Tennessee Testing Vendor Pearson Testifies in House Education Instruction Committee

Tennessee’s testing vendor, Pearson, testified on Tuesday to House Education Instruction Committee members. Pearson supplies Tennessee schools with both the state’s annual TNReady test and the recently adopted universal reading screener, AimsWeb Plus. The company took over the multi-million dollar state contract to create and administer the annual standardized test in 2020 after several years of missteps by then-vendor Queststar.

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Report: Tennessee Statewide Testing Scores Will Not Be Counted into Students’ Final Grades

Tennessee Education Report noted in a report Tuesday that school districts apparently have been informed by the Tennessee Department of Education that TNReady statewide testing scores for third, fourth, and fifth grade were incorrect for several schools and had to be rescored – but not in time to be counted toward students’ final grades.

“Sure, the state pays in excess of $100 million for the test and yes, teachers are evaluated based on the results, but the test is a colossal waste of time year after year after year,” wrote Andy Spears as he provided announcements from several districts about the failure of TNReady testing to contribute to students’ final grades.

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Maury County School System Test Scores Are Below State Average

The Maury County School System has performed below the state average on state assessments in math, English, science, and social studies, according to the Tennessee Department of Education’s website. This, according to an academic achievement indicator that measures the percentage of students who perform on grade level on state assessments as well as the improvement in this percentage from one year to the next “A student is considered on grade level if he or she scores on track or mastered on state exams, known as TNReady or TCAP,” according to the TDOE’s website. “Schools, districts, and the state can perform well on this indicator by having an overall high percentage of students on grade level or a significant increase in this percentage.” The data below is from the 2017-18 school year for Maury County: • Overall, 27.5 percent of Maury County students scored on track or mastered on annual state tests compared to the state average of 39.1 percent. • The mathematics achievement rate for Maury County was 20 percent compared to the state rate of 33 percent. • The English Language Arts Achievement rate was 23.8 percent compared to 32.8 percent for the state. • The science achievement rate…

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Steve Gill Commentary: Why are Public School Teachers Avoiding Public Schools for Their Own Children?

Would you eat at a restaurant that the cooks and wait staff avoided themselves? Wouldn’t that tell you everything you needed to know about the quality of the food they were serving? Likewise, as public school teachers send their own children to private schools at about TWICE the rate of the general public, and at an even HIGHER rate in our urban centers, doesn’t that tell us more about the quality of our schools than a huge stack of glossy, bureaucrat-generated reports about test scores? A survey conducted by EducationNext in 2015 found that 20% of public school teachers had sent their own children to private schools at some point compared to 13% of non-teachers. Those figures don’t include public school teachers who live in another county or district to avoid the schools where they teach. In 2004, an even more comprehensive national study by the Fordham Institute revealed even more disturbing figures. According to that survey, more than 1 in 5 public school teachers sent their children to private schools, which is consistent with the EducationNext study. Nationally, 11% of non-teachers made that same choice. But the Fordham Institute dug more deeply into the choices being made by parents…

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Company Accused of Screwing Up TNReady Wants Another Chance

Tennessee auditors may have recently put out a rotten review of how Questar Assessment, Inc. handled TNReady, but that is reportedly not discouraging company officials. According to the Chattanooga-based WRCBtv.com, Questar officials want the job again. Specifically, they want a new state contract to continue overseeing the same service in the fall. They will bid for it, the website reported. As The Tennessee Star reported last month, the TNReady online student assessment tests had login delays, slow servers, and software bugs, according to an audit Tennessee Comptrollers released. As reported, last year Republican Gov. Bill Haslam said TNReady “has had several hiccups” and that criticism of it “was earned.” Auditors, however, went into more detail in their report. “The first signs of trouble began on April 16, 2018 and continued through the end of the month,” auditors said in a press release. “Auditors determined that many of these issues occurred primarily because of Questar Assessment, Inc’s performance and updates to the student assessment system. Auditors also found the Department of Education’s oversight of test administration fell short of expectations.” Over the course of the audit, the department and Questar worked constantly to address the issues that caused or contributed to the spring…

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TNReady Problems Documented in Full Detail in New Audit

The TNReady online student assessment tests had login delays, slow servers, and software bugs, according to an audit Tennessee Comptrollers released Wednesday. As reported, earlier this year Republican Gov. Bill Haslam said TNReady “has had several hiccups” and that criticism of it “was earned.” Auditors, however, went into more detail in their report. “The first signs of trouble began on April 16, 2018 and continued through the end of the month,” auditors said in a press release. “Auditors determined that many of these issues occurred primarily because of Questar Assessment, Inc’s performance and updates to the student assessment system. Auditors also found the Department of Education’s oversight of test administration fell short of expectations.” The performance audit’s nine findings include five issues surrounding TNReady. These findings include: • The department’s lack of sufficient, detailed information on its Work Plan with Questar rendered it less effective as a monitoring tool to ensure Questar met all deadlines. • Questar’s decision to make an unauthorized change to text-to-speech software without formally notifying the department. This change contributed to the online testing disruptions. • Questar’s failure to sufficiently staff customer support, resulting in lengthy call wait times and high rates of abandoned calls. •…

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Education Commissioner McQueen Taking Job With National Teaching Institute

Tennessee Education Commissioner Dr. Candice McQueen will leave her post in January for the top position at a national nonprofit that addresses teaching, The Tennessean said. McQueen’s departure to become CEO of the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching, focused on aiding in training, attracting and supporting teachers, means she will not stay on with Gov.-elect Bill Lee. McQueen became Tennessee’s education commissioner in January 2015 after leading Lipscomb University’s College of Education. She replaced Kevin Huffman, who served for four years under Gov. Bill Haslam. In a Department of Education blog post, McQueen pointed to some of hers and the department’s accomplishments: This year, our students again set record highs: new high ACT score (20.2) coupled with a new high participation rate (97%); more students took AP exams and more students earned a 3 or higher – giving them credit for college; and high school graduates maintained our record graduation rate (89.1%). For the first time in years, we saw growth in students’ literacy skills in the early grades – pointing to some initial successes with our Read to be Ready work – and again students enrolled in our Read to be Ready summer camps showed statistically significant growth.” She also…

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Changes to Testing Coming to Tennessee

Bill Haslam

Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam and Education Commissioner Candice McQueen today announced changes in the delivery of the TNReady assessment for the current school year and additional changes that will take effect beginning in the 2019-20 school year. The changes are a direct response to a report generated by the recent statewide listening tour that included roundtable conversations and online feedback from educators including teachers, testing coordinators and school administrators on how to make improvements to the assessment process. “These are real solutions, some of which are already underway or will be implemented later this year, that will be felt by educators, students and parents across the state,” Haslam said. “Throughout the listening tour, the message from teachers was clear that we do not need to start over but rather do all we can to improve the delivery of TNReady. We think these changes will do just that and create a better testing experience for both students and teachers.” The Department of Education has already made significant changes, including a successful verification of the testing platform involving roughly 50,000 students, ensuring quicker turnaround of results starting with the fall end-of-course assessments, and providing better educator training opportunities. This is a “positive…

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JC Bowman Commentary: Tone Deaf School Districts 

JC Bowman

“If you don’t understand — from the school district to the superintendents — that we want our teachers held harmless, then I’m sorry, you’re tone-deaf.” —-State Representative Eddie Smith (Knoxville). That message was heard and understood statewide, right?  Apparently not.  We are receiving reports from across the state that some districts are denying their teachers their justified and earned bonuses, which harms the educator.

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Gov. Bill Haslam Says Don’t Throw in the Towel on TNReady

Bill Haslam

Before he packs up and vacates the Tennessee governor’s mansion early next year, Bill Haslam wants a dialogue with you about ways to improve TNReady. Haslam, at the state capitol Tuesday, announced what he described as a listening tour to do just that. The current governor and a team of handpicked educators will travel to six different cities as part of that tour, he said. The first scheduled stop is Friday, in Knoxville. TNReady, Haslam said, has had several hiccups. “Recently, there has been a lot of criticism of TNReady,” Haslam said. “Much of that criticism was earned. We experienced significant problems with the implantation and delivery, and these are problems that we know are unacceptable.” Haslam said he wants to fix the problems instead of “pointing fingers and casting blame.” “I am committed to doing what I can as governor before I leave to get this right,” Haslam said. “To throw in the towel on assessment is the wrong approach.” As he talked, Haslam was flanked by several people he described as “TNReady Ambassadors” — teachers, assessment coordinators, and other educators from around the state. Among them — Wayne Miller, a former executive director of the Tennessee Organization of…

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Bill Lee Wants to Reduce Student Testing, While Karl Dean Thinks Current Levels Are Just Fine

Bill Lee

The battle lines over common sense in public education have been drawn in the gubernatorial battle between Republican Bill Lee and Democrat Karl Dean, and Round One goes to Bill Lee. Lee, the outsider business executive, wants to reduce the current level of student testing while Dean, the former Mayor of Nashville, thinks the current levels of student testing are just fine. Dean and Lee may both talk about education being a priority if they are elected governor, but they have some big differences in their visions, especially testing. The Democratic and Republican candidates, respectively, won their parties’ primaries Thursday. Dean says his administration would generally continue Republican Gov. Bill Haslam’s education policies, which are a holdover from Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen’s, Chalkbeat says. Chalkbeat points out that Haslam has stuck with a controversial policy to include student growth scores from state tests in teacher evaluations. The Haslam plan is “1) raising academic standards; 2) adopting an aligned test to measure student progress; and 3) using the results to hold students, teachers, schools and districts accountable.” This past spring, the Tennessee Department of Education once again experienced widespread technical issues with TNReady testing, The Tennessee Star previously reported. From the…

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JC Bowman: A Few Thoughts on Educational Assessment and Evaluation

JC Bowman

The risk of misidentifying and mislabeling teacher performance based on test scores is too high for it to be the major indicator of teacher performance, especially when you look at issues such as student demographic characteristics. A number of states, including Michigan, have since taken steps to lessen the impact test scores have on teacher evaluations, repeatedly mentioning factors outside an educator’s control which can influence a student’s academic performance. 

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Tennessee Department of Education Announces Testing Changes

McQueen

The Tennessee Department of Education announced at a noon press conference on Thursday several changes to the state TNReady test that teachers, administrators and superintendents have been asking the state to make, the Professional Educators said in a statement released on Thursday. “Among the changes include rebidding the testing contract, refining the current Questar contract, revising timeline for online testing, and engaging more teachers. These steps complement additional actions already in the works, including eliminating two TNReady end-of-course exams, eliminating the March stand-alone field test for the next two years, simplifying and streamlining test administration, bringing in a third party to perform an independent review of Questar’s technological capabilities, improving customer service, and engaging dozens of additional Tennessee teachers, content experts, and testing coordinators to look at every part of our state testing program,” the statement said. You can read the rest of the statement here: Dale Lynch from the Tennessee Organization of School Superintendents and JC Bowman from Professional Educators of Tennessee were in attendance at the announcement. Both praised the Tennessee Department of Education for taking proactive steps to address the issue. Bowman added: “Leadership collects input from those on the ground, makes the process better for all, and then…

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JC Bowman Commentary: Legislators – One Last Thing Before You Go!

The continued feasibility of using a complicated statistical method as an evaluation tool for teachers will certainly be further debated by stakeholders and policymakers in the foreseeable future. However, the issue that members of the 110th Tennessee General Assembly must address before leaving for home is making sure our teachers are not penalized by flawed test results and scores from this year on a teacher’s 3-year average.

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Tennessee General Assembly Passes Bill to ‘Hold Harmless’ Students and Teachers Over This Year’s TNReady Tests

TNReady - Gov Haslam

In the immediate aftermath of several days of TNReady online testing failures, the Tennessee General Assembly passed a bill on Thursday that will “hold harmless” all students, teachers, and districts from the results of those tests. The bill will “ensure that results from this year’s TNReady tests will not count,” Fox17 reported: The bill would make it so students’ grades, teachers’ evaluations and pay, and schools will not be impacted by this year’s TNReady test scores. However, teachers can still choose to be evaluated based on this year’s scores if their students do well. The state of Tennessee is in its second year of a $60 million contract with Questar for the TNReady tests. So far, Tennessee has paid $12 million of this year’s contact. The state is in the process of reviewing that contract with Questar. The bill is expected to go to Governor Bill Haslam’s desk early next week. “It was clear many members of the General Assembly wanted to address concerns related to the recent administration of state assessments. The governor understands these concerns and did not oppose the legislation,” a spokesperson for Gov. Haslam said. The governor is expected to sign the bill into law next…

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Challenger Aaron Shane Says Incumbent State Rep. Susan Lynn’s Support of TNReady Testing Process Shows She Is Out of Touch

As State education officials continue to struggle with the failure of the online standardized testing system as part of the TNReady assessment of student progress, Aaron Shane is calling out State Representative Susan Lynn (R-Mt. Juliet) for failing to have taken action to address the problems. Shane is opposing Lynn the GOP Primary in the 57th District, which encompasses the western half of Wilson County. “The state has poured tens of millions of taxpayer dollars into the failed online testing programs,” Shane pointed out. “Graduating Seniors this year have never had the standardized testing work properly in their entire high school career. That is inexcusable. What is more inexcusable is that the Tennessee Department of Education bureaucrats have failed to fix the problem over the past half decade. “I have have had many parents and teachers share their concerns about Susan Lynn’s support for TNReady. One parent, who called her office, was told that TNReady was “not one of her concerns.” When an elected representative’s office tells a parent that the education of their children is “not her concern” it is time for us to elect a representative who will put our children first” Shane said. Shane went on to point…

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JC Bowman Commentary: The Trouble with Testing

Testing has taken a wrong turn in public education. I have always tried to keep it simple: testing is like your school picture; it is what you look like on that particular day. Kids go in to take a test. Teachers show up to make sure kids are taking their own test. Parents encourage their children to do their best. However, like Ozzie & Harriet, Leave it to Beaver, and the Lone Ranger, those days are gone. With an infusion of $501 million federal dollars of Race to the Top money we hurried to increase standards by adopting Common Core, which we corrected by moving back to state standards. We also increased testing, changing both format and frequency. Tennessee also adopted new evaluation methods. The teacher union supported the incorporation of TVAAS data into the state’s teacher evaluations, which landed Tennessee $501 million from the federal Race to the Top grant in 2010. Professional Educators of Tennessee did not support the use of that data on teacher evaluations, nor did they sign a support letter on the original grant submission. Not everything Tennessee tried was damaging, but it is not debatable that thus far the Age of Accountability has failed…

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Problems Reported on First Day of TNReady Testing

After months of preparing for the annual year-end assessments, many Tennessee students struggled to log on to the TNReady testing platform Monday morning. The Department of Education says the problem was quickly fixed by the vendor, and over 20,000 students took the test after the problems were resolved. “We share the frustration that some students had challenges logging into Nextera this morning. Questar has fixed this issue, and thousands of students are on the platform now. Over 25,000 students have successfully completed TNReady tests as of this point today,” the Department of Education tweeted. “No server has crashed, and the issue was not statewide. This issue was not related to volume. Testing has resumed.” Some districts saw the early errors as a warning of what was to come and chose to cancel testing for the day. “In Williamson, most of our 5-11 students could not log in,” said Jason Golden, Deputy Superintendent of Williamson County Schools. “Williamson County Schools early reports indicate that those who did get logged in apparently finished the test, but we can’t measure the distractions they were dealing with in each classroom as other students couldn’t get logged in. We shut it down for the day & are…

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Further Testing Issues Show Implementation Problems at Tennessee’s Department of Education

McQueen

After three years and little success, the Tennessee Department of Education remains riddled with problems implementing statewide online testing platforms, TNReady. According to an email blast from Chief Information Officer for the Tennessee Department of Education Cliff Lloyd on March 6, the state’s online testing platform experienced more technical difficulties this week. “The problem was related to a rogue process that was running in the data center where NextEra is hosted,” Lloyd said. “The problem was identified relatively quickly and the process was shut down, but unfortunately it did negatively impact about fifteen districts.” The email blast was sent to educators across the state as they tried to log into their state-mandated testing platform, but it wasn’t these teachers’ first report of problems from the department; in fact, it wasn’t even their first update this week. “Yesterday I wrote to you and explained the diagnosis and remediation of a problem in the NextEra testing platform that made logging on to the system difficult,” Lloyd wrote earlier in the email. “While that problem is now solved, unfortunately we encountered another problem today.” From the original vendor failing to create a functioning testing platform to thousands of tests being incorrectly scored to…

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Beth Harwell Calls for State Legislative Hearings on TNReady Testing Problems

House Speaker Beth Harwell (R-Nashville) is calling for state legislative hearings on problems with TNReady scoring. “We have made great strides over the last several years in education, and we must be diligent in ensuring we continue these gains,” Harwell said on Facebook Tuesday. “We know that accountability has been a large part of this improvement. However, the news that nearly 10,000 TNReady tests were scored incorrectly has resulted in educators, parents, and legislators seeking answers. In addition, the amount of testing has also raised questions.” Hawell, who is running for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, has asked the House Government Operations Committee to hold the hearings. The scoring issue is the latest in a string of glitches over the past several years with standardized testing in Tennessee public schools. Testing has also come under scrutiny for the amount of time it takes away from instruction, the way student scores are linked to teacher evaluations and for what is viewed as acquiescence to a national large-scale testing apparatus involving for-profit companies selling testing products and services. At the end of this past school year, testing vendor Questar was slow in returning test scores for report cards. Problems with its scanning program are now…

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TNReady High School Test Scores Show Improvement ‘Across All Subject Areas’

On Thursday, the Tennessee Department of Education released the results of the latest round of student testing, which showed that “Tennessee high school students improved across all subject areas – English, math, science, and U.S. history – on the 2016-17 TNReady end-of-course exams.” “This growth is encouraging, and it shows our students are capable of reaching the high bar we’ve set with our expectations in Tennessee,” Education Commissioner Candice McQueen said: It’s also promising to see not only overall improvement, but some bright spots in the performance of historically underserved student groups. The results from TNReady shine a light on what’s working and help us to identify where we need to better support students and teachers – so every student in Tennessee reaches his or her fullest potential. “Assessment will never be popular. However, we share the optimism today of Commissioner McQueen that ‘our students are capable of reaching the high bar we’ve set with our expectations in Tennessee.’ It demonstrates the tremendous efforts our schools and our educators have been making. We have aligned to higher standards and can see that it is now paying off. It has been a tremendous ambitious academic journey for our state,” JC Bowman,…

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Tennessee Department of Education Runs Into Another Glitch In Delivering Standardized Test Results

  The Tennessee Department of Education has hit yet another snag in getting spring standardized test results to school districts. Questar, the vendor for TNReady tests, is having problems with its scanning software used to grade paper exams. The state was already having problems with delivering raw scores, partly because some districts missed the deadline to turn in completed tests. As a result, some districts are not using test scores to calculate final grades for report cards. This is the fourth year that the state has had some type of issue with standardized testing. Last year, there were so many problems with the testing itself that the state terminated its contract with Measurement, Inc. and signed a contract with Questar. “We understand the importance of having the raw scores to communicate information to educators, students, and families, and we apologize for the inconvenience our delays have caused TDOE and our district partners in getting this information on the timeline we committed to months ago,” Brad Baumgartner, chief partner officer for Questar, said in a statement. Education commissioner Candice McQueen said in an email to school superintendents on Thursday that nearly all scores for high school EOC exams were available, but that…

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School Districts Across State Experiencing Delays In Getting Student Test Results

Tennessee Star

  A delay in getting standardized test results is frustrating school officials across Tennessee as they get ready to send out report cards and wrap up the year. As a result, many districts are opting not to factor in TNReady test scores for final grades. The problems come a year after a much larger debacle prompted the state Department of Education to find a new testing vendor, and is the fourth year in a row in which there has been some type of issue. Complications this year stem in part from some districts not meeting the state deadline to turn in completed tests for grading, forcing state officials to scramble to send back results. But the state could perhaps manage things better by enforcing fixed, staggered testing windows, said JC Bowman, executive director of Professional Educators of Tennessee (ProEd). The state typically sets one testing window for the entire state, which risks having numerous districts simultaneously waiting to the last minute, or past the last minute, to package up the paper tests and send them off for grading. “Calendar flexibility allowed for smoother administration of the test, but hampered the return of results,” Bowman told The Tennessee Star. In an email…

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EXCLUSIVE:  Rep. Sheila Butt:  Bill Focuses On The Success of Our Students

Rep. Sheila Butt (R-Columbia) told The Tennessee Star in an exclusive interview on Capitol Hill that HB 617, a bill she has sponsored in the current session of the Tennessee General Assembly, will improve options for high school testing in math and English language arts. “HB 617 is a bill which would allow local school districts to have the option of using the ACT or the SAT suite of testing in lieu of the end of course test, the TNReady test and the TCAP test, in the State of Tennessee,” Butt told The Star’s Laura Baigert. “This is a bill that focuses on the success of our students and this is a tried and true measurement of college readiness and college success.  And all of our districts should have the option of being able to use these tests for their students,” she added. “Local Education Agencies – As introduced, authorizes LEAs to use the ACT, ACT Aspire, or SAT suites of standardized assessments instead of the TCAP, TNReady, and end-of-course exams to test the subjects of math and English language arts for grades nine through 12,” the Tennessee General Assembly website says of HB 617 (introduced in the Senate as SB…

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