Trends emerge from state school report card across Southeast Tennessee

The distribution of grades across our viewing area of 159 schools.

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (WDEF)- The state of Tennessee has released their school letter grades for each public school across the state.

Every single public school in Tennessee has been on an A to F scale based on test performance along with college and career readiness.

Schools across our area varied in performance.

Seven Hamilton County schools along with an online school in Polk County received an F.

These schools are Chattanooga Charter School of Excellence High, Dalewood Middle, East Lake Academy of Fine Arts, Orchard Knob Middle, Brown Academy, Tyner Middle Academy, and Calvin Donaldson Elementary

This is the same amount of schools who received an F in 2024, although four of the schools from last year improved their scores to get off of that list, these being Spring Creek Elementary, Howard Connect Academy, Harrison Elementary, and Tracy Elementary.

Sky Arnold of education advocacy organization Tennesseans for Student Success says, “If the school has an F grade, that might be a sign that students weren’t doing well on the test. A large part of it is the growth students are showing year after year so that could be a component that’s driving the lower grades, but ultimately these grades are about accountability. It’s a way for parents to see how their schools are doing in a very easy to understand way.”

This is in contrast to 21 schools across our area that received an A, 13 of those in Hamilton County.

Only 18 schools on last year’s report card in our area received an A, and 65 more schools across Tennessee received an A.

Arnold said, “Keep that in mind because that improvement didn’t happen by accident. It took a lot of hard work by teachers through collaboration. A lot of hard work by students as well, and they all deserve to be recognized because at the end of the day that’s really what we want is to see more schools receiving an A.

One data point that illustrates the gap between the highest and lowest performing schools is the amount of students who are economically disadvantaged.

Every single one of the Hamilton County schools who received an F had 50-75%  of their student body fall into the economically disadvantaged category.

Meanwhile among the Hamilton County highest performing schools, none had more than 25% of their schools fall into this category, with some having under a five percent economically disadvantaged rate.

It is worth noting among the A graded schools outside of Hamilton County, these numbers were higher, with one Bledsoe County school reaching that achievement with half of its student population being economically disadvantaged.

We have a full list of school grades here.

Arnold tells us that Tennesseans for Student Success will have their own letter grades for each district based on their results on their website in the coming weeks.