Tennessee Tried to Mess With Teachers and Teachers Fought Back -- and Won

http://www.alternet.org/education/tennessee-tried-mess-teachers-and-teachers-fought-back-and-won



What if a surgeon’s medical license could be taken away based on an error-prone statistical formula that ranked his abilities on a scale of 1 to 5, based on the success (or failure) of a small number of the operations he performed? Or imagine if a lawyer could lose her membership to the bar because a statistical estimate of her success predicted that she would lose the majority of her cases next year.

Last year, public school teachers in Tennessee faced precisely that situation, but they didn’t take it lying down. Instead, they started a year of creative actions that led to a decisive change in policy—despite a governor determined to keep an unreliable statistical formula as a key method of evaluating teachers.

Their campaign ended successfully on April 24, when Governor Bill Haslam signed a bill rolling back the use of a statistical instrument known as TVAAS in teacher licensing decisions—and hitting the pause button on an important facet of the testing trend in Tennessee, at least for the moment.

Education experts are divided as to what this development will mean for America’s schoolkids. But many believe that it could spark similar campaigns nationwide.