2013 Pathways to the Prize - District Winners | Page 2

Pathways to the Prize
Lessons from the 2011 SCORE Prize District Winner

Pathways to the Prize
Lessons from the 2011 SCORE Prize District Winner

September 2012
Dear Educators,
Over the last three years, Tennessee has transformed into a national leader for education reform.
State and local leaders have come together to make a series of policy changes, including raising academic standards for our students, providing educators with more timely access to data, and focusing
on our lowest achieving schools to ensure that more of our students graduate from high school with
the skills they need to be successful in life. Although we have made significant strides in changing policy
conditions, our most important work concerns how these policy changes impact what’s happening in
classrooms, schools, and districts throughout the state.

Table of Contents
3

Letter from Jamie Woodson

4

About the SCORE Prize

6

2011 SCORE Prize District Winner: Maryville City Schools

18

Conclusion

20

Appendix: Discussion Guide

24

Glossary

26 2011 SCORE Prize Selection Committee / Staff

Throughout this document, there
are QR codes that directly link
to additional online resources.
To access these resources,
simply scan the code with your
smartphone. QR code apps
can be downloaded for free.
You can also access these
resources by visiting
the link provided.

Last year, SCORE awarded the first annual SCORE Prize to the elementary, middle, and high school and
one district in Tennessee that have most dramatically improved student achievement. While our aim in
awarding the SCORE Prize was to identify and reward those schools and districts that are effectively meeting the state’s new academic standards, an equally important goal of ours was to highlight best practices
and distill them into a usable format for educators. We began this work by sharing video vignettes and data
profiles of the finalists and winners after last fall’s announcement. Pathways to the Prize continues our work
of highlighting best practices and providing educators with the tools they need to replicate them in their own
communities.
In the following pages, you will find information about Maryville City Schools, our 2011 SCORE Prize
district winner, and its work to prepare all students for success after high school. Maryville demands that
the school district prepare students to be globally competitive. In response, the district engages the broader
community and uses data they have on student performance to translate those high expectations into the
district’s mission, vision, and goals. In order to achieve its goals, everyone in Maryville – educators, parents, students, and business and community leaders – has a role to play.
Maryville’s story is reflective of the work that all of Tennessee’s districts must engage in to improve
outcomes for students. As Tennessee moves into the second year of wide-scale implementation of
many of its policy commitments, we must ensure that educators have access to information about
those schools and districts that are rising to these new challenges. We hope that Pathways to the
Prize, which is grounded in research and supplemented by additional tools on our SCORE Prize
website, aids you in continuing the most important work: ensuring that our students graduate
from high school prepared for the global economy.

Very sincerely,

The SCORE Prize
www.tnscore.org/scoreprize/

2





3