Knox County School Board Vice-Chair Amber Rountree recently sent out this message addressed to all Tennessee teachers. The letter comes as the state both celebrates some TNReady scores and grapples with the latest round of TNReady troubles. It’s an interesting contrast to the letter sent to educators who are having their evaluation scores adjusted due to TVAAS errors this year.
Here’s the Rountree letter:
Dear Tennessee Teachers:
While the commissioner was celebrating at a handful of schools on Friday, I was volunteering at a Knox County elementary school. My first stop was a 2nd grade classroom to help during the English/Language Arts block. The teacher gave me the perfect center rotation — reading Otis with small groups and facilitating a writing activity based on the text! I wish I could bottle the giggles and discussion we had about learning a new meaning for “skirt.”
Then I moved onto 4th grade, where the students were engaged in writing thank you notes to several donors who made a field trip possible earlier in the week. The smile a student gave when she got to show me her note and her beautiful cursive could have lit up the entire room!
Next I visited 3rd grade, and helped work with a small group on constructing a response based on the story they had been studying about penguins. They were able to remember key facts from the text and transform what they learned in their own words.
Finally, I wrapped up my visit by talking with the principal about her to desire to apply for a Read to Be Ready grant for her school for the upcoming summer. She spoke about using her lunch hour to have a book club with her students at the nearby park.
I have been honored to work as an educator in Knox County, to serve on the Board of Education, and to currently continue my education as a doctoral student at the University of Tennessee. You might say I have the inside track on the amazing things happening in our schools, but most aren’t lucky enough to have this experience and are relegated to reading about it in the local paper.
Perhaps the TDOE missed the irony in the reporting of TNReady errors immediately prior to unfurling banners celebrating schools who have improved based on said assessment. There is no reason to celebrate an assessment that lacks validity because the data from TNReady is incomparable to TCAP.
Here’s what we should celebrate: the SRO who received a thank you note from a student, the chorus teacher finding a place for every student in the musical, the child who wouldn’t pick up a book last year and can’t put one down this year, the innovative library with a student run coffee shop, the teacher using an outdoor classroom to teach science, and you. You are in each of these stories and I am grateful.
I hope no matter what label the Department of Ed applied to your school, you are proud of the work you do daily to help grow your students.
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