Tough Introduction to Tennessee’s New Academic Standards

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By Aaron Collier

For education officials in Tennessee, the recent news of staggeringly low achievement on new state tests was all but surprising. For the public, however, Tennessee’s new curriculum standards are expected to make a tough introduction. And in the midst of new challenges and sweeping reforms, the transition into higher standards raises many hard questions about Tennessee's history of low expectations.

Nearly half of all students failed to meet new state curriculum standards last year. But officials have known that students would perform poorly on new tests since 2005, when the Tennessee Board of Education and the Tennessee Department of Education created a task force to review state standards and college readiness.

The task force led Tennessee to join the American Diploma Project (ADP) in 2007. ADP is a network of governors, education leaders and business executives who aim to raise high school standards, curriculum and assessments as well as align academic expectations with the demands of postsecondary education and careers.

Tennessee's Standards Gap

According to a report by Achieve Inc., the founding organization of ADP, students in Tennessee performed below national averages when measured against the standards of the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) — a nationally representative measure of student achievement. For instance, when measured by NAEP benchmarks, only 23 percent of Tennessee’s 8th grade students scored at or above proficient on math tests in 2007, well below the national average of 31 percent — albeit a pitiful yard stick.

The dismal outlook was heightened when Tennessee earned an "F" for Truth in Advertising About Student Proficiency on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Education Report Card. According to an article in The Daily Times, 87 percent of Tennessee students were labeled proficient on state reading tests in 2005, while only 26 percent of these students would have been labeled proficient by NAEP standards. Achievement scores spanned an even larger gap on math tests.

Through an initiative called the Tennessee Diploma Project, the state not only set new benchmarks for measuring academic achievement; it also mandated tougher graduation requirements as well as revised curriculum standards for all grades to reflect college and career-ready skills. Those changes took effect last year. And only two weeks ago, the Tennessee State Board of Education adopted Common Core, a new set of academic standards shared by 48 states.

Prepping the Public

In light of the difficult transition to higher standards, Gov. Phil Bredesen launched a public-awareness campaign led by former U.S. Sen. Bill Frist and the newly formed First to the Top Coalition. Their job has been to raise awareness of the new standards, and the group has tried to precede the state report card that will be released in late September, according to a press release. The state report card will provide district-wide achievement data and a school-by-school breakdown of test scores.

While a recent poll shows that 65 to 69 percent of Tennessee voters support the higher standards, it is still unclear what affect the low test scores will have on federal accountability measures for failing schools in jeopardy of severe state intervention. Likewise, new education legislation mandates that 50 percent of teacher evaluations be based on student achievement data, but the affect of lower achievement scores has not yet been widely discussed.

Equally important is Tennessee's history of low expectations and the subsequent reputation it has earned for setting low standards. With the efforts of the Tennessee State Collaborative on Reforming Education, or SCORE, and the arrival of Volkswagen and Wacker Chemie, education officials have begun rethinking their attitude toward student achievement — connecting economic progress with student achievement. But the new test scores will not go unnoticed, and state officials will have to reckon with Tennessee's public while promoting its workers to a global audience.

"We're finally telling the truth about where we are and where our kids are," Education Commissioner Tim Webb told The Tennesseean. "We just didn't know. Our teachers didn't know. But now they do. And so we will move forward."