Education policy makers face a similar challenge.  They are charged with taking a big concept like teacher evaluation or school funding and breaking it down into its pieces and analyze their impact on districts, classrooms and students to make changes accordingly.  Its important to do this because every policy likely has something that can be tweaked or improved.  Sometimes the majority of the policy is good and merely requires small adjustments. Sometimes significant pieces may be ineffective and need to be reformed.  And sometimes the whole the policy policy may be ineffective and need to be replaced.  But regardless of the policy being considered, it will likely impact thousands of lives and millions of dollars of education funding.  Therefore, it’s vital that policy makers engage in thoughtful discussion of how the policy connects to the real world to truly do justice to those under their charge.

Into this conversation steps Diane Ravitch. Ms. Ravitch occasionally spotlights Tennessee in her blog. On Monday she did so again with a post regarding what she believes to be the ineffective nature of TVAAS in Tennessee, reposted from Tennessee Education Report.  Ms. Ravitch continues her attack on standardized testing. She notes:

As it happens, the state of Tennessee has been using value-added assessment for 20 years, though the stakes have not been as high as they are now…while other states are making gains, Tennessee has remained stagnant or lost ground since 1992 — despite an increasingly heavy use of TVAAS data

She goes on to note how Tennessee has lost ground in almost every category from 1992 to 2011 and claims that no evidence exists suggesting student value added data can accomplish anything of meaning.  Because of these two facts, she claims, TVAAS has been proven ineffective and should be eliminated.

As an educator, I do have concerns about some of the ways in which TVAAS is used.  I know phenomenal teachers who end up with poor TVAAS scores each year because of poor tests and other subjects who have no test and are not evaluated on their own data.   But I’ve also seen TVAAS put to phenomenal use to improve student educational outcomes and student motivation.  I’ve seen students more fired up about mastering their TCAP and EOC’s than I could ever believe a child could be about a test.  I’ve seen the push of EOC’s motivate students to learn and grown throughout the school year.  I’ve seen the joy on students faces when they find out how well they did on their tests at the end of the year. I’ve seen teachers use the data they gain to drive themselves and their kids to higher academic outcomes than anyone ever thought possible.  And like it or not, longitudinal data systems like TVAAS are help to identify student growth from year to year, proficiency rates and as such should be a component in evaluating overall teacher effectiveness.  Simply put, ending TVAAS would come at the cost of ending all its benefits.

Ms. Ravitch addresses none of this on her blog.  Instead, she takes a highly nuanced issue and turns it into a blanket statement of “testing is bad.”  True, testing can produce bad results.  However, it can also produce positive results like those I’ve noted. Our discussion should then focus on how to take this system and fix the parts that aren’t working to strengthen the system overall. For example, if we use Ms. Ravitch’s own logic coupled with common sense, the fact that Tennessee’s proficiency rates have fallen doesn’t necessarily mean that TVAAS has failed. It simply means that testing the way we’ve done it isn’t working.  Instead of simply dismissing the system out of hand, we should be asking ourselves whether the data we collect is good enough and if not how we can improve and better utilize the system.

I take offense at Ms. Ravitch’s deliberate attempt to oversimplify and condemn a highly complex issue without any thoughtful discussion.  This isn’t the kind of dialogue we need when debating issues of such critical importance in K-12 education.  Lobbing rhetorical firebombs and issuing blanket statements will leave us with at best policies that are simplistic and ineffective and at its worst cause us to jerk awkwardly from one system to another as we continue to dismiss what we consider failed policies without any thoughtful analysis.

We need a real, open conversation about the merits and challenges inherent in testing in Tennessee and elsewhere.  Ms. Ravitch and others like her consistently fail to use her considerable clout to help be a productive part of this discussion about how to improve the system we have.  Only when policy makers and influences like Ms. Ravitch sit down and consider the good along with the bad will we truly have a constructive dialogue that has any hope of confronting and overcoming the challenges inherent in our education system.

State Rep. Bill Dunn (R-Knoxville) has written a decidedly anti-Pre-K editorial in the commercial appeal.  I have a couple thoughts on this.  First, why is a representative from a small government part who represents a constituency on the other side of the state injecting himself in a decidedly local matter that he has no stake in?  Second, he seriously misrepresents the research and provides no links to the studies he cites, which is broken down by Smart City Memphis.  When you actually READ the study he cites (I assume its the vanderbuilt study I found on their site) that (he says) claims that the PreK program in TN hasn’t produced results, you see clearly stated in its executive summary that participants experienced academic gains 38% greater than those who did not participate (a graph can be seen below). Please fact check yourself next time sir.

Richland Elementary Principal Sharon McNary has been selected by the National Association of Elementary School Principals to receive its highest honor in Washington DC. A bit from the article about McNary:

McNary has spent her career in Memphis public schools, starting as a special-education teacher who moved up because even as a new teacher, superiors saw leadership in her.

Congratulations!

TN Ed Report notes that two more counties in TN have voted in favor of resolutions that ask the state to stop using TVAAS in teacher evaluations and licensure.  While I will go on record as saying I support TVAAS’ use in my evaluation and licensure, I do believe that it constitutes too large of a percentage in those decisions (a reduction to 33% in evaluations sounds much more appropriate).  I’m also interested in seeing a suspension of this data’s use in educator evaluations once we implement PARCC until we get the kinks ironed out.

Shelby County educator Joy Singleton-Stevens describes how she continues to be a leader in education while remaining in the classroom.

Last but not least, the commercial appeal reports that the fiscal impact of municipal school districts could sap over $50 million from the unified school district.