Player-Peters Gains Support for School Board Seat

With School Board member Will Pinkston finalizing his resignation, the Metro Council will select a replacement. It seems Freda Player-Peters is gaining traction as a candidate for the seat. The person appointed will serve the remainder of Pinkston’s term, which ends in August 2020. Here’s a letter from a number of council members in support of Player-Peters:

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Lee Announces Leaders of School Privatization Commission

Governor Bill Lee this week announced the members of his state charter school commission, a group tasked with usurping the power of local school boards and fast-tracking charter schools with little accountability. Here’s more on the members from Chalkbeat:

  • Tom Griscom, of Hamilton County, a former director of White House communications under President Ronald Reagan, long-time aide to the late U.S. Sen. Howard Baker of Tennessee, and former executive editor and publisher of the Times Free Press in Chattanooga
  • David Hanson, of Davidson County, is managing partner of Hillgreen, a private investment firm, and serves on the board for Teach for America and Nashville-based charter network Valor Collegiate Academies. 
  • Alan Levine, of Washington County in East Tennessee, CEO of Ballad Health and a one-time adviser to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush
  • Terence Patterson, of Shelby County, is the CEO of the Memphis Education Fund and former head of the Downtown Memphis Commission. He was also the chief of staff for Chicago Public Schools, later becoming the director of the Office of New Schools in Chicago, where he managed 113 new charter schools.
  • Mary Pierce, of Davidson County, was a leading charter school advocate during her one term as a school board member with Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools.
  • Christine Richards, of Shelby County, a former general counsel for FedEx
  • Derwin Sisnett, of Shelby County, co-founded Gestalt Community Schools, a Memphis-based charter school network. He is the founder and managing partner of Maslow Development Inc., a nonprofit organization that develops communities around high performing schools.
  • Eddie Smith of Knox County, is a Republican who served in the Tennessee House of Representatives from 2014 until 2018, when he was ousted by Democrat Gloria Johnson.
  • Wendy Tucker, of Williamson County, is an attorney and adjunct professor at Vanderbilt School of Law. A member of the state Board of Education since 2014, she has been an advocate of children with special needs.

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White the Power

Apparently, the all-white, mostly Republican Williamson County School Board is really a front for leftist political indoctrination. At least, that’s the impression you’d get if you read a recent email sent by the Williamson County Republican Party in order to recruit candidates to run for School Board in 2020.

It seems some in the local Republican Party leadership are a little too comfortable in their white privilege. Or, they just don’t like reality. Or, the Williamson County School Board really is run by a bunch of raging leftists disguised as upper middle class white folks living in the state’s wealthiest (and most Republican) county.

If you believe this email, you might also believe Jay Sekulow’s lies about the Muslim takeover of Social Studies in Tennessee. You might also think that Eric Welch is best friends with AOC. Or that Rick Wimberly hangs out with “the Squad.”

Calm down, Williamson County.

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Let Me Hear You Scream

Nashville education blogger TC Weber is not amused. In fact, you can probably hear the screaming in his latest post. In it, he takes on a range of issues — charter schools, teaching reading, school discipline policies — and makes the case that all the shiny new objects are just a way to avoid the tough conversations adults in comfortable places don’t seem to want to have.

Here are some highlights:


As a result, we had a crisis on our hands, “According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, more than six in 10 fourth-graders aren’t proficient readers. It has been this way since testing began. A third of kids can’t read at a basic level.” 


I don’t want to get sidetracked, or this will turn into a 4000-word piece, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out who said it – National Assessment of Educational Progress – and what they said – It has been this way since testing began – nothing quite justifies one’s existence like the discovering of a crisis. Just think, if testing hadn’t started, we’d be wandering in the desert with no idea if kids could read or not.

On teaching reading:


Yet phonics disciples would have me believe that if we would just focus on using methods of teaching that aligned with science, we’d overcome all those social issues impacting students. Kids would suddenly start saying things in class like,


“Mrs. Johnson I used to be hungry in the morning when I came to class, but now that you are using phonics, I don’t feel hungry anymore.”


“Mr. Jones, my parents arguing and general drunken behavior used to keep me up all night, but now I go to sleep at night with the sounds of phonics in my head and I don’t even hear them anymore.”

The impact of poverty:


If you have doubts about what I’m saying when it comes to poverty’s impact on student outcomes, call me next time you have a job interview. We won’t feed you for 12 hours beforehand and I’ll keep you awake all night before your interview. We’ll see if you get the job.

There’s more — it’s intense, but worth a read.

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REPEAL

Representative Bo Mitchell of Nashville has filed legislation that would repeal Education Savings Accounts (vouchers), Gov. Bill Lee’s signature legislative achievement from 2019.

The move comes with the House of Representatives now being led by Speaker Cameron Sexton, a long-time opponent of vouchers and supporter of public schools. Sexton told an audience in his home district:


“We should do everything we can to improve all public schools in the state of Tennessee so they can be successful,” he said. “I would rather go that route than the voucher route.”

So far, the voucher repeal bill has only Democratic co-sponsors. It will be interesting to see if Sexton and other anti-voucher Republicans join the effort or put forward their own voucher repeal effort.

While Governor Bill Lee has suggested speeding up implementation of the voucher scheme, Sexton has called for putting on the brakes pending the outcome of an FBI investigation into the House vote on the bill.

It will also be interesting to see if legislators take action in 2020 to address the underlying issues — poverty and funding — impacting school success.

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Don’t Believe the Hype

A new study from the U.S. Department of Education indicates that charter schools perform no better than traditional public schools. Newsweek has more:


A new report from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) finds that charter school and public school students have the same academic performance in testing conducted at the fourth- and eighth-grade level.


“In 2017, at grades 4 and 8, no measurable differences in average reading and mathematics scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) were observed between students in traditional public and public charter schools,” the “School Choice in the United States: 2019” report found.

Despite these findings, Governor Bill Lee continues to make expanding charter schools a top policy priority. He increased funding for a charter school building fund this year and also successfully pushed legislation to create a new charter authorizing commission.

While policymakers like Lee hype non-solutions, evidence from actual schools suggests an urgent need to address poverty:

Districts with concentrated poverty face two challenges: Students with significant economic needs AND the inability of the district to generate the revenue necessary to adequately invest in schools.

Nevertheless, it seems Bill Lee and his allies will remain content to chase the latest shiny object and avoid a serious examination of policies that have the potential to change lives.

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Will Sullivan County Schools Close?

A funding dispute between the School Board and County Commission in Sullivan County threatens to result in the temporary closure of schools, according to WCYB:


A potential lack of funding to Sullivan County Public Schools could cause the school system to temporarily close.
An email detailing the situation was sent to system employees Thursday evening.


Sullivan County Director of Schools David Cox told News 5, the system has not received more than $800,000 in funding from the county. As a result, the General Purpose School Fund is now below the Maintenance of Effort Test from the Tennessee Department of Education.


The Maintenance of Effort Test requires that local fund does not drop lower than per pupil revenue. This means that, if the school system doesn’t receive the money from the county, the system would lose more than $4 million in state funding per month.


News 5 spoke with Sullivan County Commissioner Mark Vance by phone. He said the commission is at an impasse with the county BOE and the state department of education over the budget.

While disputes among school boards (which run schools) and county commissions (which provide funding) are not new, closing schools, even temporarily, is a fairly unusual occurrence.

It’s worth noting that if the state fully-funded the BEP 2.0 formula, Sullivan County would stand to gain some $5 million per year. Unfortunately, former Governor Bill Haslam froze BEP 2.0 and current Governor Bill Lee has chosen to fund a voucher scheme rather than invest significantly in public schools.

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$300 Million

Here are some interesting facts about Wisconsin’s school voucher program. These could be relevant here as Tennessee’s plan is estimated to cost as much as $300 million when fully implemented. Ask yourself: What happens when $300 million is no longer available for the BEP?

2019: 38,862 students at 284 schools statewide receive publicly funded vouchers to attend private schools in 2018-2019. Total cost: $311,470,259.04 (estimated).

Compare to 2018: 35,420 students at 240 school statewide received vouchers in 2017-2018. Total cost of vouchers in 2017-2018: 274,003,172.65 (estimated).

Over 55% of the entire student population of participating schools receive vouchers in 2018.

Only 28% of students receiving vouchers ever attended a public school.

Every year, the enrollment cap is increased by 1% of the local public school district’s enrollment, allowing more students to enter the program. In the 2026 school year, that cap is set in state law to come off entirely.

Students receiving vouchers in 2018-2019 must qualify by income. For the statewide program, that’s 220% of poverty; for the Milwaukee and Racine programs, it’s 300% of poverty. In contrast, students who qualify for Free & Reduced Lunch in public schools must meet at 185% poverty threshold.

Source: Department of Public Instruction
https://dpi.wi.gov/sms/choice-programs/data

Can Tennessee afford a $300 million voucher scheme that Bill Lee wants to fast track?

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Honest Answers

Read to be Ready is a statewide reading initiative focused on early grades. The Tennessee Department of Education describes the importance of the initiative this way:


Tennessee has made tremendous gains in student performance over the past several years – except in reading. Despite our educators’ best efforts, reading skills in elementary school learners have failed to improve, and in some cases have even declined. But these abilities are some of the most important ones our students need, and they are foundational to their success.

In discussing the urgency around improving reading results, the DOE says:


We have different vision for the future. We not only want to teach our children to read – we want to develop them into the thinkers, problem-solvers, lifelong learners, and future leaders of Tennessee. And it will take all of us to get there.

All of this sounds great — and reading is certainly very important for all students. Here’s a rubric for a first grade end-of-unit task:

Now, let’s imagine what would happen if first-graders gave honest answers in this brochure. For example, let’s think about the section that “explains the responsibilities of different leaders in Tennessee’s government.”

A first grade student from Franklin might write:

My state representative is Glen Casada. He used to be the Speaker with the big gavel. Then, he resigned because he framed a civil rights activist. He also hired a Chief of Staff who did cocaine on his desk at 10 AM on a Tuesday and had sex in a hot chicken restaurant for about a minute.

Meanwhile, a first-grader from Waynesboro could note:

My state representative is David Byrd. He was a teacher who admitted to inappropriate sexual contact with his students. They let him keep teaching and he even chaired a committee on education policy. People here re-elected him because he goes to the nice church and has the letter “R” after his name. I’ve heard he’s friends with a guy named Casada.

Over in Hohenwald, students in first grade could laud the exploits of state Senator Joey Hensley:

My Senator has been married four times and he got in trouble because he liked a girl who was also his second cousin. He even gave her drugs.

In Cleveland, a first grader might say:

My Congressman is a man named Scott Desjarlais. He’s had many mistresses and even though he says he’s “Pro-Life,” he’s supported abortions for the women he sleeps with.

Anywhere in Tennessee, first-graders could suggest:

Tennessee’s Governor is a man named Bill Lee who fixes air conditioners. He likes to wear plaid shirts a lot and pretend to care about rural Tennessee — like where I live. But, he’s supporting plans to underfund rural schools by sending money to vouchers. He also doesn’t seem to mind that hospitals all across our state are closing.

When discussing all the things Tennessee produces, students might say:

Our state is a national leader. We’re the best in rural hospital closures, we have the highest rate of medical debt, and we have more people working at the minimum wage (like my parents) than anywhere else.

We’re first in a lot of categories like that. We also do a lot to make sure it’s difficult for people to vote.

Oh, and 21 of our counties don’t even have an emergency room — that must be great, to not have any emergencies there.


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Lists

Tennessee is making some lists in the education world, and where we fall is disappointing, if not surprising. While Tennessee is among the states with the lowest investment in public schools, we are also one of the worst states to be a teacher. Here’s more from HeyTutor and Business Insider:

Tennessee is near the bottom in investment in public schools, according to data published here:

Tennessee

  • Total spending per student: $9,184
  • Instructional spending per student: $5,584
  • Support services spending per student: $3,090
  • Total spending: $9.27 billion
  • Average teacher salary: $48,456
  • Graduation rate: 89.8%
  • Academic performance: Below average

Tennessee is also one of the worst places in the country to be a teacher, according to Business Insider:

Tennessee: One-third of teachers in the state would leave the profession for something with higher pay, a 2019 survey found.

And, here’s a friendly reminder:

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