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Tennessee’s Reading 360 Strategy: Turning Literacy Policy Into Daily Reading Practice

Tennessee’s Reading 360 Strategy: Turning Literacy Policy Into Daily Reading Practice

Tennessee’s Reading 360 built a strong early literacy foundation. Now schools need daily practice and feedback aligned to instruction.

5/19/2026 · LitLab Team

Through the Tennessee Literacy Success Act and Reading 360, Tennessee has made a comprehensive commitment to early literacy. The state has built a clear policy framework around foundational literacy instruction, high-quality instructional materials, universal reading screeners, family communication, teacher training, and district implementation support. Reading 360 launched with major state and federal investments to help districts, teachers, and families strengthen phonics-based reading instruction [1].

This is important work. Tennessee is not simply asking schools to “focus on reading.” The state is building the infrastructure for stronger early literacy instruction: K–5 Foundational Literacy Skills Plans, approved instructional materials, universal reading screeners three times per year in grades K–3, home literacy reports, and professional learning for educators [2].

But Tennessee’s next challenge is the same one many leading science-of-reading states now face: making sure strong policy turns into coherent, daily practice for every student.

Tennessee has built a strong early literacy foundation

The Tennessee Literacy Success Act requires foundational literacy skills instruction to be the primary form of English language arts instruction for students in grades K–3. The state defines this instruction around evidence-based components of reading, including phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension [3].

Districts and public charter schools must also maintain approved Foundational Literacy Skills Plans for grades K–5. These plans include daily foundational skills instructional time, adopted instructional materials, universal reading screener selection, interventions and supports, home literacy reporting, and professional development [4].

Tennessee has also pushed districts toward high-quality instructional materials. The state’s implementation materials list approved K–5 ELA programs including Amplify CKLA, Benchmark Advance, among others. Amplify CKLA has been among the most commonly adopted options across K–5, followed by Benchmark Advance [4].

That matters because curriculum coherence is central to effective literacy implementation. When districts adopt strong Tier 1 materials, students need opportunities to practice the exact skills they are learning, not disconnected activities or texts that require them to guess at words they have not yet been taught to decode.

Recent NAEP results show progress is still hard

Tennessee deserves credit for building a serious early literacy system. At the same time, recent NAEP results suggest that the work is far from finished.

In 2024, Tennessee fourth graders had an average NAEP reading score of 215. That was not significantly different from the national public-school average of 214, and it was not significantly different from Tennessee’s 2022 average score of 214. Thirty-two percent of Tennessee fourth graders scored at or above NAEP Proficient, which was also not significantly different from 2022 [5].

This does not mean Reading 360 is not working. In fact, Tennessee’s results look stronger when placed in the broader national context. A recent New York Times analysis of Education Scorecard data, republished by the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard, found that reading scores were down over the past decade in 83% of districts where data were available [6]. In the state-level reading comparison, Tennessee also shows decline, but its drop appears smaller than many other states. That may reflect, in part, the state’s sustained investment in early literacy through Reading 360 and related implementation supports.

Still, the data show there is more work to do. Tennessee has built one of the country’s stronger early literacy systems, but statewide reading outcomes have not yet improved dramatically. The next implementation question is clear: once a state has adopted strong literacy policy, strong materials, and benchmark screeners, how do schools help students get enough aligned practice and feedback between those assessment windows?

Three times a year is necessary, but not enough

Tennessee requires districts to administer an approved universal reading screener to K–3 students three times each school year and submit those results to the state. Approved screeners include aimswebPlus, DIBELS 8th Edition, easyCBM, FastBridge/FAST, iReady with Early Reading Tasks, MAP, and STAR Early Literacy/STAR Literacy [4].

These screeners are important. They help schools identify students who may need support and create a shared structure for monitoring early literacy risk. But benchmark screeners are still snapshots. They tell educators where students are at a few points in the year. They do not always show, day by day or week by week, whether students are successfully applying the specific phonics skills being taught in Tier 1 instruction.

That is where an instructionally-aligned practice-and-feedback layer becomes important.

Students need frequent opportunities to read texts aligned to the skills they have been explicitly taught. Teachers need to know whether students are applying those skills accurately during actual reading, not only on broad benchmark assessments. And intervention teams need a way to keep Tier 2 practice connected to Tier 1 instruction.

Instructional coherence is the next frontier

Recent Tennessee research points in this direction: SCORE’s Knox County study found that students receiving instructionally coherent intervention made an average of 1.3 additional months of literacy growth compared with peers receiving traditional intervention. SCORE defines this as aligning intervention to Tier 1 instruction, rather than treating intervention as a separate system with separate materials and routines [7].

That finding is directly relevant to Tennessee’s early literacy strategy. The state has already invested in high-quality materials, literacy networks, foundational skills plans, and universal screeners. The next step is helping districts make every layer of practice more coherent: Tier 1 instruction, Tier 2 intervention, decodable reading, fluency practice, and progress monitoring.

How LitLab supports Tennessee schools

For districts using programs such as CKLA, Benchmark, UFLI, Fundations, Reading Horizons, or other structured literacy materials, LitLab functions as a curriculum-aligned practice layer. Teachers can browse decodable texts, create custom decodables, print stories, or assign them digitally to students, while keeping practice connected to the phonics sequence students are learning.

This helps solve a common classroom problem: even when a school has strong core materials, teachers often need more aligned reading practice than the curriculum provides. Students may need repeated exposure to a recently taught pattern, additional fluency practice, or differentiated texts that stay connected to the same instructional goal.

LitLab also helps connect practice to feedback. As students read assigned texts, teachers can review recordings, fluency information, and skill-level progress. With LitLab Skill Maps, teachers can see how students are progressing across the curriculum sequence, helping them identify which skills may need reteaching, which students may need additional support, and when students are ready to move forward.

That means schools do not have to wait until the next benchmark window to understand how students are applying taught skills. Universal screeners remain essential, but LitLab helps add more continuous, instructionally useful feedback between those moments.

A Tennessee example: Nashville Classical Charter School

At Nashville Classical Charter School, leaders were committed to the science of reading and prioritized decodable texts in early literacy instruction. But they found that students, especially in the lower grades, quickly ran through available decodables and began losing motivation [8].

LitLab helped the school provide personalized, curriculum-aligned decodable practice tied directly to phonics patterns being taught in Tier 1. During the pilot, teachers assigned decodable patterns weekly based on AIMSWeb and CKLA data. LitLab was used during the school’s Tier 2 intervention block while teachers worked with small groups [8].

By the end of the year, both pilot classrooms outperformed peers on end-of-year benchmarks, every student in both groups made gains in oral reading fluency, and teachers reported stronger engagement, including 15 to 20 minutes of sustained independent use [8].

The lesson is not that a single tool replaces strong instruction. It is the opposite. LitLab worked because it supported the instructional ecosystem the school had already built: strong core instruction, clear data, aligned intervention, and daily opportunities for students to practice reading successfully.

👉 Read the Nashville Classical Charter School Case Study

What Tennessee schools can do next

Tennessee has already done much of the hard system-building work. The next step is making early literacy implementation more continuous, coherent, and actionable inside classrooms.

A practical implementation plan might include:

  1. 1 - Use your high-quality instructional material as the source of truth.
  2. 2 - Give students daily decodable practice connected to the skills they have been explicitly taught.
  3. 3 - Keep Tier 2 intervention aligned to Tier 1 instruction.
  4. 4 - Build regular routines for oral reading fluency practice and feedback.
  5. 5 - Monitor progress at the skill level, not only through broad benchmark scores.
  6. 6 - Use universal screeners as important checkpoints, while adding more frequent feedback between those windows.

LitLab can help Tennessee schools provide that support.

Teachers can use LitLab to browse curriculum-aligned decodables, create custom decodable texts, print or assign stories digitally, and monitor student progress across key foundational literacy skills.

What to do next

Here are a few ways to get started with LitLab:

References

[1] Tennessee Department of Education. “Reading 360.”
https://www.tn.gov/education/reading-360.html

[2] Tennessee Department of Education. “Foundational Literacy Skills Plans.”
https://www.tn.gov/education/districts/instruction/foundational-literacy-skills-plan.html

[3] Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury. “Tennessee Literacy Success Act.”
https://comptroller.tn.gov/office-functions/research-and-education-accountability/prek-12-collection/literacy-success-act--lsa-.html

[4] Tennessee Department of Education. “Tennessee Literacy Success Act Implementation Report.”
https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/education/learning-acceleration/Tennessee_Literacy_Success_Act_Implementation_Report-Updated.pdf

[5] National Center for Education Statistics. “2024 Reading State Snapshot Report: Tennessee Grade 4.”
https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/subject/publications/stt2024/pdf/2024220TN4.pdf

[6] Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University. “Why U.S. Test Scores Are in a ‘Generation-Long Decline.’” May 13, 2026.
https://cepr.harvard.edu/news/2026/05/why-us-test-scores-are-generation-long-decline

[7] SCORE. “Instructional Coherence for Literacy: Knox County Study.”
https://tnscore.org/resources/instructional-coherence-for-literacy-knox-county-study

[8] LitLab. “Case Study: Nashville Classical Charter School.”
https://www.litlab.ai/blog/case-study-nashville-classical-charter-school

LitLab serves 5000+ school sites and 400,000+ students across K–5. It is ESSA Tier IV certified and aligns to UFLI Foundations, CKLA, Fundations, Reading Horizons, Superkids, Benchmark, and other major phonics programs. 👉 Learn More to see how it fits with your current program.