Governor Bill Lee announced on Wednesday that results from policies passed during the January 2021 special legislative session have provided “encouraging data.”
According to Lee and Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn, the Tennessee Learning Loss Remediation and Student Acceleration Act allowed students across the state to attend summer programs with the goal of mitigating the setbacks produced during remote learning.
Specifically, the legislation authorized more than 120,000 Tennessee students to attend K-8 academic summer camps.
“Tennessee has led the nation in getting students back in the classroom and swiftly addressing learning loss,” said Gov. Lee. “As we continue to prioritize our students, I’m encouraged to share positive outcomes of priorities established in our historic special session. I am hopeful for our state and thank the legislature for their partnership to turn the tide for Tennessee students.”
Based on data released by the Tennessee Department of Education, students showed widespread improvement in both English and Language Arts and Math.
Overall, students demonstrated an improvement of 5.97 percentage points in English and Language Arts. Furthermore, data showed an improvement of 10.49 percentage points in Math.
“This past summer, Tennessee school districts launched rich academic programs and thoughtfully prioritized student and family engagement to help their students get extra learning time and recover from a very tough school year. In doing so, they built tremendous momentum for students and staff heading into a brand new and still very tough school year,” said Commissioner Penny Schwinn. “There is a lot of work that lies ahead, but after seeing what Tennessee accomplished this summer for its students, I believe our public schools are proving what’s possible.”
The improvements are much needed, as the standardized testing scores of students across the state of Tennessee heavily declined in the past year, largely due to the coronavirus pandemic.
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Cooper Moran is a reporter for the Star News Network. Follow Cooper on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
So now we are to believe that maybe 30% of the kids MAY have reached grade level competence in English, math and science. I am not sure that is something to celebrate. Certainly not a return on investment that would allow one to keep their job in the real world.