Tennessee Governor Calls For Special Session On Critical Education Issues

Learning loss, funding, accountability, literacy and teacher pay top the list of items Tennessee Governor Bill Lee wants to address in a special called session of the Tennessee General Assembly next month. On Wednesday, Lee called for the session for January 19 to address those urgent issues facing Tennessee students and schools in the 2021-22 school year. Primary data projects an estimated 50 percent decrease in proficiency rates in third grade reading and a projected 65 percent decrease in proficiency in math. Those losses only exacerbates issues which existed prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, where only one third of Tennessee third graders were reading on grade level.