Kevin Huffman; Commissioner, Reformer, Blogger! Edlinks 10/11

Several stories and links from the past few days:

Kevin Huffman joins the Tennessee Education blogosphere! He did point out a few interesting pieces of info, especially regarding Tennessee’s PLAN and EXPLORE (basically Mock ACT) tests rising above national norms (averages?) this year.  We look forward to many more blogs from the Commissioner in the coming weeks and months!

The Chronicle also released an extensive piece pointing to higher teacher support for our state evaluation system, but I plan to do a more extensive post on that later.  You can, however, find the whole article here in the mean time.

The National School Boards Association reports that teacher evaluation metrics are improving in their effectiveness and usefulness.  Specific to Tennessee, we are only one of 4 states that (apparently, I haven’t heard of this) use evaluations for targeted PD, 13 that use it to promote teachers (more like not rehiring teachers in my experience?), 14 using it to grant tenure and 18 using it as a component to compensate educators (haven’t seen this yet).  The whole report isn’t terrible long and contains some helpful graphics.  You can find the whole thing here.

However, it does highlight that evaluation changes represent a trend across the country. From the press release:

In the past five years, 38 states have altered their teacher evaluation systems to include some measure of student performance,” said NSBA Executive Director Thomas J. Gentzel. “With variations across teaching and learning models, school boards and district officials need state support and the ability to adapt teacher evaluation models to meet the needs of local schools.”

Highlights of newer systems in place across states include: the use of multiple stakeholders to design and implement evaluation tools; multiple measures to show teacher effectiveness; and data that link teacher and student achievement.

Related to the article, Jane Roberts notes the following trends related to teacher support for evaluation in Tennessee:

the number of teachers who feel the evaluation process has merit is 21 percent higher than last year. But 49 percent of the state’s teachers still don’t trust the process or feel it is worth the time.

Clay Bailey at the Commercial Appeal notes that there will be a candidate mixer for those running for the suburb’s school board seats at 6:30 PM at the Bartlett performing arts center on Oct 21st.  Though I don’t know why, they are all running unopposed anyway…

Michael Kelley writes that the issue of school facility transfers between SCS and the new municipal school districts is likely to come up soon, perhaps as early as the October 22nd School Board work meeting.  A little teaser on some of the issues involved:

Feasibility studies showed that obtaining school buildings at little or no cost was critical to the viability of suburban districts. Critics of that approach contend that taxpayers throughout Shelby County paid to build suburban schools and should be compensated at fair market value if the buildings are to be given up.

It has been noted, however, that allies of the suburban school district movement in the General Assembly may step in to resolve the issue before local leaders have had a chance to work out a deal.

Here are the current poll results from the CA website. Looks like we have a lot of municipality voters out there…