NASHVILLE -- With a special legislative session on K-12 education set to start Tuesday, the Bredesen administration and Tennessee Education Association negotiators remained deadlocked Friday over how much weight to give student testing in teacher tenure and evaluation decisions.
"While we agree with several aspects of a proposed bill, it appears the governor is not willing to move off this 50 percent figure to use (for) value-added tests in teacher evaluation," TEA's chief lobbyist, Jerry Winters, said.
Mr. Winters said "this is something that our members tell us very clearly; that while they're willing to accept their share of accountability, there's too many factors that go into student achievement that's beyond their control to agree to something that high."
The sticking point is over how much weight to give test scores in determining how good a job teachers are doing. Tenure is granted when a teacher enters his or her fourth year.
Gov. Bredesen has said student achievement measures should count for at least 50 percent.
The board of the TEA, which represents some 55,000 teachers statewide, is expected to meet today in Nashville to consider what steps the organization will take next.
Gov. Bredesen said in a Times Free Press interview on Thursday that "I don't believe TEA is going to support it in making it (the legislation) happen." But he predicted the legislation will pass anyway.
Bredesen press secretary Lydia Lenker said late Friday the governor and TEA "are still quite far apart, and at this point I'd say we respectfully agree to disagree with each other. But talks are continuing."
The governor said the changes are necessary for Tennessee to compete seriously against other states for a piece of some $4 billion in federal Race to the Top funds. State officials say they could get up to $500 million in one-time funds for teacher development.
Based on U.S. Education Department guidelines, the state would be eligible only for $150 million to $250 million, but federal officials emphasize awards could be much higher.
Gov. Bredesen wants student achievement measures to count for at least 50 percent in making tenure decisions, but he said he doesn't want to put that into law. The governor is proposing creation of an independent committee that would make recommendations to the State Board of Education on annual teacher evaluations.
But Mr. Winters said administration officials informed the TEA that they plan to put the in-excess-of-50-percent figure in the state's Race to the Top application, which is due Jan. 19.
Administration officials note several other states are stating in their applications that they intend to weight testing at 50 or 51 percent for teacher tenure and evaluation purposes.
Andy Sher is a Nashville-based staff writer covering Tennessee state government and politics for the Times Free Press. A Washington correspondent from 1999-2005 for the Times Free Press, Andy previously headed up state Capitol coverage for The Chattanooga Times, worked as a state Capitol reporter for The Nashville Banner and was a contributor to The Tennessee Journal, among other publications. Andy worked for 17 years at The Chattanooga Times covering police, health care, county government, ...
Tennessee is actually in a particularly good position to tie teacher or administrator pay to performance - we were the first state to adopt a value-added assessment system, which allows you to see what schools, or individual teachers, contribute to the academic advancement of their students. TVAAS was implemented 10 years before NCLB, so we have experience and a rich set of historical data to work with. This is reliable data - far more reliable than classroom observations, which are a poor choice for tracking the connection between teaching and measurable learning outcomes.
There's more information on assessing teacher quality at http://www.education-consumers.org/research.htm and plenty on value-added assessment at http://www.education-consumers.org/tnproject/tnabout.htm.
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