In 2007, Tennessee joined with the American Diploma Project, a national initiative headed by Achieve, Inc., with the purpose of minimizing the state’s “expectations gap” – the gap between what a student knows upon graduating from high school and what the student needs to know to be successful in college or the workforce.
Achieve and other education partners have developed a set of benchmarks on what high school graduates need to know in the core subjects of English and math to succeed in firstyear college courses and in the workforce. Achieve worked with Tennessee education officials to ensure the alignment between the state’s new high school standards and the skills needed to succeed in both postsecondary and work settings.
Tennessee’s ADP activities – called the Tennessee Diploma Project (TDP) – included the business and higher education communities as partners to help in clearly defining the skills needed for work and college.
The Tennessee Diploma Project represents a new set of standards for grades K-12 that focuses on driving students toward graduation. There is more information available on TDP on the Tennessee Department of Education website and also by clicking here.
The new standards include some major shifts for high school students, with highlights listed below:
- All students must complete the same graduation requirements. This changes the previous policy that established separate paths for college-bound students and career-technical students.
- Gateway tests will be eliminated and replaced with more rigorous end-of-course (EOC) assessments that are aligned to the revised standards. Students must pass the courses in which EOC assessments are given, but do not have to pass the tests themselves to graduate.
- The State Board of Education is developing a schedule to phase in the weight of the scores, but EOC assessment scores will eventually account for 25% of a student's semester grade.
- Students must now take one math course for each year of high school (typically four), rather than the three courses required previously.
Students entering high school in the 2009-10 school year (class of 2013) or later will be subject to the new standards and required to take 10 end-of-course assessments instead of the current Gateway exams. Students in graduating classes 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 will still be required to meet the Gateway diploma requirements in order to graduate.
CLICK HERE to download and view the full presentation on new, more rigorous standards and graduation requirements.
CLICK HERE to view "What It Takes to Graduate,"an informative video produced by the MNPS Communications Department.
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