Background

Tennessee’s Educator Preparation Report Card is an annual State Board of Education evaluation of teacher preparation providers (EPPs). In 2017, SB575/HB626 (Sen. Gresham & Rep. Kumar) required classroom observation data to be added to the Report Card — the first year our data cover also happens to be the first year these observation and TVAAS (student growth) breakouts appear, so 2017 marks both the start of this dataset and the implementation of SB575.

This report summarizes trends for University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) across the 2017-2024 Report Cards, focusing on the classroom-observation and student-growth (TVAAS) metrics that SB575 added, and comparing how much each reported metric moved proportionally over the period.

A few things to note about the data before the results:

  • Report cards for 2020-2022 (reflecting COVID-affected cohorts) still reported observation/TVAAS values, but the State Board did not count them toward the scored Domain/Overall rating those years. Scoring resumed in 2023.
  • Some metrics changed names or definitions slightly across years (e.g., “Observation 4-5” became “Classroom Observation 4+”); values below are aligned across years by underlying definition, not by exact column label.
  • All percentages are expressed on a common 0-100 scale (source files mix 0-1 proportions and 0-100 percentages across years).

2. Is the TVAAS 4+ Decline Statistically Meaningful?

TVAAS 4+ (the share of UTK completers whose students showed the highest levels of academic growth) fell from an aggregate high of ~35% in 2017-2018 to ~23-28% in 2023-2024. To test whether this is a real trend rather than noise, I fit a binomial (logistic) regression of the yearly TVAAS 4+ proportion against year, weighting each year by its completer count (N ranged from 79 to 194).

Result: the odds of a UTK completer reaching TVAAS 4+ declined by about 6.8% per year (odds ratio = 0.93, 95% CI 0.89-0.98, p = 0.007) across 2017-2024. Excluding the three COVID “unscored” years and refitting on 2017, 2018, 2019, 2023, and 2024 alone gives essentially the same estimate (odds ratio = 0.93, p = 0.01) — so the decline is not simply an artifact of the pandemic-era scoring pause.

::: {.alert alert-warning} Caveats: this test rests on only 8 (or 5) aggregate yearly data points for a single institution, each already averaged across an unknown number of teachers and subjects. It offers reasonable evidence of a downward trend, but doesn’t identify why — e.g., changes in which subjects/grades were TVAAS-eligible each year could contribute independent of any real change in teacher effectiveness. :::

3. Which Metrics Moved the Most?

Comparing each metric’s first to last reported year (on a common 0-100 scale), the metrics vary widely in how much they moved proportionally:

The largest proportional moves were Student Growth (TVAAS) 4+ (-31%) and % High-Demand Endorsements (+28%). Across both observation and TVAAS metrics, the higher-bar “4+” tier moved more than the “3+” tier, while baseline pass-rate metrics (Classroom Observation, Content/Pedagogical Assessment) stayed essentially flat (under ±2.3%).

Summary

  • SB575 (2017) added observation/TVAAS data to the Report Card; because our data start in 2017, there is no pre-SB575 baseline to compare against within this dataset.
  • Classroom observation rates have been stable for UTK since 2017; student growth (TVAAS) rates, especially the top “4+” tier, have trended down, and this holds even excluding the COVID-era unscored years.
  • Proportional change varies a great deal by metric — high-bar performance metrics (TVAAS 4+, LOE 4+) and candidate-composition metrics (% High-Demand Endorsements) moved the most, while minimum-threshold and pass-rate metrics were comparatively stable.

Source: Tennessee State Board of Education Educator Preparation Report Card data downloads, 2017-2024 (State Data 2017/2018.xlsx, 2019-2024_Data_Download.xlsx).