State House Representative Scott Cepicky (R-Culleoka) told The Tennessee Star that he plans to introduce a new bill that closely resembles Temnnessee’s existing third-grade retention bill for literacy.
Tennessee implemented new policies last year to address low literacy rates among third-graders. This coming year, Tennessee lawmakers intend to turn their focus to mathematics.
Cepicky’s bill proposes that students who fail to achieve a “meets expectations” score on Tennessee’s Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) must enroll in either summer school or a state-recognized tutoring program. The lawmaker’s bill would not be limited to third-graders but would apply to all K-8 students.
Another difference between this bill and existing legislation is the lack of a retention component.
“This bill that we’re coming up with has nothing to do with retention,” Cepicky told The Star. “It is simply an effort to guarantee support for the approximately 66% who did not test proficient in math last year.”
Cepicky added, “This bill will ensure that teachers also get the support and training needed to offer the best instruction to students possible.”
Critics remain unappeased. House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Ray Clemmons (D-Nashville) told WKRN, “It’s as if they want our public schools to fail so that they can then take them over or channel more students into private schools, strengthen their voucher program, give them another reason to use vouchers or to create more charter schools, like Hillsdale College.”
It’s an argument that the State Rep from Culleoka rejects.
“We’re trying to make our public schools as competitive as possible with our private schools so that parents really have to decide if the education in the private sector is better?” he said.
In 2021, Tennessee lawmakers passed the Tennessee Learning Loss Remediation and Student Acceleration Act. It set forth academic support for third-grade students who did not score proficient on their Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) assessment’s English language arts (ELA) portion. It further updated requirements for students to move to the next grade via multiple pathways for fourth-grade promotion.
2022 was the first year of implementation.
Data released after the initial spring TCAP showed that roughly 44,000 students did not score proficient statewide on the spring TCAP English Language Arts assessment. By law, those students were eligible for a retake exam. According to the TDOE, over 25,000 students took advantage of the opportunity provided.
Results from those retakes showed that half of Tennessee’s districts had between 10 percent and 20 percent of their students achieve proficiency through the retest. Additionally, a third had between 10 percent and 20 percent of students improve from “below” proficiency to the next level of “approaching” proficiency. Roughly 3,350 students passed the re-take exam and, as a result, moved on to fourth-grade.
After Spring TCAP testing, Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) estimated around 34 percent of its roughly 6,000 third-graders were at risk for retention. Ultimately, the district retained roughly 84 third-grade students.
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TC Weber is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. He writes the blog Dad Gone Wild. Follow TC on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected]. He’s the proud parent of two public school children and the spouse of a public school teacher.
