Tennessee Commissioner Huffman’s Accountability Immunity
Following up on my most recent post, about the video capturing Tennessee’s Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman’s “Inspiring” TEDxNashville Talk, a VAMboozled! follower sent me a follow-up article linked here, “about the nightmare schools here in Tennessee have had with big testing/data [over] the past two days.”
Here’s the summary of the situation, although as captured in a different article written inThe Tennessean linked here and titled: “Tennessee to Let Schools [emphasis added] Out of TCAP [Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program] Requirement Due to Score Delay.”
It seems that “A move by [Huffman and his Tennessee] Department of Education to make exams better aligned to Common Core standards has delayed the release of [its TCAP] test scores…[T]he unexpected 10-day postponement will mean a four-year-old law designed to give more meaning to [the state's TCAP] standardized tests won’t be applied to many students, “as these test scores are to “account for 15 to 25 percent of Tennessee students’ final grades.”
“State officials first alerted Tennessee’s school directors of the delay on Tuesday afternoon, explaining that the state had narrowed assessments this year to eliminate factors not aligned with state standards and needed 10 more days to thoroughly review the results.” That is, state officials narrowed the test to (simply) remove items/portions from the tests that didn’t align with Common Core. As they are now figuring out, this was not as simple as it first may have seemed. Likewise, this should have been done with much more care and many more at the table (e.g., teachers for content validity) while doing so. It also seems that the state made these changes without keeping districts informed about the Tennessee Commissioner Huffman’s Accountability Immunity |: