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The Tennessee Conservative Staff –
As the Tennessee Department of Education continues to hold town hall meetings to entertain thoughts on the letter grade feedback for schools, school leaders disagree over how the law should be implemented.
The state legislature passed a law in 2016 that requires all schools to be graded based on academic achievement and growth. A number of factors kept the law from being put into effect right away.
The state department is asking for the public’s feedback on what other factors should be a part of that grading system when it is implemented this year. They are currently looking at possibly adding other criteria such as absentee rate, availability of mental health resources, and extra-curricular offerings.
Nashville Metro Schools Director Dr. Adrianne Battle believes that the growth measure portion of the system should be increased. This is likely because Metro Nashville Public Schools has earned the highest rating possible in growth for the last two years in a row.
Metro Nashville’s Chief of Academics is not so quick to jump on board with the potential plan to offer transparency to parents and to the public. He questions whether the ratings should actually be released to the public as planned in November.
“Now that we have the testing debacles behind us, and that we have data coming on a regular basis, there seems to be a rush to put a model in place without us really understanding what it’s going to be and getting the first report card in a more public manner,” Bellamy said.
Breanna Sommers, a policy analyst for The Education Trust, says there needs to be more equity for schools in higher poverty areas.
“The current ‘F’ rating is reserved for priority schools, which is our Title I schools that primarily serve low-income students, and also schools with low graduation rates,” Sommer said. “We recommend revising the ‘A’ through ‘F’ system to fully include the spectrum of all schools.”
The final town hall meeting was held in Shelbyville on Thursday night. The state will meet to consider all of the input received and complete their changes to that grading formula.
See our previous articles about the school letter grading formula below –
