Sumner Residents

December 18, 2007

Dear Sumner Residents,

A few weeks ago, the Education Consumers Foundation sent detailed information on the performance of Sumner schools to every household in the county. Our purpose was to bring parents and taxpayers more fully into the conversation about school quality.

Part of the problem in informing the public is that schools are complex organizations; and even though extensive data is available, few individuals have the time or expertise to sort through it all and make sense of it. Thus, the school quality information that the parents do receive typically comes through spokesmen and media reports. This creates a conflict of
interest: as is the case with all institutions, schools have a vital interest in maintaining a favorable public image, and their efforts can therefore run counter to the interests of parents who would prefer to have the "whole story" and not just the most flattering news.

Parents and taxpayers are the parties who have the greatest stake in schooling, yet they are among the least well informed with respect to the availability of objective school quality evidence. Our Tennessee Project, which includes our Sumner County work as well as some other initiatives in the state, is an attempt to demonstrate that it is possible to take the sophisticated data on which schools in Tennessee are evaluated and make it directly accessible to parents, taxpayers, and their elected representatives.

Sumner County is a pilot for a program that we plan to expand across the state and eventually across the nation. Given the thousands of responses to our website and other feedback, we believe that the cause of parent and public engagement in schooling has been substantially advanced in Sumner County. Families are able to see for themselves how well their local schools are performing.

Within the education community, school quality is said to be indicated by wide variety of factors-all of which, it is argued, should be included in a performance evaluation. Among parents and taxpayers, however, there is a clear pattern of priorities. In general, outcomes are more important than process; thus a school that used ideal practices but failed to produce acceptable outcomes would not be deemed a success.

From a parent’s standpoint, the success had by a school in increasing a child’s knowledge and skills from year to year is the most important attribute of a school, so that’s why we built our school performance charts on TVAAS gains in reading and math. A school that falls short on this measure cannot be considered an effective school regardless of its strengths in other areas.

Furthermore, it is important that this information be known to the public. We all want to provide the best for our children, so we need to know both which schools we should seek and which we may want to avoid. Taxpayers similarly have a need to know which schools are doing the best. They need to know which schools deserve recognition and encouragement and which need to be strengthened. Without an informed electorate, the ability of a school board to carry out the public will in matters of school improvement necessarily remains weak and limited.
Our goal has been to let parents and taxpayers know what school performance information is available, where they can find it, and what it means. Our mailing was an introduction to this body of information and to sources such as our website and that of the Tennessee Department of Education. It was intended not just as one-time event but as the beginning of a process. Tennessee has spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing TVAAS just so school performance can be clearly measured and understood, and our mission is to systematically update parents and taxpayers as to its findings.

Our outreach effort included an e-forum for Sumner residents who might have questions about our report. Because almost all questions and comments were expressed to the moderator rather than the group, we have posted the answers online for review by all interested parties http://www.education-consumers.org/sumnerqna.htm.

This list will be updated as additional questions are submitted and responses provided.

Our next scheduled report is the release of our school performance charts updated with the TVAAS data that was publicly released on November 2, 2007.

We believe that schools can improve, and we know of counties where real improvement has taken place. For example, Knox County, where value-added assessment was born, has paid careful attention to the value-added performance of their schools and the results are evident. The same thing can happen in Sumner County. It has some excellent schools; and given its growing population and proximity to Nashville, it can become one of the premier school systems in the state. In fact, Sumner’s potential for excellence was one of the main reasons we chose it for a pilot project.

School effectiveness is not something that just mystically happens. It takes leadership and hard work fitted to local circumstances, so we have no certain formulas or pat answers as to how Sumner County should proceed from here. However, here are a few suggestions:

First, know that school effectiveness is determined by the actions of the schools, and not by the makeup of the students. It is entirely within the means of the schools to become great.

In a recent study, we looked at the common practices of Tennessee’s most effective elementary and middle schools and found that they share a great deal. Our report, "Effective Schools, Common Practices" is available on our website.

Sumner County has some highly effective schools; we suggest recognizing them for their efforts, finding out what practices they use, and sharing those with others in the system.
Publicly promote value-added achievement as a goal for schools to strive for. Both the Board and the County Commissioners have stated that they want to have the best schools in your region and value-added gain is the right way to measure whether that objective has been achieved (in fact, it’s the only valid measurement). By making it the primary criterion, everyone will be focused on the same indicator as you work toward that goal.

We believe that Sumner County has an historic opportunity: a widespread public understanding of educational quality among the public and the expressed support for action from many parents. If we can be of any assistance in advancing this effort, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Sincerely,
J.E. Stone, Ed.D.
President
Education Consumers Foundation