This notice went to first- and second-grade teachers across the state of Tennessee. The state made a little error. This little error will count for 35-50% of each teacher’s evaluation.
My first thought when I read it was that I was appalled that teachers of first and second grade are being evaluated by the test scores of their students.
My next thought was to wonder whether anyone in the Tennessee Department of Education would be held accountable for this error.
And then I remembered that accountability is not for those in charge, only for those in the schools.
Subject: Important Notice Regarding Your 2013 TVAAS Teacher Report
1st and 2nd grade teachers:
The department has discovered an issue that required us to recalculate TVAAS teacher-effect scores for all 1st and 2nd grade teachers. We learned that, due to incorrect labeling by our external vendor within the SAT-10 claiming file, teachers who taught Mathematics during the 2012-2013 school year received Language teacher-effect scores for their Mathematics students, and vice versa. The issue did not involve the TVAAS model itself, nor the EdTools claiming process.
Many of the teacher-effect scores for 1st and 2nd grade will look very similar, especially for teachers that taught all of the same students in all subjects. However, some teachers may have only taught Mathematics or Language and they would have received a report that was for the wrong subject. Due to these changes, many of the teachers in Mathematics and Language will see shifts in their index measures in grades 1 and 2.
If you are receiving this email, your TVAAS Evaluation Composite Score (Level 1-5 scores) was not impacted. However, you may see slight revisions to your previously reported index scores (used to determine level 1-5 scores). For this reason, we do recommend that every teacher visit the TVAAS website using the username and password already provided by SAS to view updated information.
Please note that this situation will not impact school or district level scores in any capacity. The issue is strictly limited to individual teacher-effect scores for 1st and 2nd grade teachers and affects around three percent of those teachers’ TVAAS Evaluation Composite Scores (Level 1-5 scores).
We apologize for the inconvenience this situation has created. However, we want to ensure that teachers receive scores that accurately reflect their students’ progress during the 2012-2013 school year.
Please e-mail team.questions@tn.gov with any questions (replies to this message are not monitored).
To access the TVAAS reports go to
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Appalling. They don’t care what is actually measured, as long as it’s measured. Will that be lawsuit fodder if it affects a teacher’s evaluation? I hope so.
Dear teachers,
The outsourcing agency we paid a lot of money for to determine which of you to fire to save money for more outsourcing made an error. Oops.
You forgot, “We regret the inconvenience.”
Lots of public money funneled to corporate through these deformer policies.. Millions of dollars shifted into corporate pockets.
The irony is that ACROSS THE COUNTRY THE CORPORATE SCREW UPS ARE RAMPANT.
…and yet first and second graders are supposed to understand and not misinterpret test questions within a limited time frame, while the test maker can’t discern between two columns of data! Another marked against standardized tests.
And let’s not even start the discussion about how valid these test scores are. At one time it was generally assumed that certain types of assessments would not be administered to children in grades k-2 because of the developmental (there, I’ve gone and used that word again!) age of the students. I have seen students color in bubbles in a pattern because their math program taught them to look for patterns everywhere. Some will speed through a booklet thinking somehow that the first one done is the smartest kid in the class. Or they will see a code number on a page and decide it’s a “clue”. There are times when I ask students why they chose an incorrect answer and their explanations frequently reveal that they knew the content but were somehow tricked by the question or they made an erroneous assumption based on something else within the test booklet.
More here: http://users.stargate.net/~cokids/Standard.testsNOT.html
Thanks for the link and your very interesting insight into the thought process of young students.
You are welcome. One of the few areas where I feel knowledgable is in how young children learn. So many “experts” think that “rigor” in the early grades means treating these students like middle schoolers. They forget -or never learned- that developmentally these groups of children are very different in their thinking.
” I have seen students color in bubbles in a pattern… ask students why they chose an incorrect answer and their explanations frequently reveal that they knew the content…”
Funny, these developmental behaviors are all responses I have seen in middle and high school special ed students. Their reasoning may be slightly more complex, but the behavior is the same.
My latest and probably favorite example of this was the child who, on a district time telling assessment, wrote 10:30:12 under one of the clocks on a page. It was nowhere near the time indicated, and the addition of the seconds confused me since we don’t teach time to the second in second grade. When I called him aside later to tell me how he came up with this very advanced answer, he put his hand to his mouth and whispered, “They gave us a clue”, and pointed to 10-30-12 at the bottom of the page, some distance from the clock face in question, but definitely underneath it. It turns out it was the date the test was revised.
Sounds like more gobbledegook.
Do you know how many times teachers have had to listen to “we want to “assure you” or “we want to ensure that teacher’s evaluations and your scores” blah, blah, blah.
As soon as you hear ‘assure” or “ensure” brace for some heavy duty baloney coming your way.
As the journalist Claude Cockburn, father noted reporters Alex, Patrick and Andrew, once said: “Don’t believe anything until you’ve heard the official denial.”
“My first thought when I read it was that I was appalled that teachers of first and second grade are being evaluated by the test scores of their students.”
Here in NYS, my first graders test scores (pre-test – post-test growth) are worth 40% of my evaluation.
Columns of data are not the only things they can’t keep straight. I have been receiving emails intended for a teacher who shares my first and last names ( middle names are different) for a year. These emails contain information for me to log on to the TVAAS site and view my information and scores. I teach a non-tested subject in an elementary school. She teaches foreign languages in a high school. When I could not get them to understand and straighten out the problem I just started forwarding the emails to her.
Two Thoughts:
First – You can’t be held accountable when you blame the error on the outside vender. Very convenient dodge of responsibility and accountability.
Second – Perhaps the scores were too high for the teachers (and need downgraded).