When Lizzette Reynolds took over as Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Education in late July, she immediately inherited the huge job of deciding how to provide an A through F letter grade to every public school in the state.
Thursday, Commissioner Reynolds unveiled exactly how her department plans to do that, through a simple calculation that mostly splits student achievement and student growth equally.
Reynolds says the goal is to provide information and accountability to the public.
“I think our public schools are doing a really good job. They’re doing the best job they can. I think that a lot of that work will be reflected in this letter grade system,” said Reynolds.
For elementary and middle schools, achievement on state tests will make up 50 percent of the grade while student growth on the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS) will make up 40 percent. The remaining 10 percent will measure the TVAAS growth of students in each school who scored low (Subgroup-Lowest 25 percent) on the prior year’s state testing.
The grade for high schools will see the same 50 percent weight for achievement, with the remaining score breakdown of 30 percent for student growth, 10 percent for TVAAS growth of low performing students, and an additional 10 percent for how well schools prepared students for college and career readiness.
The Tennessee General Assembly passed legislation creating the School Letter Grades in 2016 but the state has repeatedly delayed its roll-out for a number of reasons including the COVID-19 pandemic.
Reynolds has stressed that she wanted to include public input in the grading system and her department held 10 public hearings earlier this year, along with encouraging written comment, and utilizing a working group to fine tune the calculation.
The department followed many those recommendations including utilizing all tested subjects to measure achievement, but it did deviate on a few notable areas.
Some Deviation from Working Group Recommendations
The working group largely favored using the state’s existing Ready Graduate Indicator to measure career and college readiness for high schools. Reynolds said her department chose to instead utilize more specific data, including ACT scores and students who earned postsecondary credits and industry credentials, to better measure actual student outcomes.
“Ready Grad you know from my understanding, it’s mainly participation. It’s enrollment, it’s not actual outcomes,” said Reynolds. “It’s something that we have heard needs more work from many of our external partners and so we want to make it more outcome driven so that we can then understand what is happening. What are kids attaining at the end of the day.”
Some on the working group wanted to incorporate individual district Annual Measurable Objectives (AMO) in the grade or allot a percentage to the growth of specific student demographics, like English language learners or African Americans.
Reynolds said her department chose not to use AMOs because those objectives are unique to each school district and not comparable statewide. The department does plan to make performance data from specific student demographics available to view on the School Letter Grades website, but Reynolds said her department chose not to include that in the grade score to avoid counting the same student’s growth twice. Some of those students will be included in the 10 percent of the grade allotted to the growth of the “Subgroup-lowest 25 percent.”
Some who took part in the public hearings and some members of the working group also argued that student growth should be valued more than achievement on the School Letter Grades to better encompasses challenges larger school districts like Memphis and Nashville face serving large numbers of students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and other student circumstances.
Reynolds rejected that suggestion.
“They need to achieve in order to be successful later on in life,” said Reynolds. “If you are a senior you’ve grown three grades but you’re still at a tenth-grade level are you really ready for a post-secondary life of success? We want to ensure that kids can read, do math, and write on grade level so that they are successful in whatever postsecondary path they choose, career and college.”
The department plans to roll out School Letter Grades in mid-December. The department initially planned to publish grades this month, but Reynolds said that roll out will be delayed slightly to verify some of the data with individual school districts.
