Dorsey Hopson sends a memo to Shelby County educators in the municipalities addressing concerns about jobs without really addressing anything:

First, I know that rumors about potential staffing changes within our district have come up. So I want to be very clear that no such decisions or recommendations have been made. Shelby County Schools is absolutely committed to retaining a high-quality workforce, and we will do that with care and consideration. Also, last night, our school board approved a resolution that allows our district to prepare for educating all Shelby County students who will not attend schools in a suburban, municipal school system. We have proposed some recommendations regarding how best to serve our students, but no final decisions have been made. The board’s resolution simply allows the district and our school board to negotiate with municipal officials and engage with these communities about these decisions. There is still much to learn about how this process will unfold in the months ahead. I want to assure you that as we move forward, I am committed to providing fact…

Teach for America and MTR get high marks for teacher training in the state’s new report card, while UM and CBU take a hit.

Another county (Robertson) joins Bradley County, Cleveland City, Marshall and Roane counties in expressing no confidence votes on Kevin Huffman and Tennessee’s education reforms.  Interestingly, if you look at the data from these districts, the worse TVAAS growth data among them is -1.7 in Marshall county, so these seem to be counties that would have the least to lose under these reforms…

A Memphis educator advocates for paying teachers for performance on the SCORE sheet.

And last but not least, former Mayor Herenton has been forced to close his charter schools for troubled youth after they were severely under enrolled.

No, Raj Chetty, economics professor at Harvard,  is not specifically making recommendations to Tennessee about how to conduct education policy.  But he did join with other scholars to analyze Tennessee’s STAR program (1985-1989) for early education (K-3) which included students in 79 Tennessee schools and random student assignment.

The results of Chetty’s study suggest that the quality of a kindergarten class matters greatly to a child’s future.  It’s important to note that the study focused on the overall quality of the class — from the teacher to the resources provided to class size to peer group.  So, yes, quality matters.  And certainly, the teacher is a factor in that overall quality picture.

Chetty notes that a top quartile teacher (based on test scores) can make a significant difference in lifetime income for a child.  Yes, I’ve been critical about the “big” differences Chetty notes in terms of lifetime income in other studies. And, I certainly have questions about how important this particular finding is in terms of overall income impact. And then there’s the whole notion about the limitations of the knowledge we can gain about an individual teacher based on test scores alone.

That said, Chetty does note the findings are statistically significant and his study does control for many outside factors in order to isolate classroom inputs.

Moreover, the current Tennessee Department of Education policy framework is geared toward improving results on just these sorts of tests.

So, it becomes interesting, then to see what Chetty’s research says about how to improve results on such tests (which provide at least some predictive value about how a student will do later in life) and how that compares to current Tennessee education policy being pursued by the Haslam-Huffman regime.

1) Class Size Matters: According to the Chetty study, “Small-class students went on to attend college at higher rates and to do better on a variety of measures such as retirement savings, mar- riage rates, and quality of their neighborhood of residence.”  Which makes it difficult to understand why among the first proposals of Commissioner Huffman was to attempt to adopt a policy that would have raised class sizes across Tennessee.

2) Teacher Experience Matters: Contrary to what Commissioner Huffman told the State Board of Education about teacher experience (that a teacher’s years of experience don’t effectively predict student outcomes), the Chetty study noted, “We find that kindergarten teachers with more years of teaching experience are more effective at raising both kindergarten test scores and adult earnings. This may partly be the effect of learning on the job, but it may also reflect the fact that teachers who have taught for a long time are more devoted to the profession or were trained differently.” In spite of this Tennessee-specific data on the importance of years of experience to improved student outcomes, Commissioner Huffman proposed and the State Board of Education adopted a teacher pay plan that discounts years of experience as a factor in compensation.

3) Teacher Merit Pay is Problematic: When discussing the policy implications of the study, Chetty notes, “Merit pay policies could potentially improve teaching quality but may also
lead to teaching to the test without gains on the all- important noncognitive dimensions” (soft skills). Which, as stated above, would point to policies that move away from merit pay for individual teachers, in contrast to the Haslam-Huffman policy.

4) Teacher Support is Critical: Chetty specifically points to improved teacher training, early career mentoring, and reducing class sizes as policies that could work to improve the overall quality of early (K-3) classrooms.  Again, Tennessee has no statewide program for new teacher mentoring and is not systematically working on reducing class size, especially in the early grades.  In fact, as noted above, the initial proposal from this administration would have increased class sizes.

While I may be among the first to look skeptically at the current administration’s education policy goals, it would be nice if their policy solutions actually lined up with the stated goals.  In this case, using Tennessee data, it seems clear the proposed solutions are not matching the stated challenges.

For more on Tennessee education policy and politics, follow them @TNEdReport.  You can follow bluff city education @bluffcityed 

Kevin Huffman joins the Tennessee Education blogosphere! He did point out a few interesting pieces of info, especially regarding Tennessee’s PLAN and EXPLORE (basically Mock ACT) tests rising above national norms (averages?) this year.  We look forward to many more blogs from the Commissioner in the coming weeks and months!

The Chronicle also released an extensive piece pointing to higher teacher support for our state evaluation system, but I plan to do a more extensive post on that later.  You can, however, find the whole article here in the mean time.

The National School Boards Association reports that teacher evaluation metrics are improving in their effectiveness and usefulness.  Specific to Tennessee, we are only one of 4 states that (apparently, I haven’t heard of this) use evaluations for targeted PD, 13 that use it to promote teachers (more like not rehiring teachers in my experience?), 14 using it to grant tenure and 18 using it as a component to compensate educators (haven’t seen this yet).  The whole report isn’t terrible long and contains some helpful graphics.  You can find the whole thing here.

However, it does highlight that evaluation changes represent a trend across the country. From the press release:

In the past five years, 38 states have altered their teacher evaluation systems to include some measure of student performance,” said NSBA Executive Director Thomas J. Gentzel. “With variations across teaching and learning models, school boards and district officials need state support and the ability to adapt teacher evaluation models to meet the needs of local schools.”

Highlights of newer systems in place across states include: the use of multiple stakeholders to design and implement evaluation tools; multiple measures to show teacher effectiveness; and data that link teacher and student achievement.

Related to the article, Jane Roberts notes the following trends related to teacher support for evaluation in Tennessee:

the number of teachers who feel the evaluation process has merit is 21 percent higher than last year. But 49 percent of the state’s teachers still don’t trust the process or feel it is worth the time.

Clay Bailey at the Commercial Appeal notes that there will be a candidate mixer for those running for the suburb’s school board seats at 6:30 PM at the Bartlett performing arts center on Oct 21st.  Though I don’t know why, they are all running unopposed anyway…

Michael Kelley writes that the issue of school facility transfers between SCS and the new municipal school districts is likely to come up soon, perhaps as early as the October 22nd School Board work meeting.  A little teaser on some of the issues involved:

Feasibility studies showed that obtaining school buildings at little or no cost was critical to the viability of suburban districts. Critics of that approach contend that taxpayers throughout Shelby County paid to build suburban schools and should be compensated at fair market value if the buildings are to be given up.

It has been noted, however, that allies of the suburban school district movement in the General Assembly may step in to resolve the issue before local leaders have had a chance to work out a deal.

Here are the current poll results from the CA website. Looks like we have a lot of municipality voters out there…