Where We Stand
Here’s where we are. Here’s what we inherited. Baseline conditions for Memphis-Shelby County Schools, 2025-26 — every figure compared to the state and to our own trajectory.
About 2 in 3 third graders are not reading on grade level
Source: TDOE TCAP Assessment File, 2025-26
About 1 in 5 students are on track in math
Source: TDOE TCAP Assessment File, 2025-26
About 1 in 6 MSCS students does not graduate within four years
Source: TDOE Graduation Cohort Data, 2024-25
A Ready Graduate meets Tennessee's college- and career-readiness definition
Source: TDOE Ready Graduate Data, 2024-25
District Profile enrollment count; TDOE reports demographic groups on a separate profile snapshot
Source: TDOE District Profile Data, 2024-25
TDOE's direct-certification definition is reported in the source notes
Source: TDOE District Profile Data, 2024-25
Current student growth is rated at the state's highest level; recent results have varied
Source: TDOE District Wide TVAAS Composite, 2024-25
The state's own accountability system rates the district as improving
Source: TDOE Accountability File / MSCS Federal Accountability Release, 2024-25
The Pipeline: 100 Students Enter Kindergarten…
Each stage shows how many of 100 hypothetical MSCS kindergartners reach that milestone. Hover or focus a stage for its definition and source.
Hypothetical cohort built from the latest published rate at each stage — not a single tracked class. Rates may have different source years; inspect each stage for its source.
Early Childhood
The first public outcome gate is third-grade reading. The indicators below are Shelby County context from before a child ever enrolls — county grain, not the Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) district data elsewhere on this page.
Third-grade reading gate — live TDOE data
31.8%
About 2 in 3 third graders are not reading on grade level Source: TDOE TCAP Assessment File, 2025-26.
Low birth-weight babies
11.9%
A leading precursor to kindergarten readiness — the readiness story before a child ever enrolls, per docs/KIDS_COUNT_REVIEW.md and docs/URBAN_CHILD_INSTITUTE_REVIEW.md.
Shelby County · TN Dept. of Health, Division of Vital Records and Statistics, 2022
Preterm births (less than 37 weeks)
12.9%
Preterm delivery is strongly associated with developmental delay and later school-readiness gaps — the same reproducible "before kindergarten" layer as low birth-weight.
Shelby County · TN Dept. of Health, Division of Vital Records and Statistics, 2022
Monthly child-care cost (two-parent, two-child family)
$1,500/mo
The cost side of the Pre-K-access story: access, quality, and cost together, not access alone. ALICE's Household Survival Budget is a bare-minimum cost estimate, not a subsidized or average-market rate.
Shelby County · United For ALICE Household Survival Budget, 2024
Pre-K access and unmet need
A district enrollment count does not show how many eligible four-year-olds could not obtain a high-quality seat.
Needed for publication: Annual Shelby County or Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) eligible-child estimate, funded seats, enrollment, and waitlist by geography.
Public source leadCommunity Conditions
The backdrop children live in before they reach a classroom. These are Shelby County-wide figures from federal sources, not Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) district data — county grain, not district grain, and a different denominator than any MSCS KPI on this dashboard.
Young children (ages 3–4) not in school
58.5%
Directly informs the early childhood Pre-K access gap as a public, reproducible county proxy for early-education participation before kindergarten entry.
Shelby County · Census ACS 5-Year (Table B14003), 2019-2023
Children in poverty (ages 0–17)
28.1%
Dominant driver of downstream academic and life outcomes (~28% of Shelby County children). Contrasts with MSCS's economically-disadvantaged KPI (~60%), which uses TDOE direct certification — a different, narrower administrative definition.
Shelby County · Census SAIPE, 2023
Teens (ages 16–19) not in school and not working
9.7%
Opportunity/disconnected youth measure serving as a bookend to the postsecondary enrollment pipeline, highlighting high school transitions and connecting education to justice system interactions.
Shelby County · Census ACS 5-Year (Table B14005), 2019-2023
Children without health insurance (under 19)
6.0%
Uninsured children face barriers to healthcare access that directly correlate with chronic absenteeism, untreated health needs, and early learning readiness.
Shelby County · Census SAHIE, 2023
Children in single-parent families (under 18)
51.2%
Standard KIDS COUNT child-wellbeing indicator providing demographic context for household resources, housing stability, and absenteeism across Shelby County.
Shelby County · Census ACS 5-Year (Table B23008), 2019-2023
Source: U.S. Census Bureau (ACS 5-Year, SAIPE, SAHIE), county 47157 (Shelby County). These indicators provide community context alongside MSCS’s district-level metrics elsewhere on this dashboard — they are never blended into a district figure or used as a proxy for one.
Academic Outcomes — K through 12
Our kids are growing. The system isn’t giving them enough to grow into.
ELA proficiency (grades 3–8) — MSCS vs. Tennessee
Source: TDOE TCAP Assessment Files. 2019-20 canceled and 2020-21 disrupted by COVID; treat those years with caution.
TVAAS growth composite — how much students grew vs. expectation
Source: TDOE TVAAS District Composites. 2020-21 not rated (COVID). Level 5 = significantly above expected growth.
Why both charts matter — the core tension
TVAAS measures whether students learned more than predicted given where they started — and current MSCS student growth is rated at the state’s highest level, though recent results have varied. Proficiency measures whether students are on grade level — and most MSCS students are not, because the starting point is so far behind. Tennessee’s accountability formula weights proficiency heavily, so the district is penalized in state ratings even while its kids grow faster than anywhere else in the state. Our children are running faster than ever. The finish line is still too far. That’s a resource problem, not a performance problem.
Who the system serves: ELA proficiency by student group
MSCS is 93% students of color and 80%+ economically disadvantaged. State comparisons embed that composition as a disadvantage rather than an equity challenge to be funded. Hover a bar for each group’s share of enrollment.
Source: TDOE TCAP Assessment File, 2025-26 (grades 3-8 ELA). Suppressed values shown as suppressed, never estimated.
Chronic absenteeism (missing 10%+ of school days) — lower is better
Source: TDOE Chronic Absenteeism Files. COVID years labeled in tooltip; absenteeism remains far above the 2018-19 baseline.
Suspended students lose instructional time and are far more likely to enter the justice system.
The disparity between suspension share and enrollment share is the school-climate equity signal.
The explicit education-to-justice pipeline link. TDOE Discipline Data 2024-25; CRDC 2020-21 (referrals).
4-year graduation rate — MSCS vs. Tennessee
Source: TDOE Graduation Cohort Data (4-year cohort denominator).
Ready Graduate rate (ACT ≥21 + career/college credential)
Source: TDOE Ready Graduate Files. Graduating is not the same as graduating ready.
Class of 2025; TDOE district file + ACT state/national report
System Structure
Mixed SourcesMemphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) includes traditional public and public charter schools. These counts use the Tennessee School Directory's exact school IDs and preserve inactive listings for transparency rather than quietly dropping them.
Traditional public schools
151
142 listed as active in the directory
Public charter schools
55
51 listed as active in the directory
What this count does — and does not — show
School counts describe the system's structure, not school quality, enrollment, or funding. The dashboard will add those measures only after each source can be matched consistently and published with its vintage and methodology.
Teacher workforce stability
81.7%
Teacher retention rate; TDOE Teacher Retention, 2024-25.
Data gap: Teacher workforce detail
A current Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) series for experience and out-of-field teaching needs a verified public release and consistent definitions before publication.
Public source to verify: TDOE Educator Preparation and Workforce dataCharter & Alternative-LEA Schools
Charter and alternative-LEA schooling in Memphis is split across four separate authorizers, not MSCS alone — two charter authorizers (MSCS itself and the TN Public Charter School Commission) plus two non-charter LEAs (the Achievement School District and University Schools) that also operate schools outside the traditional district structure. This tracks school-level TCAP proficiency for 213 schools across all four, 2024-25 — the same governance-comparison view a single authorizer’s own report cannot provide.
MSCS
201
schools reported, 2024-25
ASD
3
schools reported, 2024-25
TN Charter Commission
6
schools reported, 2024-25
University Schools
3
schools reported, 2024-25
Avg. ELA proficiency
24.9%
Mean of non-suppressed school scores, all students, 2024-25.
Avg. Math proficiency
25.2%
Mean of non-suppressed school scores, all students, 2024-25.
TVAAS growth, Level 4 or 5
44.6%
Share of schools rated at TVAAS Level 4 or 5, 2024-25 — from TDOE source data, not copied from any authorizer’s own report.
MSCS traditional vs. MSCS charter, 2024-25
| Avg. ELA | Avg. Math | TVAAS Level 4/5 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Traditional (zone) | 25.1% | 24.1% | 39% |
| Charter | 23.1% | 25.9% | 56.4% |
Same authorizer (MSCS), same TDOE files, split by school_lookup.json’s governance field — the one apples-to-apples traditional-vs-charter comparison this dashboard can make. Not a proxy for the TN Public Charter School Commission, ASD, or University Schools, which MSCS does not authorize.
What this does — and does not — cover
School-level data trails a year behind the district KPIs elsewhere on this dashboard — Tennessee has not yet published a MSCS school-level file for the current year. 41 schools report only end-of-course exams rather than the grade-level composite this proficiency series uses, so they have no 2024-25 proficiency row here — a coverage gap, not a suppressed score. TVAAS growth, shown alongside it, covers those schools regardless, since growth doesn’t depend on test type. The full breakdown, methodology, and known gaps are on the detail page.
School Locations
All 206 Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) school-directory listings are mapped from verified coordinates. Blue points are public charter schools; green points are traditional public schools.
193 listings are active in the directory; 55 are public charter listings. This map does not imply performance, enrollment, attendance boundaries, or demographics. Those school-level datasets need their own public, reproducible joins.
Funding
Per-pupil spending is one part of whether the system has the capacity to deliver the outcomes it is being asked to improve. Comparisons below use the same TDOE file and the same district-average field.
MSCS per-pupil expenditure
$14,595
TDOE Finance / Report Card expenditure file, 2024-25
Tennessee peer districts
- Davidson County
- $18,466
- Hamilton County
- $17,784
- Knox County
- $13,950
- Memphis-Shelby County
- $14,595
TISA is Tennessee's student-based funding formula: it combines a base allocation with weights for identified student needs. Per-pupil expenditure is not a measure of whether every school receives the resources it needs, so this dashboard will not infer a local funding shortfall until local contribution and school-level allocation data are public and comparable.
Post-Secondary
Enrollment after high school is a pipeline outcome, not a completion measure. The rate below covers any postsecondary institution in the summer, fall, or following spring.
Enrollment within one year
49.1%
TDOE Post-Secondary Enrollment, class of 2023
Ready Graduate rate
58.4%
TDOE Ready Graduate Data, 2024-25
Public data gap: District-level degree completion, persistence, and enrollment by local institution require a public National Student Clearinghouse release or a reproducible local-institution series. They are not estimated here.