Tennessee asked for public comments to improve its soon to be released School Letter Grades. Those submitted comments include important cautions.

The Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) received nearly 300 written public comments on the soon to be released School Letter Grades. Those comments include concerns about fairness and potential cautions parents and educators want the department to consider before rolling the grading system out next month.School Letter Grades will provide an A through F grade for every public school in the state. TDOE requested public input to help fine tune how schools will be measured and whether student achievement or growth should be prioritized.Submitted comments show some Tennesseans remain concerned the evaluation will promote unfairness.Milan Special School District Director of Schools Jonathan Criswell was among them. Criswell told the department he worries the new system will continue to erode trust in public education.“I don't know how you're gonna be able to pull this off and not erode trust. Once you know the score and then you go back and figure out the rules, there's really no way to come out of this with people believing that that's not manipulated, whether it is or it's not,” wrote Criswell. “And if we create a system that's predictable by color of a student's skin, the voting pattern of the people in that district or socioeconomic status, if we create something that you can predict, we've eroded trust in public education.”Multiple Tennesseans connected achievement scores that will make up the School Letter Grades to factors such as socioeconomic status and student circumstance.  Some school administrators commented that schools in more affluent areas will have higher achievement compared to a school in a poorer area.One parent even called this elitest and racist.“It’s elitist to assume that parents aren't smart of caring enough to understand a complete and accurate assessment of a school. It’s elitist because it ignores the truth that many families lack the resources many upper classes have. Its racist because research has demonstrated that the biggest driver of weak academic achievement is the poverty and disadvantaged that minorities live with,” wrote parent Lance McCold.Others said worried scores would discriminate against students of color, students with disabilities, and English language learners (ELL).Multiple administrators and teachers wrote that those concerns could be mitigated through accountability and using a model that considers circumstances such as absenteeism.“Please do not punish teachers and schools for chronic absenteeism. Our district has many attendance incentives as well as policies in place for students that miss more than 5 days. We continue to battle Covid, other illnesses, and parents/guardians who don't care whether their children attend school. Factors out of our control should not be a factor in our accountability model,” wrote Dickson County K-12 Numeracy Coordinator Julie Outlaw.“Putting such a strong emphasis on achievement only does not create a valid picture of learning for schools with high numbers of ELL (English language learner) students, with students of poverty or minority students who might lag behind. It creates a biased lens for which to view success. Diminishing the value of growth will be demoralizing to teachers and staff and only contribute to the national teacher shortage that we all are seeing,” wrote Cheatham County Director of Schools Cathy Beck.Some parents, teachers, and administrators also commented that they believe the grading criteria utilized by School Letter Grades should have been better planned and implemented.“It is an unfair system to change an accountability model after the school year has passed. All school districts and individual schools should have been made aware of accountability goals and expectations before the school year started. We always let our students know what their goals are for the day, week, and year before they begin working on those goals. The state of TN should do the same for school systems. If the state wants successful districts, schools, teachers, and students the state needs to make them aware in advance of what they feel success looks like,” wrote educator Tina Turner.Memphis parent advocacy organization Memphis LIFT member Ashlyn Sparks also highlighted the importance of transparency and communication with parents about what School Letter Grades is and what it’s measuring at their child’s school.“I think coming from a parent perspective, the first thing that jumps out at me and my work with parents is how is this going to be communicated? I think parents are already kind of bogged down with portals, links and websites, phone calls and text messages. How can this be integrated into communication systems that are already in place? Whether that's putting it on the student report card as that goes out or the student progress report as that goes out,” wrote Sparks. “Parents are already used to receiving information somehow integrating this into that I think would be incredibly helpful.”A 2016 state law created the School Letter Grades to help parents and families obtain information on how public schools across the state are serving children. The grading system was originally going to roll-out during the 2017-18 school year, however various reasons such as the pandemic delayed the change.A working group is now in the process of utilizing these public comments and input from recent town hall meetings to create the grading system the department will use to grade each school.