Haslam cautions against testing waiver for Knox teachers

Gov. Bill Haslam this week cautioned the Knox County Board of Education against requesting a waiver to keep this year’s test scores out of teacher evaluations and student grades, warning that it could set back the gains Tennessee has seen in student achievement.

“The results we’ve seen are not by accident in Tennessee, and I think you have to be really careful about doing anything that could cause that to back up,” Haslam said.

His remarks came Thursday after a rally at Mount Olive Elementary School to celebrate statewide improvements in science test scores.

Tennessee’s fourth- and eighth-graders outperformed students nationally in the 2015 National Report Card, according to science test scores released late Wednesday. The National Assessment of Educational Progress science test showed that the state’s students not only scored better than the national average, but that average test scores in Tennessee grew at a higher rate than the rest of the country.

The state also made progress in closing the science achievement gap between white students and minority students, and eliminated a previous gap between female and male students.

Haslam attributed that progress to three things, including tying standardized tests to teacher evaluations.

“It’s about raising our standards and expectations, it’s about having year-end assessments that match those standards and then I think it’s about having assessments that are part of teachers’ evaluations,” Haslam said. “I think that you have to have all of those for a recipe for success.”

The Knox County School Board appeared to have enough support to pass the resolution during its workshop on Oct. 3, with five members speaking out in favor of it. Board member Gloria Deathridge – who had objected to the resolution during the workshop – halted the discussion during the regular board meeting by evoking personal privilege, which allows any board member to postpone an agenda item for 30 days. She asked the issue be taken to the teacher advisory committee for feedback.

Last week, the teacher advisory committee met at West High School to discuss the waiver and 12 of the 20 teachers at the meeting said they supported the resolution. The other eight did not.

One member suggested the board consider gathering feedback from parents and students as well.

If the resolution is passed by the Knox County school board at Wednesday's meeting, it would not guarantee a waiver and the Tennessee Department of Education has stated it doesn’t have the authority to grant waivers. Last year, Haslam proposed legislation that mandated 2015-16 test data be used only if it's beneficial to the teachers.

In July, Tennessee offered a two-year, $30 million per-year contract to Questar Assessments to administer the statewide tests after canceling a five-year, $108 million contract with Measurement Inc.

During the first days of testing in February, computer servers at Measurement Inc. could not handle the capacity and the test crashed. Then, the North Carolina-based company could not provide enough paper versions to meet the need across the state. The state voided the contract in April and announced it would cancel tests in grades 3-8.