As recently as 2009, Tennessee was considered a cellar dweller when it came to student performance on national tests known as the Nation’s Report Card.

Maps depicting student proficiency in math and reading showed Tennessee consistently scoring below basic on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP — considered the gold standard of student assessments — even as neighboring states such as Kentucky, Arkansas and Mississippi fared better.

But now a new map based on a Stanford researcher’s analysis — showing high-growth districts in shades of green and low-growth districts in purple — has people talking, including Kevin Huffman, the state’s former education commissioner.

Tennessee has never turned heads when it comes to proficiency on national tests but, based on several batches of NAEP scores and now Reardon’s map, it’s raising eyebrows on student growth.

The first thing that jumps out at you on the map is: ‘Who is that little green rectangle in the middle?’ And that little green rectangle, of course, is us,” said Nakia Towns, Tennessee’s assistant education commissioner, during a presentation last week to a state task force on testing.

[Sean] Reardon says the green “suggests that there’s something behind the higher growth rates for Tennessee students than for students elsewhere in the Southeast. But it doesn’t tell us what caused it or why it happened.”

Read the full article by Marta W. Aldrich about student performance from Chalkbeat