The purpose of this nonexperimental, quantitative study was to determine if there is a significant correlation among teacher-assigned grades (TAG), district checkpoint scores (CP), and student scale-scores on TNReady tests. The focus was on 1,445 seventh and eighth grade students who were enrolled at a middle school in northeast Tennessee during the academic years of 2017-2018 and 2018-2019, specifically for the content areas of English Language Arts and mathematics. The second purpose of this study was to examine any moderating effects of the categorical variable, students with disabilities (SWD) status, on the correlations among the district and state assessments and students’ final teacher-assigned grades in math and English Language Arts. Sixteen research questions served as the framework of the study. Data were analyzed using Pearson’s correlation coefficients. Results of the analysis revealed that there were significant correlations among teacher-assigned grades, district checkpoint scores, and student-scale scores on TNReady tests for both math and English Language Arts for seventh and eighth grade students at this middle school during the 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 school years. These correlations were all positive and strong for the general population for both years and both content areas with the values of r ranging between .61 and .89. In general, the results suggest that high scores in any area are associated with high scores in the other two areas. These positive high correlations for the overall population acknowledge the efforts of the school and district to align its teaching practices and district assessments with one another along with the state assessments. The study also concluded that there were not significant effects of the categorical variable of students with disabilities status (SWD) on the correlations.

The purpose of this study was to determine if a significant difference exists in the TNReady scores of Tennessee students who attend a kindergarten through eighth grade school (K-8) as compared to students who attend a middle school (6-8 grades). The results of the 2018-2019 TNReady, the state adopted standardized achievement test for Tennessee, were used as the data for the study. The relationship between grade configuration and the percent of students who scored on track or mastered in English language arts and math was analyzed using an independent samples t-test. Further disaggregating by specific grade levels, grade configuration and TNReady achievement data was analyzed to note the impact in English language arts and math in each grade. When a significant difference was discovered, the data was further analyzed with an analysis of variance to determine if a significant difference existed in gender and grade configuration.