Arne Duncan was very proud of Tennessee, which was one of the first states to win Race to the Top funding. $100 million of its $500 million prize was devoted to creating an all-charter Achievement School District, made up of the state’s lowest scoring schools. The leader of ASD, Chris Barbic (ex-TFA) promised that these schools would be catapulted to the top 20% in the state within five years. Barbic bailed after four years. None of the ASD schools improved.
A series of leaders replaced Barbic.
Now we know: ASD made no progress.
Test scores in the ASD high school are a disaster.
“This year’s batch of scores, which were released early in July, revealed that test scores for state-run schools remain far below the statewide average and dropped in high school. School-level data is not yet available.
“Education Commissioner Candice McQueen called the new state test data for the turnaround district “sobering…”
“The Achievement School District — now made up of 30 schools, mostly in Memphis — was launched to transform the state’s bottom 5 percent of schools by converting them to charter schools.
“In English II, only 4 percent of high schoolers were on or exceeding grade-level, down from 9.8 percent last year. Three years ago, 10.2 percent of students were on grade level.
“In geometry, the drop was smaller, with 0.9 percent of high schoolers on or exceeding grade level, compared to 1.3 percent last year. The percentage of students on grade level has hovered around 1 percent in geometry for the last three years.”
Nevada and North Carolina rushed to create their own ASDs, modeled on Tennessee.
Way to go, Reformers!
I hope the new National Center on Research on School Choice at Tulane studies the ASD, which was modeled on New Orleans’ Recovery School District.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Compound that with all of Tennessee’s teeing failures. I don’t know how the State is finding valid data. It’s such a mess and the governor election is frightening for Education. I’m very worried.
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Oops , typo, testing failures
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The state has been used and abused by private foundations screwing up the opportunity to improve anything by a relentless focus on test scores.
So this Education Commissioner is going to do more testing and focus on tested subjects. What a tragedy for the students and the teachers. Blind faith in test scores as the salvation (or damnation) of schools is wrong.
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Unbelievable. Even in the face of absolute failure, she (Sharon Griffin) is doubling down on testing and scripted curriculum. There is no way out for them (reformers) now. They wouldn’t even know what to do to turn those schools back into healthy learning environments with experienced educators. It’s like they burnt down the forest, salted the land and now can’t figure out why nothing will grow there anymore. What a disaster.
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That is THE problem. More testing means less instruction. More scripting means less engagement. The solutions are the problems. They probably lost a lot of good teachers making way for the less experienced and lower paid. And the truly maddening part is the cheerleading, “We got this!” As if test scores measured adults’ enthusiasm for raising test scores. So dumb. Yep, way to go, ASD.
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Agreed. The cheerleading is maddening. The other truly maddening part is the way political organizations like SCORE (State Collaborative on Reforming Education | 1207 18th Ave. S Ste. 326 | Nashville, TN 37212) give huge, expensive parties for a few Tennessee schools that have the highest average test scores. They completely distort the purpose of assessment by creating an illusion that every child could score higher if they just try harder. Never once do they evaluate the implications of their policies on schools and communities. Test validity is never questioned. Organizations like SCORE exist solely to shape public opinion that normalize testing and the empty success of privatization.
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If brute force isn’t working, you aren’t using enough of it. – Pretty much sums up the failed education “reform” movement now.
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No problem, they just have to change the word ‘Achievement’, to something they can actually achieve, like chaos, disaster or deep disappointment.
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Gary Rubinstein calls it the “Underachievement School District”
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Chris Barbic is doing great, though:
“Although the group is likely to start in a small number of cities, that presentation also made its ambitions clear: it aspires to eventually be in “every city in America.”
Others involved include Chris Barbic of the Arnold Foundation; Kevin Huffman, the former Tennessee education chief; David Harris, who previously led the Mind Trust, an Indianapolis-based group; and Ethan Gray, the president of the nonprofit Education Cities.”
https://chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2018/07/31/new-group-forms-with-big-names-and-200-million-to-push-for-the-portfolio-model/
Privatized districts will be in “every city in America”!
All the big decisions have already been made, at the ed reform “executive” level- it’s just a matter of which national charter contractors they plug into which city.
Public schools need not apply.
Best to just pack it in now if you’re in the disfavored “public school sector” in one of these cities- they’ll starve you out anyway and the kids in the public schools will get hurt while they’re transitioning to a privatized system.
https://chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2018/07/31/new-group-forms-with-big-names-and-200-million-to-push-for-the-portfolio-model/
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In Memphis charter schools, only 4 percent of students were on or exceeding grade level. What’s the difference between “miraculous” New Orleans and depressing Memphis? (1) Memphis didn’t have public schools to dump low-performing student as in New Orleans. (2) In New Orleans the statistics are controlled by the state, which withholds the damaging data from independent researchers. The Trump administration rewarded $10 million in grants this year to an organization that wrote favorably about school privatization in New Orleans (buying positive spin in the guise of “research grants”).
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There is no good data coming from Tennessee, regardless of what anyone might say. Testing, problematic to begin with, has been botched for so long in this state that even the legislature has to pass laws to keep from being liable when testing data against teachers is collected.
This does not even begin to treat the problems associated with all testing. Our problems go back into the history education here during the past century. there was the diploma project. Then there was Kevin Huffman. there was race to the bottom. This is getting old.
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Race to the Top funded Tennessee fully, and one of the key elements of that grant was the Achievement School District (ASD). Reformers say they want data-driven solutions. Well, now they have data. Charter schools don’t work unless those schools get to cherrypick their students.
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“McQueen… and Griffin have been meeting to discuss additional student testing and changes to the curriculum as potential solutions to improving the district’s academics…
“We went away over the last couple of years from (monthly) assessments,” McQueen said. “We need to see school by school how we’re doing during the year and not wait until the end to see where we are.”
Yup, that should do ‘er! WEIGH that pig!
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Crazy. And the classroom teachers know.
I am sick of people who pull stuff out of their behinds.
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Luckily, my kids won’t experience this new wave of continuous testing. On the other hand, I wonder what we are going to tell our teacher trainees at colleges? That it’s a beautiful world out there once they graduate?
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I tell my teacher ed candidates that they will be the forces for change. I teach them best practices so they graduate with images of what schools & classrooms should look like. My goal is for our young teachers to learn to advocate for a future that puts children at the center of curriculum.
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Do they get full info about the full extent of testing and teacher assessments in our state?
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This image of the new ASD chief inspires trust, doesn’t it? https://in.chalkbeat.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/IMG_2846-900×0-c-default.jpg
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The agreeable fantasy that a “state takeover” of “failing schools” or the outsourcing of those same schools to deregulated charter schools would lead to their “improvement” underpins virtually all federal and state legislation. It also underpins the reform movement and leads to other agreeable fantasies promoted by reformers…. But the biggest agreeable fantasy is that statewide standardized norm referenced tests are the best means of measuring the “quality of education”… and, as we are witnessing, the state that gave us value added testing has tremendous faith in that fantasy… and. alas, so do most voters across the country despite the accumulating evidence to the contrary.
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They also sell the fantasy that extrapolating from incomplete & invalid test data is objective data. Utterly useless. I’m waiting for some of these folks to feel a tiny bit of shame for promoting their junk science.
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The truly incomprehesible thing is that “state take over” means, actually, a hostile take over by a private company, and no official finds this strange, and nobody submits objection based on this fact.
The salary of the leader of ASD is reportedly close to that of the US president’s.
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And in case you missed it: https://www.wate.com/news/local-news/-in-god-we-trust-to-be-displayed-at-tennessee-public-schools/1340174307
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The explanation is even worse than the fact itself.
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