Commentary: Lawmakers Should Aspire to Something Better by Building Upon the Assessment Policies that Kick-Started our State’s Gains

Stock image of a multiple choice test (Photo by Uplash)

In 2007, Tennessee lawmakers did something transformational for our state that sadly received very little attention.

Education champions on both sides of the aisle in the General Assembly approved new rigorous state standards and aligned the assessments that students across the state take to the new standards.

Lana Skelo (Photo by Tennesseans for Student Success)

At the time, the idea was to correct something known as the “honesty gap,” where Tennessee students would frequently perform much better on state tests than the more rigorous national exams.  In 2007, for example, the state reported 88 percent of fourth-grade students were proficient in reading on the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP), while only 27 percent of the same group of students scored proficient on the National Assessment for Education Progress (NAEP) reading section. 

Thankfully, lawmakers chose to reform state standards and align our assessments more closely with national benchmarks. This decision has played a critical role in transforming Tennessee from a state that was lagging in critical achievement measures into a model of performance others aspire to.

Between 2007 and 2011, the difference between TCAP and NAEP proficiency in core subject areas started to narrow for Tennessee students. By 2019, the two scores virtually mirrored each other, and this year, Tennessee ranked above the national average in math and reading on the NAEP for both 4th and 8th grade proficiency for the first time ever.  Most notably, the math proficiency of fourth graders ranked in the top ten this year, and our state is in the top five for post-COVID learning recovery.

Those improvements alone should warrant preserving the assessment system, but the economic benefits have been perhaps just as important as we look for ways to change how we educate our workforce. Tennessee’s annual improvements in national education rankings have led to immense economic development and a greater opportunity for graduating students to succeed. This isn’t surprising, as a sustainable, educated workforce is an increasingly important consideration for business leaders in the technology, healthcare, and manufacturing sectors that are looking at Tennessee for expansion opportunities.

Tennessee’s education story serves as an important backdrop for a hearing this week in Nashville. Lawmakers serving on the Advisory Committee on Innovations in K-12 Education are studying the scope and frequency of assessments, and they will ultimately make recommendations for possible changes. Some outside interest groups have suggested that lawmakers should use this process to reduce the number of assessments high school students take, for example, or even change the testing for younger students, potentially removing annual assessments in math and reading that have allowed Tennessee to monitor progress and provide targeted investments to improve student outcomes.

While it’s always important for our elected leaders to be open to new and innovative ways to improve student outcomes, weakening the assessment system is not the way to do it. The TCAP and the end-of-course (EOC) exams that high school students take keep learning on track, and they provide invaluable transparency into what’s happening in the classroom. As the saying goes, what gets measured gets done.  

These tests are additionally important for high school students after graduation. The admission requirements for universities, including the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, include multiple years of coursework in the same subjects EOC exams test. Tennessee’s universities are aiming to be the centers of innovation and the centers of excellence, and it’s imperative that our students can attend them. Removing these assessments puts Tennessee students at a competitive disadvantage for admission to our state’s own universities.

That possibility is even more alarming when you consider that many of the jobs that are coming to Tennessee will require applicants to have a higher education degree. Research by the Nashville Chamber of Commerce, for example, predicts that over the next decade, the number of jobs in the Nashville and surrounding area requiring a bachelor’s degree or more will grow at a higher rate than those requiring only a high school diploma.

Tennessee lawmakers have a critical choice to make on this issue. They can go back to the education standards that routinely placed our state at the bottom for student achievement, or they can aspire to something better by building upon the successful policies that kick-started our state’s gains in the first place.

I’m hoping they choose the latter.

Lana Skelo is the President and CEO of Tennesseans for Student Success. The Tennessee Firefly is a product of and funded by Tennesseans for Student Success.