Standards committee advances a string of copy‑edits and structural fixes to foundational literacy draft

The State Board of Education’s standards committee spent its session primarily revising the wording, punctuation and structural layout of the K–5 foundational literacy standards, adopting a set of consistency edits and a recommendation to split a previously combined cornerstone into separate items.

Committee members mapped and approved multiple copy edits intended to make the standards easier to read and implement. Changes recorded in the meeting included: consistently hyphenating modifier phrases such as “grade‑appropriate” and “grade‑level”; replacing “which” with the restrictive “that” in parent standards when the clause is essential; removing some commas that broke lists awkwardly; and using semicolons to separate long listed performance criteria. Members also asked staff to normalize references such as “high frequency” (to be hyphenated as “high‑frequency”) across the document.

Why it matters: The committee’s stated goal was to remove sources of ambiguity and reduce proofreading churn for districts and publishers. Several members said consistent punctuation and phrasing will help teachers and materials reviewers quickly locate intended expectations and reduce downstream change requests.

What the committee did: Vice Chair Vester Hilliard and other members made live edits to the shared spreadsheet while colleagues reviewed phrasing on screen. Leanne Potter (chair of the K–5 subcommittee) explained grammatical and usage choices for decodability standards and reminded members why the parent standard uses “reread” for fluency practice. The group agreed to: hyphenate “grade‑appropriate” everywhere; change commas that created misleading parenthetical breaks; convert certain commas to semicolons where lists were lengthy; change singular/plural mismatches (e.g., text → texts where appropriate); and standardize capitalization in subparts.

Cornerstone structure: The Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) had recommended restoring several previously separated cornerstones that had been consolidated. The committee agreed to split the combined K–5 vocabulary cornerstone back into three related cornerstones and to mirror that structure in the K–5 columns so the progression will feed language standards at higher grade bands. Members flagged the related need to update the companion standards guides so the public and districts can find curated exemplars and rationale.

Follow‑up and next steps: Staff were directed to apply the copy edits across the spreadsheet, re‑run a consistency check, and circulate the updated file. TDOE staff will move recommended cornerstone language into the draft standards and provide the committee with updated guidance on how the cornerstones align to 6–12 language standards. Committee members also requested staff review the final file for remaining punctuation and plurality mismatches before the next meeting.

Ending note: Most edits were non‑substantive wording and formatting decisions, but members emphasized these small changes have outsized effects on usability for teachers and materials reviewers. The committee left open the more substantive policy questions — such as the scope of assessments and how draft wording will be reflected in standards‑guides — for later discussion with TDOE and the assessment office.