Education growth in state due to teacher evals, report says
Tennessee’s education system has seen sustained improvements over the last eight years, and a new report says the state has its overhaul of teacher evaluations to thank for that growth — at least in part.
The report, released Thursday by the National Council on Teacher Quality, calls Tennessee a model for the rest of the country on how to spur academic growth and increase teacher retention with more intense accountability for teachers.
The report admits an inability to draw a direct, causal link from the changes in teacher evaluations, implemented during the 2011-12 school year, and the subsequent growth in classrooms across the state.
Over the same years, the state has also raised its education standards, overhauled its assessment and teacher preparation programs and implemented new turnaround programs for struggling schools.
The large number of changing variables make it hard to tease out one factor. But report co-author Elizabeth Ross said the timing of the changes and the growth that followed is not coincidental.
“A significant investment that Tennessee has made is in supporting its teachers... We don’t think that it is accidental that this investment is corresponding to increases in student achievement,” Ross said.
The report quotes additional research, released in April by Vanderbilt University, showing “much more rapid and sustained improvement” in all subjects except math following the implementation of the new teacher evaluation system and increase professional development for teachers.
“Teacher improvement trajectories appear to be more rapid after these policy changes than before,” the Vanderbilt report states.
How student performance factors in Tennessee’s teacher evalutions
Prior to 2011, teachers were only evaluated once every five years. Once they were tenured, that same review only happened once every 10 years. Student performance data was not part of the evaluation.
Now, teachers are evaluated annually. That evaluation is 50-percent based on four to six observations of the teacher in a classroom. The other half is quantitative, based on students’ performance on state tests.
The latter has been controversial, as well as decisions to tie compensation to evaluations that are tied to test scores. The controversy has increased in the last three years with technical problems administering TNReady, the state’s assessment.
Tennessee Education Association President Beth Brown said the union is on board with using achievement data in evaluations — but only if it’s reliable data.
Since testing data became part of how teachers are graded, teachers now collaborate more and work directly with administrators on improvements.
“I know that since the evaluation system has been in place, we have had an increased number of intentional conversations around practice and what’s going on in our classrooms,” she said.
Brown was overall skeptical, however, that the growth over the better part of the last decade could be attributed to the change in teacher evaluations.
“I’m cautious about assigning too much significance to this one measure,” she said.
Teachers are graded on a scale of 1 to 5, with a 5 being the highest level of performance. Shelby County Schools has previously based bonuses and raises off of evaluations, dictating that only teachers that receive at least a 3 would receive more money. That usually accounts for more than 90 percent of the district’s teachers, however.
Districts and individual schools also receive a rating on a scale from 1 to 5 reflecting how much growth students showed in one year. In the 2014-15 school year, 46 districts earned a level 5 rating. In 2016-17, that number climbed to 55 school districts.
The report released Thursday uses those data points as evidence that the more rigorous teacher evaluations are having a positive impact.
State Education Commissioner Candice McQueen, in a statement to the education community, called the teacher evaluations a “key driver” to the state’s successes.
“Tennessee has had a unique, targeted, and sustained approach to teacher evaluation that is different than any other state,” McQueen said. “We have focused specifically on student growth to say what happens in the classroom matters, and we have included multiple measures that we know contribute to student success.”
State spokeswoman Sara Gast said despite the multitude of variables, teacher evaluations are key to the improvements.
“We think evaluation is the backbone behind all of that, because it’s in accountability that student growth matters,” she said.
Teresa Wasson, director of communications for SCORE, a statewide organization that advocates for education reforms, said the significance of teacher evaluations rests on the idea that a high-quality teacher is the most important factor in a student’s education.
“The most important thing is to give teachers information they can use to improve their instruction,” she said.
Reach Jennifer Pignolet at jennifer. pignolet@commercialappeal.com or on Twitter @JenPignolet.