Blog

One of the great reasons to have a TEI blog is to help connect MCS (and other) educators to important resources. Sometimes, those resources are the voices of community leaders like Elliott Perry, who blogged last about the status quo in public education not being acceptable any more or TEI leaders like Jessica Lotz, who described the need for 50,000 more college-prepared citizens to bring Shelby County up to the national average of residents with college degrees. Sometimes this blog will literally point you toward other web resources. And today is one of those times.

On Thursday of this last week, the Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) launched a new website that every teacher, principal, instructional facilitator, school counselor, district administrator --- okay, anybody remotely associated with the new teacher and principal evaluation requirement in Tennessee --- should visit. That website is http://www.team-tn.org/educator-resourceshttp://www.team-tn.org/educator-resources

Because we're using the Teacher Effectiveness Model (TEM) in Memphis, translating some of the language on the site can be a little clunky; after all, the state's evaluation model is TEM with an extra "A": TEAM (Tennessee Educator Acceleration Model) and much of the TEAM-specific stuff doesn't apply to MCS educators.

[I Teach. I Am Special Note: Although some of it may not apply to MCS educators, some of the main tenets of TEAM are very much in line with what we believe, particularly the call for continuous improvement among both educators and students, frequent and constructive feedback (commenting on these blog posts is just the start), and measured student growth.]

But here's the important part: answers to several questions you have been asking can be found on the new website.

Can a teacher with tenure lose tenure based on the new evaluation system? The answer is at http://www.team-tn.org/educator-resourceshttp://www.team-tn.org/educator-resources

How will principals be evaluated? The answer is at http://www.team-tn.org/educator-resources I don't teach a tested subject --- where the 35% value-added results will come from for my evaluation? The answer is at http://www.team-tn.org/educator-resources

To be sure, not every question about the new evaluation models in Tennessee has an answer yet. We'll be making the road as we walk it this year. My recommendation, though, is to click on the link and visit the TDOE website just as soon as you can. A big year lies ahead; knowing more at this point is a very, very good thing.

Dr. John Barker, Executive Director, MCS

Research, Evaluation, Assessment, and Student Information