Tag Archives: Johnson City Schools

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More Districts Push for Testing Options

Two more Tennessee school districts have joined the push to move beyond TNReady and explore additional testing options. In meetings this month, the school boards in Tullahoma and Johnson City both passed resolutions asking the state for options to replace TNReady including the ACT suite of assessments. The districts also called on the state to work diligently to implement a valid and reliable student assessment.

The Johnson City resolution asks for flexibility and calls out the need for better implementation of tests:

WHEREAS, districts should have the flexibility to choose high school standardized assessments that align with the ACT College Readiness Benchmarks.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Johnson City Schools’ Board of Education hereby calls on the Tennessee Department of Education to improve the state’s testing practices to ensure technical quality, grade-to-grade articulation, and validity and reliability in results.

The Tullahoma resolution asked for the freedom to use the ACT suite of assessments and also made recommendations regarding the amount of time spent testing. If adopted, these recommendations would significantly reduce the total testing time for students:

The Tullahoma City Board of Education implores the Tennessee General Assembly and the Tennessee Department of Education to allow school districts the opportunity to select either the math and English language arts assessments provided by the State of Tennessee or an English or math test that is part of the suites of standardized assessments available from either ACT or SAT.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, The Tullahoma City Board of Education implores the Tennessee General Assembly and the Tennessee Department of Education to direct psychometricians, contractors, and developers to construct assessments designed to inform instructional practice and to provide accountability that would not require for administration a period of time in hours greater in aggregate than the specific grade level of the said child, and not to exceed eight hours in length per academic year.

Tullahoma and Johnson City join Wilson County, Maury County, Davidson County, and Shelby County in asking for either a pause in TNReady or an alternative test.

None of these districts is asking to be absolved of accountability. All of them are asking that the state treat their students and teachers with fundamental fairness.

 

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Shrinking TNReady

That’s the hope behind a resolution passed by the Johnson City Board of Education this week.

The Johnson City Press reports:

Some changes included shrinking testing timing back from three weeks to one week for grades 3 through 8, pushing the writing assessment back to February to give the state more time to get grades in by the end of the school year, and drawing back on pre-K and kindergarten ELA assessments to be less time-consuming for teachers.

The proposal comes after another year of testing trouble in Tennessee. In fact, a recent report noted that while most states transitioning to online testing are doing so smooth, Tennessee is the one glaring exception.

Broad Support?

Now that the Johnson City School Board has given unanimous approval to this proposal, the Director of Schools hopes to spread the message to other districts and build support for changing TNReady:

What I’d like to do if the board approves this resolution is reach out to all the other school superintendents and talk to them about the resolution and get feedback from them,” Barnett said at the meeting. “I think we’d have some support.”

It’s possible this is the beginning of a move that will see district leaders stand up to the state and say “Enough!”

The Board also referenced the problematic implementation of portfolios to evaluate teachers in Pre-K/Kindergarten:

Anderson said that the state estimated those assessments would take about 15 to 17 hours, but some teachers reported spending as many as 44 hours on the project, most of that time being spent in the English Language Arts component of the assessment.

She added that portfolio assessment is considered an appropriate avenue to track student learning in those early grades, and the portfolios can be completed with video or audio taping or with written assessment.

“I don’t think anybody has anything against the concept of portfolios for pre-K (and kindergarten),” she said. “Though the piloting process went fairly well, it ended up morphing into a process this past year that I think was just very complicated and very unwieldy.

It will be interesting to see how the state moves forward in revising those portfolios and if there is any move toward making significant change in the TNReady tests.

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