OPINION: Numbers show JMCSS is improving academically

Two weeks ago, the Jackson-Madison County School System announced its Level 5 designation for academic growth from the Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE). The Level 5 designation (the highest ranking possible) was given based on the number of students in the district who met or surpassed their individual projections on the end-of-year standardized tests in multiple academic subjects. While a Level 5 is an incredible accomplishment, have we - as educators and community members - given too much power to information that most of us don’t have the time to understand or contextualize? More importantly, what does it even mean to be a Level 5 district?

A student’s individual projections are based on their past performances on standardized tests and then compared to those of their peers with similar test histories. Using these two metrics, the state sets a prediction for each student each year they are tested. Students show learning growth if they meet or surpass their projections on their respective end-of-year tests. 

Before we discuss why JMCSS’s Level 5 designation is critical, I need to mention a few caveats about the prevalence of standardized testing and how, in my opinion, its outsized influence is suffocating the learning process:

• The Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) is a series of tests given in grades 3-8 in the subject areas of English/Language Arts, Math, Science, and Social Studies. In high school subjects, the TCAP is known as an End of Course Test (EOC) and is given in ELA I/II (9-10 grades), US History, Biology, Algebra I, Geometry, and Algebra II. All of the combined data makes up the majority of the state's ranking system for schools and districts within Tennessee.
• The TCAP/EOC tests assess the state standards of a given subject. As students age, the standards become more nuanced and complex. Rather than being evaluated on reading comprehension, for example, secondary ELA students are assessed on the state’s reading standards, which are some of the most challenging standards in the country. 
• Depending on the subject, the TCAP/EOC could assess as many as 95 standards (U.S. History). Each standard could be assessed using multiple questions, but only in one format: multiple-choice.
• Reading passages on standardized tests are loaded with contextual vocabulary primarily acquired by reading consistently from an early age or having different types of experiential life events that broaden a student’s knowledge of the larger world, thereby introducing more contextual vocabulary often seen in standardized reading passages. The less reading a child does and the less exposure that child has to different aspects of the outside world, the less contextual vocabulary will be at their disposal to help synthesize information. 
• Because of the accountability mandates by state and federal governments, school districts lean heavily on test data metrics because those are the rules of the game we’ve all been given to play. Unfortunately, the need to meet these projected data points has come at the expense of taking the time to think critically through a long-form text, hone much-needed writing skills over the course of a semester or year, or even allow for learning simply for the sake of learning something new. 
• I probably won’t be alone in saying that the emphasis on standardized testing has robbed the profession of teaching of much joy and dulled the curiosities of students in classrooms across the country. 

So, what’s the good news? Is there any value in how schools and districts are measured on ONE test on ONE given day taken ONE time over the course of a year? I think there is, but the value is in the growth, not the achievement. 

At the end of every year, student test results are divided into four different levels of academic expectation: 1 (Below), 2 (Approaching), 3 (Meeting), and 4 (Exceeding). Students falling into the Level 3 or 4 quadrants would be considered proficient. The academic success rates for each district in each tested subject are determined based on the number of students who are Level 3 or 4 on the end-of-year test. 

In 2024, 38% of Tennessee's ELA students and 38% of its Math students were considered proficient. In Science and Social Studies, 44% of Tennessee students were deemed proficient. 

Achievement on the state test is ideal and should be a goal at the top of each school’s priority list at the beginning of each year. However, based on the litany of issues with standardized tests listed above, achievement often correlates much closer with other factors that happen outside of school for a student, such as familial income level, stability within a home, and a plethora of different challenges that students face outside of the school building. 

A more productive way of looking at learning data would be to view it through the lens of growth. Are students across the entire district collectively improving year by year?

Because student growth (or loss) can be determined by a razor-thin margin of one or two questions, the year-to-year levels of a district and/or school can be somewhat volatile. Like learning itself, it’s best to look at the data from a wide-angled perspective. This is precisely why the Level 5 designation this year is so critical.

In the last full school year before COVID (2018-2019), 20% of JMCSS students met or exceeded expectations on the English/Language Arts TCAP/EOC test. During the same year, 21% of JMCSS Math students met or exceeded expectations. Science and Social Studies success rates didn’t look much different than their ELA and Math counterparts, with roughly 19% of Science students meeting or exceeding expectations and 20% of Social Studies students meeting or exceeding expectations. Essentially, one-fifth of JMCSS students were seeing achievement success on the year-end test in each subject before COVID. 

Below is a chart that shows the year-by-year results of JMCSS students’ achievement levels in tested subjects between 2019 and 2024. The year 2020 has been omitted from the chart because no test was given that year.

*Math success rates only apply to grades 3-8 in 2024 due to new standards for 9-12 grades.

**Due to new Science standards in 2019, there is no success rate data for Science in 2019.

Looking at the chart, it’s easy to see the drastic improvement from 2019 to 2024 and the massive drop during the abbreviated 2020-2021 school year, which was spent as a hybrid learning year. What’s most important, however, is that JMCSS students not only regained what was lost during COVID but have now surpassed (by a substantial margin) the success rates of the 2018-19 school year. 

One reason this Level 5 designation is so impactful is that it proves, without a doubt, that consistent learning is happening across the entire district year after year.

In a society built on instant gratification, people want to see immediate results, but real change is often accomplished one step at a time. Learning is no different. 

If there’s anything that should be taken from the results of half a decade of data, it should be the realization that authentic learning doesn’t happen overnight or even throughout a calendar year. Real progress happens in consistent, steady increments over time, and it’s happening right now in Madison County. There is irrefutable evidence that JMCSS has grown academically in the last five years. There’s no reason to believe that’s going to stop anytime soon.

Maybe numbers don’t lie, after all. 

Gabe Hart is an educator in Jackson and has written columns that have run in a number of news outlets at the local and statewide level.