January 15, 2016
This week, the 2nd Session of the 109th General Assembly began. Speaker Beth Harwell and Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey gaveled in their respective houses and the legislature is up and running, and we’re all off to a great start.
A quick reminder from last year – there are two Education Committees in the House (Administrative and Planning Committee and Instruction and Programs Committee) and one Education Committee in the Senate. You’ll hear a lot from us about committee, sub-committee, and house floor proceedings. As always, we’ll do our best to give you relevant and timely information here each week, in urgent legislative action emails, and on Facebook and Twitter.
Before the Senate Education and a Joint House Education Committee this week were presentations on the Every Child Succeeds Act of 2015. We wanted to share with you the video from the Senate Education Committee and the presentation from education research group. Take a few moments and watch the video linked here and feel free to share it with your networks.
Looking ahead, we wanted to let you know about a discussion surrounding TNReady. We heard from many of our teachers and parents over the last few months with questions over how students’ TNReady scores might factor into teacher evaluations. We wanted to share this article with you. Last year, the General Assembly passed the Tennessee Teaching Evaluation Enhancement Act. Here are a few takeaways from that bill:
“Local districts have complete discretion in how they choose to factor test data into employment decisions like promotion, retention, termination, and compensation.”
It is important that parents and teachers know where to direct their questions about the impact of TNReady as we move into this year’s legislative session.