Johnson 89th among TN counties for child well-being

The Tennessee Commission on Children & Youth (TCCY) ranks Johnson County as the seventh worst county in the state when it comes to child well-being. Inspired by the commission's recent State of the Child report, The Tomahawk looked at TCCY's 2025 county profiles, released in July 2025. Each profile looks at four domains: economic well-being; education; health; and family and community. A county's performance in each domain is determined by three statistics. The statistics "were chosen with consideration of important issues in Tennessee, and confined by what is available for all 95 counties," according to a TCCY document about the profiles. Johnson County ranks last out of all counties in education. Education's three statistics are 2024-2025 Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) Reading scores, where Johnson County ranks 92nd; 2024-2025 TCAP Math scores, where Johnson County ranks 93rd; and percentage of higher schoolers who graduated on time during the 2023-2024 school year, where Johnson County ranks 94th. Education is also the domain Johnson County saw the least change in since 2024, when it scored 92nd. Johnson County ranks 89th in economic well-being. It ranked 94th in the "Child Care Cost Burden" statistic; the average Johnson County household would need to spend almost half of their income to keep an infant and 2-year-old in licensed childcare during the 2024 financial year, according to TCCY. Despite this, the economic domain also contains Johnson County's best statistic, where it ranks 9th: "Severe Housing Burden." According to TCCY, 7% of Johnson County households spent at least half their income on housing from 2019 to 2023. Johnson County's best domain is family and community, where it ranks 19th. The county ranks 21st when it comes to health, and 19th in the "Kindergarten Immunizations" statistic, which is the percentage of 2023-2024 public-school kindergarteners who had completed "all required vaccine series." This is the statistic Johnson County saw the biggest change in from 2024, where it ranked 88th. In the document, TCCY notes that "counties with small populations can have wide variations in rates in some data categories, especially when just children, or even just a subset of children, are the focus." To see Johnson or another county's profile, visit tinyurl.com/TCCYprofiles