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In the wake of last year’s TNReady troubles, the Tennessee General Assembly passed legislation saying “no adverse action” could be taken against teachers, students, or schools based on the results. While legislators passed the bill late in the session, the Tennessee Department of Education was left to implement policy.

As this school year is up and running, teachers and administrators are asking what to do with data from 2017-18. Helpfully, the TDOE released this handy guidance document. The document lets teachers know they can choose to nullify their entire Level of Effectiveness (LOE) score from 2017-18 if TNReady scores were included in any part of a teacher’s overall TEAM evaluation score.

But nullifying your score could lead to unintended “adverse actions,” couldn’t it? Well, maybe. But, the always thoughtful TDOE is ahead of the game. They also have a guide to nullification.

This guide makes clear that even if a teacher chooses to nullify his or her entire LOE for 2017-18, no adverse action will impact that teacher.

Here are a couple key points:

Educators who choose to nullify their 2017-18 LOE may still be able to earn Professional Development Points (PDPs). Educators who choose to nullify their 2017-18 LOE may use their 2016-17 score to earn applicable PDPs;

So, PDPs are covered if you nullify. Great.

For educators who nullify their 2017-18 LOE, the number of observations required in 2018- 19 will be calculated based on 2016-17 data in conjunction with the educator’s current license type.

Looks like classroom observations have also been covered.

If a teacher chooses to nullify his or her 2017-18, LOE he or she may still become eligible for tenure this year. Pursuant to T.C.A. § 49-5-503(4), “a teacher who has met all other requirements for tenure eligibility but has not acquired an official evaluation score during the last one (1) or two (2) years of the probationary period due to an approved extended leave; transfer to another school or position within the school district; or invalidated data due to a successful local level evaluation grievance pursuant to § 49-1-302(d)(2)(A) may utilize the most recent two (2) years of available evaluation scores achieved during the probationary period.”

Worried about tenure? TDOE has you covered!

So far, so good, right?

Well, then there was an email sent by the Education Value-Added Assessment System (the vendor that calculates TVAAS).

Here’s what teachers saw in their inboxes this week:

Due to the upcoming release of TVAAS reports for the 2017-18 school year, some of the data from the 2016-17 reporting will no longer be available.

*    The current student projections will be removed and replaced with new projections based on the most recent year of assessment data.
*    Current Custom Student reports will be removed.
*    District administrators will lose access to Teacher Value-Added reports and composites for teachers who do not receive a Teacher Value-Added report in their district in 2017-18.
*    School administrators will lose access to Teacher Value-Added reports and composites for teachers in their school who do not receive a Value-Added report in 2017-18.

If you would like to save value-added and student projection data from the 2016-17 reporting, you must print or export that data by September 26. TVAAS users are reminded to follow all local data policies when exporting or printing confidential data.

But wait, the 2016-17 data is crucial for teachers who choose to nullify their 2017-18 LOE. Why is a significant portion of this data being deleted?

Also, note that student projections are being updated based on the 2017-18 scores.

What?

The 2017-18 test was plagued by hackers, dump trucks, and mixed up tests. Still, the TDOE plans to use that data to update student projections. These projections will then be used to assign value-added scores going forward.

That’s one hell of an adverse impact. Or, it could be. It really depends on how the 2017-18 scores impact the projected performance of given students.

The legislation in plain language indicated teachers and schools would face “no adverse action” based on the 2017-18 TNReady administration. Now, teachers are being told that future student growth projections will be based on data from this test. It’s possible that could have a positive impact on a teacher’s future growth score. It certainly could also have a rather negative impact.

The potentially adverse action of allowing the 2017-18 TNReady scores to impact future growth scores for teachers and schools has not been addressed.

By the way, we now have the following set of apples, oranges, and bananas from which we are determining student growth:

2015 — TCAP

2016 — NO TNReady

2017 — pencil and paper TNReady

2018 — Hacker and Dump Truck TNReady

It’s difficult to see how any reliable growth score can be achieved using these results.

 

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No Adverse Action

After much wrangling in a day that saw the Tennessee House of Representatives hold up proceedings in order to move forward with an effort to truly hold students, teachers, and schools harmless in light of this year’s TNReady trouble, it appears a compromise of sorts has been reached.

Here’s the language just adopted by the Senate and subsequently passed by the House:

SECTION 1. Tennessee Code Annotated, Title 49, Chapter 6, Part 60, is amended by adding the following language as a new section: Notwithstanding any law to the contrary, no adverse action may be taken against any student, teacher, school, or LEA based, in whole or in part, on student achievement data generated from the 2017-2018 TNReady assessments. For purposes of this section, “adverse action” includes, but is not limited to, the identification of a school as a priority school and the assignment of a school to the achievement school district.

This language does not explicitly address the issue of using TNReady for TVAAS, but it has an effect similar to legislation passed in 2016 during that year’s TNReady trouble. Yes, it seems problems with testing in Tennessee are the norm rather than the exception.

Here’s what this should mean for teachers: Yes, a TVAAS score will be calculated based on this year’s TNReady. But, if that TVAAS score lowers your overall TEAM score, it will be excluded — lowering your TEAM score would be an “adverse action.”

While not perfect, this compromise is a victory — the TNReady data from a messed up test will not harm grades or be used in the state’s A-F report card for schools or be used to give a negative growth score to a teacher via TVAAS.

Yes, TVAAS is still suspect, but there’s an election in November and a new Commissioner of Education coming after that. Heading into the November election is a great time to talk with candidates for the legislature and for Governor about the importance of evaluations that are fair and not based on voodoo math like TVAAS. Remember, even under the best of circumstances, TVAAS would not have yielded valid results this year.

While it is disappointing that Senators did not want to follow the lead of their House counterparts and explicitly deal with the TVAAS issue, there’s no doubt that persistent outreach by constituents moved the needle on this issue.

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