Cooper: School district clock now ticking

Tennessee Education Commissioner Dr. Candice McQueen, right, shown conferring with Hamilton County Superintendent Dr. Bryan Johnson earlier this school year, testified this week on problems with the state's TNReady tests before the state legislature.
Tennessee Education Commissioner Dr. Candice McQueen, right, shown conferring with Hamilton County Superintendent Dr. Bryan Johnson earlier this school year, testified this week on problems with the state's TNReady tests before the state legislature.

With the release of the TNReady tests results Thursday, the Hamilton County Department of Education's "mulligan" year is over.

The 2017-2018 school year had been the first for Superintendent Dr. Bryan Johnson, the implementation year of the Partnership Network between the district and the state for the county's lowest-performing schools, and yet another year in which standardized achievement tests didn't count due to execution problems in the spring by the state testing vendor.

But the "mulligan," the extra stroke allowed after a poor shot in golf and not counted on the scorecard, now has been used.

Thus, the 2017-2018 TNReady scores, which showed some slight gains but also some slippages, will serve as a baseline that effectively starts the clock on Johnson, on the five-year Partnership Network, and on the tests again being a part of teacher, student and school accountability.

We believe Johnson has, for the most part, spent his first year wisely, implementing literacy improvements, grouping low-performing schools for combined assistance, rolling out a new school facilities plan and creating schools-to-workforce-related Future Ready Institutes.

He also courageously but dangerously laid out an ambitious goal for the county - that it would be the fastest improving district in Tennessee.

We'll know if he's on track a year from now.

As for today, the district is coming off a year where most policies had been put in place under interim Superintendent Dr. Kirk Kelly, who has retired.

The TNReady tests showed Hamilton County elementary school students made slight gains, but middle school and high school students showed some concerning drops. And in most areas, the county still lagged behind the state in achievement.

For 2018, more than one-third of county students in grades three through five are on track or have mastered English language arts. That's up 2.3 percent from 2017, but the 34.3 percent is still below the state's 35.7 percent mark. In addition, high school math scores rose 1.2 percent over 2017.

However, within the district, math scores fell among elementary and middle school students, history scores dropped among high school students, and science scores were lower in all grades.

Although county middle school scores fell in science (0.8 percent) compared to 2017, they improved slightly in English language arts (1.4 percent) and were about the same in math (down 0.4). Across the state, though, middle school scores dropped in all three categories.

Johnson, acknowledging the scores aren't "where we want to be," nevertheless said gaps against the state are closing.

In fact, the district moved closer to the state in six of 10 grade level subject areas, his administration said, and had smaller declines than the state in grades 3-5 science, grades 6-8 science and grades 6-8 math.

Anticipating the scores, Johnson and his team outlined strategies to improve scores that will be implemented in the 2018-2019 school year. Among those, they said, are learning communities, which will better connect schools; a broader, more individual student focus in middle schools; Future Ready Institutes, which will help high school students focus on specific interests/careers they might prefer; a greater focus on writing for English language arts students; and a focus on math improvements across all grade levels.

New state science standards will be introduced this coming school year, so comparing the poorer science scores in 2018 with 2019 may be challenging.

Although it was announced in the spring that vendor problems in the delivery of the tests would preclude the use of results in student, teacher and school evaluations - and some students may have used that announcement to cruise lightly through the tests - the results still offer a valuable snapshot of strengths, weaknesses and trends, both at the state and district level.

Without them, the state and district would have little understanding of how and why improvements need to be made. Unfortunately, that opinion is not shared by the state teachers' union, which suggested such tests are not valid measures of student achievement, teacher effectiveness or school performance.

"Numerous studies have shown it is inappropriate to use standardized test scores and the resulting value-added scores to evaluate students or teachers," said Tennessee Education Association President Beth Brown.

Of course, numerous other studies have shown the value of such tests, but never mind.

Going forward, we trust that Johnson and his team now have positioned the school district to be among the "fastest improving" in the state and that the mediocre 2018 results will be a thing of the past. After all, this is what the Hamilton County Board of Education hired him to do, what various local education movements have worked toward and what Hamilton County residents expect.

The clock is now ticking.

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