Hamilton County principals draft letter in response to TNReady failure


              FILE - In this July 21, 2014 file photo, students at a summer reading academy at Buchanan elementary school work in the computer lab at the school in Oklahoma City. Wading into one of the most polarizing issues in education, President Barack Obama called Saturday for capping standardized testing at 2 percent of classroom time, while conceding the government shares responsibility for having turned tests into the be-all-and-end-all of American schools.  (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki,File)
FILE - In this July 21, 2014 file photo, students at a summer reading academy at Buchanan elementary school work in the computer lab at the school in Oklahoma City. Wading into one of the most polarizing issues in education, President Barack Obama called Saturday for capping standardized testing at 2 percent of classroom time, while conceding the government shares responsibility for having turned tests into the be-all-and-end-all of American schools. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki,File)
photo Education Commissioner Candice McQueen speaks to media representatives while at the Chattanooga Times Free Press on Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2015.

The Hamilton County Principals Association signed a resolution today asking the state and local school board not to use results from this year's standardized test to evaluate students, teachers or schools.

This resolution comes days after TNReady's spring testing was supposed to launch online, but failed due to glitches on the testing platform. As a result, Tennessee Education Commissioner Candice McQueen sent an email to school district Monday night saying the remainder of testing this year will be taken with pencil and paper.

In the resolution, principals in Hamilton County agree that part one of the test, which was scheduled to be administered over the the span of the next couple weeks should be canceled, saying that instructional time has already been lost preparing students to take the test online.

The resolution also says that the scores from TNReady should not be applied to accountability data until the 2018-2019 school year, hopefully the second year the online format is fully implemented, so results from both years using the same format can be used to measure growth.

Since its rollout, TN Ready has drawn scattered criticism from educators across the state for everything from testing time to the new format, which many say is developmentally inappropriate. For some, these most recent issues demonstrated their concerns were valid.

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