Whereas TN Ready testing in 2018 was wrought with technical failures and glitches that interrupted and even prevented thousands of students from completing their tests,

Whereas TN Ready testing in 2017 resulted in large numbers of scoring errors rendering all results suspect,

Whereas TN Ready testing failed in 2016, causing confusion and disappointment among students, teachers, families and administrators, and resulting in no data for the academic year for most students and teachers.

Whereas the State of Tennessee made the decision to change testing instruments from TCAP to TN Ready,  a defensible shift that nonetheless complicates judgments about student achievement and growth and teacher accountability in the short term,

Whereas TVAAS is an unstable measure of student growth especially when fewer than three complete years of data is available,

and

Whereas the American Statistical Association (April 8, 2014) and the American Educational Research Association (November 11, 2015) have issued cautions regarding the scientific and technical limitations of the use of value-added assessment for purposes of accountability

Therefore, be it resolved, that we the undersigned call on the TN State Legislature and TN Department of Education to suspend use of testing data for consequential decision-making until after the 2020-2021 school year.

We further call for:

1. A thorough investigation into the failure of Questar Assessment to successfully manage state assessments.

2. An end to the use of TVAAS to evaluate teachers and schools.

3. A three year collaborative study —involving the TN legislature, the TN Department of Education, teachers and their professional organizations, school boards and district administrators, and parents of public school students — to determine the most productive and constructive path forward to ensure real and reasonable accountability for educational outcomes in the service of the best possible education for Tennessee’s children.