Teachers still have test anxiety
Tennessee's largest teacher union filed a federal lawsuit last week to challenge how the state uses standardized test scores to evaluate teachers.
Currently, 35 percent of an educator's evaluation is comprised of student achievement data as measured by the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment Systems. Other factors include planning and preparation for learning, classroom management, monitoring, delivery of instruction, assessment and follow-up, family and community engagement, and professional responsibilities.
Surely the measure of their effectiveness -- the outcome -- should count for something. And frankly, counting for at least a third of their evaluation score doesn't sound too high. If you are a salesman, doesn't the number of things you sell count toward your evaluation or commission? If you are a doctor, shouldn't two-thirds of your patients have good or reasonable outcomes? If you build houses, shouldn't they sell?
On another front, teachers are appealing to Gov. Bill Haslam, who has proposed legislation to change their evaluations. One change would lower the weight of TVAAS in nontested subjects from 25 to 15 percent.
The lawsuit, filed in Nashville, also is narrowly focused to look specifically on those teachers whose evaluations are based substantially on test scores of students in subjects the teachers do not teach -- physical education and foreign language teachers, for instance. Those teachers, instead get a score based on the school score. The lawsuit claims this happens to more than half of the public school teachers in Tennessee.
But actually, that might be pretty fair, too, if you think about it. A sales company, a hospital, a law firm, a manufacturer is only as good as all of its workers. And anyone who's ever taken a foreign language knows that they learned something about English language comprehension, too. The same is true of art or shop and math or science.
Yes, it's true that improving standardized test scores is harder in schools where parents don't have that much education and don't supply books and other learning materials at home. But that's why it's all the more important for teachers there to be good teachers who can move students up in learning.
Teachers have already won one fight over tying TVAAS scores to teacher licensing. Last year, state lawmakers passed legislation that prohibits the licensing link, and Haslam signed it into law.
That was enough. A teacher might fail at one school, but keep his license and move on to succeed somewhere else. But teachers do need to have some sort of outcomes-based assessment in their evaluations -- just as students do.
Erlanger board reappointment spat
Hamilton County Commissioner Tim Boyd took some tongue-lashing last week for bringing up a lawsuit involving the husband of an Erlanger board member up for reappointment by the Hamilton County Commission.
Boyd said Jennifer Stanley's appointment "was clouded" because of circumstances Boyd said were involved with her husband's settlement of a lawsuit in 2011 with the River City Co. over a stalled development at 700 Market St.
That's a poor reason: It does seem a bit unfair in this day and time not to be able to separate the abilities and personas of a couple -- especially when one has nothing to do with the other's lawsuits.
But Boyd was bringing up the very valid point that county leaders -- in appointing or reappointing board members -- need to look more closely at those board members and their actions. Stanley was on the board that voted to give $1.7 million in management bonuses at Erlanger after a years of red ink, and after local lawmakers helped the hospital draw down federal money that barely pulled Erlanger to a profit last year.
What's more those board members outraged the public, the lawmakers and clearly some county commissioners by discussing the bonuses behind closed doors before the public vote.
Following an attorney general's opinion that state law does not permit public hospital boards to discuss issues like compensation in secret, the board plans to hold a "do-over" meeting.
That may be well and good -- the board likely will re-enact the meeting just to make their vote legal.
But knowing all that history and knowing about the do-over, the commission goes and reappoints the first of the same board members? Really?
So much for official outrage.