Race to the Top 101 - How Tennessee Won the National Competition and What Happens Next | Page 2

Taking Note

Sec. Duncan announced that Delaware and
Tennessee were the winners in Phase One. The
agency approved approximately $500 million in
federal funding for Tennessee — nearly the full
amount requested by Gov. Phil Bredesen — to
be distributed over a period of four years.
Fifty percent of Tennessee’s Race to the
Top funds will be distributed directly to local
school systems that propose reform ideas in
keeping with the competition’s areas of focus.
The other half will be used by the state for various purposes, including: providing professional
development for teachers across the state,
expanding STEM education programs and
pursuing aggressive strategies to turn around
persistently failing schools.
Overall, Tennessee won 444 points out of
500 possible. First-place winner Delaware finished with 455 points. Thirty-five states and
the District of Columbia submitted applications
in the second round of competition.
In his remarks announcing the first-round
winners, Sec. Duncan said both Delaware and
Tennessee demonstrated “statewide buy-ins for
comprehensive plans to reform their schools.”
In Tennessee, 100 percent of the state’s 136
school systems as well as 93 percent of local
unions signed on to support the plan.8 “This was
not about a pilot or a small-scale thing,” Duncan
said in a conference call with education re porters. “This is trying to reach every single child in
those states and doing it in a convincing way.”9
Underpinning Tennessee’s Race to the Top
plan is a new state law requiring that 50 percent of teacher and principal evaluations be
based on student achievement measures.

Competitive Edge
Almost from the beginning, national education-reform interests — such as the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the nation’s
most active education-related grant funders
— viewed Tennessee as competitive in Race
to the Top as a result of policy changes in
recent years.10 A major shift occurred in 2007
with Gov. Bredesen’s public call for, and the
State Board of Education’s 2008 adoption of,
career- and college-ready high school standards
through the Tennessee Diploma Project.11
Additional milestones came in 2009. A
rewrite of Tennessee’s law governing charter
schools — championed by Sec. Duncan, who
personally called state lawmakers to voice his
support — expanded student enrollment eligibility, doubled the charter renewal period
from five to 10 years and raised the statewide
cap from 50 to 90 schools.12 Later that year,
SCORE

August 2010

Memphis City Schools — Tennessee’s largest
school system — was awarded a $90 million
grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
to pursue a new teacher effectiveness initiative.13 (Editor’s note: The State Collaborative on
Reforming Education receives financial support
from the Gates Foundation.)
Longstanding policies also worked in Tennessee’s favor. Most notably, the state had
been nationally recognized for having one of the
nation’s oldest and most robust databases for
tracking “student growth,” or a child’s improvement in the classroom over time.
The Volunteer State’s database for tracking
student growth, known as the Tennessee ValueAdded Assessment System (TVAAS), was

“This was not about a pilot
or a small-scale thing,” said
U.S. Education Secretary
Arne Duncan. “This is trying
to reach every single child
in those states and doing
it in a convincing way.”
established in 1992 and provides statistical
analysis of student test results in the Tennessee
Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP).
Historically, the student growth data had not
played a role in evaluating Tennessee teachers
due to a prohibition in state law. Race to the
Top would change that.
In a February 2010 analysis for the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, Thomas W. Carroll,
who heads New York’s nonprofit Foundation for
Education Reform & Accountability, noted that
TVAAS could give Tennessee “an important
advantage, given the importance that Race to
the Top places on data.”14
Indeed, TVAAS is presumed to have played
a role in Tennessee’s win — in part because
Race to the Top’s emphasis on data permeated multiple aspects of the competition. More
than one-third of each state’s score would be
determined by strategies to better leverage
data systems to support instruction and to
promote the development of “great teachers
and leaders.” Race to the Top’s rules included
a requirement that states implement teacher
and principal evaluations consisting of multiple
measures that take into account student growth
data as “a significant factor.”15
In areas of the competition touching on data
systems, and teachers and leaders, Tennessee
scored 158 points out of 185 possible.16

2

Legislative Action
To strengthen Tennessee’s Race to the Top
application, Gov. Bredesen — with the backing of legislative leaders including Senate
Speaker and Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey
and House Speaker Kent Williams — called a
special session of the 106th General Assembly
to make changes in state law. “Sometimes the
planets just line up and there is an opportunity
that you didn’t expect,” Bredesen said in his
remarks to the legislature. Calling Race to the
Top “transformational,” he added: “These are
the times to seize the moment.”17
Topping the list of proposed statutory
changes: A measure that would allow TVAAS’s
student growth data to be used, for the first
time, as a factor in teacher and principal evaluations. Specifically, legislation would require
that 50 percent of evaluations be based on
student achievement measures — including 35
percent using TVAAS, when possible. Student
growth in certain subjects, including arts and
physical education, is not measured.
The Tennessee Education Association
(TEA), the state’s National Education Association affiliate, initially signaled reservations
about basing such a large percentage of
teacher evaluations on TVAAS.18 In the end,
TEA pledged support for Tennessee’s Race to
the Top plan and agreed to work with the state
to try to develop an evaluation system that uses
data “effectively and fairly.”19
The legislature’s special session began Jan.
12, 2010, to consider the proposed Tennessee First to the Top Act as well as companion
legislation known as the Complete College Tennessee Act. The First to the Top Act would
make several changes in state law, including:
• Requiring annual evaluations of teachers
and principals.
• Lifting the prohibition on using TVAAS
data in evaluating teachers and principals
and allowing the data to be used in making decisions on teacher tenure.
• Establishing a new teacher and principal
evaluation framework requiring that 50
percent of evaluations be based on student achievement measures — including
35 percent on TVAAS, when possible.
• Creating a 15-member Teacher Evaluation Advisory Committee to recommend
specific guidelines and criteria for the
new evaluation.
• Allowing local school systems to create
local salary schedules for teachers and
principals, with state approval, versus
using a state-mandated schedule.
www.tnscore.org