Despite proposals to halt measuring student progress, data lets Tennessee track outcomes

It’s summertime, so I have baseball on my mind.

One of the things that is foundational to baseball is data. Statistics, measurement, and accountability in the game are clear — you know exactly how good a player is at getting on base, retiring batters or hitting with power.

All of this information is available both in real time and over the course of a career; flip over a baseball card (or spend time on any of the baseball analytics websites) and you know exactly where things stand. It’s easy to compare, contrast, see improvement, and identify players’ or teams’ struggles.

The same approach to using data as a tool can also be true in education, and Tennessee has a history of being clear about what we value as a state and then measuring it.

When SCORE was founded in 2009, one of our four priority areas for improving educational outcomes was using data to enhance student learning. Specifically, we said that Tennessee should “create a data-driven environment that equips policymakers, superintendents, principals, teachers, and parents with the information and tools they need to advance student learning and success.”

Tennessee has led the way in many education metrics

Over the last 20 years, Tennessee has quietly led the way on using data to inform teaching, learning, and policymaking.

Our state measures and publicly reports out on student outcomes in K-12 education every year in most grades and subjects. K-12 teachers receive annual feedback on their performance, grounded in data on whether their students are learning, and we have a powerful measure for tracking learning gains (called TVAAS) that helps us understand whether teachers and schools are helping students meet — or exceed — expectations.

We led the nation in funding higher education in a way that is informed by actual student outcomes. And Tennessee is sitting on a robust, secure data system that allows us to understand how students are progressing from kindergarten through career and to see clearly which policies and practices are working.

All of these efforts have led to impressive improvements for students and have given Tennessee taxpayers confidence that the policies and investments being made in education are resulting in actual improvements in academic outcomes.

But our progress is at risk by some proposed legislation

During the most recent state legislative session, one policy proposal would have removed almost all required assessments for students in public high schools, eliminating the ability to know whether students are on-track.

Another proposal sought to eliminate the annual teacher evaluation and feedback process for some teachers, meaning many educators would have only received data-informed formal feedback on their performance once every three years.

More: Metro Nashville Public Schools post gains across all subjects on 2024 TCAP

And while Tennessee’s current Education Savings Account program requires assessments and analysis to ensure schools are delivering for students and families, legislative proposals for an expanded program varied on whether to formally measure the academic performance of participating students.

Let’s double down on what works

So what do we do? It starts with a recommitment to measuring outcomes in education and across different student groups and to reporting those results transparently and publicly so that educators, policymakers, employers, families, and taxpayers know whether education is working for students.

We must also resist the urge to water down Tennessee’s nationally leading teacher evaluation and feedback process. If anything, the feedback and professional development teachers receive needs to be more targeted, robust, and actionable.

Moreover, any publicly funded education opportunity — including school choice programs — should include measuring and reporting on student learning so that Tennesseans and Tennessee families can be sure the promise of that opportunity is being realized and resulting in satisfactory student outcomes.

Finally, at a time when many students are skeptical about the value of a postsecondary education, we need to use data to better connect the postsecondary experiences students can access to clear career outcomes. And we need to make the data insights more accessible, actionable, and usable to all Tennesseans, particularly data on how education connects to work.

We’ve made some progress, but we haven’t scratched the surface on how this data could be used to inform policy, funding, and strategy decisions from the capitol to the classroom.

Data drives results

Baseball teams can’t expect success without paying attention to the stats. Data and the responsiveness to data is an important part of how you build championship teams. The same is true in education.

Every student and family should have an expectation that education in our state — no matter the setting — is providing them with the opportunity for a great K-12 education, for a postsecondary experience that prepares them for a good job, and for a meaningful and rewarding career.

That’s something worth measuring.

David Mansouri is president and CEO of SCORE, the State Collaborative on Reforming Education.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee education: Measuring student outcomes is key to progress