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Hamilton County staff: letter grades can mask school progress; board urged to weigh growth and proficiency together
Summary
At a Hamilton County Board policy session, district staff presented how Tennessee’s A–F letter-grade approach emphasizes absolute proficiency and can obscure student growth; presenters urged local use of multiple measures including TCAP growth and district targets in Opportunity 2030.
Shannon Moody, Hamilton County Schools’ accountability lead, told the Board at a policy work session that state letter grades and the underlying TCAP test measure two distinct things — achievement (how many students meet a proficiency “finish line”) and growth (how much students advance from their starting points).
Moody used a running-track metaphor to explain the difference: “Achievement is how many kids cross the finish line. Growth is essentially erasing the finish line and say, did every student, regardless of where they started, make a whole loop around the track,” she said. She showed district data that, in some cases, proficiency rose slightly while measured growth declined.
Nut graf: The distinction matters because Tennessee’s newly implemented A–F methodology reduces some measures used previously (targets and subgroup measures) and weights absolute achievement more heavily,…
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