State Board committee reviews major ELA standards revisions; debates voice, punctuation, AI literacy and implementation timeline

Nashville — Members of the State Board of Education standards review committee spent their meeting reviewing draft revisions of K–12 English language arts standards, resolving several technical wording and progression questions and asking the Tennessee Department of Education to publish supporting materials and timelines to guide classrooms and textbook vendors.

Committee members agreed to several targeted edits — including standardizing verbs used across grade-level substandards, accepting earlier EAT committee edits that keep pronoun instruction in foundational grades, and adding an explicit progression for teaching active and passive voice — and they pressed the department to link the “standards guides” and appendix materials to the official document so teachers and materials vendors can find implementation guidance.

The standards review is part of a multi-year rewrite intended to produce a single, clearer set of ELA standards for classroom instruction and eventual materials adoption. Committee leadership and Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) staff told members that the revised standards will be accompanied by “standards guides” that unpack each standard for teachers and by an electronic appendix with grade-appropriate word lists and other resources; the department said it will make those supporting documents available to the committee for review and hyperlink them from the final standards.

What the committee changed and why - Pronouns and grammar progression: Nicole Moore, one of the EAT chairs representing the standards-writing group, explained that pronouns were removed from the proposed sixth-grade standard ‘‘for better vertical alignment’’ because the EAT’s work shows pronoun instruction appearing and being reinforced earlier in K–5. The committee agreed not to reintroduce separate pronoun substandards at sixth grade, leaving the EAT’s revision in place.

- Active and passive voice: After extended discussion about where to teach voice as a rhetorical and grammatical tool, the committee agreed to add explicit language about active and passive voice into the middle- and high-school progression. The panel decided that identifying voice should be taught at the earlier secondary grade band (identify/use in Grade 8), with “use and analyze” language applied in later grades so students progress from recognition to application and analysis.

- Punctuation sequence and clarity: Committee members debated the recommended sequencing for commas, colons, semicolons and dashes. TDOE staff had proposed a specific progression; the committee made several small edits for clarity and to make grade-to-grade expectations consistent — for example, distinguishing where students should ‘‘demonstrate understanding’’ of punctuation and where they should ‘‘use’’ punctuation correctly.

- Word lists, glossary and editorial consistency: Members asked the department to consolidate and hyperlink the standards guides, the appendix and any grade-level word lists so teachers can find both the normative standard text and the classroom-facing unpacking. The committee discussed having grade-appropriate root-word lists in the appendix and asked TDOE to consider putting authoritative examples and commonly taught spelling rules (for example, the ‘‘FLOSS’’ doubling mnemonic) in supporting materials rather than repeating exhaustive rule lists in every standard.

- Consistency, clarity and copy editing: The group spent considerable time on punctuation, phrasing and formatting consistency (for example, choosing ‘‘use’’ rather than ‘‘utilize’’ across standards and standardizing how ‘‘grade-appropriate’’ is hyphenated). Several changes were editorial — but members said they matter because teachers and materials vendors use the wording to design lessons and textbook content.

Standards guides, timeline and implementation support TDOE staff and the department’s standards-support team told members the department will publish standards guides that ‘‘unpack’’ each standard for teachers, including examples, strategies and suggested classroom resources. Banks (TDOE) said the guides are intended to be teacher-facing and to reduce the need to load every technical detail into the body of the standards document itself.

On schedule and implementation, TDOE staff briefed the committee on the downstream process: once the State Board finalizes standards language and the board votes, vendors will use the standards to prepare materials (TDOE staff described vendor work and materials adoption activity occurring in the 2027–2029 window). Members repeatedly noted the practical importance of early hyperlinks and a clear appendix so districts, teachers and publishers can begin aligning curriculum materials ahead of classroom use.

Committee process and next steps - TDOE staff (Banks, Nicole Moore, Tammy Marlowe and others) will upload the department’s standards guides and give committee members access for review. - Vice Chair Hilliard served as the live editor for the committee spreadsheet of redlines; members asked that editorial decisions (for example, using the word ‘‘use’’ instead of ‘‘utilize’’) be applied consistently across the document. - The committee named a member (Britney) to maintain the meeting “parking garage” of future agenda items and suggestions (appendix content, additional glossary definitions and formatting consistency notes). - The committee asked TDOE’s assessment team to check whether particular grammatical topics (for example, pronoun items) have been assessed on Tennessee’s assessment blueprint (TCAP) historically; TDOE staff said they would ask the assessment team for available data and report back.

Key quotes from the meeting "Pronouns are already taught and mastered in K through 5...so we felt like removing [pronoun language] altogether would just make more sense," said Nicole Moore, one of the EAT chairs, explaining the committee’s rationale for not reintroducing pronoun substandards at sixth grade.

"I think my standpoint at this moment is to maintain what the EAT is doing," Vice Chair Hilliard said after members discussed whether to reinsert specific grammar substandards in the middle grades.

What this means for classrooms The edits and the committee’s decisions are largely procedural and editorial, not final policy. The committee is working through several days of meetings to refine the language, with TDOE and EAT chairs collaborating on the wording. The department’s standards guides and appendix will be key to understanding how those changes translate into classroom expectations, lesson planning and materials adoption schedules.

The committee reconvened later in the week to continue the line-by-line review and to examine the introduction text and appendix items that members flagged for additional work; the department will share supporting resources with the committee before those follow-up discussions.