White County Schools have made TCAP improvements after the Tennessee Department of Education released the 2024-2025 state and district-level results on Tuesday.
White County saw improvements in ELA, Math, and Science in 2nd through 8th grade, except for 4th grade, which saw a slight dip in Math and Science scores. White County Director of Schools Kurt Dronebarger said White County is in the top five in all 29 test subjects amongst the Upper Cumberland school districts.
“We want to be in the top five in just about every category, in a positive nature,” Dronebarger said. “So we find ourselves there, and, you know, we look at districts across the state that look like us demographically and size-wise. And so we fare very well, and that’s all due to the hard work of the teachers and our staff in our school buildings.”
Dronebarger said two particular areas in which the school system excelled were at the middle school and high school levels. Dronebarger said he is proud to see both the middle school and high school continue to improve upon scores.
“Our middle school had some work, had some ground to gain over the past couple of years, and they have worked really hard to make that happen,” Dronebarger said. “And so that’s a big percentage of our testing population. I’m really proud of White County Middle School, and our high school has kind of carried the torch for us, carried the banner, so to speak, for a while, and has scored very well, especially in Math and in Science as well.”
White County saw a drop of five points in English One scores. Dronebarger said with some grade levels losing points from years past, there is still room for improvement.
“We also want to be above the state average in every category, and there’s a couple of those that were not, they were close, but they were not,” Dronebarger said. “So those will be areas that we will focus on. But we want to keep growing even when we are scoring high. We want to look at what we are doing well and see if we can emulate that in all of our different subject matters, and work with each other, share ideas, and positive things that are going well for us.”
Dronebarger said scores are projecting that four of the eight schools in White County will become reward schools this year.
