Tennessee House Democrats today asked state education officials to wait 3 years before using the results of state-mandated TN Ready testing against students and teachers. 

Rep. Antonio Parkinson (D-Memphis) said “the first thing we have to do is make sure the TN Ready testing system is ready before we start holding the students and teachers across the state accountable.”

 Last week, state education officials revealed that close to 10,000 of the high schools were scored incorrectly by testing company Questar.  The company blamed the snafu on a failure to update some of the grading software.  This comes after another company, Measurement Inc., had its contract terminated by the state when the company was unable to fulfill its online testing requirements. 

“We can’t hold our students and teachers accountable for a process that has now failed them for two consecutive years,” said Nashville Representative Bo Mitchell.  He added, “It’s not fair to the students, it’s not fair to the teachers and it’s not fair to the stakeholders of the state of Tennessee.” 

While lawmakers did not call for suspending the tests, they said that the state needs to take the time to perfect the system before using the results in a punitive way.

“We encourage the leaders of the State Department of Education to set your pride and egos aside and think about our children, parents, educators and schools and give TN Ready three years to be perfected,” Parkinson said.