TEA on TNReady Tour

Yesterday, Governor Bill Haslam announced a TNReady listening tour that will start Friday in Knoxville.

Today, Tennessee Education Association (TEA) President Beth Brown emailed the association’s members with a message about the tour:

There are many education accomplishments Gov. Bill Haslam can be proud of, including the consistent increases in state investment in our schools during his tenure. However, repeated failures of his administration’s high-stakes testing system are a major shortcoming in his education record.

Gov. Haslam’s announced “listening tour” is a positive step toward making state assessments something that we can all agree improves teaching and learning. If a stop is planned in your district, I encourage you to participate and share your honest experience with this testing system and your meaningful feedback for how to improve this for our students.

Assessments need to improve teaching practice and identify students who need additional assistance. We do that with mandatory benchmark testing, which allows differentiated instruction to more effectively meet students’ needs.

TNReady has not provided meaningful data to improve teaching practices or help students because of serious failures in administration, the lateness of data getting to teachers and schools, and major questions on what constitutes grade level-work. TEA supports high academic standards, but when proficiency rates of TNReady do not match other important measures like ACT scores and graduation rates, there is growing concern the test isn’t fair or measuring student achievement properly.

TEA hopes part of the dialogue includes transparency of state tests, where parents and teachers can gain access to a large portion of actual questions and answers in any given year. Publishing state tests allows teachers, parents and all Tennesseans to review how constructive responses are scored, what is being asked of students, and assurance that tests align with what schools are directed to teach.

I know how many demands you have on your time, but this is an important opportunity to ensure teachers’ voices are part of the discussion on how to improve testing in Tennessee. According to the governor’s website, the tour will begin this Friday, Aug. 24, in Knoxville, and be followed by stops planned for Hamilton County, Shelby County, Williamson County, Greene County and Gibson County. Specific locations and times are being finalized.

Thank you for your continued to commitment to Tennessee students.

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


 

TEA on TNReady

The Tennessee Education Association has a statement out on the TNReady debacle:

TEA and its members are extremely disappointed with the failures and delays of the state online assessment system, TNReady. TEA is calling for a full and accurate accounting of the problems and how they affect students, along with proof that the system is secure and fair to Tennessee’s parents and teachers. The association is calling on lawmakers to hold students, teachers and schools harmless in light of the failures and growing concerns of the state testing system.

TEA is pleased the House and Senate are holding an immediate hearing on the testing issue.

“Students and teachers across the state are told these are high-stakes tests. Teachers’ jobs are on the line, students’ futures are on the line,” said TEA President Barbara Gray. “That is the environment put upon every parent, every child, and every educator with TNReady. Now the test has been offline for two days, damaging the integrity of Tennessee testing.”

In some districts, students were able to log in, but the system would not allow them to submit finished exams. Some students were disrupted mid-exam. The State Department of Education has indicated completed work was saved on the local device students were using, but teachers and administrators must remember and document which student used which computer. It is unclear how much student assessment work was saved or lost during the failure of the online system over the past two days.

“Student morale is a key component of how well a student does on a test. Losing work, being disrupted mid-exam, and constant delays affect students negatively. We are concerned this will impact scores to the detriment of students, teachers and schools,” Gray said. “We are approaching a point where the entire testing system is becoming questionable. Students who start and stop exams may suffer emotionally or become distrustful, which may hurt concentration.”

Parents’ concerns are also growing. While the state says there is no evidence that student data or information has been compromised when the vendor said their system was hacked, there have been no guarantees the testing program protected student information.

“Many teachers are also parents, and when we hear the online testing system has been deliberately hacked, we fear for our children’s personal information,” Gray said.

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


 

TEA on TNReady

The Tennessee Education Association is out with a statement on TNReady:

“Tennessee teachers and students have lost countless hours of instruction time this school year preparing for the new TNReady assessment,” said TEA President Barbara Gray. “The call to cancel this year’s test should have come more than two months ago when the first phase was such a disaster.”

“The state is so focused on testing that it overlooked the opportunity to salvage what was left of the school year and let teachers get back to educating our students. Instead, the state placed gathering data above the best interests of Tennessee students.”

“Moving forward, we have serious concerns about the state’s ability to find a new vendor and have an assessment ready to go next school year,” Gray continued. “It is time to slow way down on the state’s testing craze and make sure we are doing what is best for our students.”

“The passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act at the federal level gives Tennessee a chance to reevaluate how it measures student and teacher performance. The new law allows for the development of innovative assessments, giving states a way out of the test-and-punish system we have operated under for many years. It will also allow us to look at other success indicators, as opposed to relying on a single test to determine if a school is meeting students’ needs.”

“We have the opportunity now to not just continue with the way things have always been done, but instead explore the opportunities afforded to us through ESSA to make sure every student receives a quality education.”

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