A Comedy of Errors

That’s how one testing director described his district’s experience with TNReady. The Johnson City Press reports:

Supervisor of Testing Roger Walk described the school system’s experience as a comedy of errors with many disruptions during the testing and, in the end, a great loss of instruction time over the course of the school year.

The sentiments expressed in Johnson City echo those expressed by educators across the state. What’s worse, this year marks the second time in three years the state’s attempt to test students online has failed, resulting in significant lost instructional time and waste of taxpayer dollars.

As I noted recently:

Here’s what else I realized: This test will just keep going. No one will stop it. Governor Haslam has yet to seriously weigh-in and appears to be fully behind Commissioner McQueen despite years of testing failures. While Directors of Schools complain about the ridiculous excuses from DOE and poor execution from Questar, so far, no district has permanently suspended testing.

It’s also worth noting that the complete failure to administer online tests is not the only problem with TNReady. In fact, even before TNReady, the state had problems getting scores back to districts in a clear and timely manner.

Further, let’s talk again about what these tests really tell us: They demonstrate which districts have high concentrations of poverty and/or low investment in schools. Often, the two occur (not surprisingly) in the same districts. Here’s more on this:

One possible explanation for the expanding achievement gap is the investment gap among districts. That is, those districts with lower levels of poverty (the ones scoring higher on TCAP) also tend to invest funds in their schools well above what the state funding formula (BEP) generates. The top ten districts on TCAP performance spend 20% or more above what the BEP formula generates. By contrast, the bottom 10 districts spend 5% or less above the formula dollars.

It’s no accident that the districts that spend more are those with less poverty while the districts with less investment above the BEP have higher poverty levels. And, I’ve written recently about the flaws in the present BEP system that signal it is well past time to reform the formula and increase investment.

Testing in Tennessee has indeed been a “comedy of errors.” It’s long past time our policymakers right-size testing and take steps to address what some have called a “culture of testing” that dictates everything that happens in schools.

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