State board staff told the strategic planning committee on July 22 that statewide literacy and postsecondary-readiness measures have improved over recent years but generally fell short of the master plan's goals.
Brianna Summers, director of policy and academics, presented "hot off the press" 2025 data from the Tennessee Department of Education and said "We're improving, but maybe not at the speed we want to." Summers highlighted gains in third- and eighth-grade ELA TCAP proficiency across most student groups but said the increases were smaller than the plan's targets.
On postsecondary and career readiness, Summers described the Ready Graduate indicator (an outcome that counts diploma completion, ACT/SAT-equivalent scores, industry credentials, dual enrollment or military readiness measures). She said the state made gains in postsecondary readiness overall but missed some subgroup goals, and noted the statewide postsecondary enrollment target for the class of 2023 fell short by 0.6 percentage points.
Erica Light, director of research for the state board, cautioned that some new pathways intended to increase licensure and readiness had not been in place long enough to appear in the current three-year datasets. "The limited license is a new pathway for educators to go from a permit to a full license. And during the time period that was covered by this data, there hadn't really been enough time yet for people to use that pathway," she said. Members asked staff to bring updated THEC data at the August workshop.
Committee members discussed expanding the literacy focus to include numeracy and broader math measures and raised concerns about the availability and comparability of early-grade screening data. Staff recommended using TCAP grades for benchmarking where available and suggested grade-band goals for greater coverage when consistent data exist.
The committee did not adopt numeric changes at the meeting; instead members and staff agreed to gather broader stakeholder feedback in August and to refine proposed goals for committee review this fall.