Three months ago, Tennessee Schools Director Jesse Register announced he was to fire 63 Tennessean teachers, of 195 total who for two consecutive years scored lowest (i.e., a 1 on a scale of 1 to 5) in terms of their overall “value-added” (as based on 35% EVAAS, 15% related “student achievement,” and 50% observational data). These 63 were the ones who three months ago were still “currently employed,” given the other 132 apparently left voluntarily or retired (which is a nice-sized cost-savings, so let’s be sure not to forget about the economic motivators behind all of this as well). To see a better breakdown of these numbers, click here.
This was to be the first time in Tennessee that its controversial, and “new and improved” teacher evaluation system would be used to take deliberate action against whom they deemed their “lowest-performing” teachers, as “objectively” identified in the classroom; although, officials at that time did not expect to have a “final number” to be terminated until fall.
Well, fall is here, and it seems this final number is officially five: three middle school teachers, one elementary school teacher, and one high school teacher, all teaching in metro Nashville.
The majority of these teachers come from Neely’s Bend: “one of 14 Nashville schools on the state’s priority list for operating at the bottom 5 percent in performance statewide.” Some of these teachers were evaluated even though their principal who evaluated them is “no longer there.” Another is a computer instructor being terminated as based on this school’s overall “school-level value-added.” This is problematic in and of itself given teacher-level and in this case school-level bias seem to go hand in hand with the use of these models, and grossly interfere with accusations that these teachers “caused” low performance (see a recent post about this here).
It’s not to say these teachers were not were indeed the lowest performing; maybe they were. But I for one would love to talk to these teachers and take a look at their actual data, EVAAS and observational data included. Based on prior experiences working with such individuals, there may be more to this than what it seems. Hence, if anybody knows these folks, do let them know I’d like to better understand their stories.
Otherwise, all of this effort to ultimately attempt to terminate five of a total 5,685 certified teachers in the district (0.09%) seems awfully inefficient, and costly, and quite frankly absurd given this is a “new and improved” system meant to be much better than a prior system that likely yielded a similar termination rate, not including, however, those who left voluntarily prior.
Perhaps an ulterior motive is, indeed, the cost-savings realized given the mere “new and improved” threat.
