Tennessee ELA standards committee finalizes glossary, approves revised K—2 standards

The Tennessee State Board of Education's English Language Arts Standards Recommendation Committee finalized glossary language and voted to approve revised K—2 ELA standards at an electronic meeting on 2025-10-29.

Brianna, the department staff member who read the meeting notice, opened the committee's orientation by saying, "This meeting is called to continue proposing revisions to the ELA standards." The committee moved quickly into detailed line-by-line work on the glossary, references and several "parking garage" items — technical edits the group left for final review while drafting the standard text.

Why it matters: The committee's decisions shape the language districts and publishers use to develop curriculum and instructional materials statewide. The approved standards and glossary language provide the state board and local districts with the normative definitions and progressions schools will follow, and the executive summary the leadership team will draft is intended to explain the committee's rationale to the full board and the public.

Most substantive changes and decisions

- Glossary: Members adopted a set of new and revised entries drawn in part from a committee email by member Miss Dockery. The group added a…