Tennessee Department of Education details rostering, deadlines for using Universal Reading Screener as alternative growth measure

Tracy Riddle, director of educator effectiveness at the Tennessee Department of Education, used Tuesday's office hours to explain how districts should roster teachers when using the Universal Reading Screener (URS) as an alternative growth measure for non-tested teachers.

Riddle said districts and charters must choose at least one individual growth measure for a non-tested teacher group; that measure may be a portfolio or a URS. "If you are using an AGM, it comprises 35% of the teacher's LOE," she said, referring to the individual growth component of teacher evaluations.

The department provided a rostering guidance document on the AGM tab of the team's website and confirmed AGM leads have access to the roster in TenShare. The roster is prepopulated from districts' EIS records with ELA teachers in the grade(s) selected by a director of schools. AGM leads must download the roster, check that all teachers who should receive a URS growth score are present, and either confirm, remove (with a selected reason), or add teachers. Riddle warned that adding a teacher in the roster interface does not guarantee a score: "If they're not being pulled from EIS, that needs to be corrected before scores are pulled after the spring window."

Districts should remove teachers who do not teach the chosen grade or who do not teach ELA, including some multi-grade virtual or departmentalized teachers who do not fit the selected grade-level grouping. If two teachers job-share and both are listed in EIS as the teacher of record, both should be confirmed and will each receive a URS score, Riddle said.

Riddle listed technical and procedural requirements: the URS must be administered in both fall and spring for a teacher to receive a growth score; teachers without both fall and spring data "might receive an incomplete," and teachers with fewer than six students connected to them will not generate an individual growth count and instead will receive the schoolwide composite score in Encompass.

The department identified seven approved universal reading screeners for use in Tennessee and noted which vendors' tools are approved for pre-K. Districts receiving VPK funding must choose either a portfolio or the URS for kindergarten and pre-K (districts may choose different measures between pre-K and kindergarten).

AGM leads were instructed to save their roster files with a naming convention that begins with the district or charter name (for example: "AGM URS rostering 2025"), then upload the completed file via the Formstack link and submit it to the team's SharePoint. Riddle said rosters are preferred to be submitted by Jan. 17 but that submissions can be made the following week (the week of Jan. 20) if additional checks are needed.

For technical questions about specific screeners or administration windows, Riddle directed attendees to the Tennessee Universal Reading Screener team at tn.universalscreener@tn.gov. The department also published vendor-specific guidance showing how each of the seven approved providers calculates growth scores.

The office hours included live Q&A clarifications: how to handle job-share teachers, how to treat virtual teachers who span multiple grades, and that teachers employed by outside vendors who are not rostered in TN Compass should not be added by districts. Riddle closed by encouraging attendees to use the guidance document and to contact the team with district-specific questions.