Hamilton County Schools outperformed the state in 24 out of 28 tested areas on the spring 2021 Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program exams, district officials said.
Grades three to five tested above the state average in all tests areas, with the district seeing an increase in proficiency for third grade English language arts from 35.6% in 2019 to 36.2% in 2021.
“I think if you were like me last year, I worried. I worried so much about our youngest learners, who we have to admit, it was not as easy to do remote instruction with our youngest learners,” said incoming interim Superintendent Nakia Towns at a Wednesday news conference.
“When you think about those foundational years, this kind of disruption that we had, we wondered how would our children be able to keep that academic progress going and in fact, we found that particularly in grades three through five, we outperformed the state in nine out of nine academic content areas.”
The statewide data indicates that students learning remotely saw bigger declines in scores compared to students learning in person last year. Hamilton County Schools operated in-person classes during 90% of the school days last year after beginning the school year in a hybrid setting last August.