Member-only story
Testing Troubles While Teachers Take a Tumble
Another wild week in Tennessee education policy
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, will not pass this year.
That reality prompted some lawmakers to suggest spending money planned for vouchers on other K-12 education priorities. However, the majority of the Senate Finance Committee opposed efforts to add $144 million to the pot for teacher pay raises.
Even as the state faces a worsening teacher shortage, lawmakers voted against what would have amounted to an additional 4% pay boost. Had the voucher money been reallocated, the total teacher pay raise in this year’s budget would have been 8%.
Speaking of school vouchers, yet another school system passed a resolution opposing them:
