How Tennessee Is Holding Its Lowest-Performing Schools Accountable

The Tennessee State Board of Education held its first-ever accountability hearings in March 2026. Elected and appointed leaders from 18 school districts and charter schools came before the new Accountability Hearings Committee to answer questions about schools that had posted consecutive D or F letter grades under the state accountability system. Dr. Ina Maxwell, a former superintendent, and Bob Eby, a former local school board chair and current state board chair, joined me on this committee. Our job was to determine whether the district leaders responsible for the state’s lowest-performing schools were making the funding and programmatic choices necessary to improve student academic outcomes.

A Statutory Obligation, Not a Suggestion

When Tennessee’s General Assembly overhauled the school funding formula, it also directed the state board, or a committee of its members, to hold public hearings to examine school performance and whether a district’s or charter school’s spending decisions have hindered its ability to meet performance goals.[1] District or charter school leaders are called before us when at least one of their schools posts an F grade for two consecutive years, or a D followed by an F, on the state report card, a publicly available rating of school and district performance. The hearing is not about that single school but about whether the entire district—finance office, school board, and leadership—is making decisions necessary to foster student success.

Attendance is not voluntary. We required directors of schools, chief financial officers, school board chairs, and, for charter schools, executive directors and authorizing officials to appear in person. Fifteen districts and three charter schools sat before the committee this spring.

The Role of the Committee

Before the hearings began, our committee spent months preparing. Districts and charter schools submitted detailed prehearing documentation about what was driving low performance, what interventions had been tried, and what barriers stood in the way. That documentation was not busywork. It laid the foundation for the pointed questions we asked in the room, which were designed to get past talking points and into the actual spending decisions districts were making.

At the close of each hearing, the committee had two options: recommend a corrective action plan to the Tennessee Department of Education or take no action. We decided on a corrective action plan for all 18, which placed the district or charter in a transparent, documented partnership with the department to address the conditions that put its schools on this list in the first place. Every committee recommendation was transmitted to the full state board for a vote. The committee cannot close a school. But it can—and is obliged to—place a recommendation for corrective action on the public record and keep it there.

In every hearing, I made a point of centering committee questions on student outcomes. Tennessee has roughly one million public school students, and the schools that came before us were among the lowest performing. My job as chair was to ask direct questions and get direct answers, because the students in these schools are counting on this process to produce real change, not just a conversation.

What the Hearings Surfaced

Across 18 conversations about schools in urban, suburban, and rural settings, two problems surfaced again and again. The first was teacher and leader recruitment and retention. Our committee routinely asked whether the state’s lowest-performing schools were staffed with the district’s strongest educators, or with the newest, least experienced ones, including staff on waivers or with fewer than two years in their roles and what support those educators were actually receiving. The second was instructional fidelity. Having high-quality instructional materials on a shelf means nothing if a district cannot show the committee, with evidence, that every classroom is teaching to grade level. We pressed leaders on how, and how often, they were inspecting what they expected. We frequently pressed local school board chairs to ensure that conversations about their lowest-performing schools were on the record.

One lesson from this first year is that accountability cannot be a one-size-fits-all exercise if it is going to produce real improvement. The trends were consistent, but the right next step for a small rural district was rarely the same as for one of our largest urban districts. Some questions centered on principal turnover and support; others focused on instructional coherence, financial decision making, or whether a local school board was holding its director of schools accountable for improving outcomes. Our committee had to differentiate its questions by district, while holding every district and charter school to the same expectation of increasing student performance.

We also learned that public accountability changes behavior beyond the room where it happens. Every hearing was livestreamed, and district and charter leaders watched each other’s hearings. At the close of the process, the committee gave leaders a school-matching tool to connect them with schools elsewhere in the state that serve similar student populations yet achieve better outcomes, providing concrete examples to learn from and follow.

A Model for Other States

This was demanding work, for district leaders and for our committee members. In addition to the months committee members spent preparing while also attending to our other board duties, we spent a full week in Nashville facilitating the hearings, all without compensation. Tennessee students deserve that level of effort.

Moving forward, our committee will refine the structure of prehearing documentation, calibrate expectations across districts of varying sizes and capacities, and prepare for future hearings. What will not change is the standard: Schools that are failing students two years running will answer for it, in public, to the body the legislature charged with that oversight.

Accountability is a shared responsibility. While holding accountability hearings was a new charge for us, we are proud of how the first year went. While the impact of this work remains to be seen, we know that the hearings created a sense of urgency, with several district leaders starting improvement plans before the full state board formalized a corrective action. We will continue to monitor performance data with the expectation that these districts will not be called back on behalf of the same schools. We built a process meant to carry real weight, and we see real opportunity for school improvement efforts that prepare every Tennessee student for success after graduation.

Notes

[1] T.C.A. § 49-3-112, further defined in State Board Accountability Hearings Rules 0520-09-02.