible for testing. Schools in cities seemed to score worse than those in suburban areas, with nearly half of schools in the Memphis-Shelby County School District receiving a D or F grade.
Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Georgia Star News, The Virginia Star, and the Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to pappert.tom@proton.me.