The House members of the Tennessee legislature voted unanimously to reduce the role of test scores in teacher evaluations, at least temporarily. Controversy continues about whether teachers and other school staff should be evaluated by the scores of students they don’t teach. (Note: readers, please tell Andrew Cuomo that other states are reducing the role of test scores, not increasing them.)
A bill that temporarily would alter the amount that student test score growth impacts teacher evaluations in Tennessee passed unanimously in the House Thursday. But first, lawmakers debated the merits of a system that grades teachers based on scores in subjects they don’t teach.
The proposal, brought to the legislature by Gov. Bill Haslam’s administration, now awaits consideration by the full Senate.
The bill proposes to phase in the weight of test scores as the state transitions to its new assessment, called TNReady, which will be rolled out during the 2015-2016 school year. Under the proposal, scores from the new test would account only for 10 percent of the teacher evaluation score in 2015-16 and 25 percent in 2016-17, before returning to the current 35 percent in the 2017-2018 school year.
The policy also addresses concerns that teachers of non-tested subjects — such as art and physical education, as well as school counselors — can be penalized for test scores they don’t directly impact. The bill proposes that student growth for those positions count for 10 percent in 2015-16, down from 25 percent, and move to 15 percent in subsequent school years.
Some legislators said that provision is inadequate, however. House Minority Leader Craig Fitzhugh (D-Ripley) offered an amendment that would prohibit test scores from impacting evaluations of non-testing teachers at all. He said allowing educators to be graded based on the scores of other teachers is akin to grading students based on the scores of their peers.
“Parents would be outraged,” Fitzhugh said.
Rep. Mark White maintained the bill is fair without the amendment, however, because no teacher works in isolation. “Does the librarian not have an effect on student reading?” he asked. “Can a guidance counselor not play a role in affecting student performance?”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
I remember reading that Tennessee was the first, or one of the first, to have teachers evaluated by scores of subjects they don’t teach. So, the gym and art teachers would be assigned a number based on an average of math and reading scores in their schools. Glad they are coming to their senses.
Some of these comments are fair — but the reality is NO TEACHER should be judged by the socioeconomic status of their students — “socio” referring to the education of the parents, and “economic” referring to the parents’ wealth level. THESE are the things that make the difference for kids “as a group” — not the teachers. What teacher would agree to teach at low-income schools ? How is this a decent policy ?
In my opinion all states should do this.
This is only a temporary change in the weighting of teacher evaluation scores while our state transitions to the new TNReady standardized tests – tests which have not yet been fully developed, validated, piloted or shared with teachers. The real question is why any percentage of our teacher effectiveness evaluation should be based on such tests next year.
Why?
As the famous saying goes: “There’s a sucker born every minute.”
Last night Chris Hayes on MSNBC interviewed Arne Duncan. Duncan brought up Tennessee as an example of common core success.
Actually if you read the fine print this does not reduce the percentage of an eval that is from test scores. Scores count for 35% of the evaluation, period. It is just that during the phase-in years of the new tests, the new tests count a smaller percentage of the 35% than they would otherwise. Whatever the teacher’s scores from prior years of the old tests will follow them around at a higher weighting until the phase in is complete, unless the teacher does better with the new test.