Tennessee House Agrees To Hand Teachers Slight Relief From Testing Pressure

Teachers in Tennessee are on track to get some temporary relief from the pressure of testing.

The state House of Representatives has approved a plan put together by Gov. Bill Haslam to change the weighting of test scores for two years. The governor says the break is needed while the state replaces the TCAP with a new standardized test.

The plan, House Bill 108, temporarily rewrites Tennessee’s teacher-evaluation formula.

Teachers are usually measured using a three-year rolling average. For the first year, the bill would place more weight on old scores. In the second, newer scores would become more important. And in the third, the formula would go back to normal.

The only criticism has been that the plan doesn’t go far enough, especially for teachers who are judged by the scores of the entire school because they teach grades and subjects that aren’t covered by standardized tests. 

House Democratic Leader Craig Fitzhugh compared that approach to grading students as a group, instead of individually.

“In other words, you know little Suzy might have gotten an A on her math test, but the school average was a C-, so Suzy gets that grade instead. Parents would be outraged if we did something like this.”

Fitzhugh proposed an amendment that would have given those teachers an even bigger break from testing, but the idea was rejected.

Ultimately he, like other lawmakers, decided Haslam’s relief offer was better than none at all. The deal was approved unanimously and now moves over to the state Senate.