Identifying Tennessee school-based agricultural education student growth and program accountability metrics

Nathan Conner,Ashton Street,John Ricketts,Christopher Stripling,Christopher Boyer

doi:10.37433/aad.v2i2.91

Abstract

Over the years, accountability in education has transformed from the primary focus being the school as a whole to the individual teacher. The purpose of this study was to determine the metrics Tennessee school-based agricultural education teachers perceive as indicators of excellent total programs (classroom instruction, FFA, SAE), and a modified Delphi study was used to seek a consensus. The following nine metrics were retained: (a) pesticide certification, (b) program of activities, (c) number of students participating in CDEs, (d) chapter community service hours, (e) total number of FFA activities, (f) number of CDEs coached, (g) at least one proficiency at regional level, (h) one American degree every 3 years, and (i) percentage of students with SAE. Overall, the metrics agreed upon are narrow in focus and all but one is a record of activity and not direct measures of students’ knowledge or skills. As a result, the measures do not include student growth or value-added scores or authentic assessments of 21st century skills. Additional research is needed to further investigate the metrics that should be used to measure a school-based agricultural education program’s success in Tennessee and across the nation.

Highlights

Introduction and Problem StatementAccountability in education transformed from the primary focus being the whole school to the individual teacher (Lavigne, 2014)
The purpose of this study was to determine the metrics Tennessee School-based agricultural education (SBAE) teachers perceived as indicators of excellent total programs
A modified Delphi study was used to seek a consensus on metrics SBAE teachers perceived as indicators of excellent total programs

Summary

Introduction

Accountability in education transformed from the primary focus being the whole school to the individual teacher (Lavigne, 2014). Tennessee has been a frontrunner for value-added assessment and was one of the first states to apply a statewide evaluation system (Lavigne, 2014). TEAM outlines that 50% of a teacher’s evaluation is comprised of student achievement data and within that percentage, 35% is calculated from student growth using students’ value-added scores, and the other 15% is made up of other student achievement measures as decided by the State Board of Education and agreed upon by the teacher and the evaluator (Lavigne, 2014). The other 50% is comprised of personal conferences, observation data, and a review of prior teaching evaluations (Lavigne, 2014). Glover et al (2016) recommended using multiple types of formative assessment techniques for teacher and student evaluation

Objectives

Methods

Results