That’s what House Majority Leader Glen Casada, who sponsored the legislation, is saying. Under his proposal, which mirrors A-F school grading systems in other states (Texas, Florida, Indiana), the Tennessee Department of Education’s annual school report card would assign a letter grade from A-F to each school in the state.
The legislation mandated the creation of the A-F scale, and the Department has designed a plan. Now, after seeing the proposed plan, Casada says it may need some work and a one year delay could give the state time to improve the proposal.
Emily West reports:
“We have been working with the Tennessee Organization of School Superintendents and delayed the A-F grading one year,” Casada said. “It gives heartache to many systems. We called all parties. We said there are problems with the way you want to implement it.”
As written and passed by the legislature in 2016, new accountability standards that give letter grades to each school across the state should go into effect for 2017.
The news of the possible delay comes as some education leaders are calling for the proposal to be scrapped altogether.
Legislative action is required to delay the implementation and it seems likely there will also be legislation that aims to eliminate the system entirely.
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