#Gov. Bill Haslam’s Monthly Column: Education in Tennessee
Gov. Bill Haslam’s Monthly Column
We have been telling our story recently about the strides Tennessee has made in education in the last several years, but it’s nice to see when national studies and news reports do the same.
And sometimes a graphic can tell the story as powerfully as anything else.
A study released this month by the Center for Education Policy Analysis at Stanford University looked at standardized tests from schools across the country, involving 45 million students. The study concentrated on student performance in the third grade and the growth rates from that point to the eighth grade.
The study produced a map on student performance growth from data from NAEP, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly referred to as the nation’s report card. The map vividly shows how Tennessee stands out in green for growth in student performance.
Tennessee has been the fastest improving state in the nation in NAEP scores, which we have celebrated for some time. The Stanford study, authored by Prof. Sean Reardon, shows growth in student achievement in green and areas with less growth in purple. A lot of green shows up in Tennessee in the graphic, and our state stands out.
Chalkbeat, an online nonprofit news outlet focused on education, picked up on the Stanford study and said Tennessee is “raising eyebrows on student growth.” Chalkbeat also referred to a New York Times report on the study this month that said Tennessee is “over-performing” in growth. So we are getting a lot of attention for our K-12 performance. But that hasn’t been the only major media attention for us in education recently.
USA Today chose “50 stories from 50 states that moved us” as part of its year in review for 2017. The story USA Today chose for Tennessee was our Tennessee Reconnect program, which offers adults the same opportunity as new high school graduates participating in the Tennessee Promise, to get a postsecondary degree or credential free of tuition and fees.
“Tennessee students can put away their checkbooks if community colleges are in their future,” USA Today said. “In May, the southern state became the first to offer a tuition-free education to nearly every resident without a degree.”
The Tennessee Promise and Tennessee Reconnect programs are game-changers for our state. In an instant, by removing cost as a barrier to entry, we changed the conversation Tennessee families were having around their kitchen tables about going to college. Now we can say that everyone can go to community or technical college free. Our technical and community colleges are more closely aligning courses with the skills that businesses actually need so graduates can start new jobs with higher salaries as quickly as possible.
In K-12 education, we’ve done three big things: We have higher Tennessee state standards and a better way to measure how students are doing. We tied our assessment of students to teachers’ evaluations and the evaluations to tenure so teachers can receive the professional support they might need to improve – because every student in every ZIP code deserves a high-quality teacher leading the classroom. We also lifted the cap on charter schools in Tennessee to give Tennessee parents more choices.
These steps have produced results that are gaining attention. But more importantly, they mean Tennessee students are learning more and have a greater opportunity to get a degree and a good-paying job. That’s the true measure of success.
