Among States Measured, Tennessee Ranks #1 in Math and #3 in Reading

Today, the release of the Education Scorecard shows Tennessee is a national leader for academic recovery post-pandemic. 

“Tennessee shines at the top of the rankings in today’s Education Scorecard release, as public schools have achieved the rank of #1 state in the nation in math proficiency increases and the #3 state in reading proficiency increases from 2022-2025,” said TennesseeCAN Executive Director Chelsea Crawford. “This is a major accomplishment that will have life-changing impacts for students and indicates Tennessee’s K-12 education policies and investments to improve student outcomes are working.” 

The Education Scorecard is a collaboration between two of the nation’s leading education research centers: the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University and the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University. The latest report provides a high-resolution picture of where Tennessee students’ academic recovery stands, combining state test results for roughly 35 million grade 3–8 students nationwide with national assessment data to describe changes in local communities.

Tennessee highlights: 

• Tennessee students are virtually back to 2019 levels in math—one of the most complete recoveries in the country post-pandemic.
• Districts like Johnson City, Putnam County, White County, and Maury County are outperforming their peers across the state in both math and reading. 
• Several other districts are rising relative to their peers in one subject—either math or reading. Sullivan County, Germantown, and Anderson County are leading the way in math performance, while Arlington, Grainger County, and Greeneville are leading the way in reading. 
• Memphis-Shelby and Montgomery County remain the state’s most significant recovery challenge.
• Statewide, there is progress on improving chronic absenteeism (i.e. students missing more than 10% of a school year), which has fallen from about 20% in 2022 to 18% in 2025. However, chronic absence rates still remain about 5 percentage points above pre-pandemic levels, indicating that this remains a priority going forward. 

Tennessee results as well as district-specific fact sheets are available at: https://educationscorecard.org/states/tennessee/

Topping the rankings for increases in math are 1) Washington D.C.*, 2) Tennessee, 3) Louisiana, 4) Delaware, 5) Maryland. Topping the rankings for increases in reading are 1) Washington D.C.*, 2) Louisiana, 3) Maryland, 4) Tennessee, 5) Kentucky. Due to data limitations, Alaska, Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Montana, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Vermont are not included in the 2026 Education Scorecard findings. *While Washington, D.C. is a federal district, Tennessee’s rankings of #1 and #3 are among the states measured in the data. 

The national release and data are available at: https://educationscorecard.org/.