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Tennessee Department of Education to Hold Town Halls as New School Letter Grade System Set to Launch this Fall

by | Aug 15, 2023

In November, the Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE), in compliance with state law, will release school letter grades for individual Tennessee schools. To prepare families, teachers, community members, and decision-makers to review that data, the TDOE is holding a series of 10 Town Halls.

“Whether you are a student, parent, teacher, policymaker, or an interested community member, school letter grades will empower all Tennesseans with the information they need to support K-12 public education and our local schools,” said Lizzette Reynolds, Commissioner of Education. “I encourage all Tennesseans to join us at a town hall or submit a public comment to share what you want to know about schools in your community and how they are serving your kids.”

The goal is to engage Tennesseans to help create an A-F school letter grade system that gives them the information they need to understand school performance.

Tennessee State Representative Scott Cepicky (R-Culleoka) told The Tennessee Star. “The commissioner felt that since this was new information, it was important to help the public understand exactly what the grades meant, and how they were calculated.”

Cepicky, the House Education Instruction Subcommittee Chairman, is excited to see the rankings released and looks forward to reviewing the data.

“A-F letter grades will increase transparency within districts for both parents and students, so they have a clearer understanding of scholastic achievement, as well as areas that may require additional attention for improvement,” said the State Representative. “Enhanced transparency in grading will also support our educators in both their planning and instructional execution in the classroom, allowing Tennessee to move closer to its ultimate goal of becoming number one in the nation in education.”

State Representative Kevin Raper (R-Cleveland) who co-chairs the House Education Instruction Committee told The Star that he feels it’s important to inform the public about all that goes into creating a school rating so they can fairly judge a school. Said Raper, “I’m excited, but cautious, about the upcoming release of letter grades, but I do look forward to interacting with folks at the upcoming town halls.”

In tackling the state’s A-F grading policy, Commissioner Reynolds is repeating the early path of her predecessor, but with more transparency. Early in her tenure, Commissioner Penny Schwinn attempted to make changes to the state’s accountability system. Lawmakers told her to “pump the breaks”. They felt that she hadn’t sufficiently engaged teachers and families before she considered making changes. Commissioner Reynolds is employing a different strategy while looking for similar outcomes.

The Federal Every Child Succeeds Act, passed in 2015, requires that every state employ a rating system that allows for the differentiation of schools and their performance. The federal government provides leeway on what information states use in creating school ratings and the method employed.  In designing its evaluation systems, the Federal Department of Education encourages states to use a wide variety of data points. Florida was the first state to use letter grades, with Tennessee soon following suit.

In 2016, the Tennessee State General Assembly passed legislation that starting with the 2017 – 2018 school year, the TDOE would be required to develop a school letter grading system. Implementing the rating plan has long been a challenge.

Online testing problems called into question the reliability of 2018 scores. Emergency legislation protecting schools from punishment for poor results delayed the release of school grades.

In 2020, the COVID pandemic prompted the cancellation of state testing nationwide. This again caused a delay in implementing school grades.

While TNReady was administered in 2021, the data was used by districts to form Learning Improvement plans, instead of for rating schools.

Last year, citing “inconsistency in data caused by three straight years of pandemic-related disruptions”, Commissioner Schwinn once again delayed the release of A-F school grades.

This year, legislators have promised there will be no excuses.

New Tennessee Commissioner of Education Lizzeette Reynolds was previously employed by ExcellinEd, an education non-profit founded by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. The organization has long been a leading proponent of the adoption of an A-F grading system by individual states. 

On the other hand, Tennessee’s local superintendents have not always been supportive of the policy. In 2018, state superintendents attempted to roll back the grading system before testing issues made the move unnecessary. Superintendents were concerned that the grading oversimplified school performance.

“If you oversimplify with the letter grade, you prevent people from looking more deeply into what the issues might actually be,” said Wayne Miller, then-president of the Tennessee Organization of School Superintendents.

A 2020 release by the National School Board Association concluded: “The findings from our research do not support the further encouragement of states, or rather state boards of education, to adopt A-F school letter grading system given our results, overall, show that thirteen states are neither better nor worse in relation to the rest of the United States in terms of using this structure as a causal reason for increasing student achievement.”

Despite strong opinions on both sides, State Representative Cepicky sees it as self-explanatory. He told The Star, “We already grade teachers and students, it only seems fair that we grade schools.”

He plans to attend several of the Town Halls in support of Commissioner Reynolds.

In addition to the town halls, Tennesseans are invited to submit public comments on their top priorities for measuring a school’s academic success, and how the state should measure progress towards those priorities. Public comments can be submitted to [email protected] by September 15, 2023.

The School Letter Grades Public Town Hall schedule is below:

View the department’s Facebook page for additional logistics information.

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TC Weber is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. He also writes the blog Dad Gone Wild. Follow TC on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected]. He’s the proud parent of two public school children and the spouse of a public school teacher.
Photo “Tennessee Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds” by Tennessee Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds and “Tennessee Education Town Hall” by the Tennessee Department of Education.

 

 

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