Matthew Burnette, Staff Writer

Letter grades are in, and some Coffee County Schools saw improvement in their scores compared to last year.

The grading is performed by the Tennessee Department of Education and is based off of metrics like student achievement, student academic growth, growth for the highest need students (bottom 25%) and for high school, college and career readiness.

Schools are then given a letter grade A-F correlating to the score the score of 1-4 they receive.

Both Hickerson Elementary and Coffee County Middle School saw the biggest improvements compared to last year with both moving from a “D” grade to a “B.”

Hillsboro Elementary, who scored the highest grade in the district with an “A,” and East Coffee Elementary, who scored a “B,” were both designated as reward schools.

Reward schools are the state’s highest performing schools recognized by TDOE for “demonstrating exceptional student achievement, significant academic growth, high readiness for postsecondary success, and strong support for English learners, with high overall scores and improvement across key indicators.”

The Coffee County School District as a whole also received a score of 2.9 which places it in the “Advancing” category, the second to highest designation a district can receive.

Coffee County has received the “Advancing” designation every that the grading system has been in place, and this year was one out of 100 districts receiving that designation.

Director of 6-8 Curriculum & Instruction Dr. Stephen Blessing, who presented the letter grades at the Jan. 12 Coffee County School Board, noted that this year Coffee County was only three-tenths away from the “Exemplary” designation, the highest offered by the state.

All of the schools in the Coffee County School System received a letter grade except for the Virtual Academy that experienced a reduction in enrollment which made it ineligible for a grade.

The letter grades were as follows:

• Deerfield Elementary- B
• East Coffee- B
• Hickerson Elementary- B
• Hillsboro Elementary- A
• New Union Elementary- B
• North Coffee Elementary- B
• Coffee County Middle School- B
• Coffee County Raider Academy- B
• Coffee County Central High School- C