Tennessee has one of the most intrusive, micromanaging, incompetent state education departments in the nation. So says the Knoxville school board, and so agrees the school boards of Memphis and Nashville.
The problem right now is the state’s failed teacher evaluation program, but there are many reasons to lose trust in the State Education Department.
Problems with pre-K and kindergarten teacher portfolio evaluations became the issue that pushed board Chairwoman Patti Bounds to say the department “still takes no ownership” of its mistakes. Portfolios are used to evaluate educators who teach pre-K, kindergarten, and subjects not included in TNReady standardized testing. Portfolios can include videos showing student progress during the year.
Earlier this week, the superintendents of the state’s two largest districts, Memphis and Nashville, wrote to Haslam and Education Commissioner Candice McQueen to pause state testing until after the election because “educator and public trust in TNReady has fallen to irretrievably low levels.”
Tennessee has taken pride in the progress of its students on national tests and has toughened up its requirements for student learning and evaluating teachers. But the foundation for its analysis, the state’s new online test, TNReady, has been fraught with technical setbacks since it was introduced in 2016.
State lawmakers were so concerned about the problems with TNReady that they passed legislation ensuring the scores would not be used to negatively impact teachers, students, or schools. School-level scores could be released as early as late next week.
Some Knoxville board members wanted to echo the sentiment of Memphis and Nashville superintendents about TNReady, but settled on highlighting the more timely portfolio issue, Bounds said.
“The portfolio system is a mess,” she told Chalkbeat. “The Department of Education has had multiple years of failure.”
The board will likely meet Tuesday in a special meeting to approve a letter, she said.
First-year problems for the teacher portfolios have resulted in error messages or questionable low scores for teachers. It is unclear how many teachers across the state are affected, but a spokeswoman for the department said about 7 percent got the lowest overall score. The state department attributed the problems to user error while one of the state’s teacher organizations blamed a system glitch.
“Every time something fails, the Department of Education blames it on the teachers. And some of their reasons are just not valid,” Bounds told Chalkbeat.
But wait. There is more.
Year after year, state testing has been a disaster. The state has changed vendors but nothing goes write.
Governor Haslam, who is on his way out, fortunately, has been a disaster for public education.
The State Education Department has been pushing charters, trying to to override the wishes of local school boards.
The Achievement School District was a total failure, wasting $100 million and destroying community schools by handing them off to charter operators, who were unable to help the kids.
Chiefs for Change created Tennessee’s ESSA plan
That’s the Jeb Bush group of chiefs who love testing and privatization.
Yep I know. I wish more attention was brought to this fact. I’m also very nervous about the Republican candidate for governor. http://chiefsforchange.org/chiefs-for-change-members-have-top-rated-essa-plans/
I did not have to read your link very long before recognizing Huffman, who left the state with his tail between his legs. So he re-appears.
Yep. He is still here. I think in Nashville
BINGO.
Wait indeed. There is still more. Teachers got a VAM score recently. One generated by this incredibly fallacious attempt at “measuring” the value of student learning. Some teachers will automatically fall below the line due to the nature of the test ranking. Thus they, like their students, will come to own this image of self, that they are failures of the profession, disgraced before their peers. All this during a year of chaos in testing where computers went down and tempers went up.
I have a solution. We need massive civil disobedience on the part of administration. Superintendents need to openly and deliberately disobey the law together with their teachers, burning these piles of worthless paper all across the state and daring the state to imprison or fire everybody.
O well. That will never happen.
Roy,
Great idea!
Do you live in Tennessee? I agree with you. TN politics interferes with Education way too much. I wish folks realized this and would vote. Most TN lawmakers had a lot of ed reform campaign donations.
I live in Tennessee, where my forefathers came in1806, doing things I think were good and some that I consider bad.
Everyone connected with public education in the state should kick out the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and demand refunds for the 120 + grants that billionaire-funded non-profit, tax-dodging foundation sent there in an effort to control education. The officials in agencies that accepted these grants did great harm to students, teachers, and citizens who were put down and treated as if guinea pigs for experiments. Gates is not the only culprit, but they (really Bill Gates) targeted Tennessee early and in 2018 the foundation is still sending millions to Tennessee in an effort to control education.
Yep. But it’s mainly through Chiefs for Change. They are all connected. http://chiefsforchange.org/chiefs-for-change-members-have-top-rated-essa-plans/
Reply
IMAGINE superintendents across the nation looking in the mirror and realizing that they ARE in charge, that they could actually unite and refuse the abuse. Too bad so many of them are only in it for the money, power and possible political clout.
My guess is not that they covet power, but that they are afraid to be fired for insubordination. Loss of income to feed family, pay the mortgage. Not many people are that brave.
I know it must be a mixed bag: those who covet power/money and thus heartlessly follow along with Bush or Broad mandates have been my personal experience, but I know that they are not representative of the nation’s larger pool.
Yep. But it’s mainly through Chiefs for Change. They are all connected. http://chiefsforchange.org/chiefs-for-change-members-have-top-rated-essa-plans/
Notice the 3 sitting together in this article https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/chiefs-for-change-education-advocacy-group-is-headed-for-more-change/2015/03/10/2e98a510-c73f-11e4-a199-6cb5e63819d2_story.html
I don’t know for sure but my guess would be that Gates’ money funds the chiefs for change. I’m sure someone here has that info.
Just look at funding for Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education.
Lots of foundations and Tech.
What scares me is that Michigan (Bridge magazine, Michigan Ed-trust) keeps talking about Tennessee as a place where education has improved (test scores).