Parent advocacy group TREE – Tennesseans Reclaiming Educational Excellence – released a legislative report card ranking lawmakers based on votes on education-related isues.
Votes that made up the Report Card included:
- Charter Authorizer. TREE opposed this bill, which passed.
- For-Profit Charters. TREE opposed this bill, which failed.
- Vouchers. TREE opposed this bill, which failed.
- Charter Conversion a/k/a Parent Trigger. TREE opposed this bill, which failed.
- Testing Notification. TREE supported this bill, which passed.
- Teacher Pay Restoration: TREE supported this bill, which passed.
- Elimination of School Board Representation. TREE opposed this bill, which failed.
Legislators were ranked from A+ to F based on their votes on the issues of importance to TREE.
Senators receiving top grades: Charlotte Burks (D-15), Lowe Finney (D-27), Thelma Harper (D-19), Jim Kyle (D-30), Becky Massey (R-6), Doug Overbey (R-2), and Ken Yager (R-12).
Of those, Senators Burks, Finney, and Kyle will not be in the General Assembly in 2015 due to retirement.
Representatives receiving top grades: Raumesh Akbari (D-91), John Forgety (R-23), Gloria Johnson (D-13), Bo Mitchell (D-50), Joe Pitts (D-67), and Mike Stewart (D-52).
TREE billed the release as a means of informing voters ahead of the November elections.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
I find it interesting that after all the years of criticizing the A-F grading scale for schools, teachers and everything else in education, TREE went with the A-F scale. I’m also slightly perplexed as to the methodology that went into the letter grade. It looks as if the criteria for a “D” was batting .500 (by TREE’s standards), a “B” was over 500 and an A was a perfect score. The concern I have is that it doesn’t appear as if TREE weighted any of the votes. For example, it seems that “testing notification” votes carry the same weight as, say, voucher votes. I would argue (as I believe that most people would) that a voucher system has a much greater impact on education in Tennessee than testing notification and should be weighted differently. Maybe they’ll fix this in future report cards.
I also take issue with Ophelia Ford getting a “B” given that she wasn’t present for barely any votes this session…