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Study: Violence in Tennessee schools third worst in the nation

wallethub.com

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WMOT)  --  A new study provides an unflattering look at Tennessee’s public schools. WMOT reporting partner Wallethub.com ranked the states on education and Tennessee scored tenth from the bottom.

 

Wallethub says it compared 21 key measures, including academic scores, pupil-to-teacher ratios and safety concerns.

 

Analyst Jill Gonzales says the one thing that most impacted Tennessee’s score was the level of violence in public schools. For example…

 

“The share of high school students who have reported being threatened or injured in the past year. That’s where Tennessee actually had the third highest numbers. So that’s certainly alarming.”

 

Another area Gonzalez says Tennessee needs to work on is the pupil-to-teacher ratio. Why is that important? S   he says research shows that the more access students have to their teacher, the higher their academic scores.

 

“We do want to see that puil-to-teacher ratio start to shrink so that hopefully more attention can be given to individual students and then test scores can go up.”

 

State officials say the scores of Tennessee’s high school students did rise across the board on the academic test results released this past week. However, state reports show that about half of all students are still testing below grade level.

 

As is often the case, Wallethub notes that there’s a strong regional component to the school rankings. Most school systems with the worst scores are in the South, while most states ranked highest are located in the Northeast.

 

Would you like to review the complete Wallethub study?

Would you like to review Tennessee's most recent academic testing scores?