The State of Education in Tennessee: Maintaining a Commitment to Rigorous Standards and Assessments
Maintaining a Commitment to Rigorous Standards and Assessments:
Tennessee’s Common Core State Standards and the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Career (PARCC)
Overview
measure student learning with the new standards.
Tennessee’s Common Core State Standards are a set of academic expectations for math and English language arts that
were developed through a state-led process to align student
learning with the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in
the real world. Since 2011, Tennessee has taken a lead role
in one of the two state consortia working to develop assessments that measure student learning aligned to the new
standards. As a governing state in the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), Tennessee educators, higher education faculty, and TDOE officials
have been helping to develop and review the assessments as
well as related policies for implementation. However, there is
still work to be done to ensure that all schools are equipped
to both successfully teach to the standards and accurately assess student learning and that communities understand the
need for higher expectations for all students.
Implementing the standards in the classroom is resulting in
new approaches to teaching and learning. In early 2013, the
Tennessee Department of Education selected 704 educators
through a rigorous application process to serve as Common
Core coaches. These coaches went through extensive training in the Spring in preparation to lead five weeks of Common Core training for their colleagues during the Summer.vii
As part of the state’s First to the Top initiatives, the TDOE
provided three-day, hands-on training opportunities for educators to help implement the standards in their schools and
classrooms. Through the Common Core coaches, the trainings were peer-led, allowing teachers to learn from and work
with other educators in their communities and regions. More
than 42,000 teachers attended the state training on the standards between 2012 and 2013.viii Although this is a substantial number of educators, many teachers have not received
the state training. To help reach more teachers, some districts
have leveraged their Common Core coaches to provide ongoing guidance and support on t XX