tnAchieves Leading the Way to Prepare Students for College and Beyond

tnAchieves is proud to share the fall 2024 report from College Promise titled Preparing Tennessee Students for College, Career, and the Future.

Tennessee has been a longtime leader in higher education policy innovation and implementation, with the most well-known being the Tennessee Promise. The scholarship offers every Tennessee high school senior the opportunity to go to community or technical college tuition and mandatory fee free. As a partnering organization to the Tennessee Promise, tnAchieves serves more than 90 percent of high school seniors in the state.

“A quality education can change the trajectory of a student’s life, and Tennessee Promise is focused on ensuring students seeking a post-secondary education earn a meaningful credential,” said Governor Bill Lee. “By providing every high school graduate with the opportunity to attend college tuition-free, we are creating greater opportunity and outcomes for Tennessee’s most vulnerable students while helping our state meet its workforce goals.”

Beyond the Tennessee Promise program, tnAchieves continues to innovate ways to support students. tnAchieves builds and executes student-focused programming that enrolls students in postsecondary education and provides critical support to at-risk students improving their chances at completing a credential or degree before pursuing meaningful careers in Tennessee.

“tnAchieves has considered itself the engine behind the TN Promise for more than a decade,” said tnAchieves President and CEO Krissy DeAlejandro. “We know that it takes more than eliminating the funding barrier to ensure increased college enrollment and completion.  tnAchieves is more than college access and success.  It is a holistic career pathways model focused on building Tennessee’s future workforce.”

In this report College Promise explains how tnAchieves is using a statewide model to transform the way Tennesseans think about college and better prepare students for success after high school.

Highlights include:

• An explanation of how tnAchieves crafted and implemented a statewide proactive coaching model alongside emergency aid funding. Results of this program show that participants are 6X more likely to graduate from college than their peers.
• The value of community partnerships, and tnAchieves’ model for conceptualizing, piloting, studying, and scaling programs.
• tnAchieves’ willingness to share their findings. The landmark TN Promise program has given tnAchieves the opportunity to inspire the development of more than 430 different Promise program programs in all 50 states.

tnAchieves is a 501(c)3 nonprofit. Any interview requests or questions can be directed to Rebecca Franklin at Rebecca@tnAchieves.org or (865) 748-7767.