Tennessee Commissioner Huffman’s Machiavellian Methods?
Following up on two of my most recent posts, the first about Commissioner Huffman’s (un)inspiring TEDxNashville talk in which he vociferously celebrated Tennessee students’ recent (albeit highly questionable) gains on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) scores, and the second about Huffman’s (and the Tennessee Department of Education’s) unexpected postponement of the release of its state-level (TCAP) standardized test scores — test scores that were, by law, to account for 15 to 25 percent of Tennessee students’ final grades – it seems a few more “behind the scenes” details surrounding what is going on in Tennessee might also explain the state’s current situation (see other “behind the scenes” details in the first aforementioned post).
We also now know that in Tennessee, on the grade 12 NAEP the state ranks among the lowest in the nation. We also now know that in Tennessee, before the 4th grade NAEP tests were taken, the state withheld an inordinate proportion of (low-scoring) students in the 3rd grade which (likely) caused (or at the very least helped to produce) the (purportedly) artificial gains observed in grade 4. Tennessee is not the first to have done this, however (see Boston College Professor Walter Haney’s article about the “Texas Miracle” that also occurred on then Governor George W. Bush’s watch here).
These “behind the scenes” explanations, unfortunately for Huffman, explain more of the gains than the casual observer might realize, although Huffman is likely counting on only casual observations being made, as it is this “unassailable evidence [emphasis added]Tennessee Commissioner Huffman’s Machiavellian Methods? |: