School board member Rhonda Thurman, of District 1 presents a Level 5 championship banner to staff and students at Allen Elementary School. Allen Elementary earned a TVAAS composite score of 5 in both 2017 and 2018. / Contributed Photo/Times Free PressTo see how your school scored in 2017 and 2018, click here.
Hamilton County school leaders have been celebrating the 25 schools that earned top scores from the state this year.
Since the Tennessee Department of Education released the TNReady and TVAAS scores from the 2017-18 school year last month, Superintendent Bryan Johnson and other district leaders have been presenting championship-style banners to the "Level 5 schools."
"We see schools hang banners for athletic accomplishments and that is good, but it is time for our schools to take equal pleasure in academic accomplishments," said Bryan Johnson in a statement. "Schools can hang these banners with pride as a result of their academic accomplishment and share the joy of the success of the students and staff with parents and the community."
The Tennessee Value-Added Assessment Scores measures student growth year over year by looking at student performance in five subject areas: literacy and numeracy (ranked individually and together), science and social studies.
Of the 25 schools across the district, which includes the charter school, Chattanooga Girls Leadership Academy, 12 of them had also earned a composite score of 5 in 2017.
The other 13 raised their scores - and some like Brown Middle, East Lake Academy of Fine Arts, Hunter Middle and Soddy Elementary, all the way from a 1 to a 5.
"The results from TVAAS this year are very encouraging and indicates our schools are trending in the right direction," Johnson noted previously. "Children exceeding a year's worth of academic growth in classrooms across the district is how Hamilton County Schools will become the fastest improving school district in the state of Tennessee."
Gaps remain though. The school district received an overall composite score of 3 out of 5, but half of the district's schools are not meeting student growth expectations. Nearly 33 percent of schools received a score of 1.
"I attribute it to being a large district and it's hard to get consistency across the district," said Chief of Schools Justin Robertson previously. "It goes back to how we support schools. How do we highlight what's going well and push that out in a quick manner? This isn't new, that's something we knew was coming."
District-wide TVAAS and TNReady scores were released in July, after another year of testing fiascoes.
Delivery of TNReady has been fraught with issues since the test was first launched in 2015. This spring, students and educators experienced a new batch of issues, including problems with the test's vendor, Questar, a malfunction that was initially believed to be a hack, and even a severed fiber-optic cable that halted testing across Middle Tennessee.
At a meeting with Governor Bill Haslam at Soddy-Daisy High School last month, local educators expressed frustrations and even questioned the validity of results.
Melody Armstrong, Supervisor of Curriculum & Instruction/Assistant Director of Schools of Athens City Schools told Haslam and Education Commissioner Candice McQueen that teachers and school administrators wanted reliable, valid data from assessments year after year so they could use it to improve instruction.
"How does it inform overall instruction for each teacher, am instructional am I weak in, what am I strong in," Armstrong said.
Other educators chimed in that it's hard for districts to be "data-driven" when they are questioning the validity of the data.
Since scores were released, Johnson and Hamilton County school leaders have emphasized successes as well as pointed out that data is useful, but also only one measurement of success.
The data is useful in terms of planning and preparing and knowing where we are and how we compare to other districts," Johnson said at the August school board meeting. "When you look at performance this year, you see gaps closing. This isn't where we want to be, or where the state wants us to be, but we see gaps closing."
To see how your school scored in 2017 and 2018, click here.
Contact staff writer Meghan Mangrum at mmangrum@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6592. Follow her on Twitter @memangrum.