The hour is 12 noon. I'll call this meeting to order. Uh I guess Nathan James, our staff will call the uh role to establish a quorum. Mr. James. Mr. Collins here. Mr. Holt here.
Mr. Mr. Gentile here. Mr. Jensen here. Mrs. Johnson. Well, she is here. She is here. Uh, Mrs. Maxwell here. Mrs. McInturf. Mr. Mullenhower here.
Miss Sap, Mr. Wells, Mr. Chairman Eie here. Mr. Chairman, you have nine members in a quorum. I declare a quorum is present and we're duly convened. Pursuant to section 8 of policy 1.400, the board's meetings policies, workshops
or meetings of the state board sitting as a committee the whole, I ask unanimous consent that the state board dissolve itself into committee the whole for the purposes of conducting our workshop. Is there any objection? Hearing none, so ordered. I declare that
we are in the committee of the whole for the purposes of conducting our workshop. This time I'll recognize any members their remarks and then Dr. Morrison. Any board members like to make any remarks. I'll just say it looks like we have a very uh full agenda but one I
think is going to bring a lot of information that we'll look forward to and some pretty good presentations. Dr. Morrison. Thank you, Chairman Eie. I don't really have much to say other than that. It's always good to be together. Appreciate everyone coming to Nashville so we can have some important conversations today
ahead of our meeting. and look forward to some of our guests, Dr. Gentile and his team and score and uh Dr. Leairard and others who are going to be um sharing some important information for us today as part of our workshop. So look forward to some good conversations and thank you all for being here.
With that, I want to remind all presenters to give their name and position before addressing the board and remind that our presenters are to avoid jargon where possible so that everyone listening understands the matter. And any other further welcome comments you want to talk about our new board member?
Yes, thank you for the reminder. This is hot off the press. So, as of yesterday, I believe team maybe it was the day before. I think it was just yesterday, two days ago. Um, we have a new student member who's just been appointed to the state board, which we're thrilled about. Her name is Britain and she's out of Bradley County and help me Nathan, she
is a junior just starting her senior senior year. Senior year. um for obvious reasons she was not able to be with us today, but we look forward to talking with her more next week and getting her ready for our next state board meeting and she is really excited and we are really excited. That student perspective is so
important to these conversations and so really look forward to getting to know her and welcoming her onto this board. Thank you. Any other comments before we get started with our agenda? We certainly welcome Christy Brown up at
the table uh for the Department of Education. First item 2024 TCAP 242 24 25 TCAP results. Dr. David Leairard and Mr. Justin Kierney, State Board of Education. Good morning, Chairman Eim, members of
the board. I am David Lair, the assistant commissioner for assessment, accountability, and research. Uh, and I'm very pleased to present with a few partners uh from the department uh the results of the 2425 TCAP testing. Uh I'm pleased to identify Justin Keany, Dr.
Keaney. uh he's a data analyst with the department and our accountability team who was very helpful in producing the materials for the presentation and is going to take a later part of it. Um I also just wanted to take a second and recognize u our chief academics officer Christy Brown who also may tag team in
uh on different elements of the presentation as a depending on questions that that may arise. Um the overarching purpose um of this presentation is to describe uh the change in TCAP performance. what did we observe in the 2425 testing window which includes fall
EOCC testing in the the fall of 24 and then obviously the primary spring testing um in the spring of 25. Um I'll start though with just a little bit overview of the TCAP program and the scope um of the data that we'll present.
Um this slide um just simply illuminates all of the full breadth of the TCAP program. uh it identifies all of the tests um that make up the TCAP program. There are 33 data points that we're tracking and presenting this year um
across four subject areas um and essentially 10 possible testable grades. Um I would just like to take a second before we get into the results um and recognize the incredible lift that is the TCAP program. Um we test more than a
million kids. Um it is an incredibly large endeavor. Um it's a heavy lift both for our kids, for our educators, parents, and families. Uh and we just want to thank everybody for their work in that regard. Um I'd also like to tip the cap to our team here at the department. Uh Danette Colby is our
senior director for assessment logistics. She's been in that position um for about seven years. Um Klay Sanders, our senior director for assessment development. Um, and as folks who've been around for a little bit will know, the TCAP program didn't always have the strongest track record. Uh,
there was a TN not ready uh, era at one point in time. Um, but the reality is we've done really good work since that time, the last five to seven years. Um, we've had no major issues. Uh, and the team uh, that I work with every day, I think has been a huge piece of of having
that stability. this past administration again 1,800 schools, a million kids, more than five million tests was the smoothest logistical process that we've had in my five years at the department. Um, so I'm grateful to my team and obviously grateful for everybody across the state for making it work. Uh because
it is it's quite an undertaking. Um, I also just wanted to take a second and recognize a connection between assessment and and obviously the work of the state board. Um the state board determines what kids need to know and be able to do at every grade level and the role of the department is always to
assess that right the department or the board determines the concepts and skills that kids should know and the department figures out how to assess that to the greatest extent possible. The intersection of our work is always interesting at the time standards are revised. when the standards revisions
are significant. The reality is we end up having to develop a new test because the material has changed. And a really consequential instance of that would have been in the spring of 24. There were significant revisions of high school math standards that were implemented. At that point in time, we
functionally developed new high school math tests. And I call that out here to also indicate that when we look at the longitudinal trends, it's important to keep that in mind. If you compare 23 performance to 24 performance, you're truly comparing the performance of two
different tests. And it might be inappropriate to call it growth because what we're assessing has changed because of the work of the state board to update what students should be able to know and do in math. And so the purpose of this chart is just to indicate that constant cycle um where we are potentially
looking at new assessments. Our ELA assessments have undergone the most sign the least amount of standards revision. So it would be perfectly appropriate to track our ELA performance all the way back to about 201718. We've done everything we could to keep the expectations consistent across that time
period because the standards themselves have not changed. High school math changed in 24, but the reality is the state board decided that the standards were not sufficiently different for the lower grades. And so we can compare longitudinal trends in three through eight math in ways that we can't for
high school math. uh and that's working as intended, right? It's not a problem that we have that change. We just need to make sure that we remain aware of how those standards revisions impact the scoring and the assessments and make sure that we're just being careful on those interpretations. Um and I'll also just take a second to
flag for everyone's awareness, all of our science assessments will go through that process next summer. So, as a result of the science standards revisions that the board undertook a number of years ago, we are now implementing those for the first time in this school year. And so we're going to
have to redo the assessments of the the science assessments. And we look forward to inviting members of the state board to observe that work as we go through that next summer. And I will just mention for our science teachers that will cause scores to be late next year because it takes us a little while to do
that work. And we know that's frustrating for everyone and we'll do our best to wrap it up just as quickly as we can. I I have a question please. Uh Dr. Morrison and I actually got this question yesterday uh at the new superintendent talking about the
alignment of the our standards with the TCAP test. So obviously you you bring up a very good point that there is you know when we change the standards what kind of lag time is there before the TCAPS then
uh measure the standards that are then in place is that so there's there's a number of steps in that process and the reality is it just takes time. So the standard revision occurs then the adopted materials need to be adjusted and catch up. So there's a lag in terms of getting new adopted
materials in the classroom. Schools need to have time to digest those new materials and then they need an entire year to teach those new standards. We obviously can't reset the scoring expectations until they've actually taught the new material. And so in that
first year, they'll actually go through teach those new standards and we won't know how to score the test yet because we've never seen the results in Tennessee. Um, and so this that first spring of that first year of implementation, that's when we pull together committees of Tennessee
teachers to help set those expectations. Um, and I where I think you're headed, we do heavily involve and lean on the expert judgment of Tennessee teachers to help us figure out how to do that. Just because Dr. Dr. Leard and I were talking about this about that very point um chair Eie and you know I think it's
so instructive to be able to and it's hard to be able to sit in on those standard setting meetings because it's very confidential obviously because the testing concerns but it's also really instructive to see the full suite of this work you know the standards the educators coming together to talk about not only what standards should be tested
and how but what does it mean to be proficient or approaching I mean there's just so many really nuanced conversations that give someone like myself a lot of confidence when you see the intentionality behind it that our assessment program is very well-designed and reflective of the standards that we
want for our students. But it it is it is tough work. Um really intentional. If any of you get the chance to go sit in one of those standard setting meetings, I would encourage you to go because it really helps to see the full picture, I think, of how this comes together. And this actually is probably another
positive consequence of moving to the eight-year standard period over the six-year standard period. It takes out a little more of that yep variation. And so that's good. Thank you. Yeah. Well, and it it's going to sound maybe a little bit like hyperbole, but
it's it's surprising how often we hear in the feedback. And every time we do a teacher-led committee, we care a lot about getting the feedback and trying to improve. But we frequently hear teachers say participating on our committees, those types of committees, is some of the best professional development that
they ever get. Um, so we strongly encourage teachers across the state to uh throw their hat into the ring for those positions. Um, so in terms of of jumping into the results, I'm going to provide I think sort of three big picture takeaways um
overarching themes and then I'll turn it over to Dr. Keany to walk through the results in a little bit more detail. Um, as I mentioned on an earlier slide, there's 33 tests that make up the program. Now, that includes two threecourse math progressions. So, not every no student takes all six of those. And there's two optional tests. So, not
every kid takes 33 tests over 10 years. Um, but we're tracking 33 data points. One of the biggest takeaways we see in the in the data from this year is just the uniformity of positive results. Um, the vast majority of subject areas regardless of grade well or grade level
in terms of year-over-year results are net positive this year. Of those 33, only three courses in some total were actually negative. Um, in terms of the year-over-year results, um, excuse me, I'm going to jump forward. Um, English 7
was down.2%. Um, third grade science was down.9% and US history was down.9%. Other than those three tests, every other test in our 33 test portfolio was net positive in terms of year-over-year results. And even
those three were all off by less than 1%. And again, we don't want to make light of that, but the reality is a 1% gain or loss on a test like ours um is um certainly probably within what would reasonably conceived as a band of error. Um we're not going to take a victory lab
for a half a percent increase. Um, so the uniformally the uniformally strong improvement across the program the department finds certainly is has not been historically where we've been. Even though we've been probably net positive for a number of years and we're happy
about the improvement to see this few instances of any of our courses going in the wrong direction the department feels really good about um is very strong. Um, in terms of where we saw the most improvement, there's a couple, I think, really interesting phenomena that I want
to present and and the department wants to continue to do a little bit more work in this space. Um, but one of the the highlights of TCAP results over the past couple years has been significant improvements in early grade literacy. If you go all the way back to the spring of
23, we saw a precipitous jump in third grade ELA performance. We were up about four and a half% at that point in time. And that in of itself was a wonderful result. But what was interesting to the department is in the subsequent year we continue to improve in third grade ELA
and and in increase a little bit. We didn't see quite that level that magnitude of improvement, but we certainly solidified those gains and kept growing, but we saw the next year a pretty precipitous bump in fourth grade performance in ELA and in other subject
areas. Um, last year we saw solid continued to see solid performance in third grade ELA. We saw modest improvements in fourth grade ELA, but we saw a precipitous jump in fifth grade. So, as moving into this year, we were particularly interested in whether or
not that sort of bleeding edge of performance would continue to metriculate into middle school because historically that has not been the trend in Tennessee. For almost all of our subject areas, the high water mark historically has been about fourth grade and then performance precipitously rolls
downhill into eighth grade. And so what I'm pleased to present is that looking at these year-over-year results, we now see significant performance improvement. Some of the biggest gains that we see are in sixth grade this year, which the department feels is is significant. Um,
so to illustrate just a few of those, um, for ELA, our fifth grade results are up 2.1% and our sixth grade results are up 3.9%. For math, our third grade results are up 3.1%, our sixth grade results are up 5.4%. One of the biggest increases that
we saw anywhere uh was in fifth grade math. Um, even for science, our fifth grade results are up 4.4% um and our sixth grade results are up 2.5%. Um, so it's not just that those early grade literacy results seem to enduring.
They may actually be having positive impacts in other subject areas. Obviously, literacy is foundational not just to ELA, but all aspects of curriculum that kids could be engaging in. Um, so the department is really pleased to see that. Um, another way to
illustrate that would be that in 24 the gap between third grade performance and sixth grade performance was about four and a half percent. 41% of our third graders were meeting or exceeding expectations and only 35.6 of our sixth graders were meeting or exceeding
expectations. We've now cut that gap in half in one year. So our third graders are now at 41.7% and our sixth graders are just shy of 40%. They're at 39.5%. Uh and we now see the biggest gap is now
between sixth and seventh grade. There's a 5% in English language arts. There's a 5 percentage point gap between sixth and seventh grade and a 10 percentage point gap between sixth grade ELA and eighth grade ELA at this point in time. Why why do you think there's such a gap
in those grades uh a reduction during in those grades and it's pretty consistent if you look at all the data that you have it's pretty consistent through all the data in all the subjects. Um, well, it would be difficult for me, I think, to probably give the right
explanation. Um, but I would recognize that this is not only a historical trend in Tennessee, but it's a historical trend nationally. Middle school performance has always been where we have lagged historically. And there's theories that exist in the literature about social development changing,
competing priorities for kids begin to change at that point in time. I mean, there's a lot of theories out there as to why that exists. Um, and we now have two trends that are potentially working in opposition to each other. Seventh grade ELA is going to be obviously a
huge point of interest next year. Um, we are very curious to see if the recent trend that we're seeing continues to endure or does the national historical trend begin to reassert itself next year is obviously something that that we're going to watch closely.
And and just to um I forget do we have to ask for permission with the committee the hall um the the grade that started receiving the um interventions after when the laws changed after the pandemic um in third grade for ELA are those now sixth graders?
Yes. So the the two trends that we're seeing competing are the supports from the post-pandemic interventions with the which is trending up the data shows and the historical trend down um over middle school. Yep.
And this year shows that at least in sixth grade that the supports that the state has been providing appear to be winning out. But then will that continue as time continues? Well, and the the argument for the intense focus on early grade literacy has always been connected to
outcomes years down the line. The department's done their own internal work that suggested that third grade ELA performance was mildly predictive of college and career ready access assessment performance 10 years later.
Um, so that's always been the dominant argument that's been made in this space for that focus in early grade literacy. uh which is why we're just tracking this so closely. Are we beginning to see that that is in fact a wave that's going to continue to roll through middle school and ultimately into high school and buck
some of those historical trends? And thus far, the data that we're observing is encouraging. I will say additional analysis needs to be done in in this space. The year-over-year results really aren't probably the most definitive way that we could be looking at it. And the
department is undertaking this work. I don't think we're at a place where we're able to present it, but more of a cohort-based analysis where you're tracking individual kids really will be the right way, I think, to get at that more definitively. But if we weren't seeing these types of results in the
year-to-year analysis, there's almost no point in assessing the data more rigorously. So, I don't feel like this is thoroughly definitive that that's what we're seeing, but it's very encouraging. Miss Maxwell, going along with uh what Mr. Holt said,
I I share those thoughts too, but also as a past practitioner since about 2015 and moving forward, we there has been a much more concentrated focus on early literacy going from uh the reading facilitation that began moving through
the science of reading. Um the department has really focused intentional uh professional development for teachers and you know I want things to happen yesterday but in the world that we live in uh sometimes it takes unfortunately
years to see that progression. So I do think next year will be key because in theoretically fourth grade tends to be a certain point where students do reach a particular place and they tend to slide off and then it continues the downhill
trend. So I'm so pleased with our educators, with the department, everyone that's working together because I mean reading is the foundational piece, the the early literacy. we can never lose sight of how important that is and we've got to get these kids as early as we can
to help them. Um, so thank you for your work. Sorry, I just had to interject. No, that's good. Mr. Brown, Christy Brown from the Department of Education. Um, thank you David for articulating the the piece there about how literacy likely has a a great effect
across uh subject areas there. Um, but I'd like to add too that we are interested in the progression of these cohorts of students and the focus on that like how are this particular group of students doing over time and we are seeing that persist um that we keep the gains and we're uh adding to that as the
years go on. So I am particularly interested in uh this seventh grade group coming up. But I wanted to mention that u the department we have a number of districts that have applied to be a part of um um network if you will have lots of networks but it's for professional learning and implementation
of our um high quality instructional materials. Um but it the focus of this network is particularly on adolescent literacy. So, we want we recognize that that has historically been an area where we do see the student outcomes begin to
fall off and we recognize that and are prepared to work with um teachers and leaders uh to be sure that don't happen in Tennessee. And I just want to mention that opportunity and I look forward to reporting back to you all on that as that progresses. Thank you, Dr. Morrison.
Well, I just have to jump in because I'm I'm very excited about that too. I think you know when you look nationally you see a lot of states who make the shift in phonics and do really well in the early grades and then like you said Dr. Leairard you see that tapering off in middle school and I think having really intentional supports and development for our middle grades teachers or adolescent
literacy is is going to be really important. I mean we've gotten the phonics piece I think really solid and that's working but we can't stop with that. So I really think if you're a district listening please join this is important really good work that you all are supporting. So thank you Mr. Chairman.
Yes Mr. Jal. Professor Lar, former professor of mine um at Vanderbilt. Good to see you today. Uh it's been a while. Um uh building on that conversation, I'm wondering if there if let's let's pretend it's not the changes to phonics, what are some other competing hypotheses? something
coming out of uh COVID pandemic is that and and then also the second question is what does that evaluation look like where a couple years from now we can pinpoint this change on early literacy and say actually that we've got good evidence to say that was the case.
Um no I I appreciate the question. I think there's a a couple perspectives on it. Um and I I'd like to tie in Dr. Maxwell's comments as well because that I think she's rounding out my comments in an important way. I've sort of suggested that in 23
we saw this singular improvement in ELA performance and that's not really the right way to represent the data historically. ELA performance in the lower grades has been improving for years in Tennessee and Dr. Keaney will actually show some slides that highlight that. Yes, we saw a precipitous jump in
one year, but the improvements in early grade literacy education has been a driving focus of the department for an extremely long time and have been bearing fruit all of that all along that time. Like I think we're five consecutive years of third grade ELA performance improvement. Um so I don't
want to suggest that perhaps there's one single thing that has contributed to that at one point in time. Um it's been the concerted effort of our early literacy instructional improvement for a number of years. Um that's likely
responsible for for a lot of that. Um in terms of and I think it's it's right and appropriate and obviously a bit of a fraught place for the department, but it's right and appropriate to think about what will we want to see, right? We're always looking backward, but I think it's appropriate to say what are
the data points that we want to see moving forward to know that we're continuing to trend in the right direction. Um I think continuing to expand the scope of that early literacy um improvement to other subject areas I think is an example of something that we
wanted to see. If the theory is truly correct, it's not only going to improve the ability to engage with ELA curriculum, but we'd like to see improvements in science and social studies. Middle school social studies is also up. I didn't mean to necessarily leave that out. The sixth grade improvement I think is only a percent.
It's not quite as robust, but it's up too. Um, so continuing to see that I think would be critically important. Um, kids who are more successful we also know are far more likely to stay in school. Um, so there's downstream benefits that we would expect to see
with that. We kids who are feeling successful are much more likely to stick around. So we would hope to see um better long-term engagement and persistence from students as a result of just being more successful. So there's a lot of lagging indicators that we might ultimately like to see there. And of
course that's going to have downstream in impacts on a lot of output. So if we look at credit accumulation at some point in time down the road um a lot of that potential it would be reasonable to assume that the foundation that we're seeing in early grade academic performance would drive those outcomes
leading to college and career ready indicators as well. I don't know if I answered your question but I look forward to having more thoughts with you on this too. It's exciting. So thank you. Um and then so again just to sort of summarize I've gotten to the first two
points. The first is just how uniformally positive they are. The second one is is where the department is is really very encouraged looking at improved trends in middle school performance. And then the last piece that I just want to touch on is the extent to which the department is always
trying to be mindful of just how broadly realized are these improvements? Um are there any communities or corners of Tennessee or groups of students that maybe aren't experiencing the improvement to the same extent? Um and I am um generally pleased to say that this
really does these improvements do seem to be a rising tide. Um various types of communities in Tennessee and we have wildly diverse types of communities. Um all of them are realizing some of this improvement. Multiple different groups of students are realizing this
improvement um somewhat uniformally. Um there are still gaps in performance for different groups of kids in Tennessee. Those persist and remain. Um but we're seeing similar trajectories of improvement um across communities and across groups of students. Um and with
that um I will turn the presentation over to Dr. Keaney and he'll walk through the results in a little bit more detail. Thank you very much Dr. Thank you very much Dr. Lair. I'm Justin Keiny. I'm a data analyst on the accountability and assessment team at the department. I'm excited to quickly
walk through a few more detailed uh results with you all. Uh, of course, as I share these results with you, like with Dr. Leair, uh, feel free to stop us at any time and ask any questions you may have. Uh, so first to talk to look at ELA performance, uh, student English
language arts per performance increased for the fourth straight year. This year, the statewide ELA proficiency rate was 40.9% across all grades. Proficiency rate of course is the combined uh percentage of all students who earn either met or
exceeded expectations on their TCAP assessments. Uh and 40.9% represents a year-to-year increase of almost 2% and an increase of 11.3% uh since 2021. Uh, I do want to note that this
statistic includes all of the results from grades 3 through eight TECAP and the high school English one and English two EOCC's, but it does not include uh the results of any alternative assessments. Um so breaking down the ELA performance
by gradeb band, we can see that the progress in English language arts has been driven by gains across all grade bands uh but especially through increased performance in high school English. Uh this year the high school
ELA proficiency rate was 46.7%. and it continues to outpace uh the other grades and it increased by almost uh four percentage points this year and 13 percentage points in the last four years. Um elementary and middle school
ELA have also increased uh albeit as a at a slightly slower pace. Uh this year the elementary school and middle school uh English both increased by roughly a point uh to 43.3 and 30.4.5 uh respectively.
Um as we as we look at these trends, you know, you look at uh grades three through five, 43.3%. And then you get this drop that Dr. Lar was talking about in the middle schools,
you know, pretty precipitous drop down to 34.5%. And then look at the gains when you get up into high school, jumps from 34.5 to 46.7. So what is it that we're doing in the high schools that obviously we're not
doing in the middle schools? I mean that to a layman, I'm not an educator. I mean that's kind of question I asked myself is is is there something there that we're doing right in the high schools that we ought to be doing in middle schools to bring those up? Yeah, chairman. I think um
one of the things to make note is always how the underlying standards contribute to the assessment. It's natural for us to assume that there's this incremental progression across the standards and they they all essentially are equally interspersed. Uh it's not quite the case
the way the high school standards are organized. the the difference in standards between the English one and the English two course, they're very very similar u between the two. Um and so across the state of Tennessee, we see almost a 10 percentage point improvement
on the English two test relative to the English one test. Um because we're not introducing as as much new material. Um it's a little bit more about doing better with things that are that are more similar. Um and so some of that improved performance in high school we
believe has a little bit to do with the way the standards are organized um as opposed to pure uh improvement with the same ask. Thank you Dr. Lair. Um so we also wanted to highlight third and fourth grade or
third and eighth grade specifically which are two areas of particular emphasis for Tennessee. Uh performance in these key grades has also increased a good amount over the last four years uh with ELA proficiency rates increasing by
almost 10% uh from 32.1% to 41.7% and grade 8 increasing by over 6% from 23 uh% to 29.6. Uh however in the last year uh these key grades have increased more slowly than
ELA proficiency in other grades. Uh for instance proficiency increased by.7% in grade three over the last year and by almost half a point in grade 8. So still an increase but a little bit slower pace than the other grades. Um, and if you
compare these key grades to the other grades, ELA performance, uh, grade three proficiency is pretty high in absolute terms. It's exceeded only by, uh, English 2, as Dr. Lar referenced, and fourth grade English. Um, on the other
hand, eighth grade ELA, again, common theme with what Dr. Lar said a few minutes ago, continues to be the lowest performing grade in English language arts. Um, breaking down this performance by subgroup, ELA performance is also
increasing steadily across all major subgroups of students. Uh, though the economically disadvantaged English learners and students with disabilities still have performance gaps. Um, for instance, while the ELA proficiency rate
for all students was 40.9% this year, it was only 23.8 for e the economically disadvantaged subgroup. um and 17.5 for English learners and 9.6 for students with disabilities.
Um we also wanted to share the topline math proficiency. Yes, sir. Just one question on those two slides that you just showed. Uh recognizing you know the learning loss situation that we had in 2020
and looking at these 2021 numbers which are coming out of that. What do the numbers look like in the years prior to 2020 from a longitudinal standpoint? Did we see levels like this
and then a dip and now we're back on a trending higher or what was that picture like? Sure. I um not looking at the data, I want to be a little bit cautious here, but I think it's particularly in ELA, Tennessee
really did lead the nation to an extent in which we rebounded from the obvious dip that we experienced nationally as a result of COVID. I think it's safe to say that by 2022, in the vast majority of instances, our
ELA performance had already rebounded above pre-COVID levels. So, you're right. Prior to this, there is a a far more precipitous dip. Um, but compared to the vast majority of the states, we made up that dip um much more quickly
than than most folks. Yeah, that squares with my uh recollection of the numbers that we are higher than the pre2021 levels. Um uh so to quickly walk through math proficiency, um you know, of course,
given Tennessee's strong focus on improving literacy, uh the growth in ELA is perhaps unsurprising. Uh so it's really notable and uh exciting that math proficiency rates also continue to increase. Uh this year overall math
proficiency reached a high of 39.1%. This is a 2.4% increase over last year. Um I do want to note that again this statistic includes grades 3 through 8 TCAP and the high school EOC but does not include the alternative assessments.
Uh and if we break this down by gradeband, we can see uh it's slightly different than ELA. We can see that math proficiency has grown uniformly by a rate of 2 to 3% across all grade bands in the last year. Um and actually in
math, elementary grades uh lead the pack with 45.4% proficiency rate and middle schools in second with uh 40.7%. and elementary math and middle school proficiency have increased uh by 13.2%
and 14.1% uh respectively in the last uh four years. So pretty healthy increase. Uh as far as high school goes, the statewide high school proficiency also increased in the last year to 30.8%.
Uh but referencing what Dr. Lared said earlier, I do want to point out that standards were reset uh during the 2324 school year. So, it's difficult to make any comparisons uh between high school performance uh 2023 and before and then
high school performance 2024 and and after. That said, you know, we see in the last year 2.2% 2% growth, which is a a positive sign that high school math is also uh growing, continuing to grow like the other uh grade bands.
One quick question. Thank you. Um we've talked a lot about algebra 2 as a board and the change in standards there and particularly that trend that we were seeing from below basic to approaching in algebra 2. Are you able to speak to any of that in terms of how that those numbers look for algebra 2?
Sure. So if you're looking at this chart um and this is again where we wanted to be cautious um if if you aren't in the no you'd look at the improvement from 23 to 24 and realize that's 6%. That's where we changed standards, right? That
24 test was a different test than the 23 test. That's not to say we did better, but I couldn't tell you how much of that 6% change was a result of the change of the content that was assessed. um if we took out if we added more accessible
statistics and data science standards um and that contributed to some amount of that as opposed to realized instructional improvements. I I don't know how to break up that 6%. Um however, for algebra 2, we continue to see this year a 3% increase in
proficiency rates for algebra 2, which I think reasonably could be assumed that those teachers have now had their second year of teaching those new standards. um have and have gotten only better um at teaching those new standards. So, we do
see um a a meaningful 3% gain in algebra 2 and that can be interpreted as having everything to do with what happened um in those classrooms this year. Thank you. And then do you know by chance what the change from below basic to approaching was because I remember last year that was actually the more
telling. Um and if you don't you can follow up. Yes, I do. Hold on. Hold on just one second. Sorry. Algebra 2 is what you wanted, right? So that looks like there um those
so the shift in that what and what we saw, right? So the the precipitous shift as a result of the standards revision that we saw with the new test um in the spring of 24. While there was overall performance improvement, there was a
significant rebalancing of those that were scoring below and those that were scoring approaching. Prior in the spring of 22, the overwhelming number of kids that weren't proficient were actually below. When we got to the new test, the overwhelming
number of kids that still might not have been proficient, they were now approaching and not below, which meant the material of the course was more accessible to them. we didn't quite get them to where we wanted to be, but they were they were far more engaged and ultimately were being more successful
with the content of those courses. In terms of what we see in 25, um we see very similar trends. It would be clear to say that that rebalancing exists. It's seemingly softened just a little bit, but it's hard to know if some of those approaching kids are now scoring
meets expectations. Um, so there's slightly fewer approaching kids in 25 than there were in 24, but it's continues to be way above where it was prior to the revision in standards and overall proficiency rates are up 3% as well.
Let me ask a question. If if we do a good job of aligning our standards from one grade to the next, which hopefully in math we would want to do that and we start with a third grade student
and that standard is a standard for eight years. So eight years later they're in 11th grade. Shouldn't we expect to see a reduction in the gap between grades 3 through five and 9 through 12 that if you know if if we're teaching
them to those set of that standards, wouldn't we hope that that gap would decrease because if we're doing our job metriculating them through the system with a a good set of standards. Does that make sense? Um, it certainly does and I I think that
globally is is going to be right. There's always going to be natural variation in the standards as well. Certain grade levels introduce standards that are historically been shown to be more difficult for kids. Like there's always going to be some natural variation and
it differs widely by subject area as well. Math tends to build on itself more than some of the other subjects do. social studies introduces more novel content. Um, but there's skills associated with both social studies and science that you would expect kids to be able to progress on. So,
but I look at a 15% gap between uh, you know, 9 through 12 and 3 through five. And I would hope in eight years that gap would be significantly decreased. Well, and to our earlier point, we we're going to monitor that very closely. Um
there is a a powerful historical trend that middle school performance continues to be more problematic and right now we see evidence that we're bucking that trend a little bit but um we're encouraged. Uh so to continue on that note uh to
just take you through the quick highlights of our emphasis grades for math third and eighth grade uh TCAP. Uh math proficiency in these key grades continues to increase. Um math proficiency in third grade has increased 1.7% in the last year and 12% in the
last four years. Um 8th grade math proficiency which as Dr. Leard has been talking about has traditionally lagged. Third grade uh has increased actually at a similar slightly faster rate. Uh 2.3% in the last year and 11.4% in the last
four years. Um, again, as Dr. Lair referenced earlier, third grade is one of the higher grades for math proficiency. It's only outclassed by fourth and fifth grade. Um, and eighth grade, on the other hand, is the lowest performing grade in primary school, uh,
for math. Um, and breaking math down by subgroup, uh, we can see solid gains for all of the major subgroups. Um, with this year's this last year's gains of 2.7 and 3.2% 2% for uh students in the
economically disadvantaged and English learners uh subgroup keeping pace with the overall uh statewide gains. Um like with ELA though of course the subgroup proficiency rates uh continue to trail the proficiency rate for students in the
state as a whole. Uh and so of course while the results in ELA and math are critically important, we'd be remiss not to take a look at some of the uh exciting trends in science and social studies. In what I'm sure is becoming a bit of a theme
throughout this uh presentation, science proficiency rates are also continuing to increase steadily. Uh this year the science proficiency rate increased by 1 8% from 44.2 2 uh last year to 46% this
year. Um and the science proficiency rate has increased by almost 8% in the last four years. Um and again these statistics include grades three through eight and then the high school EOC biology one uh but not the results of
alternative assessments. Um now a little different than math and ELA science proficiency rates are very similar across all grade bands. Uh as you can see here on the graph in in 2021 um the high school science biology one
EOC actually was a bit higher than the performance in the other grade bands. Uh you can see it was 41% versus about 40 for middle school and uh 35.7 for the elementary grades. But in the last four years, uh what we've seen is that the
elementary and middle grades have caught up and now uh the proficiency rate in all three uh grade bands is is basically the same. And actually grades three through five are the highest at 40 uh 6.5%. Um and they they all increased by about
2% over the last uh year to reach that that height. Just a clarification point for our audience out there. When you talk about the increase by 2% or 5%, it's two percentage points and five percentage points. The increase actually from 36 to
45% is like a 25% increase. So just for people to understand, you're talking about percentage points increase. Yes, Mr. Chairman, excellent clarification. And yes, I should watch I should be careful with my use of percentage. my uh I always wanted to tell a statistician something
my my graduate school professor I should have warned you I apologize I should have warned you about the chairman he would have done fantastic job on these tea math results here so yes he's right no doubt right uh so last but not least as at least
part of the time a former social studies teacher uh social studies where proficiency rates have actually increased the most in the last here uh you can see there on our graph going from 44.5 to 47.4
um and in the last four years social studies has increased 11% uh or percentage points uh rivaling the gains in English over the same time period. Um I think it's really important with social studies to break this down
by grade band uh because we can see that the gain in uh social studies has come as a result of a uh rapid increase in the middle grades. Um you can see there middle school uh at 49 uh.0 zero. Uh
whereas the gain high school, you know, while still uh about five points higher than it was four years ago, uh has stagnated a little bit and actually uh decreased in the last year. Well, and if I could just jump in there on the US history piece of that. Um I I
also just want to recognize that there has been a change in in policy that allows for course substitutions um for US history. And so we've seen an increase in trends of some students forgoing the US history test to take
perhaps AP US history. And so there's an accountability policy change. Uh and we've seen that only increase over time. And so it it's probable to the department that some of the change in performance that we see in US history may have more to do with the kids that are continuing to take this exam as
opposed to alternatives. So, we're not trying to make light of the fact um that that performance is clearly down here, but there's a plausible explanation and it may have less to do with what's happened instructionally and it may have a little bit more to do with the switch and the kids that continuing to take
this class as opposed to alternatives. Uh so, those are some of our more detailed results. Uh again, in summary, the theme for this year's TCAP is that generally steady increases in performance across all grades, uh subject areas, and and uh subgroups. So,
thank you so much for letting us walk you through uh this year's data. And uh now we'd like to open up the floor one more time if you guys have any additional questions. Thank you. Questions and comments, Mr. Chair? Mr. Melanau. Thank you. Um, I'll start by saying something humorous
and then I'll come back and and qualify it. I had a statistics professor one time that started his first class with a sin scale and he and on the sin scale he started with there's lies, there's uh interest in explicative lies and then
there's statistics. And uh you know we spent most of that semester with him basically giving examples of how people both intentionally and unintentionally provided results that were you know vastly different than the underlying
data would actually support. So that's the hopefully funny part. the the qualifier is um we trust you guys like you guys have done phenomenal work in so many different ways you and your teams and it's great to see trends that are are
moving in the right direction and uh and at the same time there's little there's warning flags going off for for example if most states are experiencing these these trends which is what I understand to have been said earlier then you know that would suggest that the variables at play may
have nothing to do with work that our state's doing or that our board is doing or or that your teams are doing. It may just be there there's macro trends that are outside of our control. Just as as an example, um I guess my my question is is this.
If if you forget about all the math and you just think about what's in the mind of the members of your team, the department really as a whole, on one end of the scale, they could adopt the idea that we still have a lot of work like we're still leaving a lot of kids behind
here. There's a lot of kids still left behind. We have a lot of work to do and we're we're going to stay very focused on that. That's on one end of the scale and kind of ignore some of the positive trends and really just stay focused on making it better. On the other end of that spectrum, um you know, we could find ourselves easily
becoming complacent in some areas thinking that what we're doing is actually working because hey, the the trend is good when in reality the variable that's causing that improvement has nothing to do with the in fact we could actually be making bad policy and and and we could still see a positive
trend. My question is ho how are you h how is how are you communicating with your team and how are you creating the ethos among members of your team to stay disciplined around making it better and not just assuming that what we're doing
today is actually working because the sort of high level statistics suggest as much but really staying disciplined and focused around at a very granular level is it working for the various subsets of children for example or is there
something else in the data that's that's uh that we're missing that that we would otherwise gloss over because we think hey what we're doing is is working. What's the ethos and how do you how do you drive that discipline? I I really appreciate the the comment
and I'll if if I'm not getting it at at what you had hoped, please feel free to steer me as we go. But I also appreciate your anecdote as well. Um my doctoral professor was a wonderfully well-
reggarded empirical scientist and she always talked about data telling a story. Like the reality is you can have all the numbers in the world but a human being still has to interpret it in some way, shape or form and you never want to lose sight of that fact, right? Like numbers rarely speak for themselves.
There's always a human being that's interpreting it in some way. And so to your point about discipline, we try very hard to make sure that we're being as judicious as we can and presenting this information. And I think that plays out in our world in in a couple different
ways. Um, as the team that builds the assessments, um, ensuring that we conform to nationally recognized best practices for the construction of those assessments is essential to ensuring the longitudinal
analysis of this. If we don't do our work um very rigorously and thoughtfully, um there are plenty of states that have gotten their hands slapped in the past because they talk about things called score drift, right? Like scores are going up and down
because of how they construct the tests, um not because of what's happening in the classroom. And so we take that responsibility very very seriously. We're sort of the gatekeeper in being able to look at this data and actually believe that it's meaningful in describing what's happening in
Tennessee. Um, and we release technical manuals every year that document our work. And for folks that are interested, we encourage you to to double check our work. Um, because it's it's critically important and it's the foundation of of being able to have these conversations.
Uh, and we do take that very very seriously and feel good about that. And just to illustrate the point, we have a technical advisory committee of nationally recognized psychometricians, folks in full faculty and university positions who train all of the psychometricians. And they're an
advisory committee for us. And every time we come to a fork in the road or folks who doublech checkck our work, um they are always a lifeline away for us and are always ensuring that the department is continuing to do what it needs to do um to trust the results that we're presenting here. Um and then the
other thing that that leaps out to me in your comment is to actually there's two other pieces. Um one is triangulating the data whenever possible. Um one of the really interesting pieces is to look at the relationship between TCAP performance and NATE performance and
those two have been correlating very closely over the past couple years. Um and so continuing to see that those two data points seem to be moving in concert gives us confidence um that we're doing the work on our side um to
ensure that the gains that we're seeing are meaningful. Um but to your point, we are by no means there yet. Um it was really significant in the last round of NAPE results. For the first time, Tennessee is now in the top half of academic performing states in the
country. we've not been there before, but the stairst step of improvement that we've seen in the TCAP results is leading us to a place where that is now true. Um, and again, talking about 41% of students passing the test, I don't want to make light of the fact that we
still have massive improvement that we need to make. Um, but it seems prudent to say that the improvements that we've seen do reflect changes, positive changes that have happened in schools across Tennessee. And we can triangulate
that in different ways. And the last just the last thought also that your comments is is recognizing the difference between measuring to improve and measuring to evaluate. Our job with the TCAP test is measuring to evaluate, right? We are the rigorous endofline
result to say how far did we get. There is a whole space of educational measurement that is specifically intended to give information to folks who are in the trenches every single day. And we're a piece of that, but the
TCAP's primarily intended to be that final end of round that end of line evaluation about how far we achieved. It is not a sufficient tool to give schools all of the information that they need to drive improvement. It's the starting
place in their conversation about performance. Um it is not the end goal to give them what they need to continue to realize gains in classrooms across the state. Mr. I think my mic may have died.
Thank you for that. Question does this create a situation for example. Thank you. where um you know people who are doing the great work that would underly good results could perceive that hey what we're what we're doing is
working without recognizing that they're actually missing the mark. There's there's actually they're not really um if you strip away the macro factors, the strategy or the policy or the decisions
that are being made aren't actually advancing the cause. there's there's something else that's sort of uh that's that's driving that result that's sort of consuming whatever decision they might be making. All of that simply to say it's great to see the results. I would
much rather see this general trend than than the alternative. But it also does bring the risk of less rigor in the day-to-day decisions are being made because we just kind of assume that what we're doing seems to be working and and and what is your
leadership team, what is the I guess the broader team really doing to make sure that that assumption doesn't start to creep in because what will happen is cast out three or four or five years when the macro trend sort of goes away and it will at some point predictably
uh then then we're left with the decisions that we've been that we've been making that if suboptimal would lead us to an opposite trend that we don't want to experience. Well, I'm happy to share a perspective on that, but I'll also if Christy Brown
wants to weigh in because we're getting a little bit more into the implementation and improvement end of things, which is less my shot, but I think the way I would interpret your comments is, you know, looking at the early grade literacy improvement, right?
We went from around 28 29% proficiency five years ago and now we're up at 44%. Um, from an implementation standpoint, have we squeezed all the juice that we
possibly can out of that initiative because we've seen that improvement slow, right? Like we we were up four and a half% in 23, we were up 7% last year is the most efficient bang for the buck
for districts to rededicate themselves to that work or does it make more sense to shift some of those resources into middle school and support middle school literacy so that we can continue to try to protect that recent trend that's contradicting the national trend. Um,
and that's the difficult work of being a director of schools, right? their job to make those really hard decisions about how they're spending scarce resources um and figuring out how they can have an impact that protects and and realizes and prioritizes this local trend that
we're seeing that seems to be preliminarily speaking bucking that national trend. Mr. Jensen, thank you for your work. It is encouraging to see the trajectory uh over the last several years. I do have a
question. You've got a composite on these scores across the state. And my question, and you don't have to answer this right now, is the components of that. I have a district that I've got urban, suburban, and rural schools. And
it would be helpful to me to get some insight into how that you've got a whatever the 46% or whatever and that's across the entire state. It would be helpful not today. I'm not but to get some insight into where we're making you
know if you got a 46.8 there's probably 70 somewhere and 15 whatever that the math is there. that would be helpful to me to get a a better insight into where we're improving and where we're just the things are just stuck where
they are. So, you don't need to respond to that, but I would like to think that we could get some analysis that looks a little bit deeper into the composite, what the components of the composite are. Does that make sense? No, it it it it certainly does. And I'm
I'm happy to report that disagregation by what we would call local, right? There's a national education statistics that breaks out urban, suburban, rural, town. Um that's a typical disagregation that the department supports. So our assessment dashboard will allow you to
break out results by local. Um our data downloads page has files that make the data available by local. And so we clearly get the question, it's important. Um and particularly in Tennessee, we have such diverse communities here. Um it's very hard to
talk about a typical Tennessee anything um because our districts look wildly different from each other. So we we appreciate the push. I don't know what the resource is or how but I'd love some feedback on that if you don't mind. Thank you. Any other questions?
I'd like to say one thing is uh Dr. I don't know when you came into this position, but I know when I was on the board, first on the board in 2018. I don't think you were near as prominent if you were on the board that in TDOE at the time as you are right now. But if
you look at what's happened over the last five or six years, 10 years in the department getting the data to know where we are and where we want to go, uh it's tremendous and a lot of it I think has to do with your leadership. Just wanted to thank you for that.
Okay, thank you. Next item is Tennessee 2030 data driven goals for Tennessee. Courtney Bale from SCORE. All right. Well, thank you so much to the board for inviting us to come speak about this new coalition that SCORE is
leading around setting some datadriven goals for our state moving forward. So, I know uh my colleague Mary Cypress Mets had the opportunity to come speak to the board about six months ago about another collective um impact project we've been working on, our impact credentials framework to try to better capture how
we're connecting students to economic opportunity. And this is really a practical application um of that and an opportunity for us to set a new vision as a state. So, why did we start exploring this goal
setting uh project? Uh we know first off that too few Tennessans are finding paths to economic success and we also know that fortunately we have a strong track record as a state of aligning around collective goals and making
significant progress. Um so some folks in this room may remember in 2011 when we set the goal to be the fastest improving state on NAPE and we met that goal. Uh we've also had a collective goal around post-secondary attainment, the drive to 55. And while we didn't
meet that goal, we made tremendous progress toward it. So we know that we have a history of kind of linking arms and working collectively to drive forward action. We also know fortunately that there's really clear research and data on how we can measure and even predict student
success. And we also know that rather than having one singular goal, having a longitudinal look uh allows partners at all points in the continuum to find a place to connect to push forward work for Tennessee students. And we also saw this as a real opportunity to work
together to cast a bold new vision that prepares Tennessee students for success. So when we're talking about progress year-over-year, we're anchoring to a bigger picture. And so when we first started thinking about this project, the first thing we did was go through a stakeholder
engagement process. And I I know two of the first folks we talked to were um Sarah and Michael at the state board around if we were going to set a series of goals for the state, where would we anchor them? What would we look at knowing that there are a plethora of different areas we could have um looked at? And what we heard from folks was
this felt like an important role that SCORE could play to set ambitious goals across different sectors that it would be something that wouldn't make sense for a single agency to own alone and so that it really would need to be a collective impact um uh project. We also
felt uh we also heard that it felt like our state was lacking a north star. We had had goals in the past but we didn't have anything currently we were driving toward as a state. And we also heard interest from partners in aligning strategic plans and future dashboards
reports to the Tennessee uh 2030 goals. I know we had lots of conversations with Dr. Gentile, our partners at TBR, at TDOE about a a desire to have a more cohesive vision for the state and then also just a lot of excitement about the
opportunity to work collectively together. And so where that brought us was to these Tennessee 2030 goals that really aim to set a shared vision for student success across the entire education
continuum, including really ambitious goals for growth across key metrics that have been shown to be predictive of students long-term success. As I mentioned, we were hoping to make an uh an actionable application of the credential impact framework that was
also collectively conceived um to show what steps would a student need to take on their way to earning a credential that is going to enable economic independence and chart a clear path for making sure students are on track across their experience. So the hope was to really blur the lines
between sectors, between different transition points in a student's educational career and build really shared accountability for student outcomes. So where that landed us was on this key metrics framework. So you'll see um the
yellow bar in the middle are the metrics that we anchored on. So again, we could have anchored on a number of different metrics, but um as Dr. Leard was sharing uh previously, there's a ton of evidence that whether or not students are proficient in third grade reading is
very predictive of their later success. Um we know that grade seven math. Um we've had some questions about why we anchored on grade seven versus uh grade eight. In Tennessee, grade seven is the last grade where the majority of students are on the same pathway before folks may start peeling off to take
algebra 1 or integrated math at an earlier level. Some students do do that in seventh grade. Um but the majority are still on that same pathway. um collegegoing on time uh post-secary completion and I'll talk a little bit about our aspirations for quality being included
in that and then quality credential attainment and you'll see on the right our anchor aspiration I think whenever you start talking about goals in a numerical sense there is a tendency or a desire for folks to say why would you not set a goal of 100%. And obviously we
want all students to read and write proficiently, to be able to do math, to be able to live choicefilled lives, but we wanted to have very datadriven realistic but ambitious goals that we could work toward. And so these are sort of a stake in the ground. And we also know, as I mentioned, these
metrics are not inclusive. There are a lot of things that you look at before and after these, a lot of things that could be included. So, I've listed just a few of the leading indicators that as we talked to partners um felt like other important pieces of the puzzle that if you were a community uh member working
to support these goals and you didn't have a direct impact on grade three ELA, there are other other areas you could look at and other leading indicators that could let you know whether or not students are on track before they reach that metric. And so as we started thinking about
setting these goals, uh we kind of went through a thought experiment as a team of what would it look like if just one more student in every classroom across the state reached proficiency in these goals each year and we maintained that pace of growth until 2030? Where would
that land us? Um and what we saw is that that led to pretty tremendous growth. And so that is what led us to set these goals where they are at. So again, looking at 2024 data and I know you all just had the opportunity to hear Dr. Leard and his team share about our TCAP
uh results. So those are not captured in this the TCAP results that came out the previous uh just last month, but we wanted to set a path for if we were to meet this pace based on where we were in 2024, where would we get to? And so you can see that just one more student per
classroom every year would get us to 71% proficiency in ELA by 2030, which would be a record for the state and the country. In seventh grade math, if we applied that same methodology, we would get to 58% of students reaching proficiency by
2030. uh in post-secary, if we were able to support one additional high school senior in every classroom across the state uh to pursue a post-secary pathway, uh we would get to a 77% collegegoing rate. And you can see in the in the text there, we are hopeful
that eventually this could be a more inclusive measure that doesn't just include typical post-secary going, but could also recognize apprenticeships, military enlistment, other viable pathways that lead to economic success for students. But we just don't have the data right now to to have a cohesive
measure there. And then uh completion, if we were to get one more student across the finish line, we would get to a completion rate of 64%. And you'll see that shaded light purple reg uh region there. Uh our aspiration is that 75% of those credentials would
be um high value credentials on our impact credentials framework. So credentials that are in high demand that uh have a good job outlook uh that result in a strong wage uh that could potentially be stackable. But we know that that's not the full
picture of student success. Uh we know that unfortunately we have a lot of youth who are disconnected. Nearly one in six young people ages 16 to 24 are disconnected from both education and the workforce. We know that some students get
interrupted. In 2021, for example, 64,000 high school graduates completed uh the Tennessee Promise requirements, but 50% of them never enrolled in post-secary education. And we know from data that if students don't seamlessly enroll in a post-secary opportunity,
they are unlikely to get back on that track. We also know that we're facing undermployment. So nearly half of Tennessans are undermployed based on their level of education. and Tennessee has one of the lowest workforce participation rates in the country.
We know that our attainment still lags workforce needs. Despite the concerted effort we have made as a state to improve our overall level of attainment, nearly half of Tennessans hold a post-secary credential and we know that twothirds of jobs will require one by
2031. So, as a state, we must work urgently and collectively to cast a more expansive vision and goals that reflect our full understanding of what contributes to student success. Because we know when students excel in the classroom, they emerge prepared to find
success in college, in career, and in life. Um, and I'll share just a portion of a quote from a director of schools in Sullivan County, um, which is one of the districts that signed on to be a Tennessee 2030 partner. He said, 'Imag what can happen if we work together to remove barriers and ensure more students
find success. It's time to turn the aspirations we have for our students and that they have for themselves into reality. I want to quickly preview uh sort of the next phase of this work which will be local data dashboards that we hope to launch later this fall and I will say
huge thanks to our partners at Tekk who are doing some special cuts of data for us that we really appreciate. um and TDOE for always having great data downloads that that we're able to access and leverage. Um but we started thinking about at the local level, what if we
anchored on that same ambitious one student per classroom pace of growth, taking into consideration where each district is starting. So you can imagine that some districts might lose ground in a year. Maybe their student needs changed. Maybe they had a
high rate of teacher turnover. Maybe they experienced some other type of disruption. But what if instead of losing hope, we rallied around them to ensure that they got back on that ambitious pace of one more student per classroom per year? And this is uh anonymized, but this is
an actual Tennessee district. So you can see a district that saw a pretty significant decrease. But if they were to get back on that pace of one more student per classroom per year, they could still reach 61.7%, this is a third grade ELA, uh,
proficiency by 2030. And then on the other side of the coin, you can imagine that some districts might surpass that one student per classroom pace, which is obviously what we aspire to. But what if it instead of expecting them to let up, we supported them to maintain that sense of urgency
and stay on a solid upward trajectory of one more student or more each year. What would we see there? And this is again another Tennessee district who saw a pretty big jump in third grade ELA. And you can see if they were able to maintain a one more one student per
classroom pace until uh 2030, they would reach 77% proficiency, which is truly remarkable. And so I I say that for folks like Dr. Maxwell in the room who may remember AMOs, things like that. What we did not want the perception to
be is that score is setting goals for districts of what they should achieve. And we know that based on when those years were uh when that data was anchored, that may really change your ability to meet those expectations. And so we felt like uh by meeting each
district where they are each year, setting a clear vision for an achievable uh but ambitious pace of change and then supporting them to meet that pace, the statewide impact would be huge. So our hope would be that we keep these static state level goals and then each year we
will update the local dashboards with growth projections for districts if they're able to meet that pace. Um, and I'll read one more just a excerpt of a quote um from Tara Scarlet um who shared, "Achieving the Tennessee 2030 goals around reading, math, and
post-secary enrollment and completion is critical to propelling our state forward and ensuring each student reaches their full potential. So that really is the intent of it. Um, and then as I mentioned the this is really a coalition effort. So, we already have nearly 50 districts, higher education
institutions, schools, and community advocacy organizations who have signed on as official Tennessee 2030 partners and are actively championing these goals. Um, and the number of partners continues to grow. So, you can see a full list of partners on the um Tennessee 2030 website, tn2030.org.
Um, and if any folks are interested in learning more about what it means to be a partner or signing on, we would love to talk more. Would love to welcome questions. Thank you very much, Miss Bale. Questions for Miss Bail. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Melanau. Thank you. Um
I I'll try to be very direct with this question. Yeah, it sounds like I take this I I can I perceive from this presentation that um there's agreement around, hey, we want everybody to improve. Um you and your team have projected,
hey, this is where we could go with this. Uh join us in that effort. Uh what is it exactly in one minute? What is it exactly that you plan to do to get there? I'm I hear a lot of like energy and excitement about it, but like what what are the discipline strategies and
operative execution elements of that plan? Yeah, I mean I think that's going to vary from community to community based on what their specific needs are and that's why we're hoping to build a coalition of partners who are sharing ideas and strategies. I think as a state level organization, we'll continue to advocate for the strategies that we know
research has shown uh to lead students to greater success. So in early literacy, having high quality instructional materials in place, systematic phonics instruction, um high dosage tutoring, instructional coherence, those are issues we'll continue to champion. Uh we're doing a lot of research as an organization
around math and what we need to do to continue the amazing uh pace of change we've had, positive pace of change we've seen in math, how we can codify some of those practices. Um we're doing a lot of work about thinking about pathways for students and how we can make those feel more connected and are doing deep
partnership work with um Christiey's team at TDOE to think about how we can better connect pathways to careers so students are able to succeed. Uh but I think ultimately uh we will hope to track data over time, highlight bright spots when we see them at both the
school and district level of districts that are exceeding expectations, exceeding that pace. So we know the places that we can go to to learn. Can can I follow on to your question, Mr. Molinar? Go ahead. Because I had one that was very similar to that. Yeah.
I I think what you're proposing is an excellent way, like you say, to track to make aware. You know, you think of one person in a classroom. I I like that concept. That seems easy to do. But then when you think of, you know, maybe there's 20 people in a classroom, one in classroom, that's 5%. So you go back to
what Dr. Larard was saying, that's a 5% increase. But the key is how do you get there? And you talk about long-term success. How do you define long-term success? Now, this board's mission is prepare students for post-secondary success. Is that is that
what you do? Is long-term success is that they they end up in the workplace with a career or when you talk about how do you define long-term success? Yeah, I think for us, we say success in college, career, and life. So we want students to be able to live choicefilled lives where they are able to take the
path that's best suited to their interests and needs but also results in a living wage a family sustaining wage and an ability for them to be productive members of society. So I think whether that path is directly uh into post-secary to pursue an additional
degree or credential um which for a lot of students is the right pathway or whether that's a pathway into the military or a pathway directly into the workplace but with the information about what their long-term earnings could be, what their potential for additional um
job growth would be. So I think it's around in equipping students with the ability to make choices that will result in a life of economic independence. So So I agree. I think that's what we ought to do is look at the end point. And going back to Mr. Mullen's question,
how do you how do you get there? So is that something where we would look at our curriculum to see if our curriculum is preparing those students for for that success that that type of thing that you're proposing? Yeah, I mean it's a great question. And I think it's something we're doing a lot of thinking about as an organization of
how we can analyze labor market data, labor market needs to see where are the high demand career pathways that have a steady job outlook so that students are not just taking the next step that they'll stay stagnant for 40 years, but that there's an opportunity for them to continue stacking on additional
credentials um growing in their career. So, I think making that information connect from the workforce to post-secary and then even down to high school is the work that we're um working a lot with Christiey's team around. How can you define those pathways better in high school? How can you help students
when they're thinking about post-secary also think about career? Um I often think about my own high school experience. Um and I was a public public school educated. I was always a high achiever. Um I went into college not knowing what I wanted to do. Um, I I
felt like I had plenty of time to explore and I remember having a little panic attack after my first semester of being like, "Oh my goodness, I'm supposed to know what I'm going to be doing for the rest of my life." And so I think uh hope hopefully building a system where students who are currently in high school are going into their next
steps, whatever those may be, whether that's directly into the job market, into the military, into post-secary with a vision for where they want to land and what their options are. and that our advising is increasingly attending to uh to that and and helping them to see those connections. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I
don't think we should lose that site. Yeah. That we want to look at each student and see what helps them get to their pathway. Agreed, Mr. Chair. Mr. Holt, then Mr. Mullen or Mr. Yeah, you still have want to go back. Okay, Mr. Mullen, go ahead.
I'll make Yeah, just one quick comment. Um so just looking at your website uh it looks like there's a lot of people who agree with the objective um a lot of organizations um who have who are steeped in this field and I think you got it looks like you got tremendous
support for the the idea and concept. I'm not seeing a lot of school districts that have signed up at this point. Um so and I'm not I'm not asking this or saying this in a in a critical sense. I'm trying to create some visibility around what you're doing. Yeah. If I'm a superintendent or if I'm
someone who's making decisions around whether or not we choose to engage in this or or sign up on this, what what is the compelling argument that I do? So, yeah, that's a great question. So, I will say we have not focused as much on recruiting individual districts. Um, we
worked with the Tennessee Organization of School Superintendent, so their membership organization, and were able to present to their executive committee and they signed on as a partner. Um and so uh as an individual district, what we would hope is that we could provide um additional data analysis that may be
specific to what you need. We've had some partners ask us, hey, if we wanted to project this out at the school level, could you support us to do that? If we wanted to look at comparisons, uh we had a lot of back and forth as we talked to folks and iterating around what the local dashboards would look like. A lot of districts were like, I would love to
be able to compare my district to another one. And a lot of people were like, I would definitely not like to be able to do that or would not like people to be able to do that. So, I think our hope is we would be able to provide some more customized bespoke data analysis for them. Um, and help them think about strategies, connect them to to resources that could make progress toward the
goals. Yep. Mr. Holt, thank you. So, we as a state board are um undertaking our own strategic planning process and so your timing presenting to us is is very appropriate.
Um, and as I look at the uh TN 2030 key metrics, I think those line up pretty well with our strategic plan and what we have been talking about. I just wanted to sort of put a pin for everyone that you know in the spirit of all rowing
together that as we are refining our own master plan that we are aligning with the work that score and others are doing um so that we don't have um you know aspirations that are not all lined up together and and are across purposes.
So, I I'm I'm not sure um where the best way to kind of make sure that we're lined up as as score is moving forward and as we're moving forward, but I just want to invite that collaboration so that we ensure that that we're doing that. Yeah, thank you for that. I'll add on to that. Uh I strongly agree with that, but we're going to hear in a
second from TEKC their strategic plan here. TDOE has their uh plans. Uh, I've long been a proponent that we align be sure that our plans are well aligned and work together closely to be sure that
when we put our strategic plan together and we work with TDOE and we work with TUCK and other organizations to make sure that we're all in alignment. Mr. Chair. Yes, Mr. Jensen. A question on the the communications.
Yeah. Um, I had involvement probably 10 years ago with East High School when they started a STEM school and one of the real challenges we had and at a granular level was getting the parents to
understand the opportunity. Yeah. I was recently at the Germantown uh superintendent leadership and they were saying parents are now calling and saying what are you doing on career and
technical education and that's in a in a community that uh would probably not be thought of as a place where CTE is going to be important but the parents are asking about it and I think when we look at at University of Tennessee I don't know what the entrance
for the ACT is there but I suspect it's mid 20s. uh University of Memphis has changed theirs to 21 and so there it seems like we have got a enlarging opportunity. We could call it a gap
with kids and postsecary and one of the things that I have felt strongly about is that we have to start with the parents and the children in the sixth, seventh, eighth grade and that surprises people when you tell them
but if If we don't communicate, and this is my question, is from a communication, marketing, whatever word, what are y'all doing to get that message down into parents and
their children and at what level and at what age? Because I think you got to build that into their thinking now, not in the 11th grade. Yeah. You know, so I'm just curious about how that's being addressed. And I'm sure you're all are thinking about it, but I'd appreciate
hearing something on that. Yeah, thank you for that question. I think that's a really great point and I think we have heard traditionally I'm excited to hear that there's been positive um feelings around CTE and and requests for it from parents because I think what we often hear is the opposite of parents who have kind of an
antiquated vision of what CTE education is or what advanced manufacturing is and they picture kids like dirty in a plant floor and they don't understand. it's actually know they're programming the robot that's putting the tool on and um so I I'm glad to hear that there are some changing perceptions around that. I
think that is definitely work that we're thinking through in partnership with TDOE around those high school pathways. How are we improving advising so that not only students but their families are getting um better information about career pathways and how schools are working to meet those. I think TDOE is
also doing some really innovative thinking about how you better define pathways of study in high school around dual enrollment specifically. We have a really robust CTE programs of study that are very well- definfined, but how do you do that for something that may not be a CTE course? And then how are you
giving information to students and families as they as they think about that? I think we've also done some thinking around how we could improve work-based learning offerings. And I think thinking about parent externships could be an interesting thought. I know we've done some thinking as an organization around teacher exterships
and how do you get educators into some of these um high demand career um places to see what it's like to actually do that job because we know that's often who students are going to for advisement is not necessarily their high school counselor but their favorite teacher someone that they respect in the school
building. So how do we get more folks to have that? So I think including parents in the conversation about students careers. Uh I know as a result of the innovative school models grants that TDOE did three years ago now. Um a lot of districts did invest in both career
counselors and also career interest inventories. And so I think improving how we're sharing that information with families because students are often starting doing those career interest inventories when they're in middle school and starting those conversations earlier. Those are a few thoughts that I would have, but I think that's a really good push for making sure that we're
including families in the follow up if I may. So when you look at the parents will hear about it if it's going well. Yeah. Yeah. I mean that's the best message is when there's a program and I think of the
University of Memphis, their high school, they got like 1,500 or 2,000 people on the waiting list to get into that high school into that into that school. Well, there's something going on there that's causing parents to say, "I want my child there." Yeah. And so, part of it is getting the
programs there, getting them robust, making them work. But I think there's also a piece missing in the message about the viability or the desiraability of postsecary that's other than something of four-year college. I'm
sorry to pick on four-year colleges, but I just see, you know, a uh a one of the numbers we saw was 50% of the kid. Well, that we got 50% that we've not done a good service to. Yeah. And that for a long time in Memphis at
least, it was everybody every day collegebound. Well, that's just that's not true. It never was true. Yeah. And maybe that's aspirational, but it doesn't deal with the reality of what our kids and I'm glad we're moving in this direction, but it just still seems
to be there's messaging that's necessary to get to enough people to understand this is the pathway for the future. Yeah. So that's appreciate what y'all are doing. Vice Chair Cobins, thank you. Uh thank you and uh the score
team for your work on this. Um, I participated in the quality quality credentials framework process with Mr. Gentile um over about a six-month period and um I definitely see this as an extension of
of that work or dovetales. Uh couple of points. one um this framework to me is similar to how we
propose standards. So these are basically standards and expectations of what we want outcomes to be for our students. Um, and how that happens in Memphis and Shelby County, how that
happens in Knoxville or Chattanooga or Nashville may look different, right? Similar to how districts take the standards and incorporate their curriculum um appropriately for their particular um student population. So the organizing
principle around having these standards and expectations of outcomes I think is really important because across all of these vast and large institutions we all have our strategic plans but we really at the end of the day are all
working towards that same goal of uh positive student outcomes. Second, um, couple of years ago, we had a presentation by the Department of Labor where they talked about the workforce
particip participation rate and I think the number was that 500,000 Tennessans uh, who are work eligible are not participating. And I've heard that, you know, several times in years since.
And um two things come to mind with that issue. One is how do we stem that tide? Okay, so that's first and foremost. How do we, you know, keep more people from falling into that um that river? And so
I see this as a part of that where, you know, we're making a commitment that you will not leave our learning environment with no options. Yeah. At minimum, you'll have a credential that allows you to go out into the world and pursue your objectives. Now, there's another piece
of that 500,000. There's a whole lot more work that has to be done uh to deal with the f with that population in and of themselves. And I know this doesn't necessarily try to do that, but you know, as you've talked about this and presented this, those things come to mind for me. And I think it's great for
us all to be on the same page, singing from the same hymn book and pushing towards the same outcomes and um working those into our strategic plans which then sends a stronger message across the state uh to the partner organizations
who'll be doing the work, you know, on the ground level. So, thank you all for your hard work and give my best to David and thank you for serving on that committee. I know that was a time commitment. We really appreciate your contributions. Thank you. Dr. Morrison, I just can't uh miss the opportunity
because I hear Mike Edwards like echoing in the back of my head right now because one of the things I appreciate so much about this is how student centered truly the metrics are. I mean I think you know all hopefully districts and state boards and agencies are thinking about how we track progress and you know don't lose
sight of like you know we want to continue to see that trend but I think when you put it in terms of students then the percentages become real and and you also see that it is doable you know one student in every classroom you think about teachers if I'm a district leader like taking this I love the idea that y'all are going to have local dashboards
because I think again the energy behind this hopefully will continue if people really take it and to your point like make it theirs and then connect about the strategies and the things that are working, the bright spots. I mean, you all do an excellent job at SCORE of getting curious about where we see really great success and what's happening there and just getting on the
ground to understand and connect people to those those places of real progress. U but at its core, I just really love that it's about like one student in every classroom. I think that makes it real. It also makes it like become possible when you see that this like that number is one student in every classroom. Yeah. So,
yeah. And I appreciate that like getting curious that that is something that that's always interesting to us when data comes out. We're looking for new ways to cut it and to find surprises. And I don't think this district would mind because their results were wonderful. Uh but the district that had the big jump was Henry County. And that was kind of surprising to us. I don't
I'm I'm like I want to follow up with them and see what are you doing like why did your kids see this huge jump in third grade ELA? Because something they're doing is working. And so it feels like a shared opportunity for us to to learn from the good work that's happening in the field. I think to Dr. Maxwell's earlier point like this is a
journey that we've been on as a state for a long time. We've had really great success. We've been touted as a national leader and we also know that 40% of kids reading is not okay and so um hoping that this will help us to find the bright spots, figure out what they're
doing and replicate those good practices. Thank you. Had one more question come in. U we've got our folks here everybody saying we're doing a strategic plan and that's wonderful and I look forward to it and I just want to
make sure we've got AI in in the mix of really thinking about that because it's coming fast. Mr. Vice Chairman Cobbins and I've watched over the last 10 months in our region this just massive influx of job opportunities
and growth in that area and I just that's one part of it but the other part is how it's going to dramatically shift the way we learn the way we teach and I don't have all the answers but if we're doing strategic plans then that needs to be somewhere in the mix because it's
coming and it's coming really fast. Yeah, I appreciate the board has been really forward thinking in how to incorporate that AI across subject areas and um agree it's a it's it feels like every day there's a new advance that that blows my mind. So agree with that
wholeheartedly. Any other comments? Echo Mr. Jensen's comment and I I feel like a lot of times with with this group that when we talk about AI it shifts to implementation in the classroom how it can make teachers more efficient proper
uses with students which is very very important um but then also like what the jobs of the future are going to be and then how we should if if we are looking forward to what um you said Mr. chairman about, you know, making sure that all students have those post-secondary opportunities, trying our best to look
forward and using all the experts that we can tap into to to what are those going to be in however many years. And we may not be able to predict it, but but we're actively trying to do that so that they don't get there and they've got, you know, the credentials and the jobs of for for the jobs of 2025 instead
of for 2020 2030 and 35 and so forth. Yeah, definitely. Thank you. Thank you so much, Miss Bill. Thank you so much for the time. We have a break. It's 1:39. Let's uh convene in 10 minutes.
two minutes. Two minutes. Hey, Ally, could you tell them out there two minutes so I can get the board members in here? Hey Josh. Josh, can you round them up? Round them up. talking about uh strategic planning.
Sure. Our next item is Tennessee Higher Education Commission Commission's master plan and we are missing Mr. Stephen Gentile, are you gonna speak for him? Can you guys hear me? Uh, he did want to
do the introduction. So, if we just a second. Nathan. Nathan's right here. Mr. Gentile. T Tennessee Higher Education Commission's master plan. It's up to you.
All right, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Um, good afternoon. Transition to talking about another strategic plan here. Uh, I am joined today by um, Miss Paige Elliot. She's our senior director of research and strategy and my chief strategy
officer uh, Amanda Clefane. If I can take a moment of personal privilege, you guys have all gotten to see how awesome and amazing Dr. Victoria Harpool is. Um, she's on Amanda's team as well. We just got back from a conference, the SHIEO policy conference, which was made up of
people from our types of agencies from across the country. And Amanda received what is essentially the industry's MVP award, the David L. Wright Memorial Award. David Wright used to work uh in Tennessee. He's worked at other Shio
agencies as well. um and he head up our last master plan in 2015. It was an honor to see her win that award. So, want to thank you, Amanda, for all the great work you do on behalf of Tennessee. Um yes, snaps around, claps around. Thank you.
Okay, so we're going to go over today um a couple of items. One is going to be the higher education master plan and then to talk about our collegegoing rate as well. Um with regards to the higher education master plan, just some backdrop on this. This is a requirement um that the state has in statute that the Tennessee Higher Education
Commission set the strategic higher education master plan for the state of Tennessee. There's actually a very prescriptive pro process in there um in that statute. There's a master plan review committee that is comprised composed of um
the six presidents of the locally governed institutions, the LGIS, uh the University of Tennessee system, president, the chancellor of Tennessee Board of Regions. It also has on that committee the chairs of both the finance and education committees in both the House and the Senate, the Legislative
Budget Office is on that committee as well, the commissioner of finance and administration, and the controller of the treasury. Am I missing anyone else who's part of that process? Okay. Um and then also our commission much like your body here is ultimately tasked with
approving that strategic master plan. Um so in some ways is a very prescriptive code on exactly who's a part of that process, but we wanted to expand that um and really hear from as many stakeholders as possible in thinking
through our next 10-year strategic plan. Uh we started this process back at the beginning of the year um surveying our commissioners, surveying uh stakeholders from higher education, from state government, identifying what we need to
do and where we need to go on behalf of higher education. Um since then we've held topical work groups that focus on workforce data, defining a northstar goal, um on access and research and data as well. um have had really good
conversations and last week we presented to our commission the outline of where the strategic plan is going and what we've heard from everyone. Um we look forward to having that conversation with you today. And then we have next week another meeting with that that statutory committee I mentioned earlier. And then
our team is going to buckle down and start writing that strategic plan. In October, we're convening all the trustees in the state and the regents from TVR um for an event, a two-day event. And a big topic of that conversation is going to be the strategic plan, then for final
commission approval in November and then launching that going forward. Again, this is a 10-year plan. My hope is that uh we set uh a direction where in 2030 we are updating this plan to in order to
best situate us where we need to be for that last 5 years and to go one step further um to set a northstar goal that's going to be projected for 2040. I think it's really important with higher education that you give yourself as much time as possible um as you're working
with uh ultimately three to five years of making substantial changes for things that will affect education for the next four to five years. So a 10-year plan with a 15-year goal. Next slide please. Um a big topic of conversation and this came
up earlier with scores presentation on the credentials of impact. um uh we mentioned here being a part of that process and identifying uh some concerns that people have with higher education specifically the value of higher education. Now those words themselves
have not been explicitly expressed in our meetings. However, when you start to drill down on what is identified as the problems of higher education, arresting that decline in the perception of the value of higher education is is paramount. Um, we know that Tennessee
needs more, not fewer, more students going into college and getting that credential. Uh, we also know that there are premiums attached to those who graduate with a bachelor's degree, an associates degree, and even those who do not attain that credential. Um, start
but do not attain that credential. Unfortunately, in Tennessee, there is a lot that fall into that first category that some college, no degree. in Tennessee, uh, students who start off at a university who are firsttime
full-time students, just 50% of them are getting a credential in four years. In our community college sector, upwards of a fifth to a fourth of our students uh fail to get to that next semester after starting that first year of community college. Uh, we know that
higher education is a value. We also realize that we can do a lot more to make it even more valuable. Um, Amanda Clefane is going to take the the remainder of this presentation and talk about where our outline is pointing us. Amanda, thank you, Chair Eie, Dr. Morrison, and
members of the board for having us here this afternoon. So, Stephen sort of just laid out the process that we've been going through over the past several months to engage with a wide variety of stakeholders on this master plan. We really had two primary goals as we set
out in this process. One to ensure that this was highly collaborative and had we heard from the various voices that would be not only impacted by but impacting this plan. And second that we ensure that this was a plan that could live on. Not one that we knock out and publish
and then forget about, but one that we're really thinking through and thinking about on a daily basis. I've been grateful um to work with Ally and other members of the board as we've been thinking through this process and recognizing that your group is also going through the same strategic planning process. And so really excited
to share this with you today. What I'm going to do is outline um really how we've organized this outline for our master plan and would really love to hear from you all um as we get through each of what we're calling our cornerstones. So, where I'm going to
start is talking a little bit about our guiding principles. And I was really grateful. I feel like a lot of the discussion that happened following Courtney's presentation just a little bit ago, I think is really resonates with things and conversations that we heard throughout our master planning
process. So what you see before you on this slide and I won't read everything on the slide are a series of guiding principles that we identified. Really the values and beliefs that we think are going to influence and should influence the decisions and actions that we take with this master plan and as this master
plan should evolve over time. We want to ensure that our goals and that our um strategies are ambitious, but that they're also collaborative. Consistency came up as a a big talking point throughout our discussions. really a desire to ensure that while we have been at the forefront in many ways as a
state, we continue to fulfill those duties and responsibilities to our institutions and to our students and families. Innovative, again, another term that I think really recognizes the fact that Tennessee has been um at the front uh of a lot of different policy
initiatives across the country. Student centered. Um, this was raised earlier, uh, and is one that, uh, most of folks as we've gotten feedback really think this ought to be our first guiding principle. You can see there's not really an order to these except that they're in alphabetical order right now, but recognizing that everything that we
should be doing should be student centered when with them in mind. And then that last uh, guiding principle we have up here is understandable. Something we heard a lot about um is that we we really make this system harder than it needs to be both for students and families to navigate, but
also as we think about the multitude of staff that need to help students navigate the system. How can we streamline and simplify some of the things that we do to ensure greater awareness and uh understanding of our system overall? So, it's with these six guiding principles that are kind of
helping to inform and push us forward with our master plan. But what I mentioned before and what I think serve as really some foundations to our plan are our cornerstones. We have three cornerstones and these again those foundational blocks we're really
really organizing our goals or objectives for this strategic plan. I'll talk first through our aligned objective and you've got sort of the statement that we've got under there recognizing that we need a system a higher education system that is better aligned better aligned within the higher
education system and we'll talk a little bit about that but also with our K12 sector and the workforce we heard through various conversations the need to ensure that we have Tennessans that are ready to meet the needs of our state that ensures that we have a more um
aligned system um both with uh employers needs but also with that future workforce things that we don't yet fully even know um are on the horizon. And so we've identified three objectives within this aligned cornerstone that I want to
talk a little bit through. The first is ensuring that we have a more efficient and effective higher education system. This was really in recognition of the fact that students are learning at all parts of their journey. apprenticeships, prior learning,
work-based learning, dual enrollment. There are many ways in which students are coming to higher education with experiences, recognizing that that credit ought to be recognized as we think about students progression towards that degree. And then to Stephven's point earlier about on-time completion,
ensuring that we are really promoting students efficient completion of their degrees. again recognizing those various mechanisms competency based education and prior learning as we think about that and then another topic that has resonated and that I'm confident this
board thinks through a lot is dual enrollment we've had explosive growth in dual enrollment as a state how are we ensuring that those credits are counting towards something meaningful um as a student progresses so again a more efficient and effective system for higher education
continuous this is really in recognition Like I mentioned before that students learning is happening at all times. We have high school students who might not seamlessly enroll or adults who are looking to come back. We need to ensure that there are on and off ramps to
higher education and that students are able to bring their credits with them. And so an idea that was um raised through this process was around a skills inventory. skills is the word it seems of the day as we think about our employers and uh workforce development
areas. And so thinking through how are we communicating um the skills that students are gaining and ensuring that that pathway is one that they can come on and off of throughout their journey. And the last one in this cornerstone that I want to highlight is meaningful
ensuring that uh students can connect their experiences to real world skills. And this again builds off of some of the points I've already made, but really helping to ensure that students know the courses that they're taking have a purpose. We conducted a couple of focus
groups throughout the summer and heard directly from students. A curiosity, why why am I taking this class? This class doesn't seem to make sense for my degree program. Well, I think that is an opportunity for us as we think about how we talk about coursework to better
articulate the skills that students are acquiring and really to grapple with what is necessary um for those degree programs. So I shared with you all a couple of um examples here. You see on the screen in the big circle are cornerstone and then the smaller circles
are three objectives. And then some of the points that I made verbally are really a series of strategies that have been identified. What I'll like what I'd like to point out at this point is that living breathing document that I mentioned at the outset. Those strategies are the things that we expect
to evolve and change over this next decade long cycle. Things that we hope we make significant progress towards and also can and should evolve as the demands of higher education change. So before moving into the next uh
cornerstone, I was going to pause and see what sorts of questions or comments or thoughts that you all had on these objectives. I think you're very clear. Thank you. Okay. I may Oh, yes, Mr. Um, in one of our working groups we had,
uh, it was the same one that Nathan James sat in and and was eloquent as always and thinking about the future of where we need to be. Um, and thank you for that. Commissioner Reynolds, uh, from the Department of Education. Um, this was a big key point for her is how higher education needs to be more
aligned with K12 to your point earlier. Um, and I know that, you know, our relationship with the state board of education has never been stronger. Um, but she absolutely pushed us in a way and said, "We need to hear more from higher ed about where we're coming up short in K12." Um, uh, and oftentimes I
try not to uh, point fingers at anyone because I find oftentimes higher ed points fingers at K12, K12 at higher education. Um, and it could be a circular effect in that way. But it it it dawned on me like okay I need to perhaps lean in more um in certain
conversations and it was it was good to have that um so expressed and that will be a theme in our master plan. Thank you. I I will also say I think it is continue to be important that we look at the endpoint what you're talking about and for the integration the P20
instead of K12 higher ed the workforce. I think this is critical and I think you asked a very key question. and you said why am I taking this course? What's it going to do for me in the f future? I think those are the kind of things we have to ask ourselves. Yeah. Thank you,
Mr. Chair. Yeah, Mr. Mullen. Thank you. Um, I would piggyback on that and just say one of the things that I think is oftentimes lost in these conversations is um, in fact maybe on this slide right here
that you're looking at um, you you know sort of this this focus on future workforce and you know becoming a productive citizen and so forth. All of which are honorable objectives but I think we also need to take into account like what's the quality of life of the students that are coming out of these
programs. not not just what can they earn, not just what their income is. And you know, it's things like learning how to manage their finances. And you know, I know that there's been conversation about that within the K12 sphere, but like like learning learning how to
manage your own personal financial um well-being is I think a very important part of uh not just being a productive contributor in the workforce, but also being able to afford to um you know, feed your family and put clothes on your kids and and and pay for help
pay for their education and support their school. So there's a there's more than just turning out worker bees. There's there's also a quality of life element that that I find to be oftenimes missed in in uh establishing kind of
what those northstar objectives are. Um, so I'd love to hear, you know, as time goes on, um, you know, what what higher education's thoughts would be on that front, which can of course be reverse engineered into the conversations we're having in the K K through 12
environment. Thank you. Um I'll take quickly and then I would ask uh for those who are part of that defining the Northstar goal conversation if they've got any points to add. But this was I think a really key point that was made from the participants in that room again ranging from several higher
education entity representatives uh nonprofit advocacy groups K uh state board and the department of education and others. So again, an intentional mix of folks and they recognized uh while there are yes of course economic benefits, there are also so many other
benefits that we need to be sure we're thinking holistically about those outcomes. And so um something that Stephen raised at the beginning I think is you'll notice we're not giving some sort of specific goal right now and that I think is in recognition of the fact
this this big drive to 55esque goal. Um, and that is because we really want to be thoughtful about what are those multiple measures that we're thinking about in terms of student outcomes and success and how do we ensure that that is in alignment with the direction that we are
moving holistically as a state. Um, so hopefully that partially answers your questions, but I I did want to say if there's others when I when I mentioned about his eloquence, I was actually thinking about that exact comment. Nathan, you made you made a point at that meeting. I hope you remember what it was. Um but we wrote it
down. It's somewhere on our notes. Um can you do you remember what you said about I spoke to that? With your permission, Mr. Chairman. So, one of the points that I made in terms of in terms of K12 and higher ed and how
if if this state is going to stay on the path of improvement and education, then um K12 can't bear the burden alone of explaining all the time why it's necessary to use assessments, right? The
tests and examinations exist, especially when we're talking about end of course exams. They exist because higher education was facing a situation where people would come there with an A+ in their physics class or in their chemistry class or whatever class and
then not be prepared for the freshman level work. And so that's something that the Department of Education, this board, and others have had have worked on over time and that we absolutely need cover on. At the same time, the the partnership that we've had on the early
postsecary opportunities to refine those things to be uh as as useful as they can be, the dual enrollment programs and to to look at those as not not just the province of the student that's going to get a bachelor's degree no matter what,
but of the student who 20 years ago would have gone to the vote school and is now going to come out with half of or a whole TCAT credential. and and ready to go. The the time of working separately is is behind us and the
process there um that I was very privileged to to take part of. Oh my gosh, it just it sung to my heart because it it wasn't it wasn't the two parts of education looking at each other over a great chasm. It was an
understanding that every bit of this is about providing people who who yes are able to to make their living but more importantly all this in terms of its service to the state is about producing people who are able to continue this
business of self-governance and that necessarily involves uh independence economically it involves independence of thought and and I think it it It was one of the most fun days that I've had with you all especially. So,
thanks Stephen. Moving now to our second cornerstone, achievable. And I've made this point already, but we need to make higher education more achievable by making it more accessible, affordable, and supported. Again, uh something that we heard through all of our conversations
is that this is harder than it needs to be. there are a lot of opportunities for us as a state to help improve accessibility earlier. Um the point around advising was raised. Thinking through how are we providing students with more information
um throughout and before they are necessarily making that decision about higher education, removing information barriers, simplifying our communication strategies. Um I think hopefully folks on this um board are familiar with this most recently launched pilot we have around direct admissions is a great
example I think of really getting information directly into the hands of students in order to help them be successful. Consistency in our language was also raised. How are we communicating with students and staff and others and leveraging tools like college for TN to
support them in terms of affordability? Uh Tennessee has a lot to be proud of in terms of affordability. When you look at a lot of the measurements, we are among the top states in terms of funding per full-time equivalent student. And we've also had some landmark uh financial aid
investments with the Tennessee Promise and the Tennessee Reconnect over time. And so, while higher education has become more affordable, we really need to focus on maintaining that affordability as well as those investments in higher education in particular. And so thinking about um
both those lenses with which we have a lot of positive uh foundation to build on, but also recognizing that basic needs remains a huge barrier for a lot of our students in terms of enrollment and higher education. There's some great
um pilots and programs out there now to better support and better understand quite frankly the scope of these challenges for our students. And so that is one of the strategies that's been highlighted as a need um for us as we think about supporting more students to that finish line as Stephen mentioned before. And then finally, the third
objective in this uh cornerstone is a more supported higher education system. And this is again recognizing um a desire that for Tennessee students, the biggest challenges are ones that are occurring in the classroom, not outside of the classroom. And so thinking about how we support students through academic
advising, coaching, and some flexibility as is necessary for students who may need to be part-time or working or parents. And so thinking through the support systems that we have um both for our students as well as for our institutions um and getting students
across that finish line. So these are a series of objectives and again a variety of strategies that we've been thinking about as we desire to make the higher education system more achievable in Tennessee. And I'll move now to the last one. Um, and again, if I had a favorite, I think
it might be agile. Um, a desire to really improve the agility of our system. And that's through a few different um, objectives that are outlined on this slide. But, uh, as the coordinating body for higher education, we've had some pretty substantive momentous changes in governance in
Tennessee since the last master plan was released in 2015. Stephen mentioned the focus act gave independent governing boards to our six locally governed institutions. That has truly changed the landscape in terms of how we as the coordinating body need to think about
bringing our campuses together. Something that was shared earlier that I was really excited to hear um was talking about the best practices and how are we amplifying and sharing those stories amongst our institutions. this uh entire cornerstone is really
focusing in on how do we as a system operate better to meet those needs. And so the first uh objective is really helping to ensure that we improve the conditions and are responsive to changing needs and that's really a more proactive higher education system. And
this really involves some intentionality around how we're gathering perspectives. Uh you know we mentioned a survey at the beginning of this master planning process. How are we going to be regularly engaging students and the higher education community to ensure that we are meeting the needs of today
but also preparing for those needs of tomorrow. Something that uh we're contemplating and really excited about is the idea of a president's council. I mentioned now we have eight governing bodies in higher education in Tennessee. Um and those are just our public institutions in specific. How can we be bringing those
groups together to really help share best practices, understand one another's challenges, and help to make solutions for those a more coordinated higher education system. Uh just before this meeting actually, I was gathering with some um T-C staff to talk a little bit
about the breadth of higher education. We spend a lot of time talking about our public institutions in the state and that's I think very important but there's a breadth of institutions that are offering post-secondary training to Tennessans and beyond the Tennessee borders. How do we ensure that we're
capturing the breadth of those institutions and engaging those perspectives through this conversation especially as those are also institutions preparing students to meet those workforce needs. Again, bringing folks together, using that convening authority and
responsibility as a higher education commission to hear those stories, identify um issues and challenges and identify problem solving together. Doing so too in a way that is productive um on-time graduation rate has been raised
as an example that immediately I think can sometimes cause uh negative reactions. How are we going to really address the fact that we can we have a lot of opportunity to improve our on-time graduation rates across the higher education sector and how can we do that authentically and really uncover
the challenges that our institutions are facing and help them find solutions. And then finally uh how do we have a more datainformed higher education system? We're very fortunate in the state to have a robust um higher education data system. But I think we really want to
think through how are we using this information to identify some of the problems and challenges that we're facing and then work together to resolve those. uh a model that's been used locally at least within the TEK and higher education system uh most recently has been this critical data issues
resolution framework and really bringing together folks from all parts of the higher education enterprise who contribute data and really help us understand what exactly are we trying to do with this information and how are we going to perhaps collect or evolve that collection to then meet those needs. I
think in a very similar way bringing folks together again to talk as an example about on-time graduation rate and help us um strive to understand uh the challenges faced there. And so I want to close um really quickly with
sort of where we are in terms of what's next. So what you've heard now is an outline of our higher education strategic plan. Uh Stephen mentioned, we will be bringing together our statutory committee members on Monday next week to really talk through this plan, but also
to take it a step further um to prioritize and then also to determine shared ownership. Uh while this this is a strategic plan for higher education in Tennessee. This is not Tekk strategic plan. And so what's really critical is that we have our campuses recognizing
themselves in this plan and seeing where they are going to move the needle forward. A a next critical step with that will then be bringing those folks together to identify and collect measures. Something that you probably noticed in the various objectives that I shared is that there's
not a specific number associated with that. And that's uh partially by design right now to really think through how are we going to work with our campuses who have the real- time data and are thinking about these issues on a day-to-day basis to inform not only what they're collecting or what they're
reporting on at a local level and scaling that statewide. And then um really a big thing once uh we get through uh our approval processes in November will be to disseminate this plan widely ensure that folks are aware of it how they fit in it and uh how we
will be moving us forward. Those are the major points that I wanted to make this afternoon relating to our strategic plan and I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. Thank you. Questions Mr. Chairman? Yeah, Mr. Mullen. Thank you. Um, if you had to identify
one or two areas where you think there's the highest risk of misalignment between the work that you're doing and and the work that the state board is doing, for example, what would those be? Highest risk like like help us help us to kind of
highlight that when we re review that collaborative effort. Yeah. Um I think what remains a really big opportunity is is in that alignment cornerstone for us is around the relationship and the connection you know the expansion of early postsecondary
opportunities in our K12 spaces I think remains is really exciting both for exploration but also preparation for students and I think there's a lot of opportunity for us to be sure that those credits meaningfully transfer for students to a post-secary institution
and that um in that same vein I think that career advising conversation is one that I think can be very helpful. You know, it's difficult to ask an 18-year-old to know what they're going to do with the rest of their lives, but how can we better inform them of some of those decisions as they're preparing
that? So, those might be my two immediate thoughts, but it's something I definitely want to give a little bit more thought to, too. Am I understanding you correctly to to say that the dual enrollment specifically as kind of a bridge program would be an example of making sure that
there's credit alignment etc. Dual enrollment I think uh expansion of industry certifications and workbased learning. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Dr. Jindel, if I can Mr. Chairman add to that I mean the first presentation we heard today um from Dr. Lared uh about the TCAP
results. The high school was it the aggregate uh rate was 40% or so for high schools. Um and we're going to have a conversation here about collegegoing rate here in a second and our collegegoing rate in the mid50s students
going on to college and just like that gulf right there of students who may not necessarily prepared for college but a lot of them are going on to college. um that I think speaks to where we just got to be ever vigilant on being aligned. And so it's less about policy specifically like dual enrollment. I
agree there's a lot of opportunity to have a strategic vision for dual enrollment um and align on there. But just also recognizing that the state needs more people than post-secary, maybe not in a four-year university um but certainly in technical training as well. Um just how can we work together
to ensure that students are prepared for the challenge ahead and that's where the alignment is going to be. I think this is an excellent discussion and I'm really glad to see uh our organizations working together that uh Dr. Morrison or Nathan, you know, sit uh
as an exopicio member on the board and part of this and you're working with Alli Reed. I think that's critical to be sure that we have the alignment. So, thank you. Thank you. I'm going to turn it now over to Paige to talk about college going. Thank you, Amanda. Thank you, Chairman
Eie, and the board um for inviting us today. Uh to just really tie these two pieces together, you know, we've talked about multiple measures in the strategic plan. Um we heard from SCORE about their Tennessee 2030 goals and so we're going to dig into one such measure um actually
just released earlier this week and that is uh Tex's collegegoing rate. The Tennessee College Going Report is an annual publication by Tekk that tracks data on Tennesseee's public high school graduates who seamlessly enroll immediately after completing high school
in post-secary education. This includes students who enroll at Tennessee's public universities and community colleges of course, but also Tennessee colleges of applied technology as well as outofstate and private institutions. um thanks to THECK's extensive student information system that Amanda
referenced earlier as well as data from the National Student Clearing House. Um and so today I'd like to share a few brief highlights from this year's report which focuses on the class of 2024. Um of course there is much more in the report and like I said that just came out this week and so I will be sure you
have a link to that at the end as well. So part of this year's report highlights some important work done by the Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education or Witchie. They have a project called Knocking at the College Door and this is uh Witchie's venue for providing updates on projections of the
number of high school graduates that each state will see in the coming 15 years. In their December 2024 report, Witchie estimates that while most states will see a decline in the number of high school graduates who are available to enter the post-secary pipeline, Tennessee will actually lead the nation
with a 15% growth in the number of high school graduates. This nationwide decline in the number of high school graduates is due to shifting demographics as well as birth rate declines and has been come to be known as the enrollment cliff and we will see 38 states projected to see fewer high
school graduates by the year 2041. However, according to those same witchie projections, Tennessee will be insulated from this enrollment cliff. In fact, Witchie projects that Tennessee will see upwards of 10,000 additional high school graduates per cohort by 2041.
Importantly, this does include both public and private high school graduates. And cumulatively, this amounts to 1.3 million additional high school graduates between the classes of 2024 and 2041. While of course this is reassuring news
for Tennessee higher education, it's important to stay focused on ensuring that these graduates are able to follow the right postsecary path for them. Other states who are hurting for enrollments of traditional age students may increase their recruitment efforts in states like Tennessee. And
Tennessee's institutions will need to be prepared to help students understand their options for post-secary education to understand what it would look like to stay in state in order for Tennessee to capitalize on this potential pool of new enroles. And so with that as a little bit of
context, um, as you all are probably very familiar, we do begin to see these witchy projections for growth in high school graduates play out for the class of 2024. The total class of 2024 grew over to over 73,000 students. And as
again, I'm sure you know, the state high school graduation rate increased to 92.1%. This meant that the class of 2024 had a record number of high school graduates who could enroll in post-secary, which brings us to the collegegoing rate for this class of 2024.
This is a measure again of the proportion of students in each public high school graduating cohort that seamlessly enroll in post-secary education. Um, more precisely, these are again these public high school graduates in the Tennessee Department of Education's 9th grade cohort who earn a
regular high school diploma and enroll at a post-secary institution in the following summer or fall after their high school graduation. And again, importantly, this includes all students who enroll anywhere. So, we've got again Tennessee's public institutions, the Tennessee Colleges of
Applied Technology, as well as private and out of state institutions. So the collegegoing rate for the class of 2024 fell slightly to 56%. However, again because of the size of the graduating class, this means that the number of students enrolling in
post-secary education did increase to 36,610 students. Given the changes that we saw with the 2023 2024 free application for federal student aid or the FAFSA, this collegegoing rate is promising. Um there
were many challenges was associated with students ability to apply for federal financial aid in a timely and seamless manner that this class confronted and Tennessee really stepped up and facilitated an extensive FAFSA frenzy campaign last summer which paid off in
consistent completion rates of the FAFSA and again in large numbers of students successfully metriculating into post-secary education. Another important set of metrics tracked in the collegegoing rate report is collegegoing gaps across demographic groups. And so here you'll see the
collegegoing rate for male students in bright blue, that line on the bottom, compared to collegegoing rate for females in darker blue at the top. Females have consistently higher collegegoing rates than their male counterparts. And this gender gap was at its widest in 2020 at 14.6 six
percentage points and it has narrowed slightly in the years that followed. While both groups saw slight changes between the class of 2023 and the class of 2024, this gender gap did remain stable at 13.7 percentage points.
Here we also examine collegegoing gaps by the four race and ethnicity groups that we capture in our reporting. We see that changes in collegegoing rate were not distributed evenly amongst these groups as the largest student groups group white students who are shown in the bright blue at the top of the graph
make up most of the collegegoing rate and they saw a point4 percentage point decline in collegegoing students in the other reporting group which includes American Indian or Native Alaskan Asian Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander and multi-racial students
generally mirror white students collegegoing patterns and again saw a 3 percentage point decline in their CGR. Collegegoing rates for black or African-American students, which are shown on the gray line in the middle of the graph, decreased.5 percentage points
over the last year. This widened the gap between white and black collegegoing rates to 13.6 percentage points. And then finally, Hispanic and Latino students collegegoing rate is shown in light blue at the bottom with a 35 38.5%
collegegoing rate for the class of 2025, I'm sorry, 2024. Notably, this demographic group is one that is growing within the high school graduate cohorts. And the gap between white and Hispanic students collegegoing widened again to 23.1 percentage points,
marking the largest gap observed in the 5-year period presented here. And then finally, we also examine disparities in collegegoing by economic disadvantage status. Um, again, I'm sure you all are familiar with this, but this is a designation used at the K12 level
to indo indicate socioeconomic status. This includes students who are in foster care, who are homeless, migrant, or runaway students, and students who are directly certified by the Department of Human Services as participant in state uh or federal income or nutrition
programs. So you'll see here that students who are economically disadvantaged enroll seamlessly in post-secary education at much lower rates than students who are not in this category. Additionally, the gap in collegegoing rates between these two
groups of students peaked at 28.2% for both the classes of 2020 and 2021. This likely reflects the disperate pandemic impacts on these two groups of students. While the gap narrowed to 26 percentage
points in 2023, it widened slightly again to 26.2 percentage points for the class of 2024, ultimately leaving economically disadvantaged students with a collegegoing rate of only 38.7%. So despite some post-pandemic improvement for these students, a really
considerable gap remains. I will leave it there. Um, but as previously mentioned, there's much more to this report, including some recommendations for what higher education should be doing to respond to these data. Um, I encourage you to read the full report as well as accompanying
uh resources on our website and the code on the screen. We'll take you all there, but we are happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Questions? Mr. Jen, your graph shows the entrance of uh students in freshman year, whatever
it might be. What do you have numbers on what happens after that year? Uh because I, you know, while we got this number going in, how many are actually sustaining and reaching a certification or graduate or or whatever. Do you have those numbers? Is that something worth
hearing about? Yeah, great question. So yes, we do track that um in the form of our first-time freshman cohort graduation rate which is in our factbook. Um as Stephen referenced earlier for that fouryear out from that entrance um that is about 50% statewide but also varies
pretty drastically depending on the institution that they go to. Um we do not track that back to their high school. Um but it is something that we have thought about understanding what that pipeline looks like for students depending upon where they're starting.
Um, and I think again speaks to academic preparation and all of the pieces that we need to think about as we're thinking about this coordinated aligned higher education um, experience. So you're just for clarification, you're saying if you have a student in two in enter one of them will make it
within four years. Correct. Okay. Follow-up question on um, first year students, first generation students. Do y'all track do you track those numbers as well? Um, yes and no. Um, in a few places we
have it. Um, some of the trickiness that we've discovered recently is having a better understanding of what first generation means to a student. Um, particularly in the state of Tennessee when we do have um these TECATs and these other like industry credentials,
understanding how a student whose parent has that type of credential understands themselves. do they think of them as first generation because their parent didn't go to a traditional college experience um is a little bit tricky and so there's some variation in how our institutions measure that or capture
that across time. So it's just quite not as reliable of a measure um and we also see that it is really highly correlated to that economic disadvantage status. Um and so there are lots of different ways to slice the pie to kind of get at the same sort of concept. And then just one more comment. Um, University of
Memphis identified 3,000 uh, students that were 30 hours or less from graduation. And part of the reason was they ran out of all kinds of funding. And the the most one of the most interesting was a
lady who's 76 years old who they made some funds available through to address those 3,000. I'm just curious if we could perhaps give some thought to that about how we think about those people
who are within 30 hours or some number that we could really I mean that that's a lifechanging event for a lot of people and they have given up I think in a lot of times. So just I'd appreciate you thinking about that. Yeah. So I'll I could go on for quite
some time but I'll be brief. We actually have a research project right now with an organization called Ithaca SNR. um and they have been helping us do a community of practice with some of our campuses around adult learners and that's exactly where they've gotten to is how do we um identify who those students are who are very close to the
finish line and what they need to get there and so um I won't say too much more because we are in pretty early stages but I suspect that there will be some exciting uh developments in that area coming out of Tekk soon. Thank you very much Mr. H. Thank you. So the forecast is that um
we're going to have more as a percentage based growth in high school graduates than any other state in the country over the next 15 or so years. But then our collegegoing rate has declined. I mean it's went up a little bit since the pandemic, declined a little bit again
last year, but it's still pretty far below the pre pandemic numbers. So, we have this this big group of future high school graduates, and it seems like we're sort of at this new plateau below the collegegoing rate that we had in the
past. And that seems like a an opportunity, but also like a sort of a dangerous confluence of trends if our objective is to, you know, get all of these as many of these students as can as we can into the collegegoing path. Um, so what what what's the strategy of
the you know what have we learned from other states potentially that that have higher collegegoing rates so that we can take advantage of the fact that we have this large influx it appears coming down the pike of um high school graduates to get more of them into these programs
that we think they should be in. Um I'll start by saying it can be a really stubborn metric to move. We did see some pretty substantive jumps um in increase in collegegoing rate with the introduction of Tennessee Promise. A big part of that being the communication
campaign. But uh one thing I'm going to highlight and then I'm actually let Paige speak a little bit more to it has been um this recent pilot around direct admissions. You know, really helping simplify the information barriers that students face. I'll let her talk a little bit about that.
Yeah. So, in short, the direct admissions pilot will be an experiment where a student will get a letter that says, "These colleges want you. They don't have to apply. There's no application fee. All they have to do is it will come with a QR code. They'll scan it and say, "Yep, I'm in." Um, and
we are super excited about what this will mean for students and the fact that we are taking the first proactive step. Uh, the student doesn't have to go out searching. They don't have to understand what might be a good fit. they don't have to understand where they would qualify for admission. We are going to
take the information that we have in our system already and we are going to do the outreach to start that process. And so what that does is again for these first generation students whose parents maybe have never gone through this process. Um for the students um in
communities that are underresourced or traditionally have not had a lot of access to higher education, this is showing up in the mailbox and taking that first step and all the student has to do is respond. And so we are really excited to see what the results of that look like. It's proven very successful in other states that have undertaken
similar things. And then um to be again brief, but I will add the other element that we are excited to be piloting in the state of Tennessee is a financial aid offer alongside that letter. So, not only these institutions want you, but also here is a dollar figure of how much
you will qualify for in state financial aid uh through Tennessee Promise through the Hope Scholarship to help support that journey. And so, not only are we answering the sort of logistical and paperwork question for students on the front end, we're also telling them a little bit about how to solve the
financial problem. And so, we're really hopeful that that will um propel the collegegoing rate in really drastic ways. How large is that pilot program? So, uh, we have randomized across every high school in the state of Tennessee. And so, approximately 40,000 students will get a letter offering direct admissions.
And then is there data from other states on to Mr. Jensen's point on on the persistence then of the students who are receiving those in in following through and graduating? Great question. Uh, my team and I were actually just discussing this this morning. I'm not aware of any off the top of my head. For the most part, I
think what we see is that initial bump in the enrollment and then we would expect a directly admitted student and a traditionally admitted student to have the same chances of success. But it is something that we are interested in um learning about more from other states and then again continuing that research
to answer those questions as well in Tennessee because I wonder if if it could be helpful to have some persistence coaching or or saying that's coupled with the the funding with the direct admission if we know this is a population that historically has been less likely to metriculate. Right. And I think that's where a lot of
the other strategies Amanda mentioned um in the master plan come into play to ensure our institutions are ready and able to accept these students to support them to get them through across the finish line. It's not just about getting them in the door initially. We also have to get them across the stage with a credential. Thank you.
Add a couple of questions. Um, as we look at the college growing rate, that's for all colleges that included TCATs and two-year. Have you looked at it specifically college and universities versus community colleges, two-year
colleges and TCATs, and how has that changed over time? I would assume that with the emphasis on TCATs across Tennessee, there was probably a more significant increase in that area. But do you have that data? Yes, I do. I did pull it up. it is in the report. Um about 75% of the students
who enroll stay instate at a public institution. Within that we have seen um increases in the TCATs over time about just short of 10% of the students who enroll again at an in-state public institution or going to a TCAT and that is up from 6 and a half% 5 years ago. Um
so that's really where we're seeing a lot of growth. And then um in the UT sector as well. I think that's interesting to note. Uh, also when you look at your gender gaps of college going, what about completion? Is it still that wide of a gap in
completion or does that narrow or what? There is a gap. I'm not sure off the top of my head how wide, but we can figure that out. Thank you. Other questions? Yes, Dr. Gentile. So, follow up on a couple of items here. Um to the point about direct admissions
successful in other states uh and that persistence part of the part of what I I'm I find intriguing about this project is that uh Tennessee Promise did see a big jump in college going and students knew that they can get tuition free education at a community college or a TCAT. Um something that we're hoping to
see with direct admission is um perhaps addressing what they call in the field undermatching where students don't know that they could have gone to perhaps a university that's more suited for what they need to do. Um and they go to a different school and it doesn't work out for them and they drop out. Um, so
there's a chance that this direct admission work and we have about 20 universities who are signed on for this and all the TCATs and all the community colleges that can better place students in a in a program that's right for them as well. Um, second about that decline in college going that we saw. There's an
appendix B I believe part of the college going rate um where we worked with Dr. Celeste Kurthers a researcher economic education researcher out of UT Knoxville that gets to the why behind that decline and a lot of it and correct me if I'm wrong um was because of the tight labor
market at that time they were able to actually make some linkages in Tennessee but also in the country a big contributing factor to that declining collegegoing rate was just that students can go straight from high school and earn a decent living as that economy as
it inevitably will tight goes the opposite direction that might lead to a higher college going rate. Again, we're not hoping for that being the cause, but it's a possibility. Vice Chair Cobbins, just curious, it may not, but I'm just
wondering, so with the um sort of the the roll back of DEI initiatives, does that complicate your ability to glean from data, these disparities around race, ethnicity, gender,
um that you have here, and metriculation and those other factors. We collect this information around race, ethnicity for students and continue plan to continue to report on those outcomes um in both this collegegoing rate report
but also our fact book is probably the other place where we would see most of those firsttime freshman persistence and completion rates. So universities still have the ability to collect data garner all that and and we will continue to collect that.
That's great. Thank you. And I I'll just add to that actually news out of the Department of Education, the US Department of Education is that um student institutions are going to be required to track data disagregated by race um and gender and submit it to the feds. So we'll still continue on it. It
does of course alter our recommendations on on how to address it. Um uh and instead talk about more like like direct admission. Every student is getting a direct admission letter. That's for all students. um identifying those strategies uh certainly to help with the economically disadvantaged students so
that they know um what they're getting. Thank you very much. I have an answer to your earlier question. Okay. Um the graduation rate for female students in the 2018 cohort at six years out was 53% and for male students was 46.2%. So about a 6.8 percentage point
gap. So narrower um but certainly still persistent gaps. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you very much. Very interesting data. Thanks for having chairman. If I can just one more thing I want to add to this and this could be a call back to the score presentation um about this general success measure. We
it would be great if we can track how many students are getting apprenticeships. Um the data is lacking there right now. It' be great if we could track the amount of students going into the military. We don't have access to that. A new feature to this one um because they're not technically collegegoing. They're college uh went.
what I said in my findings, there are about a hundred students who got a college credential via dual enrollment who did not then go on for further education. It doesn't really affect the overall rate that much, but we're going to be keeping track of that number as the years go by. Good. Great.
Very good data. Thank you. Next item, new charter school responsibilities for the state board of education. Miss Ellie Reid. Good afternoon. Alli Reid, director of engagement and accountability for the board, speaking with you today about some recent legislative changes that
have informed several of the items that you'll see before you tomorrow regarding charter schools. Before jumping into all of those details, I want to remind us about some important definitions so we're all speaking the same language here. Charter schools, when we're talking about charter schools, we're
talking about public schools in Tennessee. They are operating under the terms of a charter agreement that is also in accordance with several of the requirements that our traditional public schools follow as well as state and federal law. A charter school
authorizer. When we say authorizer, we're referring to a local board of education, the Tennessee public charter school commission, or remaining still the achievement school district that makes decisions about approval of a charter school renewal, revocation, and
does some ongoing oversight and has responsibilities there. The achievement school district, just to note, has currently two schools remaining in their portfolio, and they will be suns setting in the 2627 school year. a charter school sponsor. This is a proposed
governing body that's filing an application to open a charter school to an authorizer. And then that governing body, when we say uh that phrase, we're referring to the organized group who operates the public charter school. And they're responsible for key decisions
such as budgeting, curriculum, and operations of the school. to get a little bit more specific about charter schools and some of the key differences and similarities from our traditional public schools is that that governing
body is making some of those decisions that your traditional local board of education would make for their direct run or their traditional public schools. Charter schools, however, are still required to teach the same state standards, to hire licensed educators,
to meet the state's minimum instructional days, administer the same state assessments as our traditional public schools. And they are also held to the same state accountability measures as well as federal. And what's different here is that charter schools
then have an additional set of accountability measures that are written into their charter agreement. So they actually have additional accountability metrics than our traditional public schools. And we'll talk more about that in a few moments.
So why the need for the change? This last legislative session, public chapter 275 was signed into law and this did kind of three key points that we'll get into more detail next. The first is to
establish a replication application and authorize the Tennessee public charter school commission to promulgate rules regarding replication process. It also allows in circum certain circumstances a charter school to apply directly to the
charter commission to open a new school and it makes various changes to the charter school responsibilities among state agencies which is a lot of what's reflected in the proposed changes on first reading tomorrow. So to get into some more detail about each of these
charter school replication first and foremost when we say replication I'm referring to specifically uh the creation of one or more charter schools that utilize the same academic focus of an existing charter school operated by a
sponsor or governing body. So for example, an academic focus could be something like a college preparatory program or monasteri. And so this is a governing body that's currently operating a charter school in Tennessee that's looking to replicate that same
academic model. It doesn't have to be in the same community. It doesn't have to be the same grades. Uh but it is the same academic model. And so what's changing here is that we now are in law allowing a governing body to apply after
one year at a minimum uh to replicate a current school and that is to replicate it directly with their existing authorizer or to request to replicate directly with the charter commission. It also now requires the
state board to develop the replication application and we'll talk more about that in a few moments and gives that rulemaking authority to the commission to uh define their process for replicating or reviewing those
replication applications. The second key point that I highlighted initially is this there are now establishment of direct pathways to the charter commission. So the Tennessee uh public charter school commission was
established in 2020 nope 2019 and then really got going in 2020. Um, and you might remember that the state board had several of those responsibilities such as hearing charter school appeals and overseeing or authorizing some charter schools that moved over to the charter
commission. There was not a direct pathway uh except for going through an appeal process. And so now this legislation has created three different options for applying directly to the charter commission. The first one that you see on the screen has a lot of text,
so I apologize in advance for that, but it is pretty meaty and there's a lot of important key points in here. So, I didn't want to try to summarize it. Um, but essentially what you're seeing here is that beginning this uh this summer, effective immediately, it is not
retroactive, but moving forward, if the charter commission has overturned a local board of education's decision to deny an application on three separate occasions within a three-year consecutive period of time, then the
next five years, immediately following that date of that third overturn decision, that any uh sponsor seeking to establish a charter school in that LEA may choose to apply directly to that LEA
or apply directly to the commission. If that is not triggered again over the course of those five years, then it's only for those five years and then it goes back to only applying directly to the LEA. But that is really some important details in there and a new
direct pathway that gets triggered in this kind of three overturn decisions over a three-year period of time. The second direct p direct pathway to the charter commission is if you're a public institution of higher education that you're seeking to open a charter
school, you can apply directly to that local board in which you intend to operate in the geographic uh location or directly to the charter commission. And then a governing body seeking to replicate, as we were just talking about, an existing school, you have the
option to apply directly to your authorizer if that is that local board of education in which you operate your existing school or directly to the charter commission. That's a lot of information. So, let me pause here. Any questions on that?
I guess I did a good job. Okay. The third piece to highlight is this change in state agency responsibilities. And so if we think about first why why is this happening? Why are there changes to responsibilities for our across our three state agencies? And I'm referring
to the department of education, the state board, and the charter commission. We think about what's changed over the last several years. And I think that the first and foremost, the addition of the authorizer evaluations is a big driving factor for this. The state board is now
responsible and has been for the last several years in evaluating authorizers and there are several state documents that authorizers are required to use which we in turn are assessing to what extent you're implementing and with quality and is it effective you're
implementing these required documents and so I think that the key point here and the reason for why these shifts is really thinking about streamlining that process just makes the most sense if we are evaluating on the back end how effective If you are in using those required documents then we should be the
ones also responsible for on the front end developing and monitoring those documents as well. So on the screen you see quite a list of different documents that have shifted now from the department of education to the state board in terms of ownership.
As this law passed and became effective July 1, we've been doing a lot of work to update the state board's website, which you see a nice screenshot here of, uh, to reflect these changes to rebrand and move these documents over from the Department of Education to the state
board. And, um, I'm happy to share that the majority of these documents were live on our website on July 1st. There are a few key foundational documents however that will be updated in the coming months or will be available on the website in the coming months um that
are still going through a larger redesign. Most of these documents were simply rebranded, updated and added to our website. Uh but the charter application and the performance frameworks which I'll talk more about in a moment was already in the process of
going through a larger update and redesign. And so we are still working through that and we'll see later this month as well as in next month where those documents are then added. Did you have a question? Mr. Chairman, Mr. Melan,
I'll start with just saying I know you wear many hats and this is a big one that you that you wear uh and you've done an incredible job of um navigating this, updating it, feeding into the decision making dialogue, etc., etc. Um, so I think you're probably the best
suited to appine on this. What do you think the effect of this is going to be? Are we going to have more charter applications? Are they going to be more quickly processed and returned? Are there going to be some other implications that I haven't referenced?
Um, I think two things come to mind first for me. One is just if I think about where we've where we've been in the process of our authorizer evaluations, we've really seen tremendous improvement across all of our
districts who are authorizing charter schools. We started in a place where not everyone was speaking the same language. And after two years, we all were basically on the same page talking about the same things, having the same foundational documents in place. And now we're really leaning more into quality. And I think that that quality oversight
is really important as well as authorizers are making decisions on on these applications. And so that can lead to uh higher quality options for students. So that's first and foremost. Um I think when it comes to the application and us having ownership of
the application now uh there is a real opportunity to have um maybe more applications but I would say stronger applications as well. Uh I think that's more of the goal is having stronger applications on the front end
than it is having more. Uh, and so I think that a lot of the streamlining that we've been working on in the charter application itself is really going to lead to that. Thank you again for all the work you're doing on this. I know that it's uh it has been a big lift and there's been a
tremendous amount of change and you've navigated it just so adeptly and I appreciate that. Thank you. So I mentioned the charter school application redesign that we we've been working on. Um, and I want to say especially a thank you to the Department
of Education and that team who had uh prior to this law changing, had made some real efforts and taken strides in using some grant dollars that was for technical assistance to prioritize these updates. Uh, and so we were really appreciative of being part of that work
and then taking it over, but having the dollars to bring in some outside partners in actually making these updates to these documents. This slide shows you a reminder of what the charter application cycle entails. It's a lengthy one. It actually begins December
3rd each year with a letter of intent and it follows all the way through an initial application round, potentially an amended application round, then potentially beyond that an appeal and that can end in October of the following year. So it is a long process for
actually reviewing and approving charter applications. And where we are landing now, the state board's ownership in this process is with the letter of intent designing or rather being uh responsible for developing that document as well as the application materials and the
scoring rubric. All of which are critical and required documents for not only applicants but also for authorizers. And again, to your point, Mr. Mullenhau, really streamlining our process and ensuring that there's high quality throughout the entire process.
The application redesign, as I've been mentioning, uh really started last year. Um I could say it's been longer than that, but we've really been working on it very uh intentionally since 2024 with the goals of streamlining the application materials themselves,
eliminating unnecessary administrative burdens. I'll tell you that document just kept getting added on. uh more and more questions and um and pages and attachments and it was it was becoming very cumbersome. Um as well as building in some additional supports to increase
quality. We had a scoring rubric that um could be interpreted very differently from one person to another had a lot of opportunity for subjectivity and some of the work that we've been doing in that document alone I think is really critical in having the same conversation at the local level as well as the state
level upon appeal. And what does this actually mean? This criteria here or this question, what are we looking for in the answer? And uh what does that mean? So they're all speaking the same language as many people who are reviewing applications do not have direct charter experience. Um and so
getting everyone on the same page. We're really been intentional about those updates in the scoring rubric as well as in the application itself. really thinking about at this moment in time knowing you have probably a year of going through the process and then you have another year before you actually
open the school. What do you need right now at this point in the process for us to really determine are you ready to move forward to the next step and thinking critically about the questions that we're asking? Are we getting at that critical information? So, um I'm
happy to say that we are almost ready to release the updated application that will be available on our website later this month and have been planning trainings not only for interested applicants but also for authorizers and thinking about adjustments for for them
to just continue to be uh having a high quality application review process. The other critical foundational document that the state board is now responsible for is the performance framework. And you may remember we've had lots of conversations about this document
particularly most recently when we were thinking about opportunity public charter schools and how a authorizer can hold those schools accountable. Um and so on the slide here you see this um graphic depicting the cycle of effective authorizing and our authorizer
evaluations hit on all of these areas. Um and and really this is meant to kind of show an idea of what does authorizing entail and that it is a cycle. It is something where not only at the authorization
process where that work really begins, but moving into contracting and the authorizer's responsibility of oversight and monitoring and issuing corrective action if needed to getting to the point of renewal in which essentially the cycle starts over again and it continues
round and round. And so the performance framework is a central document to this work in thinking about how is the school performing? Do we need that's that oversight piece? Do we need to implement corrective action and using the
outcomes? What's on that performance framework, the annual evaluation uh to determine whether we are interested in renewing that school? Is it actually meeting the expectations that we both authorizer in charter school agreed to at the authorization point?
So the model performance framework is a state level document. It's existed for several years. it has not been updated since 2018. And so I'm excited to be working on that as well. And the framework is that annual tool that authorizers use. I mentioned they have
this additional accountability for charter schools, federal accountability state, and then the authorizer has an annual tool, the performance framework that they're holding them accountable to as well. It is attached to the charter agreement is an exhibit to the agreement so we're all on the same page at the
start of what the expectations are and it measures academic performance financial and organizational. It's called a model though the state version because it is not required for authorizers to use. It is required for the state to have a model version. So
that is the document that we are taking ownership of and the requirement there is that every authorizer has a performance framework in place and they can use the model or they can develop their own but the requirement is that they do have a performance framework. Um
and so the additional uh piece here, we're updating the model performance framework, but there's a second performance framework now that with that opportunity public charter school law that changed last year also required the development of a performance framework for opportunity public charter schools.
And so we're working on that document as well and plan to have both of those released by next month and have been working really closely with several stakeholders including some of our members here on updating these documents and getting them to a place where we feel ready to push them out um to our
authorizers to the public for ongoing use. So to wrap us up in terms of what you'll see before you tomorrow, there are several proposed rule and policy changes that reflect these changes in law uh that is addressed in the charter school
rules that um the bullet points are listed on the screen as well as stateboard policies. Most of the changes that you see here are again those that reflect uh what was changed through public chapter. Um, but there are also some additional opportunities,
particularly in the rules and when we think about the charter school application and the changes we're making to the materials themselves that allow us some additional streamlining opportunities here. Um, and so that is what you'll see in the proposed changes before you tomorrow.
So, I went pretty quickly through that, but I know we have more on the agenda. So, happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Miss Reid. Questions for Miss Reed? I have a question, Mr. Just so I make sure I understand, it's a two-year process estimated to get
through, right? You put the application in and it's a couple of years till that really one one year. Okay. And then let's say they go to the LEA, they're turned down, then they go back again the next year and they're turned down. they go back to Europe is did I understand that
correctly that they could be four years before they can get an authorization. I think what you're asking about is that option to apply directly to the commission. You're thinking about that. Um great great clarifying point. It is not about excuse me per applicant. It's
overall. So if for example, let's say Memphis Shelby has five charter school applications that they're reviewing and in that same year they over they deny three and it goes to the charter commission on appeal and the charter commission overturns those three. That's
the three. It doesn't have to be the same one over three times. It's three in total per year or over a period of time. And and let's say they get turned down turned down turned down. Who owns that charter school? Because at one point it
was going to go to the state board or the somebody other than the where does it go at at that eventuality? Who owns it upon appeal? Yep. Yeah. So, if a charter school decision is overturned by the appellet body,
previously the state board, now the charter commission, the uh there is a 30-day reconciliation period in which the authorizer um or rather the local board can choose to authorize that charter school. So, the charter
commission would return to the local board and say, "We've made a decision to overturn your decision. You have the option over 30 days to think about whether or not you want to actually authorize this school. If you don't, we will become the authorizer and then who do they report to?
So then they would report to the charter commission if they were the authorizer. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Holt. And I'm I'm not sure, Mr. Jensen, if I understood your question properly, but just want to make sure if if I did or didn't. Um if it if the issue is if I want to start a charter school and I
apply and I'm denied by the local board and then I want to apply again under the process and then appeal that takes place over the span of months not multiple years. Yeah. Right. So the Yeah. So the the the second application
to the local board is like a within a month or so, 60 days, 90 days to review and then uh 30 days after that and then the appeal to the commission if denied again is within a few months after that. Yep. So they have 10 days to appeal
after they're denied that second time. Um and then there is a 75day period in which the commission has to review it. So all of that is taking place over the span of like a year and a half instead of multiple years. So it's a lot of timelines.
Just a quick a quick comment that I was going to make Ross which is just to echo the comment earlier about all of Alli's great work um in this area with the additional responsibilities that the state board has taken on. So thank you Ally for all of your work. Thank you Dr. Now, I'm going to sound
like a broken record, but I'm just sitting here thinking, how many hours does Ally have in her day? Because if you think she is leading our charter, this is a big lift, y'all. This is a big lift. Um, and it's a it's a good lift. I'm I'm grateful that we have this responsibility and partnership with the department. I think now that we're in
this evaluative role with authorizers, it kind of puts the big picture in mind for all of us. So, like I think she does have unique perspective on how the application, the performance framework, you know, all these things can come together, but she is one person. So I'm so grateful to our partners at the Department of Education and other
stakeholders, board members who've taken time because it is a big lift. I mean she's also leading our strategic planning work, accountability hearings. I could go on engagement. So just Ally, thank you. Um and then I had a question too. Do we know or have data on how many applications are replications? because I
do think that's an interesting wrinkle that doesn't depend on previous decisions by an authorizer, local authorizer, that if you are an applicant who is replicating um you can go directly to the commission to your question earlier, Mr. Mullenhower, about how this might change the flow of of
school applications. That's one that I'm wondering about in terms of numbers. Yeah, it's a good question. Um yeah, replicating is not a new idea. It's not a new op option for uh charter schools. Um, but the the pathway options is new.
I do not have that, but I will find out. Dr. Morrison, you left out days in the district that she oversees as well. Under engagement. Yes. That specifically tsba meeting. I mean, I could go on. She has a lot of important things on her plate for which we are very grateful for her excellent work.
And and you take complicated situations and make them clear that us non-educators can understand much better. Thank you. Any other comments or questions? Welcome, Mr. Wells. Glad to see you here. Thank you, Mr. Reed.
Next on the agenda are State Board of Education member reports. Um, I think everyone knows I have a report I'll talk about later, but let's see if other people have something they want to talk about first. Vice Chair Collins. Yes, sir. I had the pleasure back in
June of joining Miss Erica Light and Mr. Derline for the educator preparation advisory council meeting where we discussed um recent changes in state law and their potential implication on the
education prepar educator preparation report card and uh brainstormed about ideas around uh the metrics and how they might be adjusted and um that overall framework. So, it was a great discussion, a lot of great feedback, and thank you all for your hard work on that
and allowing me to join you. Other comments? Well, if none, then I will uh bring up my subject. I think everyone knows that at the last board meeting in May, uh I brought up uh an issue that I wanted to talk about having to do with graduation
requirements associated with the world language two credits. Um since then, I've done a lot of research. I got a lot more data that I would like to uh put forward. Uh Michael Durine has done an excellent job of helping me convene a
stakeholders group to get input from. And so I'd like to present some of that. First one I want to talk about is I want people to understand my purpose is about choice. I've gotten many emails that I want to yank foreign
language out of the schools. That is not the choice. Uh what I want to do is again have each student be able to prepare themselves for postsecary success. How they how they can in a workplace environment that continues to
change. And today, you know, we heard a couple of conversations today from SCORE and from higher ed talking about how do we best prepare our students for the workplace? That's our mission. And so, this is kind of what brought me to where
I am. Uh, I heard about, you know, what's the most effective and efficient way to do that? And I think these are questions that we as board members need to ask ourselves. Think about how the workplace has changed over the last 10 years. workplace environment. And as we look at
P20, how can we provide the best opportunities for our students to thrive in their adult lives? I want to make it clear, I'm not suggesting that we change our credit requirements from 22. Some people seem to think that I wanted to reduce the credits to graduate. That is
not the case. We'll keep 22 credits. As I said, we've heard from a lot of stakeholders recently about the value of the critical skills thinking that you get from world language. I agree with that but you can also I think get that from other courses that I want to talk about.
So from the stakeholder meeting that we held uh we had several people talk and I want to highlight some of the points that were brought up. Education commission states executive that was on that call. He provided some data. 26
states in the United States do not have a world language requirement for graduation. 26 of the 50. Of the remaining 24, 17 have stated options such as CTE, fine
arts, dual enrollment. So, of these 46 states, are we impacting of those 46 states, are they being impacted in their ability to get into the colleges and universities of their choice? Originally, I thought Tennessee might be
a leader in this, you know, if we did this, but we're not a leader. I think we we're a follower at this point in time. Furthermore, I found an article that was recently written May of 2025 by Excel and Ed. You may recall Excel and Ed is
Jeb Bush's organization. It says that it rated the top seven states for best preparing their students for the workforce in general. Not just right out of high school, but overall workforce in general. It's interesting.
Those seven states are Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Colorado. Of those seven states, four have no
world language requirement for high school graduation. The other three have a option of CTE or fine arts graduation. Thought that was interesting.
Furthermore, uh questions are raised. You know, a student doesn't know, you know, about college and university. So, how can we stop them? You we want them to be able to go to a college or university of their choice. I totally agree with that. So, I started looking at college admission requirements.
Yale, I just looked at some top college admissions because I figured they were probably more restrictive. Yale University has zero requirements for world language and doesn't even strongly encourage you to have that when you before you go in. Wrenchler Polytech
probably the leading one of the leading engineering schools in the country. No requirements for world language for admission. Harvard University no requirements for world language for admission although they do strongly uh
encourage four credits of that. And then I looked within our own state, University of Tennessee. We had a person from uh UT on the call, vice chancellor I think of academic affairs. It is not a requirement for world
language for admission in the University of Tennessee. Now they have a scoring criteria where they score for various things like scholarships etc. And in that world language gets two points, math gets four points, English gets four
points, science gets three points, uh, history gets three points, and world language gets two points. That's just one criteria. The primary criteria, I think, are ACT scores and and those scores. But they also look at uh
extracurricular activities. Those are the things that are more important to the universities in college admissions. Looking at UT, they have in Knoxville, they have 12 colleges. College of Business, College of Nursing, College of
Engineering, College of Veterary Medicine. Of those 12 colleges, only four require world language to graduate from their college. I also found out was interesting about Yale University. Fred Smith who just
passed away who led a worldwide organization FedEx went to Yale University. Now I don't know if he had world language or not but he did go to Yale which doesn't require that. Tennessee does have a waiver process. We're very familiar with that. Well, not
I'm not sure that we are very familiar with looking at it. Our rule says you can be waved from uh world language requirements under certain circumstances, but we don't define what those certain circumstances are.
So, we leave it up a lot to the districts. So, I went and looked at the various district uh uh requirements to be waved. It's all over the map. One district that I looked at has very, you know, you can take all these
potential courses, which is great. Another district says, "Your parent has to sign this. If they sign this, you must recognize that your child will not be admitted into a four-year college or university."
Others say, "You got to recognize that their likelihood that they're going to get admitted to a college university is very low." I was talking to a superintendent just went to the east core superintendent study council uh on Tuesday and uh I was talking to superintendent there and
because of what we did he said I went back and I looked at mine he says it's it's confusing at best so what can we do there I mean we have to put them through a waiver process if they're going to get it and the waiver
pro process is different across the state I talked to the attorney the attorney for Tennessee School Board Association Ben Taus was on our call. He made a very good point. He said in effect, we already have what I'm proposing.
He said with the waiver process, people can uh you know get waved out of the foreign relations requirements. But he said what his point was, it was kind of misinterpreted, but later I talked to him and he says specifically, and I think he did submit this in writing, his
point is why not just go ahead and codify it. Codify that you don't have to have a waiver, that you don't have to have these requirements. In emails, uh, I've received, and I've received a lot of them, and most of them are from world language teachers or from
students, and I think we're going to hear from some students tomorrow. I've been called ethnosentric. I want people to understand four of my five grandchildren are 50% Mexican. They're being raised bilingual and I
firmly support that. I think that's great. But is that right for everybody? Shouldn't a budding songwriter have the opportunity to have that time to take a music theory course? or shouldn't a CT a
uh engineering student be able to take more STEM classes or a CTE class or robotics class? We heard about that too in our discussions today. How can we best prepare our students for the future?
I talked with uh a senior official of the department of energy who had been uh graduated from the defense linguistic defense language institute and ask him about this the importance of that he suggested instead of world language we
ought to be teaching AI something that Mr. Jensen just brought up teach people how to use the AI to get the information and how to program coding those kind of information. So I look at this my
daughter she took three years of French in middle school and four years in high school. It was great. She enjoyed that you know that was good for her. My proposal one thing we heard about is the cultural benefits. My proposal says you wouldn't have to take two years of
language in the same same language, but you could have a year of French and a year of Spanish or a year of Russian or whatever is being offered to today. So they have the opportunity again to do what's best for them. Now, one of the criteria that I heard about
is well, if we didn't if we did if we made it optional that a lot of the rural schools would probably just disband and not offer world language to their students, which I think would be a mistake. I've heard some superintendent say we would require if it's being
offered, it ought to be required. One of the challenges that I heard from the superintendents at the meeting on Tuesday, one rural county said they tried six months. They tried six months to hire a world language teacher. Have not been able to do that. So what they
ended up doing is they went to another county and they hired that teacher to teach it not only virtually but asynchronously. Think about taking a world language course asynchronously where I'm a
student and I look at my future if I'm going to use a world language in my class or I'm not going to use it and I could be taking something else but I've got to take this course asynchronously. I've got to schedule my own time to watch a video and learn about it and
teach basically teach myself through that and I could have that course doing something different. Is that the best thing for the students? So as I go through this process, I I ask myself, our mission is to
prepare students for postsecary success. What can we do? What can we do? How can we do that to give them the best options that we can? And to me, it's pretty compelling. But I go back to my acronym of learn. Listen, engage, act, respect,
and navigate. And I'm sure other board members have differing opinions than what I have and I certainly want to listen to it and I look forward to healthy discussion and I will respect whatever actions but at this point in time we're not taking any actions. We're getting discussions so that we can
continue to get more information decide if any actions are are needed or not. So I'll open it up to other people at this point in time. Yes, Miss Johnson. No, I'm on. Okay. I'm Marsha Johnson. First, I want to commend Chairman Eie
for bringing this in front of everybody. When I initially at the May meeting heard it, I was like, "Ah, no." And um I did listen to the video of the group of individuals that met to discuss this. If anyone has not watched it, they need to
because it totally gives you a wide perspective, gives you all different forms of information as to where everybody is coming from. Uh what I got out of it that he did not bring up is that yes, we need 22 credits for students to graduate.
Most schools you could have as many as 28 to 32 if you took full courses all through the high school. Um, the other thing that was brought out that I kind of gleaned into because of my past, um, students that take a foreign language
such as Spanish in the middle school, those if they can pass the exit exam for high school like Spanish one, that credit can be earned in a middle school, at least it could at Fort Campbell,
which is where I taught. Um, one of the courses that was considered higher level thinking was Spanish as well as algebra 1. I taught a program called AVID and those were two of the choices that the students had to take in order for them
to be considered higher level. Um, then it was through modification and the AVID program where those children are encouraged and tutored and made to be successful in that area. Um, I heard a
lot about the waiver and my thought is that rather than taking the requirement away since it is considered a higher level doing a foreign language to modify the waiver so that it was consistent across the state and so that the
language of you will not go to college or the language is more uniform. So that it did give an option along with the parental consent that a student could opt out of a foreign language. So that's I have one question to ask you or and
maybe our experts can ask this. You talk about the 28 to 32 credits. Uh they did mention that. My understanding talking to superintendents on that. That's if you're in a block scheduling, but if you're on a traditional scheduling, that's not the case. Those number of hours aren't credits aren't available.
So maybe somebody can get that data. So, I don't know how many it's not block. Yeah. Yeah, there's a a lot of schools that aren't on a block schedule. So, okay. Thank you. Yes. Go ahead. Um,
see some common high school schedules that may not be blocked is are six to seven periods a day. So, obviously times four years. So it may be a little bit less than that for um for those schools that offer if it's six credits you can earn in a year. Depends on half credits,
that kind of thing. So I think it it's probably slightly slightly less than uh that amount than block schedule. But um again, it would depend how that's set up as six periods, seven periods, half credits, what they do on those things. Miss Maxwell, did you have a point?
I do. Uh thank you, Chairman Eie. Um, I think it was great that you brought this before us to talk about because I think that's how that we can affect positive change for our students. Um, so interestingly so no one doesn't
misinterpret this, you know, I still uh think that the requirement should be there. uh when I read our rule, you know, talking about the waiver, you know, it says the credit requirement for fine arts or world language may be waved by the director of schools for students
under certain circumstances to expand and enhance the elective focus. So, I feel like that is there for our students who do need to have two other classes, two other electives. I I do I did take
away from the listening session. Uh my suggestion is that definitely the waiver form needs to be across the board the same very simple language. Obviously taking away the language, you will not go to college. I talked with the new
director of admissions at a university yesterday morning and uh we talked about this and it's it's not a requirement. Um, I do feel that it offers things that our students need. Um, I could go on for hours about Miss Phillips, my French
teacher, you know, the world that she opened up to me, opened up for me. Um, but I want to look at it through the eyes of a director for just a second because I I was there and yes, I've said I can't find a French teacher or Spanish teacher. So last night I sat down and I got to
thinking, okay, we did um with our differentiated pay plan, which we are codified in law to do each district on the website, the TDOE website, there are 145 differentiated pay plans listed. So I went through all of those just curious
just to see, okay, I know personally, yes, I had a problem finding a foreign language world language teacher. 25 of the 145 uh school districts reporting specifically said world language was
definitely a hard to staff area. Um and then they have uh some ranged from a $1,000 incentive up to there were you know different prices amounts six $7,000 incentives for signing on which gave me
pause and thought you know what when I was director I didn't offer a high enough incentive you know hindsight's always 2020 um but then I got to thinking okay so yes it's a hard to staff area but if you look at the 23 24 vacancy data collected
uh that was presented at our last November meeting. World language u the vacancy data for world language was 3.29% across the state. So that gave me pause to say okay yes it's it's hard to
staff but it's not impossible. So then I got to thinking and I went back through all 145 pay uh differentiated pay documents and I looked at math uh ELA science and sped. Well, math in particular because you
know literacy is my first love but I do love math and uh 67 of the districts listed that math was a hard to staff area which is 46% of of the 145.
Um, so you know, I I'll just blame myself here. You know, as a director, if I said yes, you know, it's hard to staff. That's why I need to change this requirement. I'm talking just for myself, but that's not valid based upon the numbers that I've looked at. And
like I said, the effort, you know, I I sat there last night and I thought I didn't offer enough incentive. Then today, the presentations have been amazing. Thank you, Chairman Eie and staff for arranging these because I think we have tools in place to help
propel maybe the train of thought a little bit more uh with the differentiated pay plan but also the waiver simplifying it. I do think it does need to be simplified. Absolutely. Um, also, uh, I think this, what I thank you
for with this conversation, I think this gives us a great opportunity to focus on the advising that our students are receiving, beginning end of 8th grade, going into high school, and continuing.
um you know providing support for the the counselors, ensuring that they're a aware of all of the the things that are codified in law, the rules, but also strengthening that bond where that like all the things that they're doing to
increase uh college enrollment. You know, I think this gives us a lot more food for thought, not just world language, but how can we improve what we're doing for our students in a much broader perspective. Um, so at this
moment that's that's where I'm at on this. Chairman Eyee, thank you. Other comments? Mr. Gentile, Chairman Eie, I thank you for uh engaging uh with all the stakeholders in higher education as well. His conversations, I have a a lovehate relationship with foreign language
requirements. Uh the love 23 years ago this this week, I met my wife in Spanish class at uh at my under undergraduate ed education. Uh worked out well for me. Um the the hate though came because I I I struggled so mightily in foreign language and I knew I was never going to
be fluent in that language I was learning. Um earlier we had a conversation about uh needing to be better in higher education about saying why we have these courses how these connect and I think it's it's a fallacy actually for me when I was in
high school to think that I was taking foreign language to become fluent in a language. Um, what I actually learned was English grammar much better. Um, I learned cultural critical thinking, etc. um and say no matter from my perspective
where this conversation goes and where the decision ultimately lands, I think it would still be very important much like we do with music and band and other arts uh to be very vigilant in and expressing why
foreign language whether it might be optional to you but what you'll get from that um how this can connect and better your life much like it has your grandchildren as well. Um, you know, we've heard from colleges that you've you've referenced um admission standards at least in Tennessee would likely
change to reflect uh where this body goes with it. Um, I would just hope that in counseling students should the this body go this direction that we just are are vigorous and rigorous and making sure that students know why they might
benefit from these courses going forward and be able to weigh that against taking another CTE course as well. for now that's my matter my my thought on that matter. Thank you. I appreciate that and and I do believe that you get benefit from the critical skills of that but I also believe that music is a universal
language and uh computer coding is a language and as is other things too but yeah very good points Mr. Jen oh I'm sorry Mr. refer to you. No, I defer to you. Uh let me just start by saying um you you articulated it absolutely
beautifully. Uh the the the concept the the proposal leaving open that there's debate to be had, leaving open that it's not going to be the same answer for everybody. Um, I think I know that you've worked hard to
uh get feedback from uh every angle and uh you wo that into um your your comments as well. So just phenomenal job. Um I don't quite understand why this particular topic uh brings out
um such energy um from from some people. Uh I I think that it's probably illustrative primarily of the fact that choice is so important. So I'd like to just highlight two things that you mentioned, access and choice. And Dr.
Maxwell, I think this may um this may also speak to some of what you commented on. You know, it may be possible to hire someone for Spanish in a given district or for French or German or whatever. Uh but if if I'm a student or if I have a
child and I really want that child to learn German uh and you can hire a Spanish teacher but you can't hire a German teacher or French or you know name any others. Um you know I I think it would be too easy to collapse the
concept of do they have access to a foreign language as opposed to asking the question well do they have access to the foreign language that actually matters to them. Um, and that is kind of the flip side of the coin of choice. Um,
you know, it I I I have a hard time believing that um that some families in Tennessee would be best served by their child um being
required to take uh French or German or even Spanish. And yes, there's a waiver program, but you know, as as currently written, um maybe they're not aware of it. I think that's probably oftentimes the case. They're not even aware that that's an option. Um or maybe the the
superintendent or the principal in that area uh doesn't want to um sign the waiver. And as a result, you know, a family or a child whose, you know, prospects in life are already challenged, um, who is just trying to
figure out how to put food on the table for themselves and their family. Uh I I have a hard time believing that the best way that that child can learn to survive in this world and hopefully uh thrive in this world is to uh be effectively
required to take a foreign language as opposed to learning um uh any number of other skills to include trade skills in particular uh that that can help them to um earn a living and so forth going forward. So, so I would
highlight two things. Access and I think that there's um the feedback that I've gotten on from both angles um brought this to the to the forefront especially in the rural areas. I think that that's that's where this argument can become very compelling
that yes, you may be able to get access to a teacher of a particular foreign language. But uh that's a very limited um that's a that's a very limited option for the families and the students who who want alternatives. And again being
the flip side of the choice. If we think about this from the standpoint of what maps to the future uh whether it's higher education uh which I think you illustrated is is it's not a requirement pretty much across the board. Uh but if we think about you know getting into a
trade school or getting a job at a local manufacturer etc etc u I think anyone who who wishes to impose this on a million children in Tennessee
because they had a good experience with it or because it was the right thing for their family should should really step back from this for a moment and ask the question you know how would I feel If the state board of education made a rule that my child had to take welding, how
would I feel about that? Can you learn from welding? Yes, you can. Can you learn critical thinking from welding? Yes, you can. Can you learn how math works and laws of physics from welding? Absolutely, you can from welding. Does that mean that every child in the state of Tennessee should go out and take
welding? I think not. And I think that that same exact argument applies to world language. So, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Jensen. I have a question for you, Mr. Chairman. What would it look like if it was goodness to you or success? I What can
you give a picture of what that would look like? Well, again, I I think what I would propose, and I haven't really gotten the words down, but the alternatives would be options that, you
know, include two credits of world language or two credits of CTE or two credits of fine arts or something that advances them towards their future of what they're looking at. And if you look
again the 17 states that have the options, they list, you know, dual enrollment, you know what, again, think of our mission. What is our mission? Our mission is to prepare students for post-secary success. How can we best do that? And we talk about the workforce,
meeting the workforce. How can we take each student, you know, not in group, but each student meet their goal for post-secary success? And so it goes back to the counseling that was talked about over here. I think that's critical uh that you know right now we have a high
school and beyond plan that starts in 11th grade. We want to move that back to eighth grade. We talk about we heard today uh from uh I think it was score that talked about start moving back career options. Doesn't mean pin them down to that but help them along their
way to counsel them. So I I think that these courses that we offer as options should help them meet their career goals down the pathway. I would be willing to work with uh you know our staff higher ed to get the integration to get out
detailed words. I don't have the specific words that I would put right now but that's my concept is think about the student each individual student students first not not uh you know all the other organizations stuff like that what's best for that student and I would
try to come up with some goal for that I I have a comment that um I have this recurring nightmare and had it a long time of u waking waking up and realized that I
needed two more semesters of Latin to graduate from college. And it's just like, oh man, it's so nice to wake up and realize that I didn't have to finish that. So, as one who has taken a number of languages, I I'm fully supportive of the
concept of the exposure to it, but there's a difference between exposure and proficiency. And I think that the question I would wrestle with on this is because in two semesters or one semester, you're getting just you're just getting
exposure to it. Proficiency comes with years of it and a focus. And I I I I know in some of the uh elementary schools that the kids are getting Chinese, you know, now that's an exposure and they can say a few words and I'm I think
that's great. But I think an expectation to say that we're going to create kids who are moving toward proficiency in a language, whatever that language might be, is with two semesters or one or whatever that I I just would question is
that a worthy pursuit to his if if we want to give him exposure, I think that's great. But I think if we're thinking that's going to give him proficiency in a foreign language, that's that's a big hill in my view. And I'm supportive of what you're thinking. I just
that that would be the challenge to me is what are you really going to get by requiring two semesters or one semester or whatever. And I think the maximum probably for I don't know 95% of the kids is going to be an exposure which is I'm not saying that's bad. I just I
think that's the the maximum they may get out of that. That may be what you're thinking. What I what I find out is that the the greatest benefit from the uh critical skills thinking is for students to begin that in their elementary grades. That's
when their brains are most plastic is what I read and where they can absorb and it can generate their brains as opposed to uh high school. So uh you know that's something that thought Mr. M. Oh okay.
Sure. Okay. Mr. hold. Well, first I'll say um Mr. Chairman, I think anyone who is listening to your remarks um should not doubt that you're coming to this from a place of of goodwill and creativity and being student centered of of thinking about
what is best for students and that's I think all of our northstar and it's great to ground us in this conversation on that. Um, and then also I like the fact that, you know, some discussions we've had previously about us being reactive to changes in law versus being
proactive about what are ways that we can use our position to find ways to make changes that could improve outcomes for students in Tennessee. Um, with that said, I am personally um
of the opinion that we should retain the um foreign language requirement as as it is. And I've given this a good bit of thought and haven't done as much data research unfortunately as as you or Dr. Maxwell and found both of those uh presentations compelling
for me. I think and and just to kind of plug in and try not to restate things that have already been said, but it it goes to, you know, what's the intrinsic value um of foreign language education and exposure for students
um that makes it different than other courses for which we don't have requirements. We we have certain courses we do require for graduation, others that we don't. And it to me it's it's of the same type and and level of
importance that I believe that we should require it and continue to require it um because of the the the the worlds that it opens up for students um to be exposed to be aware of the fact that there are other cultures. there are
other entire ways of living that are very different from what it looks like in rural or urban or suburban Tennessee. Um and and that goes to this sort of bigger picture to you know to to Nathan's very eloquent remarks earlier
about you know the the purpose of our system of education for self-governance and this project that we have um that goes even beyond I think the the the very important goal that we focus on so much of job preparation um but of having
well-rounded citizens who are are exposed to the world and who have opportunities um and and and I one of the points that was uh has been made by uh folks who've reached out to us which it sounds like is is fairly compelling
is is this this fear of loss of access if we were to remove the requirement that's especially rural districts um would have less of an incentive to use the sort of creative uh compensation mechanisms to bring those teachers in
and that that could therefore close off that type of opportunity. um to students in certain parts of our state. Um and then just to echo the point about how languages are they they're foundational
for other types of understanding English and and and and good grammar in English and critical thinking and and things like that. Um, so without kind of reiterating anything else that others have said, um, I I'm also of the opinion that we should improve the waiver
process so that we have one better data on the number of waiverss, how they're being used, um, but then also clean that up so that it's being used appropriately in circumstances where there truly is hardship and districts aren't able to
um, obtain these teachers despite using the tools that are available to um as opposed to what it sounds like we have now which is a little more haphazard of of how the waiverss are being used. Thank you, Mr. Holt. Vice Chair Cings,
maybe I should not have let you go. Took all my words. No, I uh I applaud our chairman for um being forward thinking and visionary and um concerned about the future prospects of our
students and um making sure that they have options and choices along that journey. um as I've received emails and um actually had a conversation with um
um very experienced and lauded superintendent about two weeks ago. Um and one of the things that that superintendent said to me about this particular topic was um
that you know our goal is to prepare our students to be global thinkers, global leaders as the world changes and so rapidly and uh to Mr. Holt's point, you know,
part of the foreign language, world language immersion experience is so much more than just the language itself. If you're studying the language, then you have to understand the culture. If you're understanding the culture, you
have to understand the people. And as we turn on the news at 5:30 today, uh we'll see so many examples of where that is that understanding and that um value and appreciation is not occurring on a daily
basis. And so again, to Mr. Colt's point about the waiver process. You know, I think we all agree that parents should have choice, students should have choice, and the way
that the language is written today, it's not as parent or student centered as it could be. Uh that power relies with one individual. And so to the extent that we can
modify the waiver language so that it leans more towards giving parents and students that power to make the best choice for their students journey and experience. Um I'm in support of that and um again respect all of the opinions
and p perspectives shared. Uh but definitely think that um we're trying to get to the same point. How we get there, I think is the big question. So, thank you. Thank you, Vice Chair Cobins. Mr. Wales,
thank you. Um as Mr. Holt said, we you know, the student always comes first in the in our in our minds. And uh as a parent of a now a high school student, you know, I've kind of run my brain through this process a little bit. um and and and hearing the the waiver
language that parents are supposed to sign, it would scare me to death. Uh and I obviously wouldn't wouldn't, you know, be comfortable signing that. And then I hear your rebuttal about all the the schools that do not require it. Um and I guess I guess one question I would have
is even if it's not required, um and I'll do a caveat here. I missed the uh the the the the conversations earlier my due to employment. I was I had a hard time getting here this morning. Um, so this may have come up, but um, you know, you you hear more and more about how
hard it is to I've got plenty of friends that went to UT and their kids can't get in. They're like, man, I I wouldn't have gotten in. My kids better test taker than me when I and and so I'm thinking like, you know, if my son's doesn't take this, we do the waiver and he wants to go to UT or something and they don't require it. If they don't require it,
um, is it still considered in the admissions process? you know, and I I wouldn't want a parent to see something that says it's not not a requirement, but then it still hurt the student later or something like that. And so in the conversations that I missed, did any did that come up or or what?
Maybe uh Mr. Gentile can talk, but my understanding is uh it is not a requirement for admissions. It is a scoring criteria that's evaluated against all the other factors. And they didn't say it was a scoring criteria for admissions or for
scholarships or whatever. They just said it was a scoring criteria. Mr. Gentile, do you know? Chairman, I I apologize and profess ignorance on that as well. Dr. Harpull, do you know? Yeah, I can't I don't do sign language.
Sorry, Dr. Harpool. But but but on the but on the spot. But but I have a followup in general on this in a second, but Yeah, sign language. That's right. That counts. And I didn't mean sir, just to say I didn't mean UT in general. I use that as a any of the schools that don't have it
as a requirement. Let me then I can speak more in general, Mr. Chairman. Go ahead. Well, I'll let me give it my answer and then I'll hear your answer is that what I understand is that schools now use a holistic approach to evaluate the students. And so those that don't
list it as a requirement, it is not a requirement. I don't know. But so just to clarify you getting you're going to be the expert, but just make sure we get the rights thing said. Um, so even though it's not a require requirement though, like um, so is it weighed against like co um, community
service or things like that or is that is that what you mean? All right. So I'm I'm going to go back 12 years and and speak to when I worked in admissions and I worked for a selective institution uh, in North Carolina. So it's not related to an institution here. um but and it's a a
institution that accepted about 22 20% of its students and very much most often its expectations for admissions were beyond what a high school would require or a state board of education would require. Um and so we greatly relied on
good college counseling. Um and and a lot of high schools have that. A lot of high schools do not to be able to say, "Look, you to graduate from high school, you need these requirements to go to that school over there, to go to Vanderbilt, um etc. Uh you'll need to take four years of foreign language." I
think it was three years is what we expected. So that relies on good counseling to be able to uh understand who students might want to be doing that in the future. uh it is holistic admissions but at the same time typically if the courses are available
uh that that institution will expect you to have taken it. If the courses are not available then there will not be an expectation. Does that make sense? Uh, I will say this is that I think those
requirements change and you said that was 12 years ago that and so I would be more inclined to look and specifically see what the requirements are now. I mean my data when I went back and looked at various requirements like I say Yale as an example it does not even strongly
recommend that you take a world language. uh Harvard did strongly recommend four credits. Uh so I agree that it should go back to the uh counselor working with the students. I
think that's critical. Um but I don't uh I do think requirements are constantly changing based on expectations of the world and and where the world is going uh in the future. Miss Johnson,
I may be incorrect, but from what I understood in looking at requirements and what is acceptable, I was with the understanding that you're awarded certain points and that the world language would give
you a point or two points toward your overall entrance score just as well as your community service and things like that. But that was what I they didn't they didn't go into how the how the points were evaluated and how many points you got for community, you
know, community service or ACT scores or whatever. They just said two points for world language, but it's not a requirement, right? Other comments? Okay, Dr. Morrison, then Christ, did you want to go first? Go ahead. I I don't have a whole lot else to add. I've really had wanted to
listen because again again I applaud Chairman Eie and I've told him this and I've told many of you this. I think regardless of where you net out on this particular issue I think he's setting a really good example for all of us of how to be proactive when it comes to the policy decisions before us and really trying to center that in the student
experience and the changing dynamics and global and and domestic workplace. I just think wherever we net out, I I applaud you and thank you for bringing this proactively to our attention because there's and we said this to the superintendents that we spoke to yesterday. There's there's really there should be no sacred cows. We should
constantly be re-evaluating what is serving our state best, our students best, our families best. We will have differing opinions on most of the issues that come up in those conversations. And I think that's healthy and good. Um, and on this one in particular, I think there are a lot of competing considerations and you know, I have not decided fully
where I am. Doesn't matter. It's your girl's decision. But I am listening because I think the direction for our staff is important to know where the will of this board is on this issue. Um I've been trying to take notes and we'll go back to this recording. We can decide additionally after this conversation and tomorrow's conversation. Do we need to
get more in writing from each of you to determine our next steps? Looking at Michael, we can conclude on that. Um I did hear a lot of themes though around clarifying and more standardizing the waiver option. I think that ties into the advising piece too because no matter what we're going to have an opt some
students who can opt in or out of this provision. We already have a waiver requirement. So it's really kind of whether the default is opting in or opting out. Um currently it's opting out. So you know making sure that that's really clarified and standardized. Uh working with high school counselors to understand the nuance involved here. You
know whether or not they take the two or the four depending on again the students particular pathway is important. Thinking about the high school beyond plan is one way to anchor those conversations. looking at middle school credits and the option of counting that towards high school. I mean, I think there's a number of things that have
come up in the the course of this conversation and previous conversations that um we may want to consider as a board, including changing the requirement to an opt um in instead of opt out, but trying to take notes. Other conversations I know will come up
tomorrow as part of the graduations rule that's on our agenda, though not this specifically, just related generally to graduation. So, um, the only other thing I was going to say that again as I was reviewing the material, it is striking to me that you have so many states that don't require world language de facto.
And I only say that because I found that as a point of curiosity because I I tend to agree with a lot of what has been shared around the value of world language. I just I'm curious to learn more from those states that uh either don't require it or require it as part of an option with CTE and um fine arts electives because I just think it is
curious to me that we are one of a very few handful of states that still requires it de facto. So uh again I think to Mr. Holtz's point a little bit more research I think would be helpful in terms of understanding the nuance and other state requirements in our own data sets if it's possible to get more data on the waiverss. Um and then just
thinking about the supply and demand that's something that comes up too. We heard from the superintendents yesterday, particularly in those rural districts, thinking about the available options for um communities that want to continue to offer world languages, whether it's required or not, and how they meet those staffing demands, which I think are real. So,
that's all for me, Christie. Miss Brown. So, I appreciate the discussion and the engagement and any way that we look at it. It's certainly been a student centered conversation uh from our working group to here today. And so, I
really appreciate that. Um so whether we're talking about really tailoring these options, individualized options for each individual student, that's our goal, right, through um this advising or you know, maybe it's require the requirement to inform parents about the
waiver. Maybe it's standardized waiver, maybe it's not a graduation requirement. And of course, the department stands ready to support what it and respect the decisions that are made, of course. Um, and so, you know, I I think there's a
there's there's a good um way to just this open discussion and let me just let me start with this. Uh, I taught foreign language. That was my endorsement. I taught high school foreign language in a really rural county in Tennessee in Jackson County.
Um, and I did see that open up um, you know, understanding and you know the knowledge and things and I'm not sure that any of those students thought I'm going to be proficient in Spanish when I get out of this class. Uh, and some loved it, some really did not. Uh, but I will say it did bring uh, you know, an
understanding, cultural awareness to myself as I learned it. I came from the county that I taught in um, and you know, I saw um, you know, the understanding of of English. they we know there's research around that and academic um you know performance in other areas that may that it may have
impacts on. So, I think there's benefits there and I think deciding whether that's a better benefit for each student rather than a more like focused elective area or uh their program of study they want to go into is um you know that's
that's hard because it's going to come down to that highly individualized advising and that's really critical having parents and students know uh what the options are, what the implications may be um and that they can make a really informed decision. So regardless
of which way or somewhere in the middle um that um that the board decides to go with this um I appreciate the discussion, respect the the outcome here. Um we'll support the department will either way um however it goes. And
then again, just uh we're going to continue to work on supporting those uh career coaches and uh counselors in schools to be sure that they are having those discussions that parents and students are aware of every option and where those pathways may lead and what
may benefit that child the most. So I think we can get there with whatever decision the board makes and we will uh we will support that. Thank you Mr. Milan. just one last comment as as I was sitting here um to
to try to put some numbers on what I was trying to illustrate earlier. Uh my my understanding is that the last one of the last studies that was done uh indicated that that 14% of families in in the state of Tennessee live below the poverty line. another I think it was 29
or 30% live below what's called the the Alice threshold which is basically a measure of you know can you buy the can you afford the basic things of life um and and that's actually been strained here in the last few years with um both regional as well as national inflation
and housing costs and so forth so so com the combined total is approximately 44ish% of the families in Tennessee are reportedly struggling to afford like basic necessities of life. So take that and set that aside for just a moment. I
also think that it's worth noting and this is not a you know charge against anybody in this room as much as it is just trying to recognize that we we are a self to a large extent I think a self- selected group in that I think everybody here values education probably had foreign language. Um I would argue that
I think everybody in this entire room has had more opportunity than most of the families that I just referenced a few minutes ago. uh we we don't we we've we've experienced the value of foreign language. Um
but most of us probably have not experienced what it's like to live at, you know, below the poverty line. Some of us may have and and that should inform, I'm sure will inform our thinking, but it would be very easy for us to lose sight of our own biases on this particular point. Uh and and I
would just encourage anybody who's considering this topic to just step back for a second and just imagine a world in which you can either pay rent or you can feed your kids that day. Uh and and and and
you're thinking about your child who's who's uh going into a system and and and and you want the best for your child to not have to experience that same thing. Would you encourage them to take a foreign language or would you encourage them to for example pursue I'll use the
example a trade and I know that it's not that simple. I know that there are examples in which taking a foreign language may very well open their eyes and and get them onto a path to get out of that that that Alice threshold
cyclone. Um, but I I think I think we have to recognize the potential bias here and we have to really think about what's best for that child in their ability to provide for themselves. Uh, not just open their eyes to the broader
world, but put food on the table and pay the rent and pay the electrical bill. Thank you, Mr. Mullenower. Let me just kind of close this out first. I want to thank each one of you for your statements. I heard I respect uh it's
given me things to think about. I hope it's given each one of you things to think about as we continue to I think we all agree that at least the waiver process needs to be improved and changed. Uh but you know should it be more or less or whatever? So I would
encourage each board member over the next uh quarter to continue on your own to research look at the data you know and uh I mean we will continue to get emails from various sunundry positions
but every one of you I highly respect your decision makingaking process. So look at the data, think about what's best for the students, and when we come back together, you know, we'll work with uh our staff, uh maybe come up with a
proposal or recommendation or whatever, which can be changed or doesn't have to pass and it may die for lack of second if we come up with something. Who knows? But at least we've had a good discussion today, which I really truly value and appreciate each one of you and thank you
for taking the time. just encourage you to continue to look at the data and then put the students first what you think is best for the students and we'll make a decision that makes that is best for the students as a group. Thank you. All right. License discipline
Mr. Mis All right, switching gears just a touch. Um, good afternoon, senior associate counsel Todd Madison, Alex Anderson, Ryan Shanahan, Associate Counsels. Uh, we'll be presenting for you the staff's recommendations on licensed
discipline at tomorrow's meeting. Um, we've not received any requests to speak this time around, so we do not anticipate anyone showing up to speak on their own behalf at this time. We'd like to take any clarifying questions or note items for further discussion tomorrow.
Any questions or comments? Looks like you guys are complete. Thank you. We'll see you tomorrow. Thanks. All right, final discussion. Dr. Morrison. Oh, I think all my brain cells are tired. But this was a great day as I
knew it would be. It always is. I'm so grateful to our many presenters from Tekk to score to internal team uh department of ed. Again, it was a really robust uh series of conversations, which is why my brain is tired and I'm grateful for all the engagement particularly in this last conversation.
just appreciate the work that our board members did to come with their opinions, their thoughts to really round out our conversation today. Look forward to more of that tomorrow. Um, I also failed to mention some of our newest team members. So, when Rachel's back, our general counsel tomorrow, we'll make sure to do that. Todd, you can hold me accountable
uh because we've got some folks on the legal team that I'd like to recognize. So, we'll do that tomorrow at our meeting when we're all here. But I don't think there's anything else for me. Thank you. I agree. And one thing I really liked about today is how everything is tying together. You know,
the the master plans, the score, uh, you know, thinking about what's best for the student and and as long as we keep that focus, you know, we will do what's right. And thank you for each one of your conversations, discussions. It has been a full day. Tomorrow will be another full day. Uh, part of it we will
have uh people come and speak about uh the graduation requirements. So I'm sure it'll be interesting to hear hear that too. So with that no other discussion um our work being concluded I now declare that the committee the whole and the board is adjourned
for being here