Tennessee links teacher evaluations to pay

Tennessee’s State Board of Education has ratified new rules requiring that student test scores factor in evaluating, paying, and promoting educators.

The rules tie 35 percent of teachers’ professional evaluations to their students’ results on the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS). Teachers of tested subjects will be rated according to their students’ test score growth, while principals will be judged on school-wide gains.

A law Tennessee lawmakers adopted last January requires linking 50 percent of educator evaluations to student growth. Promotion and retention, as well as pay raises and tenured status, will be affected by recorded learning gains.

“The results of the evaluation will be considered as a factor in all personnel decisions,” said Tennessee Department of Education spokeswoman Amanda E. Morris.

Improving valuations
The rules, adopted in April, reflect the work of the legislature-appointed Teacher Evaluation Advisory Committee, whose 15 members comprise elected officials (including former U.S. Senator Bill Frist) and representatives from the education, business, and nonprofit sectors.

Some state education reform supporters have reacted favorably to the evaluation rules, which go into effect for the coming 2011-12 school year.

“We’re pleased,” said the Tennessee Center for Policy Research’s Ryan Turbeville. “It still has some things that need to be worked out, but this is a pretty big step forward.”

Tennessee’s state model grants a menu of options for local school boards to use to measure the other 15 percent of student growth in evaluating educators. Additionally, school districts can seek approval from the State Board of Education for locally-crafted systems that meet statutory guidelines.

A lingering challenge for the state is resolving how to evaluate teachers whose students are not required to take standard assessments, such as special-needs students.

“We are working closely with educators, experts and other leading districts and states to determine the most valid, reliable and appropriate measures for assessing student growth for educators in non-tested areas,” Morris said.

Race to the Top’s influence
Developed by Dr. William Sanders, a University of North Carolina research fellow, TVAAS has been used since 1993 by the state of Tennessee to measure individual student growth while weeding out pre-existing factors that might skew instructional impact on achievement, like race, class, IQ, and previous education deficits or advantages. Morris said the state already has value-added data on 40 percent of the state’s teachers.

The 2010 state law reforming educator evaluations helped Tennessee to secure a $500 million federal grant as one of two states to win the first round of Race to the Top, a pool of federal stimulus money. Tennessee’s program has been dubbed “First to the Top.”

While the federal funds have generated favorable results thus far, Turbeville believes they can provide a false sense of complacency when other education reforms have yet to be addressed.

“We don’t want lawmakers thinking it was enough,” he said. “When you win a grant that’s so large, you feel like you’ve already accomplished something when there’s plenty more to be done.”

Limiting collective bargaining
The large bipartisan coalition that backed the 2010 “First to the Top” legislation has split over a Republican-backed effort to restrict collective bargaining privileges for teachers unions.

Senate Bill 113, a complete bargaining prohibition, won 18-14 approval from the state’s upper chamber on May 2. The House amended the measure to allow bargaining only for salaries, benefits, and specific items related to working conditions. Along with professional evaluations, differential pay, teacher hiring and placement, and grant programs would be exempted from negotiation.

Turbeville believes either version of the measure would be a justifiable improvement, and would help facilitate a move to compensate teachers based on classroom performance. “Historically, the [Tennessee Education Association] has been very adversarial to many types of reforms,” he said. “When a union gets that big and powerful, it will put its needs and its interests over the needs of the children.”

Though an outspoken supporter of Tennessee’s evaluation reforms, Gov. Bill Haslam (R) had not stated a position on the collective bargaining legislation as of press time.

Ben DeGrow (ben@i2i.org) is senior education policy analyst for the Independence Institute, a free-market think tank in Golden, Colorado.