Members of the Rutherford County School Board approved a resolution Thursday to ask the state to exclude the achievement scores of students learning English as a second language (ESL) from the calculation of School Letter Grades.
The state plans to use the calculation to roll out an A through F grade for every public school across Tennessee on December 21. Achievement is expected to make up 50 percent of the School Letter Grades score.
Board member Frances Rosales recommended the resolution, saying the goal is to start a conversation for students who may need to be scored on other criteria.
“I believe we should advocate for these children not to be counted on the aspect of the achievement, but for them to be counted more towards the growth aspect to kind of balance those schools that have a higher population of children that are ESL. And this law, specifically, does not have exemptions at all,” said Rosales.
The board unanimously passed the resolution which states that scoring schools based on the performance of students working on becoming fluent in English creates an unequal scoring mechanism for schools with higher numbers of ESL students.
“This is a very fair – we’re not asking to do away with the A through F, whether you like the A through F, it’s coming – we just want something that’s fair. Fair to our students and fair to our schools,” said Vice Chair Maxwell.
If Tennessee were to follow Rutherford County’s recommendation, ESL students would still be measured by how well they are growing academically. At least 40 percent of the School Letter Grades calculation is expected to come from student growth measured on the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS).
Rutherford County Schools has a growing ESL population, and board members argue growth is a more accurate means to score those students as they learn English.
“This is something I’ve talked about for a number of years because it is really unfair to our teachers that are graded on their performance,” said Board Member Tammy Sharp. “It’s not that they (ESL students) can’t read. It’s a comprehension level skill. So, I think this is great. I think we need to send this out to the other districts around here, and we need to be downtown lobbying all our legislators with this.”
The 7,431 ESL students in the school system make up 15 percent of the district’s student population. This is an increase from 2022, where there were 6,055 ESL students. Additionally, 25 percent of students have families that come from a non-English speaking background.
“For people listening in, you should know that this is a pretty firm stand for a board to take, to go back and ask that legislators look at this, but we think it’s very, very important. We don’t believe the A through F system is going to be fair to those of us who teach our children from other counties,” said Board Chair Sheila Bratton. “It’s a resolution that we feel like would help to even the playing field when it comes to funding.”
Before creating the School Letter Grades, the Tennessee Department of Education held town hall meetings and encouraged online comments to gather public input where some participants expressed similar concerns about ELL students.
A 2016 state law created the School Letter Grades to provide families with information on how well public schools across the state are serving children. The grading system was originally set to roll out during the 2017-18 school year, but the pandemic and other factors delayed it.
