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.

 

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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