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KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — For the second year in a row, the Tennessee Department of Education has released its “letter grades” for nearly all public schools in Tennessee.
The letter grades are calculated on a few factors, like achievement, growth, and the performance of the bottom quarter of students. For high schools, a sliver of the score comes from college and career readiness.
All of that data is collected through test scores, primarily TCAP scores.
A leader with the Professional Educators of Tennessee, Patrick Basnett, says the scores one a measure of success, but they aren’t representative of a full picture for the quality of education.
“It doesn’t measure the effort that is put in every single day by our hardworking educators,” he said. “It doesn’t measure circumstances that certain kids may be going through.”
He does say, across the state, schools showed incremental growth.
“As long as we’re seeing improvement, we’ll take that information for what it’s worth, apply it to that point in time, and keep moving forward,” Basnett said.
At Maryville City Schools, six campuses were awarded an A. They have 8 schools total. Their Director, Dr. Mike Winstead, said even though they do well, there’s more to a school’s success than test scores.
“In public education we meet so many needs you can’t measure all of them,” Winstead said. “We can measure the academic piece to some degree with testing, and that’s what’s reported, but we do so much more than that.”
Below is a breakdown of how each school was graded in East Tennessee’s largest districts. You can click on the links to see that school’s full report card, or click here to find your school.