Supporting Effective Teaching in Tennessee: Executive Summary | Page 11

The State of Education in Tennessee
There is growing consensus across the
country that educational outcomes should
be the key metrics for determining the success
of education reform efforts. As was discussed in the previous
section, educational outcomes are strong predictors of a number
of both individual and community long-term outcomes
including economic growth, individual wage earnings, and
health status. While inputs such as teacher quality and per pupil
expenditure are important, the emerging consensus is these
inputs only matter in the extent to which they drive changes
in outcomes. Thus, this chapter will begin by discussing
Tennessee’s educational outcomes relative to other states and
then turn to examining Tennessee’s educational inputs.

Figure 3.1 illustrates. It is clear Tennessee has significant room
to improve—first among states in the Southeast and then
among states across the nation.

No single metric can fully describe a state’s educational
performance. However, one can gain a sense of a state’s overall
performance by examining a range of educational outcomes
including national and state standardized test scores, ACT and
SAT scores, graduation rates, and a state’s level of educational
attainment. When one examines these outcomes, one finds
that Tennessee essentially never ranks above the national
average. Many argue this should be expected as southern states
generally rank low on education metrics. However, even among
states in the Southeast, Tennessee does not perform particularly
well. While Tennessee consistently ranks ahead of Alabama,
Mississippi, and Louisiana, Tennessee consistently ranks
behind North Carolina, Florida, Kentucky, and Virginia, as

There are at least five areas on which Tennessee needs to focus
much more effort. First, although the state Department of
Education has done a commendable job providing professional
development for teachers about the Tennessee Diploma Project,
much work remains in helping superintendents and principals
address some of the legitimate questions the Diploma Project
raises, especially about the role of career and technical education
and identifying sufficient numbers of high-quality math and
science teachers. Moreover, much more needs to be done to
educate the average Tennessean about the importance of the
Diploma Project. Second, the state lacks a comprehensive
strategy for improving teacher quality. While the state has
recently launched several initiatives to address this challenge

Tennessee has some strong blocks on which to build. Tennessee’s
data system is among the best in the nati