Education 101 - An Overview of Recent Education Reforms in Tennessee | Page 4

Taking Note Superintendent Selection in Tennessee: A Brief History January 2011 these new standards. A key moment in the year will be September 2011, when the second year of test scores under the new standards will be released publicly. In September 2010, three different groups in Tennessee won a total of $72 million in the U.S. Department of Education’s Teacher Incentive Fund competition to develop new, comprehensive plans for rewarding highly effective teachers and principals. Knox County Schools will use its $26.5 million grant to expand the Teacher Advancement Program to 13 new schools while Memphis City Schools will use its $9.5 million grant to reward high-performing teachers and principals in the district’s lowest-performing schools. In addition, the Tennessee Department of Education will use its $36.0 million grant to help over 100 schools across the state develop comprehensive teacher compensation plans. Evaluating What Works With Tennessee receiving over $710 million in new competitive federal and philanthropic grants over the past two years, a litany of new programs and initiatives have been launched. In 2011, many of these initiatives will just be getting off the ground, but there will likely be pressure to begin evaluating the effectiveness of these efforts. One of the key signs of whether the state and districts are on the right track will be whether they make mid-course corrections to programs based on data they receive about student achievement and feedback about the effectiveness of each program. Reform in 2011 Although Tennessee has clearly made substantial reforms to its education system over the past two years, in many ways the hard work is just beginnin r