NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — A big day for public school students as the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program or TCAP testing got underway this morning.
Third and fourth graders have the most at stake after the legislature passed the 3rd grade retention law in 2021. The goal is to make up for pandemic learning loss, but here's the reality after a number of tweaks to the state plan in the last two years.
If a third grader does not score at grade level on the English Language Arts portion of the standardized test, there are a number of hoops to jump through to get to the fourth grade including summer school and tutoring.
Meanwhile, last year's third graders who fell into this "retention group" are still feeling the effects of this law: if they don't show enough growth year over year, they will be held back. About 12-thousand fourth graders are at risk statewide.
I know there is a lot of information to sort through — I'm a parent in the middle of this, too. I found this helpful image from the Tennessee Department of Education mapping out pathways to promotion for third and fourth graders:
My colleague Emily West also has an in-depth look at these retention changes, and even broke down the proposed formula on what your student would need to score to move on to fifth grade.
