By Sherri Drake Silence - The Commercial Appeal -

The Tennessee Education Department's evaluation of student achievement may be delivered the week of Christmas, more than a month later than the report card is typically released.

Because of increased academic standards for Tennessee students this year, the state's 2010 report card is a gift school districts are anxious to unwrap this season.

But this year's delayed release creates a "logistical nightmare" for districts that use the achievement data to offer tutoring for students at struggling schools and prepare plans of action for the upcoming assessment tests in the spring, says Memphis City Schools Supt. Kriner Cash.

"Lag data does us no good when we're trying to close significant achievement gaps," Cash said. "It's only two or three months before the new test has to be administered ... it puts a lot of stress and pressure on the district and the children."

The report card release date has changed several times this year, but officials are now aiming for the week of Dec. 20, said Amanda Morris, deputy director of communications for the state education department.

"That's not the most ideal time frame," Morris said. "... (But) because all of the changes that have happened over the past year, (we're) playing catch up."

For at least the past five years, the report card has been released in the first or second week of November.

The state releases an annual report on kindergarten through 12th-grade students, including state, district and school-level information on achievement. The report card details how students perform on exams and assessment tests in math, reading, science and social studies. And it shows how individual schools and school districts stack up.

Cash said it'd be most helpful to get the information even earlier than November. The district has preliminary results, but until it's official, it's hard to take corrective action for the current year.

For example, parents of students in MCS schools that don't meet "Adequate Yearly Progress" on the report card can ask that their kids be transferred to schools in higher academic standing. That process is delayed when the district doesn't know which schools didn't meet AYP.

This summer, state and local leaders -- including former U.S. senator Bill Frist and Memphis Mayor A C Wharton -- warned the public to be prepared for a big drop in achievement test scores, a reflection of Tennessee's new, tougher academic standards.

A "proficient" score on last year's assessment tests may miss the mark this year.

Morris said the release date for the report card was delayed several times because the state education department didn't get directions on how to calculate the scores based on the new standards until mid-November.

The new standards weren't approved by the state education board until July and then they had to be approved by U.S. education officials.

"It's somewhat of a domino effect, as a result of changing the standards," Morris said.

Shelby County Schools Asst. Supt. David Stephens, who oversees curriculum and instruction, said district officials have some unofficial, embargoed data, but they won't have a full picture of how students are performing until the report card is out.

"We'd love to see it. We try to make decisions based on data," Stephens said. "(But) we're not going to use it as a handicap. We're going to move forward."

-- Sherri Drake Silence: 529-2510