The Tennessee Department of Education on Thursday unveiled the calculation for its new A-through-F school accountability system.
In 2016, the General Assembly tasked the TDOE with creating the new system, but its rollout was delayed. Former Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn attributed the multiyear delay of the system's launch to testing issues and later the COVID-19 pandemic. Though the TDOE already had a model, the state never released it.
The legislation requires that achievement and growth scores be included in the calculation, along with other factors as decided by the TDOE, but it didn’t clarify how heavily each factor should weigh in. Stakeholders from across the state asked for an emphasis on growth, but the majority of the calculation will be driven by achievement.
“The TDOE asked for feedback; they didn't use any of it,” says Mary Batiwalla, a former TDOE employee who served as the executive director of accountability, among other roles.
While achievement measures a student’s proficiency in a topic during the time of the test, growth scores consider how they improve academically over time. Some think growth is a better measure of how schools serve students who are hindered by outside factors like poverty.
According to the TDOE, individual schools’ grades will be released in December. The breakdown of the calculation score can be seen below.
From: Tennessee Department of Education
“School letter grades will be a powerful communication mechanism for our parents and families, which is why it is so important to ensure the calculation of the letter grade is clear and easy-to-understand, and I deeply appreciate all the stakeholders across the state who have engaged with us during this process,” says education commissioner Lizzette Gonzalez Reynolds. “While we cannot satisfy all priorities and perspectives that were shared, we believe we have developed a calculation for school letter grades that aligned with the spirit of the law and will more meaningfully differentiate school performance to parents.”
