Is it time to cancel TNReady testing in light of concerns over COVID-19? The federal government seems to at least allow for states to make this call, according to a story in Chalkbeat.
Guidance released by the U.S. Department of Education says it will consider waiving requirements for state-wide tests, currently mandated in grades 3-8 and once in high school. State testing occurs throughout the spring, and some school closures were already running into planned testing windows.
Not only could this be a relief for Directors of Schools facing a tough call, it could alleviate the strain of what has so far been a failed TNReady testing experiment.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
Despite cancelling a planned rally to drum up support for improved school funding, the Tennessee Education Association is still calling for teachers and public education advocates to take action on or around March 16th. More from TEA President Beth Brown.
Following the announcement yesterday of our decision to cancel the TEA Rally for Our Schools, I want to challenge you to still mark Monday, March 16, as a Day of Action for the funding our schools deserve. Our public schools need a $1.2 billion investment from the state to provide the resources, services and support our students need to succeed.
It’s affordable: Tennessee can do this without raising taxes. It’s right: Strong public schools are the foundation of strong, thriving communities. It’s time: Underfunding our schools has gone on for too long; The students sitting in our classrooms right now, and the generations to come, deserve the very best education.
Monday, March 16, 2020, is a day we have all been looking forward to since the delegates at the TEA RA in 2019 voted unanimously that a large-scale action was needed to increase state funding. While we can no long risk a large in-person gathering, we still have the opportunity for a statewide, large-scale action.
I am asking each local association to identify a way for public education advocates in your community to show their support for increased state investment in public education. This can be anything from wearing red on Monday (including your Rally shirts, if you have them), to posting social media videos stating why your school deserves better funding, to a flood of phone calls to your state legislators. Better yet, you could do all three!
We must remain focused on this goal and not let the loss of the rally result in lost momentum. Elected officials in Nashville need to feel the pressure from folks back home that we are watching, and we expect better for Tennessee’s public schools.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
The Tennessee Education Association has cancelled a planned March 16th rally for school funding because of fears around the coronavirus (COVID-19). Here’s more from an email:
For more than 150 years, TEA leadership and staff have been committed to working in the best interest of Tennessee students and educators. It is for that reason that we have made the decision to cancel the Rally for Our Schools on Monday, March 16. In an abundance of caution for the health of educators, students and TEA staff, we cannot responsibly ask hundreds of public education advocates to gather together in Nashville as the coronavirus continues to spread across the state.
While the rally has been cancelled, the fight continues. It is more important than ever that we do not lose our momentum or focus on accomplishing our goal to increase state funding to the Southeast average. We are in a critical moment for the future of public education funding in our state. Our students and schools need a dramatic increase in state investment in public education. Please watch for communication from TEA in the coming days via email, print publications and social media for details on the next step in this fight and how you can be involved.
TEA will also be sharing information with members on how we can all support our fellow educators and students affected by the tornados in Middle Tennessee.
Sincerely,
Beth Brown, TEA President
Carolyn Crowder, TEA Executive Director
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
Betty Bean has the story of an unlikely two-term winner on the Knox County School Board, Jennifer Owen.
Owen won re-election on Tuesday night by a large margin despite being outspent, reports Bean:
Sure, she had devoted volunteers and steady support from educators, but her opponent, John Meade, co-president of the Central High School Foundation, was rocking big ticket contributions from the top tier of the local GOP donor base and dispatching bales of direct mail to district mailboxes while Owen only sent out two mailers, one of which she paid for with $2,000 borrowed from her husband, Robert. Her only other large contribution was $2,500 from the K-PACE, the Knox County Education Association political action committee.
As Bean continues, she notes that Owen is known for speaking truth to power. She takes principled stands, even if they are sometimes unpopular. She’s not at all afraid to make the establishment uncomfortable. She asks tough questions. She’s unrelenting in her advocacy for public education.
Her story is not unlike that of Nashville’s Amy Frogge, now a two-term school board member. Frogge was outspent by large margins in both of her campaigns, and both times she won big. She challenges city leaders and state policymakers and she’s relentless.
Perhaps there’s a lesson in this for politicians everywhere: Stay true to your principles, fight hard, and do what’s right – even in the face of well-funded, polished interests who claim to be “for the kids.”
Whatever the case, Owen joins Frogge as someone who looks at the powerful interests in her way and nevertheless, persists.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
State Senator Dolores Gresham will not be seeking re-election this year, the AP reports:
Tennessee Republican state Sen. Dolores Gresham says she will not be seeking reelection this year.
The Somerville lawmaker made the announcement in an email this week to constituents in her 26th District.
Gresham served six years in the state House before she was elected to three four-year terms in the Senate. She became Education Committee chairwoman as a freshman senator.
Gresham’s leadership was a critical element in securing passage of Tennessee’s school voucher program. In fact, in litigation filed by the school systems in Nashville and Memphis, reference is made to Gresham’s captaining of the voucher bill from the Senate floor.
Amendment No. 1 did not apply to Sen. Gresham’s home county of Fayette County or to any of the other six counties in Sen. Gresham’s district, despite Fayette County having two out of seven schools (28.6%) on the 2017 bottom 10% list and one out of seven schools (14.3%) on the 2018 list of priority schools.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
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Yesterday’s election provided good news for teachers in Wilson County, as voters there approved a sales tax increase with a portion of the proceeds from increased revenue dedicated to increasing teacher pay. The Lebanon Democrat has more:
The sales tax in Wilson County will be going to 9.75 percent from 9.25 percent after voters overwhelmingly gave their OK Tuesday.
The referendum passed 58% to 42%, according to complete yet unofficial results posted by Wilson County Elections Administrator Phillip Warren.
The vote came as the result of a decision by the Wilson County Commission to put the issue of where to find new revenue to fund teacher pay to voters.
The move comes as Wilson County is feeling the impact of the national teacher shortage, driven in part by low pay for educators. Additionally, new reports indicate teacher pay in Tennessee has actually fallen over the last decade when adjusted for inflation. Wilson County also suffers from a pay scale tied to teacher value-added scores.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
A state organization tasked with providing research on the operations of state and local government has released a report suggesting Tennessee’s school funding formula, the BEP, needs at least $1.7 billion to adequately fund public education in the state. TACIR — The Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations — released “K-12 Education Funding and Services.” Here are some notes:
* Report shows local governments spend at least $1.7 billion over BEP requirements.
* “Comparisons of BEP-funded to actual positions show that school systems often need to hire more staff than provided for by the formula” (Page 18)
* “In fiscal year 2018-19, the BEP funding formula generated a total of 62,888 licensed instructional positions, but school systems employed a total of 69,633 with state and local revenue.”
“Although the changes made in 1992 and since have resulted in substantial increases in funding to support the BEP, meeting local needs and the requirements imposed by the state and federal governments often requires more resources than the BEP funding formula alone provides. Consequently, state and local funding in fiscal year 2017-18 totaled $2.1 billion over and above what was required by the BEP formula, including a total of $1.7 billion in local revenue.”
“Given the ever evolving needs of communities in Tennessee and the likelihood that the BEP funding formula could better account for these needs, the Commission recommends that a comprehensive review of the components be made by the BEPRC or other designated state and local officials and other stakeholders to ensure that the BEP funding formula supports a commonly accepted basic level of education for Tennessee students.”
The TACIR report, showing a gap of nearly 7000 teachers, comes on the heels of a Tennessee Department of Education report indicating a “teacher gap” of 9000.
Additionally, the $1.7 billion identified by TACIR is slightly more than the $1.5 billion targeted by a group of legislators seeking to bring the BEP up to a level of adequacy.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
In February, the school districts in Nashville and Memphis filed a lawsuit challenging Gov. Bill Lee’s signature legislative achievement, school vouchers. Today, parents in both districts filed a second suit challenging the so-called “Education Savings Accounts.” Here’s more from a press release:
Public school parents and community members in Nashville and Memphis today filed suit in the Chancery Court for Davidson County challenging the Tennessee Education Savings Account (ESA) voucher law as an unconstitutional diversion of public education funding to private schools.
In the lawsuit, McEwen v. Lee, the plaintiffs contend that diverting millions of dollars intended for Memphis and Nashville public schools to private schools violates public school students’ rights to the adequate and equitable educational opportunities guaranteed under the Tennessee Constitution. The lawsuit also charges that the voucher law violates the constitution’s “Home Rule” provision, which prohibits the state legislature from passing laws that apply only to certain counties.
The Tennessee voucher program would siphon off over $7,500 per student – or over $375 million in the first five years – from funds appropriated by the General Assembly to maintain and support the Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) and Shelby County (Memphis) Schools, according to the lawsuit. The controversial state law could go into effect as early as the 2020-21 school year.
The voucher law passed by a single vote in May 2019, over the objections of legislators from Shelby and Davidson Counties, as well as others.
If the voucher program is implemented, Metro Nashville Public Schools and Shelby County Schools will lose substantial sums from their already underfunded budgets, resulting in further cuts to educators, support staff, and other essential resources, the lawsuit states.
“We love my daughter’s school, but it is already underfunded,” said Roxanne McEwen, whose child is an MNPS student. “There isn’t enough money for textbooks, technology, to pay teachers, or to keep class sizes down. Taking more money away from our schools is only going to make it worse. I joined this lawsuit because I want to be a voice for my child and for kids who don’t have a voice.”
“I believe that Shelby County Schools do not have enough funding to provide all children with the resources they need to learn. At one of my son’s middle school, they do not offer geometry, and one of my other sons did not have a science teacher for two years in a row,” said Tracy O’Connor, whose four children attend Shelby County Schools. “If the district loses more funds due to the voucher program, I worry that we will lose more guidance counselors, reading specialists and librarians, and there will be more cuts to the foreign language and STEM programs.”
The complaint highlights numerous ways in which private schools receiving public funds are not held to the same standards as Tennessee public schools, in violation of the state constitution’s requirement of a single system of public education. Private schools do not have to adhere to the numerous academic, accountability, and governance standards that public schools must meet. They can discriminate against students on the basis of religion, LGBTQ status, disability, income level, and other characteristics. And they are not required to provide special education services to students with disabilities.
“Public schools are open to all children, while private schools receiving voucher funds are not held to the same standards,” said Nashville mother Terry Jo Bichell. “My son is non-verbal and receives extensive special education and related services in his MNPS school, including being assigned a one-on-one paraprofessional. I do not know of a single private school in the state that would be willing or able to enroll a student like my son. Even if a private school was willing to enroll my son, we would have to waive his right to receive special education.”
The voucher law also violates the Tennessee Constitution’s requirement that the General Assembly appropriate first-year funding for each law it passes. No money was appropriated for the voucher law, and recent hearings have revealed that the Tennessee Department of Education used funds from an unrelated program to pay over $1 million to a private company for administration of the voucher program.
The plaintiffs are represented by Education Law Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center, which collaborate on the Public Funds Public Schools (PFPS) campaign. PFPS opposes all forms of private school vouchers and works to ensure that public funds are used exclusively to maintain, support and strengthen our nation’s public schools. The plaintiffs are also represented by the ACLU of Tennessee and pro bono by the law firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
Former teacher Kat Tipton writes in Education Week that free work is expected of teachers, and suggests it’s likely because a vast majority of educators are women.
When I was hired to be a 1st grade teacher, I was given absolutely no curriculum for reading or science. While my school did have a math curriculum, it was out of date from the brand new, controversial Common Core State Standards and did not match our assessments. Instead, I was told to plan with my colleagues.
This often led to me scouring the internet for good resources. While some coworkers were willing to share, they rarely sat down and explained what they were giving me, and I certainly never had the opportunity to observe them using it. I was in over my head and had no idea what I was doing.
However, there is a growing number of disdainful educators who are downright angry that teachers are daring to sell their materials on Teachers Pay Teachers. At a technology conference last summer, I heard a presenter loudly talking in the vendor expo center. I listened as he laughed and called TPT sellers the “whores of education.” In a session later that day, I learned about a website where teachers can upload their work for free for others to use.
Why are teachers expected to give away their hard work for free? The presenters in charge of the website explained that they were there to “help kids” and not themselves. I have seen this same sentiment on Twitter often. If you really cared about kids, you would just let people have the things you make rather than sell them!
But, is that fair? Do doctors who work with children give their medical advice away for free? Does Google look around, as it makes new technology for teachers, and say, “You know what? Let’s share all this with Microsoft. After all, it’s for kids!”? Can you think of a single other profession in which those in it are not given what they need to complete their job, are expected to make their own materials, and are then expected to just give those materials away to others?
No, the real problem here is that so many teachers aren’t given what they need in order to do their job—for kids—that they have to pay other teachers to get what they need. The lack of funding in our schools is shocking, and it’s no surprise that schools can’t afford up-to-date curriculum when many can’t even afford basic furniture or actual teachers.
More than three-quarters of public school teachers are women. Would we value the work done by teachers and sold online—and would we be less likely to call those who participate “whores”—if more teachers were men? The average public school teacher makes about $55,000 a year, and the majority have at least two degrees. If a teacher had a side job at American Eagle, would she still be a “whore”? Why is selling something related to teaching as a side job considered to be the worst thing a teacher can do?
Nashville school board member Amy Frogge recently talked with “The Vue,” a community newspaper in her home community of Bellevue. Here are some highlights.
Author Diane Ravitch, who has written several books on the plight of U.S. public school systems, chronicled Frogge’s efforts in her new book, “Slaying Goliath,” writing that Frogge “emerged as an articulate critic of privatization… who courageously stood up to the right-wing governor, the legislature, the state (education) commissioner, and then-Mayor (Karl) Dean, who were all pushing for more charters in Nashville.” (An excerpt recently appeared in The Washington Post. You can read it here: https://wapo.st/2uQtsSJ )
According to Frogge:
“All of the tentacles of the reform movement are still active here and trolling the legislature, but when I first got on the board and I talked about it, and impact of poverty on learning, and topics like that, I was crucified. Charter schools were supposed to be miracles – if you just put your child in charter schools, they are going to do better.”
Frogge won her seat against great odds:
“I raised about $24,000, but my opponent raised $120,000 (and still lost). She was at the time on the board of the Public Education Foundation, which was very pro-charter, so I don’t think anyone was aware of how contentious the school board would come to be. At that time, it was still a regular local school board.”
Great Hearts:
“My first meeting on the school board was the fourth Great Hearts vote, and all the power players (in Nashville) were backing it. I didn’t know anything about education policy. I was educating myself on every issue that came up. I looked at charters, and research was saying that they don’t perform any better than traditional schools on average, so that was kind of my answer during the campaign.
“Kevin Huffman (the state Department of Education commissioner) was really upset that the board on the previous three votes did not approve (Great Hearts). He demanded that the minute we got sworn in, we had to vote on it.
“Great Hearts had nine schools in Arizona. They were very segregated. They were wanting to charge $1,500 a student, and high-priced lunches – ways to weed out low-income kids. It was clearly a school that was being set up to ‘cherry pick’ the better performing kids and leave everyone else behind.
“I felt something was wrong, especially with my legal background, with the advice we were given. I still thought we were going to vote and be done with it. But right after we voted (against it), all these power players marched out on television and said we broke the law, which wasn’t true. But it led to a year of controversy.”
The article notes that Frogge is now more hopeful about where education is headed in Nashville, though the fight against so-called “education reformers” has been long and unrelenting.
READ MORE about Amy Frogge’s journey in public education advocacy.
Nashville’s Amy Frogge with Diane Ravitch in 2014
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
