NASHVILLE (AP) - A bill to close public access to teacher evaluation data is headed for a full Senate vote.

The Senate State and Local Government Committee voted 7-0 on Tuesday to advance the bill, sponsored by Republican Sen. Jim Tracy of Shelbyville.

Access to the data should be limited to school officials and not available to the general public, Tracy said.

"Evaluations are supposed to be used as a tool to help teachers, it's not going to be used for anything other than that," Tracy said.

Under recent changes to state law, half of teachers' assessments must derive from testing data, while the rest comes from classroom observations.

Kent Flanagan, the executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, said he was caught off guard by the measure because the original bill did not include any reference to education records.

"We weren't aware that this caption was going to be used in this fashion, other wise we would have discussed it with the legislators involved," he said. "Because we want to talk about whether or not these evaluation results should be public or confidential."

The companion bill was awaiting a vote in the House State and Local Government Committee on Wednesday.