Minnesota and Tennessee CAN

So, if you visit the website of TennesseeCAN — a pro-privatization education “reform” group, you find this:

I know Tennessee is the volunteer state and we’re certainly a friendly bunch, but are we really building a grassroots organization to help improve education in Minnesota?

Maybe, just maybe, the 50 state CANs as they are known aren’t really all that grassrootsy. Here’s how Minnesota CAN describes their work:

It’s cut and paste advocacy — sounds very organic and grassroots, right?

Anyway, you’re welcome, Minnesota!

For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport


 

Keep the education news coming!

 

MNEA Makes School Board Endorsements

The Metro Nashville Education Association (MNEA) released endorsements for the upcoming School Board elections. Here’s more from a press release:

“In the District 2 School Board race, we were very impressed with two candidates but ultimately voted to support T. C. Weber because of his knowledge of our district and understanding of what can and should be done in our schools,” according to MNEA-PACE Chair Stephen Henry. School Board Chair Anna Shepherd, who is running unopposed in District 4, received the MNEA-PACE endorsement because of her dedication to our schools and her district. MNEA Vice President Theresa Wagner notes that Tyese Hunter is receiving the teachers’ endorsement because she “outshined her opponents in her interview.” Hunter who is running for reelection has worked tirelessly as the school board’s budget and finance committee chair to get more funding for our schools and is keenly aware of the funding needs of our students and the impact of Nashville’s “prosperity” on our employees. MNEA-PACE voted to endorse former MNPS teacher Gini Pupo-Walker because of the outstanding work she has done with immigrant populations over the years and her deep understanding of our schools. She is clearly the best candidate in that race.

For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport

Got some education news to share? Send to andy@tnedreport.com


 

An “F” for TNReady

The Johnson City Press offers a grade to the state for TNReady testing this year and it’s not a good one.

Here’s some of what they had to say:

Tennessee deserves a resounding “F” for TNReady. Schools should be able to test their pupils without hampering instruction and limiting the scope of education, and both parents and teachers should be able to have confidence in the scores. Surely, other states have a model Tennessee can apply.

The writers note that this is not the first year of testing trouble:

For more than a quarter century, Tennesseans have watched the state’s Department of Education fumble around with standardized testing and school accountability measurements. The last four years have been especially comical, leaving teachers and parents without a consistent understanding of achievement while squandering valuable learning time for students.

TNReady Irony?

So the state leapt into the ironically named TNReady, a new set of tests replacing the TCAP, in 2015. TNReady has been a disaster from the word go. The first year, the state canceled the online tests altogether for grades 3-8 and fired the original vendor, which failed to integrate the test online.

Last fall, the problems mounted as the Department of Education announced a new vendor had incorrectly scored about 9,400 TNReady assessments, affecting 70 schools in 33 districts. This year, that same vendor was the victim of what state officials described as a deliberate cyberattack, and connectivity issues slowed the whole system, thrusting everything into question yet again.

While the legislature took some action this year to address the immediate crisis, the state’s next Governor and the 2019 General Assembly should carefully examine our state’s testing culture. In the meantime, local school boards should be more aggressive in pushing back against a Commissioner of Education who has exhibited indifference to the chaos caused by years of bad testing management.

 

For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport

Keep the education news coming!


 

A Comedy of Errors

That’s how one testing director described his district’s experience with TNReady. The Johnson City Press reports:

Supervisor of Testing Roger Walk described the school system’s experience as a comedy of errors with many disruptions during the testing and, in the end, a great loss of instruction time over the course of the school year.

The sentiments expressed in Johnson City echo those expressed by educators across the state. What’s worse, this year marks the second time in three years the state’s attempt to test students online has failed, resulting in significant lost instructional time and waste of taxpayer dollars.

As I noted recently:

Here’s what else I realized: This test will just keep going. No one will stop it. Governor Haslam has yet to seriously weigh-in and appears to be fully behind Commissioner McQueen despite years of testing failures. While Directors of Schools complain about the ridiculous excuses from DOE and poor execution from Questar, so far, no district has permanently suspended testing.

It’s also worth noting that the complete failure to administer online tests is not the only problem with TNReady. In fact, even before TNReady, the state had problems getting scores back to districts in a clear and timely manner.

Further, let’s talk again about what these tests really tell us: They demonstrate which districts have high concentrations of poverty and/or low investment in schools. Often, the two occur (not surprisingly) in the same districts. Here’s more on this:

One possible explanation for the expanding achievement gap is the investment gap among districts. That is, those districts with lower levels of poverty (the ones scoring higher on TCAP) also tend to invest funds in their schools well above what the state funding formula (BEP) generates. The top ten districts on TCAP performance spend 20% or more above what the BEP formula generates. By contrast, the bottom 10 districts spend 5% or less above the formula dollars.

It’s no accident that the districts that spend more are those with less poverty while the districts with less investment above the BEP have higher poverty levels. And, I’ve written recently about the flaws in the present BEP system that signal it is well past time to reform the formula and increase investment.

Testing in Tennessee has indeed been a “comedy of errors.” It’s long past time our policymakers right-size testing and take steps to address what some have called a “culture of testing” that dictates everything that happens in schools.

For more on education policy and politics in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport


 

Changing the “Culture of Testing”

An article by Rebecca Horvath appeared recently in the Johnson City Press and focused on this year’s TNReady debacle. Horvath suggests a “culture of testing” dictates policy that doesn’t serve our students or teachers well.

Here’s a bit of what she has to say:

Nearby middle schoolers were faced with low-powered computers that had to be charged before their tests could begin. Then, they spent two hours trying to submit their tests via the crashed state site, through their lunch time, only to have to return after a late lunch and submit them. (Teachers are not allowed to submit them.) Some students waited 90 minutes for the first part of their test to be submitted online so they could continue with the second part. Can you imagine the stress and frustration for students and teachers?

So, students across the state have spent the entire school year preparing for these tests – the curriculum is designed around them – hearing about how important they are, even having the very school calendar based on testing dates, only to encounter problems immediately.

Every hour lost to testing difficulties is wasting tax dollars, increasing the already heavy stress on teachers and frustrating students and parents.

What, exactly, is the purpose here?

Having a way to assess student progress and success is important, of course. We have to be able to see what areas need improvement and what our schools do well. Standardized tests have been around for a long time, but the pressure and the culture that permeates the entire educational system is new. But tests should be tools, not weapons.

 

As I’ve written before, we keep moving forward with testing despite years of problems.

It’s also worth noting that the threat of financial penalties is essentially an empty one — unless the state absolutely insists on withholding money from schools for problems the state caused. There’s almost no chance any federal funds would be lost. I’d suggest local districts stand up and push back more aggressively.

For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport

Got a story idea or a column to submit? Email me at andy@tnedreport.com


 

About that Dump Truck

Was it really a dump truck that caused TNReady trouble last week? It seems likely (as many suspected at the time) the answer is “NO.”

Chalkbeat has more:

The troubles that at least two Tennessee school districts had connecting to the state’s online testing system last week were not related to a slashed fiber optic cable, the internet provider says.

State Department of Education officials blamed testing problems last Thursday on a fiber optic cable that had been severed by a dump truck in East Tennessee. That cable cut, officials said, resulted in slowed connectivity for students in some districts, while other school systems could not connect at all.

Still, the Tennessee Department of Education continues a pattern of excuse-making:

“There is no evidence this was anything other than a side effect of the issue with the fiber cut, but we continue to look into it,” Sara Gast, a spokeswoman for the state education department, said last week.

But internet provider Education Networks of America disputes that, saying that the West Tennessee issues were not related to the cable cut.

What happened in those cases remains a mystery, for now.

Meanwhile, despite thousands of students in districts across the state experiencing login and submission problems and testing being delayed or suspended on multiple days, the testing continues. There’s also still the question of just how many students received the wrong test and what all of this does to the testing environment.

For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport


 

Frogge on the MNPS Budget

Nashville School Board Member Amy Frogge yesterday outlined some concerns she has as the school system’s proposed budget faces tough choices ahead:

MNPS will receive a $5 million increase this year, rather than the $45 million increase requested by the board. Mayor Briley is doing his best with limited funding, as this article explains, but there just isn’t enough money to go around.

For the first time in my school board career, I voted against a budget proposal. After weeks of receiving conflicting and inaccurate information from the administration, I lost trust in the budget process. The administration still will not answer many of my questions, which is unacceptable.

So where will the cuts come from?

They will not come from the charter sector. Under state law, charters must be paid, so the $5 million increase must first go toward the $14 million increase in charter school costs this year. While other schools may suffer, charter schools will remain fully funded.

Cuts are not likely to be made at the top levels of administration. While cutting paper from classrooms and proposing to cut seven social workers from schools, Dr. Joseph pushed for a pay raise for himself and his top administrators. In the wake of the budget shortfall, he chose to keep his personal chauffeur. Dr. Joseph also pushed to pay friends brought to Nashville extra, unexplained stipends and high salaries off the pay scale.

Under the current budget proposal, Dr. Joseph will earn $346,000 next year. This amount includes his salary plus vacation days and deferred compensation, but doesn’t include his benefits or any consulting fees that he may earn per his contract. (The administration will not disclose how much MNPS employees are earning in consulting fees, even though I have repeatedly requested this information.) Dr. Joseph has added top level administrators and will pay four of his five Chiefs $190,000 each next year. (The fifth earns approximately $170,000.) To provide context for these salaries, Dr. Register earned $266,000 per year and paid his top administrators $155,000 each. Jay Steele, who earned $155,000, was alone performing the same job that now is fulfilled by two Chiefs, each earning $190,000.

Cuts are also not likely to come from consultants. The year before Dr. Joseph and his team arrived, the district paid outside consultants approximately $5 million dollars. Next year, it appears the district will pay consultants somewhere in the range of $14 million to $30 million. Again, I can’t get a straight answer from this administration on proposed consultant costs, so this is my best guess. What’s clear is that consultant costs have increased substantially under this administration, which begs the question: Why must we pay outsiders so much to guide the district’s work while also increasing salaries for those already paid to lead the district? Do our current leaders not have the necessary expertise? When they were brought to Nashville, they were certainly billed as experts deserving of higher salaries.

Some of the cuts will surely come from Dr. Joseph’s firing of nearly 100 Reading Recovery teachers. Although Dr. Joseph promised a plan to “repurpose” these teachers, it’s become clear that there is no such plan, and in fact, schools don’t have any money in their budgets to re-hire these teachers. There are also limited positions available for these teachers. So ultimately, it’s most likely that our very best and most highly trained literacy teachers will leave. Many are already retiring or headed to other districts. Despite an ongoing teacher shortage, this doesn’t seem to bother Dr. Joseph and his team, who were actually caught celebrating the firing of these literacy experts after our board meeting.

Finally, the $27.2 million increase requested for employee compensation, including pay raises and step increases, seems impossible now.

This budget season has been a disaster- unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I hope the Metro Council is prepared to ask the hard questions.

 

A few comments:

First, the reason Mayor Briley is having a tough budget season is because the two previous mayors (with approval from Metro Council) spent heavily from reserve funds to balance budgets. Now, that savings account is depleted and absent new revenue, there’s just not any extra money. Yes, Metro Council needs to ask tough questions of the school budget, but they should also be asking questions about how Nashville got here.

Second, as Frogge notes, it seems likely that two things will happen: Some teachers will lose their jobs and there will be no raises. Both are incredibly problematic. Nashville is experiencing a teacher shortage that has resulted in a shift toward what I’ve called “virtual equality.” Nashville teachers are already underpaid, and not giving raises would only exacerbate this problem.

Third, one reason the MNPS budget is facing problems is a “surprising” drop in students. Somehow, this drop was both unanticipated and created a budget emergency this year.

By way of her post, Frogge points out some possible alternatives. It’s up to the School Board to make a proposal to the Metro Council based on these new numbers. The revisions Dr. Joseph proposes to the MNPS Board will say a lot about his priorities. Metro Council can’t revise the school system’s budget, they can only vote it up or down. However, a budget document that doesn’t address the concerns Frogge raises should be rejected and sent back to MNPS for improvement.

For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport

Keep the education news coming!

 

WRONG: Another TNReady Story

Today’s TNReady story is a tale of the wrong test.

Reports from multiple districts indicate that students have been given tests for the wrong grade level today, particularly in ELA.

This was reported some last week, as well, with the biggest instance noted in Anderson County.

In an update to parents last week, Williamson County noted this type of testing mix-up had happened there as well.

Even when there’s not a widespread outage, as has happened due to dump trucks and hackers, there are problems with the execution of this test.

As Chalkbeat reports, the problem with yesterday’s test (not blamed on aliens, surprisingly) means the text-to-speech feature is turned off today. That means students requiring this feature will not be able to test:

Districts were told late in the day that the culprit was traced to a feature allowing text to be turned into speech for students needing audible commands.

“The problems presented by this feature impact the system for districts across the state, regardless of how many of your students are using text-to-speech,” said an email to superintendents from the state Department of Education.

No word on when students needing this feature will be able to test.

As I said yesterday, it’s amazing to me that this test has not been stopped. When will our Department of Education put students first?

 

For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport

Keep the education news coming!