State’s Report Card Released

A detailed report on school progress in Tennessee will be released tomorrow.

The 2005 Report Card lists the academic progress from the state’s 136 school systems. Attendance, demographics, dropout rates, and test scores are all part of the school’s assessment.

For this first time this year, the report will also include school poverty rates and the percentage of classes being taught by highly qualified teachers.

Connie Smith is the Executive Director in the Office of Innovation, Improvement and Accountability.

“Really the purpose of the report card is two for reasons. We want a user friendly public card that answers the question, “Is this an effective school?” Number two, we want a school document which looks at all the data for school people so that they can quickly look, “What are the pluses here and what are the deficits we need to correct?”

The report card gives details above what is required by federal law. In fact, Tennessee’s report card is considered one of the top three education assessments in the nation. The card will be on the Tennessee-dot-gov web site by nine tomorrow morning.