The Tennessee Department of Education (TDE) is implementing several programs that are designed to help its schools ensure they are safe and supportive, thereby improving student outcomes. Below are descriptions of two such programs.

Safe Supportive Schools
With a U.S. Department of Education's Office of Safe and Healthy Students Safe and Supportive Schools grant, TDE is building a data system to ensure that students experience a safe and supportive learning environment. The initiative will create a school climate oversight team and center composed of key stakeholders and school leaders, and develop a measurement system that surveys students, school staff, and families. Data generated by the proposed measurement system will be used to help students in persistently low-achieving schools and those in schools identified with poor conditions for learning.

Character Education
Through a collaborative effort between home, school and the community, character education guides students in developing positive ideals and good habits that will improve behavior, school climate, and ultimately academic performance. In Tennessee, students are provided opportunity and example for becoming conscientious and productive citizens in their school, community and nation. By integrating character traits like caring, respect, responsibility, trustworthiness, citizenship and fairness into all areas of the school experience, students will gain better self-awareness and the desire to become more socially responsible.

Safe Schools/Healthy Students
Since 1999 the U.S. Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Justice have collaboratively funded and supported the Safe Schools/Healthy Students (SS/HS) Initiative. The SS/HS Initiative is a discretionary grant to implement a coordinated SS/HS comprehensive plan of activities, curricula, programs, and services that focus on creating safe school environments, promoting healthy childhood development, and preventing youth violence and alcohol, tobacco, and other drug (ATOD) use, henceforth referred to as the SS/HS comprehensive plan. An eligible applicant is a local educational agency (LEA) or a consortium of LEAs that partner with their local public mental health, law enforcement, and juvenile justice agencies to develop and submit a community-specific SS/HS comprehensive plan that addresses five elements. Tennessee has one 2008 Safe School Healthy Students grantee.
 

Tennessee currently collects incident-based data and will improve its reporting of incident-based and truancy data, as well as create a school-safety measurement system.

On a biannual basis, Tennessee reports data on priority health-risk behaviors and the prevalence of obesity and asthma among youth and young adults as part of the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS). Below is data for a selection of YRBSS indicators for Tennessee and the United States.