Testing Troubles While Teachers Take a Tumble

Another wild week in Tennessee education policy

Andy Spears
2 min readApr 19, 2024
Photo by Nguyen Dang Hoang Nhu on Unsplash

In Tennessee education news this week, the state’s standardized test ran into some problems (an annual event) and the state’s teachers took a backseat to the Governor’s plan to privatize public schools.

First, the state’s standardized test faced server glitches and many districts had to stop administration and/or cancel the planned testing for today.

This incident is particularly salient given a new law that creates mandatory retention for third graders who fail to meet a certain score on the English/Language Arts portion of this particular test.

Note that the test is not designed to test reading ability or reading skills. It’s not a reading test.

Here’s more on the trouble with the test — even though the vendor received an additional $40 million from the state last year.

As the legislative sessions comes to a close, it seems apparent that Gov. Lee’s signature legislative initiative, school vouchers…

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Andy Spears

Writer and policy advocate living in Nashville, TN —Public Policy Ph.D. — writes on education policy, consumer affairs, and more . . .