We say this often because it’s true: All politics are local. It’s true again today as we marvel at how these seemingly disparate things come together: The white supremacy thread that ran throughout the Jan. 6 insurrection; Tennessee’s and other Republican majority-led states’ efforts to suppress not just voting rights but Black history teaching; and the recent findings of a Tennessee Education Research Alliance study showing that Black and male teachers in Tennessee consistently receive lower classroom observation scores – even when they have similar teaching qualifications and similar student achievement growth scores as those of their white and female peers.
Let’s start with the study, which tiptoes around the obvious – implicit bias and systemic racism.
Not until the final findings page does the study note: “This finding raises concerns that the observation score gap reflects some form of systemic bias – that is, that Black and White (or male and female) teachers receive systematically different observation scores even when they have similar student achievement growth scores.”
Even with that, the next sentences read, “Bias in this sense does not require individual observers to be biased against particular groups of teachers. Nonrandom sorting of students within schools … could be a source of bias … . Another source of bias could be the observation rubrics themselves … . Further investigation to understand the sources of these gaps is key … .”
Why so much tiptoeing? It is important to remember that Tennessee’s nearly all-white and supermajority Republican General Assembly in May passed a last-minute, surprise bill prohibiting any publicly funded school from teaching “critical race theory.”