The State of Education in Tennessee: Expanding Student Access to Great Teaching
Expanding Student Access to Great Teaching:
Teacher Preparation, Evaluation, and Ongoing Support
Overview
Tennesseans hold high expectations for their educators.
Teachers are expected to improve student achievement each
year while responding to the individual learning needs of all
students. Throughout 2013, the Tennessee Department of
Education, local school districts, and research- based advocacy organizations have continued to focus on the importance
of fostering effective teaching. Expanding student access
to great teaching begins with recruiting intelligent, talented candidates into the profession and providing rigorous
training programs that prepare them to meet the demands
of today’s classrooms. Once in the classroom, teachers need
opportunities for ongoing professional learning and support,
which should be informed by the results of a meaningful
educator evaluation system. While progress has been made
in improving teacher evaluation and providing high-quality
training on Tennessee’s Common Core State Standards, there
is still work to do to ensure these efforts produce educational
improvement for students.xxii
Update on the Work
By the end of the 2012-2013 school year, the Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) completed transitioning the
Field Services Centers into the Centers of Regional Excellence (CORE). The new CORE offices are focused on provid-
ing direct support to teachers as well as school and district
leaders. SCORE heard consistently from educators across the
state that they relied on support from the CORE offices and
appreciated having a local contact with the TDOE. Each office has instructional academic specialists charged with helping districts improve classroom instruction and implement
the Common Core State Standards. Because the CORE offices
are regional service agencies, they can provide opportunities
for educators to collaborate with their colleagues across multiple districts. While the CORE offices have been an asset to
the districts, there are ongoing capacity challenges due to a
relatively small staff serving multiple districts in one region.
Each of the eight CORE offices has approximately 10 staff
members and serves an average of 15 districts.
The TDOE offered comprehensive, high-quality professional development for educators on Tennessee’s Common Core
State Standards in Summers 2012 and 2013. (“See Maintaining a Commitment to Rigorous Standards and Assessments”
in this report for more information.) In addition, the TDOE
hired and trained more than 700 educators to serve as
Common Core coaches to their peers across the state. While
an unprecedented number of teachers have received this
state-funded support, not all educators attended the summer
trainings, and about one-third of the districts (over 5,000
teachers) do not have a Common Core coach. For example,
in the northwest region of the state, half of the districts (over
1,000 teachers) do not have access to a coach.
Refinements continue to be made to Tennessee’s teacher
evaluation system. Since the First to the Top Act of 2010 established requirements for an educator evaluation system,
the state has continued to improve upon the Tennessee Educator Acceleration Model (TEAM) which is used for about
80 percent of teachers in the state. In the original legislation, 50 percent of an educator’s evaluation is based on student performance, and 35 percent is derived
from measures of learning growth, based
on the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment
System (TV
AAS) where available. New legislation passed in 2013 made two key changes
regarding the use of TV
AAS data. For educators relying on school-wide TV
AAS data, the
weighting has been reduced to 25 percent. In
addition, districts now have the discretion
to allow educators with individual TV
AAS
scores of a four or a five to use that score
for 100 percent of their overall evaluation.
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Since not all teachers have individual growth scores, the TDOE has been
working with educators and content
experts to develop growth measures
for specific areas including career and
technical education, fine arts, world
languages, and early grades.xxiii The
new measures used in the 2012-2013
school year increased the total percentage of teachers with
individual growth data from about 30 percent to just over 50
percent. While this is an improvement, the TDOE estimates
that approximately 70 percent of teachers could have growth
measures in 2013-2014 if all districts elect to use all approved
measures. The TDOE has also used feedback from educators to fine-tune the observation rubric for the 2013-2014
school year to ensure alignment with Tennessee’s Common
Core