Rutherford County School Board members voted Shelia Bratton to be the new board chair Tuesday evening, replacing former chair Tammy Sharp.Sharp withdrew from serving another one-year term due to a medical diagnosis that she wishes to focus her full attention on.“I just wanted to thank everyone for the emails, the texts, and the phone calls in support of my well-being and my new diagnosis. I even had some people here tonight. Thank you, thank you everyone, and it was an honor for me to serve the last year and aside Dr. Sullivan and we’re gonna keep going. We’re gonna go from here,” said Sharp.

Accountability was the main focus for Cookeville parents, educators, and administrators during a Tuesday night discussion about how schools should be graded for serving students.The public meeting is the latest in a series of forums hosted by the Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) to gather state input on how to improve the new School Letter Grades evaluation tool. The tool will provide an A through F letter grade for each public school when it launches in November.Grading schools based on student academic growth has been a common topic discussed in prior meetings, but this time, multiple speakers stressed the importance of School Letter Grades providing a measurement for student achievement and career/college readiness.

Members of the Tennessee Textbook and Instructional Materials Quality Commission unanimously voted Wednesday morning to remove race/ethnicity and gender from the applications candidates applying to serve on an advisory panel will submit.Commissioners will name that advisory panel next year to provide guidance to the board when reviewing science textbooks and instructional materials for public schools.

Members of the Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) Board of Education have seen four of their decisions against proposed public charter schools overturned by the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission. Next week two new proposed schools will make the case to be added to that list.The commission has public hearings scheduled for charter appeals from Invictus Nashville Charter School and Nashville Collegiate Prep High School (NCPHS) on Monday. MNPS board members denied applications from both in July.Under state law, denied applications can appeal to the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission. Its members have the option of overturning local district denials.

Tennessee’s much criticized Achievement School District has a new leader.Dr. Bren Elliot is joining the Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) today as the new State Turnaround Superintendent. In the position Dr. Elliot will oversee and support the state-run Achievement School District (ASD) and serve certain priority schools identified as in need of improvement and support.The new superintendent will also oversee the entirety of school turnaround efforts in Tennessee, including moving schools out of the bottom five percent of student achievements, managing supports, interventions, monitoring, and funding for priority schools in the state.

Rutherford County is home to two of the top readers in the state.Smyrna’s Stewart’s Creek High School Senior Taylor Aslup and Murfreesboro’s Oakland Middle School sixth-grader Gibson Weber were among four winners of the annual Tristar Reads contest.

Alice Lockett is an example of the generational challenges many families in Memphis face.As a teenager she dropped out of school after becoming pregnant and had to support her daughter by working at fast food restaurants.

When Subira Gordon took over as the CEO of the Nashville Charter Collaborative last July there was no question what challenge she wanted to work on first.Public charter schools are leading Nashville’s educational improvement journey in many ways, but the public isn’t always getting that part of the story.

Patricia Adams graduated from Fairley High School in 1989, when the school was still a traditional public school in Memphis.Since then, she’s witnessed the school undergo two different leadership changes, including what she calls a rebirth when Green Dot Public Schools took over to run Fairley as a public charter school in the state-run Achievement School District (ASD). Adams is currently serving as the organization’s Director of Operations.

New data released by the Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) shows not many third-graders passed the summer school option to advance to the fourth-grade under the state’s new Third-Grade Retention Law.The Tennessee General Assembly passed the Third-Grade Retention Law in 2021 to ensure students who failed to meet reading proficiency on the annual Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) would receive additional support through tutoring and/or summer school before being promoted to fourth-grade. Under the law, students who scored in the “approaching proficiency” category had the option of advancing by attending summer school and showing “adequate growth” on an assessment at the end of it.

Zephan Alexander describes his time as a public-school student in Memphis as a challenge. He struggled in traditional public schools and public charter schools but says things changed when he enrolled in a former public charter school operated by Pathways in Education (PIE).PIE operated that school under the state-run Achievement School District from 2014-2022. Alexander was among those speaking in support of allowing the organization to return to Shelby County.

Zephan Alexander describes his time as a public-school student in Memphis as a challenge. He struggled in traditional public schools and public charter schools but says things changed when he enrolled in a former public charter school operated by Pathways in Education (PIE).PIE operated that school under the state-run Achievement School District from 2014-2022. Alexander was among those speaking in support of allowing the organization to return to Shelby County.

The Memphis-Shelby County Schools board voted Tuesday to approve a $5 million deal to buy 45 acres of land for the new high school in Cordova, after the district terminated an agreement to buy a smaller parcel nearby.

The special session on public safety ended much as it has proceeded over the last week, with chaos.After the session wrapped up in the House, Speaker Cameron Sexton, R-Crossville, and Representative Justin Pearson, D-Memphis, collided with each other as Sexton was making his way out of the chamber and Pearson and fellow Representative Justin Jones, D-Nashville, were holding signs close to the speaker’s face.

The special session on public safety produced another chaotic meeting in the State House Monday.House members voted 70 to 20 to silence newly re-elected Representative Justin Jones, D-Nashville, under a House rule for speaking out of order twice. Members instituted the new rule specifically for the special session.

Proposed public charter schools have not found an easy road to approval in Tennessee this year.Local school boards approved just two charter applications, American Classical Academy-Rutherford and the Tennessee Career Academy in Memphis. School board members in Shelby, Davidson, Madison, Montgomery, Robertson, and Maury County denied every other application to open a new public charter school in their communities this year.Six of those applicants are appealing to the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission beginning this week. Commissioners have the option of overturning charter application denials and members did just that with three high-quality applications in Nashville last year.

The Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) announced Rogersville City School’s Melissa “Missy” Testerman as Tennessee’s 2023-24 teacher of the year Friday evening.Testerman is an English as a second language instructor at Rogersville Elementary School who additionally serves as a mentor for new teachers and has been a teacher for 31 years. She’s also the president of the Rogersville Education Association, serves as the summer camp coordinator for the district, participates in the nonprofit Readers Are Leaders which helps at-risk readers, and serves on committees and boards throughout the district.

The first week of the special session on public safety may have seen more criticism for what lawmakers didn’t do than what they did.Only a bill to fund the special session made it through both houses of the Tennessee General Assembly and members are unexpectedly opting to return for a second week.

A crowd of roughly two dozen Shelby County parents and educators gathered Wednesday night to explain why they believe ease of understanding and transparency will be critical to a new resource for grading how well schools are serving students.The public hearing is the latest in a series of forums the Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) is hosting across the state to gather input to improve the new evaluation tool called School Letter Grades. The department plans to launch it in November to provide the public with an A through F grade for each public school.At Wednesday’s forum at the Southwest Tennessee Community College Macon Cove Campus, parents and educators focused their feedback more on making the School Letter Grades understandable and transparent for parents than on specific changes to accountability measures.

For the second time members of the Metro Nashville Public Schools Board of Education are taking the unusual position of stepping into the Nashville mayoral election.Board members put out a joint statement Thursday to officially endorse Metro Councilman Freddie O’Connell in the upcoming mayoral runoff against former Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development Assistant Commissioner Alice Rolli.