Dive Brief:
- Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam has big plans to change the state's education system, and he has the support of at least one union president in Knox County Education Association's Tanya Coats.
- Coats told WATE 6 that she believes Haslam is taking teacher input into consideration as he creates action plans, citing his move to ease into standardized tests being worth 35% of a teacher's evaluation.
- Another aspect of Haslam's plan is switching the state over to a Common Core-aligned assessment so students' end-of-year exam matches their curriculum.
Dive Insight:
When educators in the state found out 35% of their evaluation would be based on test scores, they were not too pleased — especially since the test the students were taking was aligned to Tennessee's old state standards and not the Common Core State Standards they are now required to follow. This could obviously lead to resentment and an unfair measure of achievement. To rectify these frustrations, Haslam is switching students over to a Common Core-aligned exam in the 2015-16 school year and allowing tests to only count for 10% of the evaluation that year. It will be worth 20% in 2017 and 35% in 2018.
While Haslam's concessions are appreciated, there are still educators who point to the fact that the value-added method (VAM) of teacher evaluation is flawed. In April, the American Statistical Association released a report saying that the widely popular VAM is unreliable due to its focus on standardized test scores, which ignores teacher value toward other student outcomes.
