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

Million Dollar Baby

Since 2011 (the 2012 election cycle), two pro-voucher groups (Students First and the American Federation for Children) have given nearly $1 million to Tennessee legislators by way of direct or in-kind contributions, according to reports filed with the Registry of Election Finance.

Two of the biggest recipients?

House Speaker Beth Harwell has received more than $43,000 via donations to either her campaign account or her political action committee (PAC).

Senate Education Committee Chair Dolores Gresham has received $28,500 in contributions and support.

See the full list:

Students First-AFC Contributions 2011-present

 

Corra and Weber Talk Vouchers

Legislation creating a school voucher program in Tennessee has been placed on the floor calendar of the House of Representatives for Monday, February 8th.

As the debate over whether to approve this proposal continues, bloggers Charles Corra and TC Weber weigh-in.

Corra offers two posts (so far), one dealing with the key players and the other beginning a conversation around possible constitutional issues.

Weber offers strong opposition to vouchers and notes:

Instead of adopting any of these ideas that are already proven to help children, we are choosing to adopt, at great expense, a plan that has been shown to hurt children. What a voucher program essentially does is ration high quality public education. Some children, namely those whose parents can navigate the system, will get a life boat to a potentially better situation. But what about those left behind? A vouchers plan does not offer a solution for those children. In fact, as blogger Steven Singer points out, it makes things worse.

More on School Vouchers:

What TN Can Learn from Louisiana on Vouchers

Voucher Week

The Price is Right

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

Haslam on K-12 Education

Governor Bill Haslam delivered his annual budget address tonight. Here are his remarks on K-12 education as prepared for delivery:

Right now, the spotlight is on Tennessee. Who would have thought a decade ago that Tennessee would have significant positive attention around education? Strategic investments, increased accountability, and higher standards have changed the game.

We’ve always known that post-secondary education was not just about access. It’s really about success. And we knew that our students couldn’t succeed if they weren’t prepared when they left our high schools. It’s why we’ve worked so hard to improve student outcomes in our K-12 schools. And why it’s important that Tennessee students are still the fastest improving students in the country since 2011.

In Tennessee our public schools have roughly 1 million students. Since 2011, 131,000 more students are on grade-level in math and nearly 60,000 more are on grade-level in science. For the third straight year, Tennessee public high school students improved on their ACT. Our graduation rate has increased for the third year in a row and now stands at 88 percent.

We need to stop and take a moment – not to pat ourselves on the back – but to let all of that sink in.

A lot of you in this chamber remember when this state continually ranked near the bottom in national rankings, and you understand the progress Tennessee has made in just a few short years. Think about the teachers who continually rise to the challenges their students might bring through the door every day. Teachers and students are doing more than ever before, and their achievements must be recognized. We’ve raised our expectations and our standards. Through the process approved by the General Assembly last year we are well on the way to having in place our new Tennessee Standards that we spent so much time discussing over the last two years. Teams of educators have been working to review each standard, and their work is being reviewed by other professional educators with input from thousands of Tennesseans. The new standards should be voted on by the Board of Education this April.

While much of the rest of the country is still arguing about what to do on Common Core standards, Tennessee went to work developing our standards that continue to raise the bar of expectations. This is what we do. We respond to a changing world and make sure our students are prepared for tomorrow.

I personally believe that investing in education is the smartest thing we can do for economic development. But I also believe it’s a smart long-term investment. One of the things I want to make certain that we do with this budget is invest money that will save us money down the road. The facts are clear: a more educated population will spend less money on health care. Less money on incarceration. If we’re going to be about anything, it has to be about opportunity for all Tennessee students.

One of the things I think we should be the most proud of is that Tennessee – working together – has been a national leader in investing in K-12 during this administration. Tennessee is in the top 10 for elementary and secondary state education expenditures in the nation. We are also outpacing the national average increase in teacher salaries, and that’s before this year’s investment.

Hear me now, our commitment to education continues in a big way tonight. This budget proposal includes the largest investment in K-12 education in Tennessee’s history without a tax increase. We’re funding the Basic Education Program (BEP) portion of teacher salaries with $105 million. Between the current fiscal year’s $153 million and this year’s proposed $261 million investment in K-12 education, Tennessee state government will invest more than $414 million new dollars in our schools, more than $200 million of those additional dollars for teacher salaries.

We’re also including nearly $30 million for the 12th month of health insurance so teachers are offered year-round insurance through the state. And we’re doubling the state investment for a total of $30 million in recurring state dollars going to technology needs at our schools.

Our TCAP tests this year showed that we are making great progress in math and English in our high schools and that proficiency in math and science is increasing in all grades. However, those same tests showed that we are not making the kind of progress that we would like to see in third through eighth grade reading. Because of that, we’re investing $9 million to create a network of literacy coaches and regional coordinators supporting literacy efforts all across the state. Our students have shown incredible growth, but reading remains a challenging area that we have to get right.

What’s important in all of this is that we’re not investing in the same old public education system in Tennessee. We’ve raised our standards. We’ve linked teacher evaluations to student performance. And we’ve expanded education options for children. We are showing historic progress, and we can’t back up. We are a system that is committed to the basic premise that all children should have access to a quality public education regardless of zip code, and we are shrinking the achievement gap for historically underserved and low-income students. None of us should want to go back to ranking in the 40’s. This state will continue to do what has brought our students success: investing more in education while raising our standards and making certain that how well students are learning is reflected in teacher evaluations. I’m grateful to no longer be in the 40’s, but I’m not satisfied to be in the 30’s.

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

 

The Price is Right

When one state legislator decided to support a voucher scheme, he earned a primary opponent. Price Harris of Germantown has pulled papers to challenge Republican Steve McManus over the issue of vouchers.

Grace Tatter reports:

“The voucher bill will take more money out of this school system, and it will make them do more with what little bit that they have, and even less if this bill passes,” Harris said Tuesday after picking up a petition from the Shelby County Board of Elections. A resident of the Memphis area since he was 4, the 49-year-old is the father to a seventh-grader and high school senior who attend Germantown public  schools.

Harris, who already followed anti-voucher as well as anti-testing advocacy groups like “Momma Bears” on Twitter, said he was moved by parents and public school teachers at the rally who insisted that vouchers would harm their fragile school district…

As the voucher legislation (HB 1049) heads for a floor vote, possibly as early as next week, lawmakers like McManus have to be thinking about how the vote could impact their electoral prospects.

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

 

What TN Can Learn from Louisiana on Vouchers

Tomorrow, the Tennessee General Assembly’s House Finance Committee will listen to debate and possibly vote on HB 1049, legislation that would create a private school voucher program in the state of Tennessee.

Yes, the 22 members of the Finance Committee could send an expensive, unproven voucher scheme to the House Floor for a vote — or, they could reject the plan or delay a vote until later.

The cost of the program at full implementation comes in at $130 million or more. Local school boards would lose funding but still have to maintain facilities and staffing at or near current levels.

This comes at a time when the state is facing a lawsuit calling its funding of public schools inadequate.

It seems that, no matter what you believe about the merits of that lawsuit, it would be wise to wait on starting an expensive new program until the suit is settled. Imagine if the state opens vouchers and then also loses the school funding lawsuit. The money that would then be going to vouchers could be used to boost funding at public schools.

Aside from the funding question, though, it’s important to pay attention to outcomes. As Jon Alfuth noted in an article on the topic last year, so far, there is little to no evidence of a positive impact on student outcomes from a voucher program.

If what we do in education is truly all about the students, then we should adopt policies that have proven positive impacts.

Proponents may argue, though, that vouchers haven’t shown harm and it is possible Tennessee’s program could be the one that finally shows a benefit.

Except, now there’s a study of Louisiana’s voucher program. Instead of showing no impact or a slight positive impact, the study shows actual harms to students participating in the program.

Specifically, the study, released by the National Bureau of Economic Research found:

  • Attendance at a voucher-eligible private school lowers math scores and increases the likelihood of a failing score by 50 percent.
  • Voucher effects for reading, science and social studies were also negative and significant.
  • The negative impacts of vouchers were consistent across income groups, geographic areas, and private school characteristics, and are more significant for younger children.
  • Survey data shows that voucher-eligible private schools experience rapid enrollment declines prior to entering the program, indicating that the vouchers may attract private schools struggling to maintain enrollment.

So, not only are vouchers expensive, they have been shown (in Louisiana at least) to have negative impacts on students.

With little data showing any significant positive gains and new data suggesting possible harms, it is difficult to understand why policymakers would adopt a voucher system in Tennessee.

 

A group in Nashville speaking out against vouchers: 

 

nashville vouchers 2016-2

 

 

 

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

 

Corra vs. Butt

Tennessee education blogging newcomer Charles Corra takes on anti-Islamic hysteria and State Rep. Sheila Butt in his latest post on Rocky Top Ed Talk:

I recently wrote about an implicitly anti-Islamic bill floating around the Tennessee legislature that sought to ban the teaching of “religious doctrine” until 10th grade.  While the bill does not explicitly mention Islam in its text, it was filed in wake of parental complaints regarding students learning about the five pillars of Islam and effectively seeks to prevent “religious indoctrination” in Tennessee public schools.

While some of us may have hoped this silly bill would simply wither away and die, it unfortunately has not.  Instead, it will be see some light of day in the Senate Education committee.

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Sheila Butt (R-Columbia), is no stranger to asserting her religious beliefs. Rep. Butt has called for a Council on Christian Relations, Rep. Butt is a published Christian author, with such notable works as “Does God Love Michael’s Two Daddies?” and “Everyday Princess: Daughter of the King,” which contains some…questionable comments regarding interracial dating.

Corra correctly notes the bill will soon receive a hearing in a legislative committee.

Here’s more on efforts to stir anti-Muslim sentiment in Tennessee:

Financed by Fear

Sharing the Wealth

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

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

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

New Kid on the Block

Charles Corra, an employee of RePublic Charter here in Nashville, has started a new blog on education policy and what he calls a “forum for ideas,” including ideas on charter schools.

In a post on charters, he says:

I look forward to a broad-based discussion of how charter schools impact Tennessee – whether it be negative, positive, or a little bit of both.

We’ll see how the discussion goes.

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