Decaturville Elementary earns A on Tennessee State Report Card

Decaturville Elementary’s new A on the Tennessee State Report Card gives Decatur County a concrete measure of school performance, not just a feel-good headline. Along with the top letter grade, the Decaturville campus was named a REWARD School and earned a TVAAS Level 5 distinction for 2023-24, the state’s highest mark for student growth.

That matters well beyond one building at 820 South West St. in Decaturville. Decatur County Schools serves families in Decaturville, Parsons, Scotts Hill and Bath Springs, so a strong result at one elementary school shapes how parents, teachers and taxpayers view the district as a whole. The district office is at 59 West Main Street in Decaturville, where officials now have a public benchmark to point to as they plan for the next school year.

The state’s letter-grade system is based on more than a single test score. For elementary and middle schools, Tennessee weighs student achievement, academic growth and growth among the highest-need students. For high schools, college and career readiness is also part of the calculation. Decaturville’s A suggests the school met those benchmarks at a level that placed it among the state’s better-performing campuses.

Tennessee said 290 schools statewide received an overall A for the 2023-24 school year, out of roughly 1,905 public schools included in the data release. That puts Decaturville Elementary in a relatively small group of schools that cleared the state’s top accountability tier.

The Tennessee Department of Education updates the State Report Card each year with school and district information on student achievement, growth, enrollment, English learners’ proficiency, graduation rate, postsecondary readiness, discipline and funding. For families, that makes the report card one of the clearest public windows into how a school is performing and where pressure points may remain.

Decaturville Elementary’s leadership is listed as principal Christee Pettigrew and assistant principal Brittany Tubbs, giving the recognition a specific administrative face as the school’s results come into focus. The distinction also arrives at a time when district leaders across Tennessee are managing staffing, funding and recovery from learning loss, making a top grade a useful signal for teacher recruitment and community confidence.

For Decatur County, the A grade is more than a ribbon on the wall. It is a public answer to whether one of the county’s key elementary schools is moving in the right direction, and it gives the district a stronger case that its schools can compete on performance as well as on geography.