Tennessee Parents Left With Limited TCAP Data Now That Letter Grades Are Out Until Sometime This Year

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The Tennessee Conservative [By Paula Gomes] –

The Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) says that TCAP scores for each school will be available through their website when they release the 2023 scores sometime “in early 2024.” For now, this leaves the public with a limited amount of information pertaining to each school’s TCAP scores through the new Letter Grades system.

After letter grades were released for Tennessee schools at the end of 2023, the news was grim for some districts with greater than 25 percent of all public K-12 schools receiving a grade of D or F. According to data from the TDOE, almost a third of the 1,700 schools eligible to receive a letter grade received a C, and less than half were awarded an A or B.

The “grade” of each school is based on four factors: overall success rate for achievement, overall growth, how much the lowest performing students have grown academically – and for high schools – how prepared students are for college and careers.

President Tanya Coats of the Tennessee Education Association has said that the letter grades are heavily weighted on a “flawed high-stakes standardized test.”

The rating system meant to give Tennessee families a “snapshot” of how their local schools are performing currently gives a limited amount of information pertaining to these test scores for each school. There is no definitive date for when this data will be made fully available. Only the state and district level TCAP data for 2023 is currently available on the TDOE’s State Report Card. 

To find this data for a specific district, click “District Finder” at the top of the page and once a district is selected, one of the tabs will say “2023 District Assessment”. Scroll down to view district TCAP data there. Similarly, state-level TCAP data can be found under “State Overview” and “2023 State Assessment”.

The only way to see TCAP information specific to a school at the moment is to download accountability files and assessment files from the TDOE data downloads page. However, these are unwieldy to search through and when staff at The Tennessee Conservative looked through them earlier, we found much of the information we were looking for was suppressed.

Here’s a look at how TCAP proficiency scores in English and Math line up with Letter Grades for a sampling of high schools that received an A across the state.

West Tennessee:

Collierville High School in Shelby County

English Language Arts: 65.1%

Math: 41.7%

Lexington High School in Henderson County

English Language Arts: 45.1%

Math: 37.1%

Munford High School in Tipton County

English Language Arts: 53.4%

Math: 30.7%

Middle Tennessee:

Clarksville High School in Montgomery County

English Language Arts: 55.5%

Math: 28.6%

Rockvale High School in Rutherford County

English Language Arts: 59%

Math: 26.2%

Centennial High School in Williamson County

English Language Arts: 65.8%

Math: 40.4%

East Tennessee:

East Hamilton High School in Hamilton County

English Language Arts: 61.4%

Math: 41%

Greeneville High School in Greene County

English Language Arts: 49.9%

Math: 45.6%

Bearden High School in Knox County

English Language Arts: 53.8%

Math: 29.8%

About the Author: Paula Gomes is a Tennessee resident and reporter for The Tennessee Conservative. 

You can reach Paula at paula@tennesseeconservativenews.com.