Educators Defeat Attempt to Strip Teacher Licenses Over Test Scores
July 24, 2014 by twalker
By Luke Towler
School districts continue to make high-stakes decisions about teacher performance based on how well students perform on state mandated tests, despite mounting opposition across the nation. Yet no state has tied renewal of teaching licenses to test scores – but Tennessee recently came close.Last year, Tennessee Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman began pushing this highly controversial proposal, only to be with met with steadfast opposition from the state’s educators. This career-ending policy would have been similar to telling a student who fails a course that she is academically finished.
But the Tennessee Education Association (TEA) successfully lobbied against the policy. In June, the General Assembly passed legislation prohibiting student test scores based on the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment (TVAAS) to be a determining factor in teachers’ licenses.
TVAAS, a statistical estimate that can measure student test scores in reading and language arts, math, science and social studies, gives teachers a score of 1-5. Educators would have needed a TVAAS score of at least 2 for up to two or three years to renew their licenses. Teachers who do not receive TVAAS estimates would have needed an overall evaluation score of at least 2 over the same time period. The overall evaluation score also takes TVAAS scores into account: 25 percent of those teachers’ overall evaluation is based on TVAAS scores at the school-wide, statewide, or district-wide level.
“The idea that a teacher could lose their license based on low test scores is an assault on the teaching profession,” said Jim Wrye, TEA assistant executive director of government relations and communications. “It makes no sense at all. Would you pull the license of a lawyer who loses in court? There are often things that are outside the professional’s control.”
TEA spread awareness about the dangers of this policy through presentations in several cities and before the House Education Committee and the State Board of Education. TEA General Counsel Rick Colbert Educators Defeat Attempt to Strip Teacher Licenses Over Test Scores | NEA Today: