What’s Missing From Gov. Haslam’s Teacher Support Initiatives?

Yesterday Governor Haslam released a statement outlining four new initiatives designed to “support educators across the state” in response to our “direct feedback.”

After casting my critical teacher eye on these proposals, I find many things to like. However, in my opinion some don’t go far enough and could be so much more. Additionally, these initiatives continue the governor’s trend of offering support teachers, contingent on it not costing any additional money. As a result, the entire proposal represents a positive step forward but one that leaves out several initiatives that would have a much stronger impact on truly supporting teachers.

Organization

I’ve divided this critique up into four sections: 1) the actual proposals, 2) proposals that constitute what I consider concrete (real, tangible and likely to be felt) support to teachers, 3) proposals that sound supportive to teachers but could go either way and 4) what’s missing from these proposals.

The Proposals

First, what’s changing? The governor’s proposals can be distilled down to these five key ideas:

1) Providing more information to help teachers prepare for state tests, including practice questions, tests and the opportunity to review and select test questions.

2) Creating assessments that are aligned to the new Tennessee State Standards, to be administered next year (2015-16).

3) Phasing in the new test data so that growth data steadily becomes a larger part of teacher evaluation scores over time, starting at 10% in 2016 (next year), 20% in 2017 (two years from now) and back up to the full 35% that we currently have in 2018 (three years).

4) Reducing the weight of student achievement growth for non-tested teachers from 25 to 15 percent in their evaluation score.

5) Creating a “Teachers Cabinet” that will meet quarterly with the governor and “share real-time information from the classroom, advise on policy considerations and provide a direct line of communication to their schools and communities.”

Tangible Support

As a teacher, there are several components that I think will positively impact educators daily lives in the classroom.

First, I applaud the governor for removing much of the pressure from teachers in the first two years of implementing the new state assessments.

I’ve heard many teachers in my circles asking for this since PARCC was rolled out last year, and its good to see our concerns actually being addressed. This step will ensure that teachers have adequate time to learn how to teach the new standards before being held accountable for the results of those standards through an assessment. I think that this will go a long way towards easing apprehension with both the roll out of the new standards and the implementation of the new tests next spring.

As a side note, I’d like to point out that this initiative closely mirrors a policy proposal set forth by Andy Spears at TNEdReport and myself last spring, though we recommended a full one year moratorium on using test scores from the new tests to evaluate teachers.

Second, these initiatives promise to provide teachers with more transparency as to what the new tests will look like and provide us with the opportunity to contribute to their development.

This was one of the biggest teacher complaints with the PARCC assessments – that we didn’t have enough sample questions or practice tests to adequately prepare ourselves and our students. Another complaint was that the test questions were simply not good questions.

This policy represents a good step to address these frustrations. Though the quality of resources that will be provided needs to be clarified, we can now hold the governor accountable to his commitment since he’s put it down in writing should the resulting materials prove less than adequate.

Third, reducing the non-tested teacher achievement percentage from 25 to 15 percent in evaluations is a step in the right direction.

As a non-tested teacher (geometry has to Tennessee State Test) I’ve always felt it was strange to use data from students that I do not teach to evaluate me. My school’s overall scores are very high so I have little to complain about, but many of my colleagues aren’t so fortunate and find themselves with artificially reduced evaluation scores that may not reflect the actual quality of their teaching.

As I’ve written before, I have some concerns about using value-added data in high stakes decisions given the statistical flaws inherent in such systems when it comes to evaluating teachers who have no (or very limited) say in the actual instruction received in these subject areas, sothe reduction is welcoming in that light.

Potential Support

As I read down them, there are also several things that have the potential to support teachers, but need to be fleshed out as we move forward. In other words, these are the “let’s wait and see” pieces that could go either way.

First, there’s the continued issue of using test data to evaluate non-tested teachers.

While reducing the percentage from 25 to 15 percent achievement data for non-EOC teachers is a step in the right direction, I don’t feel that it goes far enough. I personally think it’s unfair to use test scores from courses not taught by a teacher in their evaluation given the concerns surrounding the reliability of these data systems overall.

That said, I always try to be solutions oriented, so let me make a brief recommendation to strengthen this initiative.

I believe this could become the first step in a move away from using this data to evaluate non-tested teachers. If the governor wanted to get serious about supporting non-tested teachers and being completely fair in our evaluation, he should follow up with a proposal to develop an alternative achievement measure for these teachers, such as the portfolio system that we use here in Memphis for performing arts teachers. This could then allow teachers who like the existing system to continue to use it while given those who find fault with it a viable alternative.

Without this piece, I think this initiative should be seen as one with promise, but one that falls short of what it could become.

Second, I’m optimistic about the teacher council, but the governor needs to provide more details about what it will actually do and how it will impact his decisions.

Advisory committees and councils can in fact provide excellent opportunities for citizens to give elected officials good quality feedback, as long as they are listened to. But they can just as easily be used to create a feel-good effect when in reality our voices continue to be ignored.

I’m not saying that this will happen in this case and I certainly hope it doesn’t. I only say this to clarify that the role of this committee, which will only have as much impact as the governor decides to give it, needs to be further clarified to ensure it doesn’t end up this way before I’d consider it hard support.

Third, the test review process also needs further clarification.

While it sounds like a step in the right direction, I’d like to see more specifics as to the mechanisms that will be used to ensure teachers get input into the process. How will the 100 teachers be selected? Will all teachers be able to review the test questions? What happens if teachers still don’t like the questions or have additional suggestions? What happens if the test designers don’t like the feedback? Will it be legally binding, or can they simply choose to ignore it? And will feedback be given directly to the governor or to Measurement, Inc., the test creator? Only time will tell, and it’s a question that needs answering before I can call this solid support.

Failure to Support

While there is much to like and much that could be liked, I’m most disappointed in what’s missing from this teacher support initiative, namely the absence of anything that would constitute a substantial increase of financial resources directed towards teacher support.

Consider the teacher salary discussion we’ve been having here in Tennessee. This is something that Tennessee Teachers have been clamoring for and which the governor promised but then went back on this past spring. There’s no mention of other initiatives that would require extra funding, such as BEP2.0, which would provide millions of additional dollars to our school districts across the state and do much to help teachers. There’s also no mention of expanding training Common Core trainng, which is essential if we’re going to continue to enable teachers to be successful when the three year phase in of growth scores winds down.

Minimal Support at Best

The bottom line is that these four initiatives will make some difference in teachers lives, but without additional resources the entire plan feels hollow at its core. What’s missing is a substantial financial commitment to supporting teachers. As a result, this set of initiatives has feels good at first glance but on closer examination appears hollow at its core without this commitment.

This is a good first step, but if we’re going to truly support teachers in Tennessee, we need to see some money behind these initiatives. Until that financial commitment is made, I fear that Tennessee teachers will continue to question the magnitude of the governor’s commitment to supporting us in our work.

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