2026 Tennessee Educator Survey Snapshot: Early-Career Teachers

The 2026 Tennessee Educator Survey Snapshots offer quick, accessible insights from educators on some of the most important issues in our schools—including artificial intelligence, cell phone policies, student discipline, match curriculum and supports, career and technical education, early-career teachers, teacher evaluation and retention, and more. These one-pagers highlight what teachers are seeing and experiencing right now, providing valuable perspective to inform conversations about policy and practice across the state.

• Key Insight #1: Early-career teachers who complete student teaching or internship clinical experiences are more likely than those in job-embedded clinical experiences to agree that their clinical experience prepared them for their current role.
• Key Insight #2: Early-career teachers report feeling better prepared when their clinical experiences occur in the same district in which they obtain their first teaching job. This is particularly true for early-career teachers in schools with the most economically disadvantaged (ED) students, suggesting that early experiences in those settings prepare them to meet students’ needs.