The Tennessee General Assembly quickly worked this week to dispense with Governor Bill Lee’s education package to address learning gaps created by the COVID-19 pandemic.  According to the Governor’s office, the Extraordinary Session was “tasked to take up five key education issues: Learning Loss, Funding, Accountability, Literacy, and Teacher Pay.” 

 

While the bills were directed at the K-12 community, the higher education teacher preparation programs were impacted.  Specifically, SB7003/HB7002 contained several provisions affecting education preparation programs (EPPs).

 

The legislation requires THEC and the State Board of Education to conduct a one-time teacher preparation program study.  The study will examine the current landscape of literacy instruction, programming, and pedagogical practices as well as program affordability, including net-cost and student loan-burden.  The study results must be completed by March 1, 2022 and reported out to the State Board of Education, the House and Senate Education Chairs, and ultimately posted on the SBE and THEC websites.

 

The bill also requires the TN DOE to develop standards of foundational literacy skills to be used by all EPPs.  At minimum, the skills standards should include how to effectively teach phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension; how to differentiate students with advanced skills and those with significant reading deficiencies; Dyslexia identification skills; how to implement reading instruction using high quality instructional materials; how to implement behavior management and trauma-informed principles and classroom practices for students to effectively access reading instruction; and how to administer universal reading screeners to students and use the resulting data to improve reading instruction for students.  These standards shall be implemented on campuses by August 1, 2022, and will impact university students seeking K-3 licensure and those seeking an instructional leader license.  Students seeking the applicable licensure shall be required to take and pass a reading instruction test which will be paid for by the state.