Caroline Bauman, Chalkbeat Tennessee
It’s the homestretch to Election Day. Here are important education stories on Tennessee races.
Tuesday is Election Day.
Tennessee will elect its next governor, as well as a new legislature in a year of significant turnover. The outcome of these elections are likely to have major implications for education policies, such as testing and teacher accountability, pre-K access, and...
Griffin: ‘Students who live in poverty should learn in luxury,’ but state-run schools are far from luxurious
Imagine changing schools at the start of the year, not because of a move to a new neighborhood, but because your school’s roof caved in.
That’s what happened last fall when more than 200 students at Georgian Hills Achievement Elementary School, run by the state’s...
Too young to vote, Memphis teens lead voter-engagement campaign in advance of midterms
At 17, Caitlin Brinson isn’t yet old enough to vote, but she’s working hard to get other Memphis residents to the polls in November.
The Cordova High School school senior is active in a new youth initiative called Engage Memphis, which aims to increase voter...
When students miss school, they fall behind. Here’s how one group is curbing absenteeism.
When Crystal Bullard moved to Memphis from the Bahamas last year, she was looking for a new life and a better education for her three young children.
What she found was an overwhelming school system that was hard to navigate, and an environment where her...
Why this Memphis principal says hiring former students is the ‘ultimate compliment’
Here, in a series we call “How I Lead,” we feature principals and assistant principals who have been recognized for their work. You can see other pieces in the series here.
For Barbara Harmon, hiring former Germantown High School students to teach at that Memphis...
Tennessee launched a pre-K pilot program aimed at boosting literacy. Here is what happened.
A pilot program led by the State Department of Education at 134 early childhood programs across the state led to more growth in literacy skills among 7,000 of Tennessee’s youngest students.
The one-year pilot is one piece of a larger war on literacy the state...
It’s been six years since Tennessee took over its first low-performing schools. How are they doing?
Six years after the state took over six of Tennessee’s lowest-performing schools, all of those schools continue to struggle, new state test results show.
The state’s ambitious goal with the Achievement School District was to transform the schools that tested in the bottom 10 percent...
Eighteen legislators show support for TNReady pause as 11 superintendents say press on
School leaders and now state lawmakers continue to pick sides in a growing debate over whether or not Tennessee should pause state testing for students.
Eighteen state legislators sent the superintendents of Nashville and Memphis a letter on Tuesday supporting a request for an...
McQueen calls superintendents’ request to pause state testing ‘illegal and inconsistent with our values’
Tennessee’s education chief is pushing back after leaders of the state’s two largest school districts asked for an indefinite break from standardized testing.
“Pausing a state assessment would be both illegal and inconsistent with our values as a state,” Education Commissioner Candice McQueen wrote...
Here are three things to know as Tennessee starts a new school year
Welcome to the start of a brand-new school year across Tennessee.
What do you think the big themes in education will be this year? What should Chalkbeat be watching and writing about? Who should we be talking with? We want to hear from you, so...