Tag Archives: TNReady

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As Flexible as a Brick Wall

Grace Tatter reports that officials at the Tennessee Department of Education are “perplexed” by concerns over using TNReady data in this year’s teacher evaluations.

While a number of districts have passed resolutions asking for a waiver from including TVAAS scores in this year’s teacher evaluations due to the transition to TNReady, a department spokesperson said:

“Districts have complete discretion to choose how they want to factor that data,” Ball said Thursday. “They don’t have to use TNReady or growth data in hiring, firing, retention or promotion.”

As Tatter’s story notes, however, data from TNReady will still be a part of a teacher’s TVAAS score — 10%. And that score becomes a part of a teacher’s overall evaluation score — a ranking from 1-5 that purports to measure a teacher’s relative effectiveness.

10% is enough to move a ranking up or down a number, and that can have significant impacts on a teacher’s career, even if they are not fired and their pay is not impacted. Of course, some districts may use this year’s data for those purposes, since it is not prohibited under the evaluation changes passed last year.

Dan Lawson outlines some of the of impact faced by teachers based on that final number:

The statutorily revised “new tenure” requires five years of service (probationary period) as well as an overall score of “4” or “5” for two consecutive years preceding the recommendation to the Board of Education. Last year, no social studies assessment score was provided since it was a field tested and the teacher was compelled to select a school wide measure of growth.  He chose POORLY and his observation score of a “4.38” paired with a school wide growth score in the selected area of a “2” producing a sum teacher score of “3” thereby making him ineligible for tenure nomination.

According to TCA 49-5-503, a teacher may not be awarded tenure unless she achieves a TEAM score of 4 or 5 in two consecutive years immediately prior to being tenure eligible. That means a TVAAS score that takes a teacher from a 4 to a 3 would render her ineligible.

Further, a tenured teacher who receives a TEAM score of a 1 or 2 in two consecutive years is returned to probationary status (TCA 49-5-504). So, that tenured teacher who was a 2 last year could be impacted by a TNReady-based TVAAS score that moves a TEAM score of a 3 down to a 2.

Districts don’t have “complete discretion” to waive state law as TNDOE spokesperson Ashley Ball seems to imply.

Further, basing any part of a teacher’s evaluation on TVAAS scores based on TNReady creates problems with validity. Why include a number in a teacher’s evaluation that is fundamentally invalid?

Teachers want an evaluation process that is fair and transparent. There’s nothing perplexing about that.

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

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Of Hope and TNReady

Natalie Coleman is a 7th grade language arts teacher in Sumner County and a 2015-16 Tennessee Hope Street Group Fellow.

Are we ready?

This question is front-and-center in the conversation surrounding education in Tennessee.

This is the question ringing in classrooms across the state, the question plaguing teachers working tirelessly to adjust instruction to more rigorous expectations, striving to help students reach heights monumentally higher than they’ve ever been asked to, much less prepared to, before.

This is the question of parents, nervous their children’s scores will not be as high as they’re accustomed to, worried that everything they’ve heard about the standards and Race to the Top and the over-testing is true, worried that the changes happening in our state may not be good for our children.

This is the question of students whose target has been moved each year, who have been told TCAP counts as a grade (and that it doesn’t), that it’s the last year for TCAP tests (and that it’s not), and that now it is time for us to be TNReady. As a state, we have even branded our new test with a name that echoes our question—Are we ready? Are we TNReady?

For anyone in the state closely connected to education, TNReady is a name that carries with it fear of the unknown, of unrealistic standards, and of unwarranted pressures on teachers, parents, and students. At the same time, though, it resonates with the hope of what we as a state want to achieve—readiness in our students.

We want them to be ready for the next steps in their educations and in their lives. We want them to be prepared to succeed. We do not want to continue reading that students in the first Tennessee Promise cohort aren’t making it, even when college is free, because it’s “too hard.” We do not want to continue hearing from employers that Tennessee’s young workforce is simply not ready.

I will admit that, as a teacher, I am nervous about TNReady because of the pressure it puts on my students. I fear that my classroom will progressively become more and more of a test preparation center and less of a place where students can cultivate creativity, curiosity, interest, and wonder. I am concerned that the testing may take too much of our time and focus, may not be developmentally appropriate, may not be amply vetted, may overwhelm our low-budget school technology resources. I believe that teacher and parent groups are right to raise questions and concerns, right to warn that TNReady may not itself be ready and that its incorporation into student grades and teacher evaluations is problematic and potentially unfair.

Yet, the prospect of TNReady also fills me with hope because of the aspiration it represents. As a state, we have said that it’s time for our students to be ready, time to stop selling them short with watered-down standards and bubble-sheet assessments, time to do what’s necessary for our students to be able to read and write at levels that will make them ready for the literacy demands of college and careers.

In the previous six years I’ve taught, I’ve felt a great tension between what I believe has always been the heart of our language arts standards and how those standards were ultimately assessed. At first, I idealistically believed that teaching language arts the way I learned to teach—authentically and deeply rooted in reading and writing—would automatically translate to test success as well. My achievement levels and TVAAS scores told a different story. Over time, I learned that achieving the desired results required shifting gears to TCAP-specific strategies and drills as the test approached. Test scores improved greatly, but I don’t know what my students actually gained, besides a good score, from those weeks of lessons.

Now, though, my students are preparing for TNReady Part I, a test that will require them to read rigorous texts and synthesize the information from them into a sophisticated essay. This new test has the potential to be one that matches the authenticity I strive for in my classroom.

When I tell my students that the writing we are doing in class right now is to prepare not only for TNReady Part I but for many kinds of writing they will need to do in the future, I can mean it. The skills we are honing to prepare for this test are skills that will help them write successfully in high school, on AP exams, for college admissions essays, in college classes, and even in their careers.

Right now in Tennessee, because of our raised standards and the assessments that come with them, our students are learning skills that will make them ready. I believe this and hope for more growth because of the amazing growth that I’ve already seen.

As our state has undergone massive educational shifts, our students have borne the changes and adapted. When we first began piloting text-based essay prompts a few years ago in my district, many of the students in my class stared at them blankly, merely copied the text word-for-word, or wrote a half-page “essay” that displayed a complete misunderstanding of the task. The writing was often missing the basic components of topic sentences, indention, or even separating paragraphs at all. As I worked to help my students prepare in those early days, for tests that were pilots, my students groaned when we were “writing again.” Even though I worked to make writing fun and to give students opportunities to write for genuine purposes throughout the year, writing assessment preparation was an arduous task for everyone, and students were often frustrated.

Each year, though, the frustration has diminished a bit. In the beginning, just making sure students learned the basics of an essay format seemed an impossible task; now, they come to me knowing how to tackle prompts and organize their thoughts into paragraphs. There is still much room for growth, but where my students start every year and where they end are both well beyond those markers for the class before. Each year is better and better, and—best of all—the groaning is gone. Put two complex texts and a writing prompt in front of my students now, and they set right to work, staying focused for over an hour at a time, writing away. They’re open to revision and work to make changes. They ask for help, and they take pride in making their writing the best they can.

This is progress I would have considered miraculous three years ago, yet it is commonplace now, and I am grateful for the growth I see in students’ abilities each year.

When February comes and brings with it text-based writing tasks for my seventh graders that look more like something I would have learned to do in pre-AP classes in high school, when April comes with a second computer-based test, this one filled with rigorous and lengthy texts to read and a large dose of an entirely new breed of multi-select, drop-down box, click-and-drag multiple choice questions, will my students be ready?

I am not sure that they will be completely ready. Yet.

No matter how my students score on TNReady this year, though, they are undoubtedly stronger for what we’ve done. No matter what problems we encounter with the test and what we need to do to fix it, I hope we never lose sight of the goal behind it. I hope we keep our standards high, I hope we keep striving to make our assessments authentic measures of the skills we want our students to attain, and I hope we see that the end result is students who are ready.

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

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Still Not Ready

The MNPS Board of Education last night passed a resolution calling on the State of Tennessee to delay the use of TVAAS scores in teacher evaluations during the first year of the new TNReady test. The resolution is similar to one passed in Knox County last month.

Here’s the MNPS version:

A RESOLUTION OF THE METROPOLITAN NASHVILLE PUBLIC SCHOOLS BOARD OF EDUCATION IN OPPOSITION TO THE USE OF TNREADY DATA FOR TEACHER EVALUATIONS FOR THE SCHOOL YEAR 2015-2016

PROPOSED BY ANNA SHEPHERD

WHEREAS, Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) is responsible for providing a local system of public education, and
WHEREAS, The State of Tennessee through the work of the Tennessee General Assembly, the Tennessee Department of Education, the Tennessee Board of Education, and local boards of education, has established nationally recognized standards and measures for accountability in public education, and
WHEREAS, all public school systems in Tennessee have been granted a one-time pass in the 2015-2016 school year to not integrate TNReady scores into each student’s final grades due to an anticipated delay in assessment results, and
WHEREAS, teachers with at least five years of experience are eligible for tenure only if they receive an overall evaluation score above expectations or significantly above expectations for the prior two years, and
WHEREAS, this school year is the first year that the TNReady assessment will be administered, and
WHEREAS, the TNReady assessment is not a compatible assessment with the TCAP assessment, and
WHEREAS, the TNReady assessment requires the extensive use of technology and the State of Tennessee BEP funding formula, already inadequate, does not meet these technology needs or the needs of MNPS schools as a whole, and
WHEREAS, the Tennessee General Assembly and Tennessee Board of Education have already adopted the “Tennessee Teaching Evaluation Act” to lessen the evaluation score impact of TNReady in English/language arts and math, and
WHEREAS, over 70% of MNPS teachers, counselors, librarians, instructional coaches, and others do not produce individual TVAAS data, and
WHEREAS, MNPS seeks to recruit and retain excellent teachers to serve our students.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY METROPOLITAN NASHVILLE PUBLIC SCHOOLS BOARD OF EDUCATION AS FOLLOWS:
MNPS Board of Education strongly urges the Tennessee General Assembly and the Tennessee Board of Education to provide a waiver from utilizing the TNReady data for the use of teacher evaluations for the school year 2015-2016 or allow districts to only use observation data from evaluations to make decisions on hiring, placement, and compensation based strictly on the 2015-2016 TNReady data, and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Tennessee General Assembly and the Tennessee Board of Education consider the impact of the 2015-2016 TNReady data upon future years of teacher evaluations, and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Tennessee General Assembly and the Tennessee Board of Education consider allowing teachers to be eligible for tenure when they have received a composite score of four (4) or five (5) for two of any of the last five years, as opposed to the prior two years only.
ADOPTED BY THE MNPS BOARD OF EDUCATION AT ITS MEETING ON TUESDAY, JANUARY 12, 2016.

 

The resolution includes a few interesting notes:

  • 70% of MNPS teachers don’t have individual TVAAS data
  • There’s mention of the inadequacy of the BEP formula
  • There’s a call for further review of TVAAS after this year

According to prepared remarks by MNPS teacher Amanda Kail prior to the vote, four other counties have passed similar resolutions.

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

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CAPE Flies into 2016

At the first MNPS Board meeting of 2016, advocacy group CAPE will again be encouraging teachers to raise their voices and speak out. CAPE member Amanda Kail previews the remarks she plans to make this evening:

Ladies and gentlemen of the school board — My name is Amanda Kail. I am an EL teacher at Margaret Allen Middle School.
First and foremost, I would like to wish all of you a happy new year. And in that vein, I would like all of us as a district to take a moment to reflect on what we have gotten right, and how we can improve in 2016.
First of all, you are to be commended in recognizing that over-testing has become a serious problem for our schools. Countless studies from leading experts in education, as well as the groundswell of parents around the country who are opting their children out of the tests, and even demands from students, such as the White Station High School students organizing in Shelby County point to the same conclusion — high-stakes testing has been a colossal mistake, regardless of the intentions. Many of you have made statements recognizing the need to reign in the testing as a priority. Thank you. Now let’s make 2016 the year that happens.
How can we do that? First, let’s end testing where we can. DISTRICT benchmarks take up SIGNIFICANT instructional time, and are often given so close to other tests as to be redundant. Getting rid of them would mean 3 less weeks of testing (and 3 weeks more of instruction).
Second, make instructional time THE FOCUS of school days again so teachers can teach and students can learn. Cap building-level testing to no more than once per semester. Remember that assessments are now given on-line, and that most schools at MNPS do not have enough computers to give these assessments in one day, meaning that a single whole-school assessment can drag on for one or two weeks in order to accommodate all students and grade levels.
Third, join Knox County, Blount County, Washington County and Anderson County schools by supporting Board Member Shepherd’s proposal to postpone using TN Ready scores on teacher evaluations this year. Tell Nashville teachers you respect our profession enough to not evaluate us on something that is so much beyond our control. Then tell the Tennessee legislature that it is time to reexamine the trust we have placed in high-stakes testing to tell us anything besides which schools are rich and which are poor.
Finally, lets find a director of schools who truly has ALL of our schools at heart. MNPS needs someone who will ask our legislature to end high-stakes testing and who will demand full funding for our district. Someone who will spend their time getting struggling schools more resources, like the wrap-around services from the Community Achieves program, and who will implement a fair and fully-supported discipline policy grounded in restorative justice. Someone who recognizes that threatening and punishing schools that are serving students with the highest needs is not nearly as useful as finding those schools the resources they need.
We have much work to do, but if we work together, this can be the year our system truly shines. Thank you.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
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A Matter of Fairness

A coalition of education advocacy groups released an online petition today calling for a one year waiver from using student test scores in teacher evaluations in Tennessee.

Here’s the press release:

A coalition of groups supporting public education today launched an online petition asking the Tennessee General Assembly and Governor Bill Haslam to grant teachers a grace period from the use of student test scores in their evaluations in the first year of new TNReady tests. The petition tracks language adopted unanimously by the Knox County School Board, which passed a resolution last week opposing the use of student test scores in teacher evaluation for this academic year.

“The state has granted waivers so that TNReady scores aren’t required to be counted in student grades for this year,” said Lyn Hoyt, president of Tennesseans Reclaiming Educational Excellence (TREE). “If TNReady won’t count in student grades, it’s only fair that it shouldn’t count for teacher evaluation.” Hoyt noted that the transition to the new test means entering uncharted territory in terms of student scores and impact on teacher evaluation scores. As such, she said, there should be a one year or more grace period to allow for adjustment to the new testing regime.

“TNReady is different than the standardized tests we’ve had in the past,” Hoyt said. “Our students and teachers both deserve a reasonable transition period. We support the Knox County resolution and we are calling on the General Assembly to take notice and take action. Taking a thoughtful path transitioning to the new test can also build confidence and trust in the process.”

Hoyt also cited a recent policy statement by the American Educational Research Association that cautions against using value-added data in teacher evaluations and for high-stakes purposes. “Researchers who study value-added data are urging states to be cautious in how it is used to evaluate teachers,” Hoyt said. “The transition to TNReady is the perfect time to take a closer look at how test scores are used in teacher evaluations. Let’s take a year off, and give our students and teachers time to adjust. It’s a matter of fundamental fairness.”

Groups supporting the petition include:

Strong Schools (Sumner County)
Williamson Strong (Williamson County)
SPEAK (Students, Parents, Educators Across Knox County)
SOCM (Statewide Organizing for Community eMpowerment)

Middle TN CAPE (Coalition Advocating for Public Education)
Momma Bears Blog
Advocates for Change in Education (Hamilton County)
Concerned Parents of Franklin County (Franklin County)
Parents of Wilson County, TN, Schools
Friends of Oak Ridge Schools (City of Oak Ridge Schools)
TNBATs (State branch of National BATs)
TREE (Tennesseans Reclaiming Educational Excellence)
TEA (Tennessee Education Association)

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

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New and Not Ready

Connie Kirby and Carol Bomar-Nelson, English teachers at Warren County High School, share their frustration with the transition to TNReady and what it means for teacher evaluation.

Connie Kirby:

This is going to be long, but I don’t usually take to social media to “air my grievances.” Today I feel like there’s no better answer than to share how I feel. It’s been a long year with some of the highest of the highs and lowest of the lows. I work in a wonderful department at a great school with some of the most intelligent, hard-working people I know. As the years have progressed, we have gone through many changes together and supported each other through the good and the bad (personally and professionally). We do our best to “comply” with the demands that the state has put on us, but this year everything that we’ve been hearing about and preparing for for years has come to fruition. We’re finally getting familiar with the “real deal” test, instead of dealing with EOCs and wondering how it’s going to change. I’ve seen the posts and rants about Common Core and have refrained from jumping on the bandwagon because I have had no issues with the new standards. I do, however, see an issue with the new assessment, so I have held my hand in the hopes that I might find something worth sharing and putting my name next to. Today, I witnessed an exchange between one of my colleagues and the state, and I couldn’t have said it better myself. With her permission, I am sharing her words.

Carol Bomar-Nelson:

I don’t know how to fix the problems with the test. I agree that teachers should have accountability, and I think student test scores are one way of doing that. Having said that, if the state is going to hold teachers accountable for student test scores, then the test needs to be fair. From what I have seen, I firmly believe that is not the case. I am not just basing this conclusion on the one “Informational Test” in MICA. Other quizzes I have generated in MICA have had similar flaws. When my department and I design common assessments in our PLC’s, we all take the tests and compare answers to see which questions are perhaps ambiguous or fallacious in some way. I do not see any evidence that the state is doing this for the tests that it is manufacturing. A team of people can make a test that is perfect with respect to having good distractors, clear wording, complex passages, and all the other components that make up a “good” test, but until several people take the test, compare answers, and discuss what they missed, that test is not ready for students to take–especially not on a high stakes test that is supposed to measure teacher effectiveness. I understand that this is the first year of this test. I am sympathetic to the fact that everyone is going through a ‘learning process’ as they adapt to the new test. Students have to learn how to use the technology; teachers have to learn how to prepare their students for a new type of tests; administrators have to figure out how to administer the test; the state has to work out the kinks in the test itself…The state is asking everyone to be “patient” with the new system. But what about for the teachers? Yes, the teacher effectiveness data only counts for 10% this year, but that 10% still represents how I am as a teacher. In essence, this new tests is like a pretest, correct? A pretest to get a benchmark about where students stand at the end of the year with this new test that has so many flaws and so many unknowns. In the teaching profession, I think all would agree that it is bad practice to count a pretest AT ALL for a student’s grade. Not 35%, not 25%, not even 10%. So how is it acceptable practice to count a flawed test for 10% of a teacher’s evaluation? We can quibble all day about which practice questions…are good and which questions are flawed, but that will not fix the problem. The problem lies in the test development process. If the practice questions go through the same process as the real questions, it would stand to reason that the real test questions are just as flawed as the practice questions. My students have to take that test; I never get to see it to determine if it is a fair test or not, and yet it still counts as 10% of my evaluation that shows my effectiveness as a teacher. How is that fair in any way whatsoever? In what other profession are people evaluated on something that they never get to see? Especially when that evaluation ‘tool’ is new and not ready for use?

I know how to select complex texts. I know how to collaborate with my PLC. I can teach my students how to read, think critically, analyze, and write. When I do not know how to do something, I have no problem asking other teachers or administrators for suggestions, advice, and help. I am managing all of the things that are in my control to give my students the best possible education. Yet in the midst of all of these things, my teacher accountability is coming from a test that is generated by people who have no one holding them accountable. And at the end of the year, when those scores come back to me, I have no way to see the test to analyze its validity and object if it is flawed.

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

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Not Yet TNReady?

As students and teachers prepare for this year’s standardized tests, there is more anxiety than usual due to the switch to the new TNReady testing regime. This according to a story in the Tennessean by Jason Gonzalez.

Teachers ask for “grace”

In his story, Gonzalez notes:

While teachers and students work through first-year struggles, teachers said the state will need to be understanding. At the Governor’s Teacher Cabinet meeting Thursday in Nashville, 18 educators from throughout the state told Gov. Bill Haslam and McQueen there needs to be “grace” over this year’s test.

The state has warned this year’s test scores will likely dip as it switches to a new baseline measure. TCAP scores can’t be easily compared to TNReady scores.

Despite the fact that the scores “can’t be easily compared,” the state will still use them in teacher evaluations. At the same time, the state is allowing districts to waive the requirement that the scores count toward student grades, as the TCAP and End of Course tests have in the past.

In this era of accountability, it seems odd that students would be relieved of accountability while teachers will still be held accountable.

While that may be one source of anxiety, another is that by using TNReady in the state’s TVAAS formula, the state is introducing a highly suspect means of evaluating teachers. It is, in fact, a statistically invalid approach.

As noted back in March citing an article from the Journal of Educational Measurement:

These results suggest that conclusions about individual teachers’ performance based on value-added models can be sensitive to the ways in which student achievement is measured.

The researchers tested various VAM models (including the type used in TVAAS) and found that teacher effect estimates changed significantly based on both what was being measured AND how it was measured. 

 

That means that the shift to TNReady will change the way TVAAS estimates teacher effect. How? No one knows. We can’t know. We can’t know because the test hasn’t been administered and so we don’t have any results. Without results, we can’t compare TNReady to TCAP. And, even once we have this year’s results, we can’t fairly establish a pattern — because we will only have one year of data. What if this year’s results are an anomaly? With three or more years of results, we MAY be able to make some estimates as to how TCAP compares to TNReady and then possibly correlate those findings into teacher effect estimates. But, we could just end up compounding error rates.

Nevertheless, the state will count the TNReady results on this year’s teacher evaluations using a flawed TVAAS formula. And the percentage these results will count will grow in subsequent years, even if the confidence we have in the estimate does not. Meanwhile, students are given a reprieve…some “grace” if you will.

I’d say that’s likely to induce some anxiety.

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

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Quickly Dropped?

Some members of the Knox County School Board are considering action that would result in removing standardized testing “quick scores” from a student’s final grades.

This follows a year of changes to quick score calculations that created confusion for school districts across the state.

Discussing the matter, board member Karen Carson said:

“I think it’s one of those laws that generally you do it to hold students accountable and motivate them to do their best, but frankly it only increases the stakes for students,” she said.

“I don’t see that it benefits our students in any way. I don’t think student test scores, this test, should impact a student’s grade.”

Because of the transition to TNReady, scores will not be ready in time to be included in student grades this year. This prompted the Knox County Board to ponder asking the General Assembly to remove the requirement altogether.

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

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Testing Time

While Tennessee teachers are raising concerns about the amount of time spent on testing and test preparation, the Department of Education is lauding the new TNReady tests as an improvement for Tennessee students.

According to an AP story:

However, the survey of nearly 37,000 teachers showed 60 percent say they spend too much time helping students prepare for statewide exams, and seven out of ten believe their students spend too much time taking exams.

“What teachers recognize is the unfortunate fact that standardized testing is the only thing valued by the state,” said Jim Wrye, assistant executive director of the Tennessee Education Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union.

“Teachers and parents know there are so many things that affect future student success that are not measured by these tests, like social and emotional skills, cooperative behaviors, and academic abilities that do not lend themselves to be measured this way.”

Despite teacher concerns, the Department of Education says the new tests will be better indicators of student performance, noting that it will be harder for students to “game” the tests. That’s because the tests will include some open-ended questions.

What they don’t mention is that the company administering the tests, Measurement, Inc., is seeking test graders on Craigslist. And, according to a recent New York Times story, graders of tests like TNReady have, “…the possibility of small bonuses if they hit daily quality and volume targets.”  The more you grade, the more you earn, in other words.

Chalkbeat summarizes the move to TNReady like this:

The state was supposed to move in 2015 to the PARCC, a Common Core-aligned assessment shared by several states, but the legislature voted in 2014 to stick to its multiple-choice TCAP test while state education leaders searched for a test similar to the PARCC but designed exclusively for Tennessee students.

Except the test is not exactly exclusive to Tennessee.  That’s because Measurement, Inc. has a contract with AIR to use test questions already in use in Utah for tests in Florida, Arizona, and Tennessee.

And, for those concerned that students already spend too much time taking standardized tests, the DOE offers this reassurance about TNReady:

The estimated time for TNReady includes 25-50 percent more time per question than on the prior TCAP for English and math. This ensures that all students have plenty of time to answer each test question, while also keeping each TNReady test short enough to fit into a school’s regular daily schedule.

According to the schedule, the first phase of testing will start in February/March and the second phase in April/May. That means the tests are not only longer, but they also start earlier and consume more instructional time.

For teachers, that means it is critical to get as much curriculum covered as possible by February. This is because teachers are evaluated in part based on TVAAS — Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System — a particularly problematic statistical formula that purports to measure teacher impact on student learning.

So, if you want Tennessee students to spend more time preparing for and taking tests that will be graded by people recruited on Craigslist and paid bonuses based on how quickly they grade, TNReady is for you. And, you’re in luck, because testing time will start earlier than ever this year.

Interestingly, the opt-out movement hasn’t gotten much traction in Tennessee yet. TNReady may be just the catalyst it needs.

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

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Quickly Inflated

Jon Alfuth has a piece over at Bluff City Ed that answers the question: Did this year’s method of calculating quick scores on TCAP result in grade inflation? The short answer is yes.

The post is complete with math and graphs that explain the two different methods for calculating quick scores and the possible grade inflation that resulted this year when the TN Department of Education switched to the cubed root method.

Here’s an excerpt that explains the point difference that would be expected based on the different methods for calculation:

The cube root method yielded on average a quick score, the score that goes for a grade, of 4.46 points higher. In other words, a student scoring basic with a raw score of 30 or higher would, on average, receive an extra 4.46% on their final quick score grade, which goes on their report card. A student who scored a 70 last year could expect to receive a 74 under the new quick score calculation.

The additional points do drop as one goes up the raw score scale, however. For the average basic student grades 3-8 with a raw score between 30 and 47, they would receive an extra 5.41 extra points under the new method.

The average proficient student grades 3-8 with a raw score between 48 and 60 would get 4.32 extra points under the new method.

The average advanced student grades 3-8 with a raw score of between 61 and 67 would receive an extra 1.97 extra points under the new method.

The difference varies much more widely for below basic students, but the difference can be as much as 25 points in some cases.

In short, final grades in subjects required to factor in TCAP scores were higher this year than they have been in the past. In some cases, these “extra points” would have moved a student up a full letter grade.

Commissioner McQueen has indicated that this method will be used going forward as the state transitions to the TNReady test, starting next year. Of course, that test is entirely different from TCAP, so comparisons between the two are of limited value — at least until there are multiple years of TNReady data to use for comparative analysis.

More on Quick Scores:

A Call for Testing Transparency

That Was Quick

Quick and Confusing

 

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