At the end of June, Pearson signed a two-year, $40 million contract to takeover the failed TNReady test. This is the third vendor in the five year history of the new, supposedly better test.
This is a role Pearson has played before. When the first TNReady vendor, Measurement, Inc. failed to deliver, Pearson came to the rescue. The effort earned the testing giant $18.5 million.
Here’s the problem: Pearson seems to have a habit of failing to keep student data secure. Two recent stories out of Illinois and Nevada raise questions about the ability of Pearson to protect student information.
Both school districts have notified parents that they recently learned from Pearson Clinical Assessment that the company experienced a data security incident related to their AIMSweb 1.0 product by an unauthorized third party. The districts used AIMSweb 1.0 to track student academic progress and are among 13,000 Pearson clients impacted by this incident.
More than 650,000 Nevada students had personal information exposed in a data breach announced this week by the state’s two largest school districts, prompting internet safety advocates to urge parental caution with products children use online.
The breach involved Pearson Clinical Assessment’s software program known as Aimsweb 1.0, which is used for screening and assessment.
This is not exactly a reassuring restart of Tennessee’s relationship with Pearson.
Maybe, though, they can effectively administer an online test without problems?
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That’s the raise teachers in Sumner County could see in 2020 if a proposal being advanced by Director of Schools Del Phillips secures funding from the Sumner County Commission.
According to Phillips, in a presentation made to the Sumner County School Board last night, the cost of the plan is an estimated $8.8 million. Phillips says he’s been working with the School Board in recent years to boost pay for classified employees and noted that all classified employees in Sumner County Schools now earn a minimum of $10 an hour.
The pay increase is necessary, Phillips argued, because similar systems are already paying teachers more than Sumner. Williamson, Wilson, Robertson, and Rutherford counties were used as reference points.
Here’s how Sumner County pay compares with these systems currently:
First year teacher with a bachelor’s degree
Sumner $36,100
Williamson $40,150
Wilson $40,000
Robertson $39,156
Rutherford $41,144
So, Sumner County has the lowest starting pay among peer districts — and it’s not even close.
Let’s look at veteran teachers.
Teachers with 15 years of experience and a master’s degree
Sumner $49,983
Williamson $57,463
Wilson $51,000
Robertson $51,204
Rutherford $59,842
Here again, Sumner County lags behind peer systems. Veteran teachers with advanced degrees make less in Sumner than in comparable middle Tennessee systems.
The new proposal would boost every step by $4000, ensuring no teacher started in Sumner at less than $40,100. Veteran teachers with advanced degrees would see mid-career salaries in the mid-50s, and those with 20 years or more would see pay in the $60,000+ range.
All of this would bring Sumner County in line with similar districts. Sumner already has one of the best benefit packages in middle Tennessee.
Phillips plans to ask the Sumner County Commission for a funding commitment for this plan at the August 19th meeting.
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The Tennessee Department of Education doesn’t give a damn about teachers. At all. Not one. And, apparently, they are also willing to ignore legislators. You know, the people tasked with both making laws and funding budgets. That’s the clear message from the attitude demonstrated by the TNDOE around the issue of Pre-K/Kindergarten Portfolios.
Here’s the deal: On May 10th, Public Chapter 376 became law — it’s legislation designed to create alternatives to the current portfolio disaster. The law states that districts may use the current (failed) portfolio model or “an alternative academic growth indicator approved by the state board of education.”
So, teachers will finally get relief from the fiasco that has been K portfolios.
IF the state has an approved alternative. Which they don’t.
Here’s the text of an email from Jaime Grimsley, Senior Director of Educator Effectiveness at the TNDOE (total bs job title):
The department is working with the State Board of Education to recommend alternative growth options to portfolio in early grades. At this time, there are no approved alternatives to implement and all districts should move forward with implementing portfolios for the 2019-20 school year. Our goal is to have approved alternatives ready for use in the 2020-21 school year.
Translation: We didn’t do what teachers asked and what legislators mandated. We don’t want to and you can’t make us.
Here’s more on how the TNDOE has failed educators and students in the portfolio process:
Kindergarten teachers I talked to estimate the evidence collection process takes up a minimum of five instructional days. This means students aren’t actively engaged in the learning process during the evidence collection days. As in the scenario with Eric, it requires the full attention of the teacher (and if possible, an assistant) in order to collect the evidence. This doesn’t include the tagging of evidence or the uploading to an often unreliable online platform known as Educopia. Some districts report hiring subs on evidence collection days so teachers can document the evidence from their students.
Eric’s story is just one more example of a Department of Education that claims victory when the evidence suggests much improvement is needed. It’s a Department hellbent on pursuing supposedly lofty goals no matter the consequences to students or their teachers. Lost instructional time due to portfolio evidence collection? No problem! Days of stress and chaos because TNReady doesn’t work? Outstanding! Teachers faced with confusing, invalid evaluations? Excellent! Eric and his teachers and Tennessee’s schools and communities deserve better.
So, teachers and students will have to wait ONE MORE YEAR until the DOE actually provides an alternative model. That means your Kindergarten student will be losing instructional time and that teachers across the state will be forced to jump through meaningless hoops in order to meet a ridiculous mandate.
Does the TNDOE care? Nope. Not at all.
Will legislators hold them to account? They haven’t yet, and there’s no sign the current crop of lawmakers or the Governor will do one damn thing to make the TNDOE responsive to the needs of those in classrooms.
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Governor Bill Lee has made no secret of his desire to expand charter schools across Tennessee. From doubling the funding available for charter school facilities to creating a “Super Charter Authorizer” that will override local school boards, Lee has made clear his disdain for public schools. A report from the Network for Public Education offers insight into why this strategy is destined to fail.
The report examines funds distributed by the US Department of Education’s Charter Schools Program and finds an alarmingly high 40% failure rate. Tennessee, always a national leader in the wrong categories, exceeds the national average with a 49% failure rate. Here’s more from the report specific to Tennessee:
Tennessee which has a 49 percent grantee failure rate, gave 38 grants of $10,000 each to schools that not only did not have a NCES number, they also did not have a listed name. Where did that $380,000 go? Apparently, the Department of Education has no idea.
Here’s more on the “success” of charters in Tennessee:
One hundred and twenty-one grants were given to open or expand charter schools in Tennessee from the federal charter schools program between 2006-2014. At this time, at least 59 (49%) of those charter schools are now closed or never opened at all. Fourty-three of the 59 grant recipients never opened at all.
Of the 43 that never opened, 38 did not even have a name. Only a grant amount was listed.
How much was spent on failed charter schools?
In total, $7,374,025.00 were awarded to Tennessee charter schools during those years that either never opened or shut down
This is the future Bill Lee wants for Tennessee — schools that never open or shut down just a few weeks into the year. Cash giveaways to private entities with little to no track record of positive impact. Taxpayer dollars wasted in the name of “choice” and the “free market.”
Bill Lee and his team of privatizers surely know these facts. They also don’t care. Steady, reliable service to the DeVos agenda of using public money to support private schools is all that matters.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
During the voucher debate this past legislative session, I wrote about Governor Bill Lee’s Arizona Dream. I noted that Lee seemed determined to turn Tennessee into the same type of fraud-riddled education mess that decimated school funding in the Grand Canyon State.
Now, of course, the FBI is investigating Tennessee’s voucher vote. But instead of caution, Bill Lee is hitting the gas pedal and trying to move vouchers into our state even faster.
Last year, nearly $200 million which otherwise would have been in the state’s coffers, money which could have been used to boost our shamefully low education budget, is paying for children to go to private schools.
Private school tuition tax credits, the state’s first voucher program, began in 1999. Back then, before vouchers, 44,050 students attended Arizona’s private schools, about 5 percent of the student population.
How did private school enrollment look in 2015, the most recent year I can find data for? In 2015, the number had risen to 46,250, which is an addition of 2,200 students over 17 years of taxpayer-funded vouchers — about 130 new students a year. That doesn’t sound like the kind growth you should expect given the investment we’re making.
Here’s a math problem for you. If Arizona had 2,200 more private school students in 2015 than in 1999, and in 2015, we spent $150 million on vouchers. How much were taxpayers pitching in for each new student? You’ll probably need to grab a calculator to figure it out, so let me give you the answer. It comes to $68,200 per new student.
$68,000 PER STUDENT.
That’s the cost to advance a voucher agenda that all the evidence indicates will fail the children it is designed to help.
That’s Bill Lee’s Arizona Dream. That’s the scheme he’s trying to foist (quickly) on Tennesseans.
Don’t let anyone tell you Bill Lee is a fiscal conservative who cares about protecting taxpayer dollars.
Here’s what his agenda makes clear: Bill Lee wants to take YOUR tax dollars and spend them on private entities regardless of outcome. Just because.
That’s bad policy. It’s fiscally irresponsible. It tells you all you need to know about Bill Lee.
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Chalkbeat has the story of how the troubled Achievement School District (ASD) will not add any schools, and may see some leave:
No new schools will enter Tennessee’s troubled turnaround district, and there’s a likelihood some will exit and return to their local districts.
While the achievement district was once the cornerstone of Tennessee’s turnaround strategy, no new schools have been added to the district since 2016. Schwinn said that trend will continue this year because the state is in “the process of redesigning and building” the district.
Commissioner of Education Penny Schwinn added that she expects new schools will be added in the future.
Now seems like a good time to remind everyone of the troubles with the ASD over the years.
Most of the schools that were taken over by Tennessee’s turnaround district remain on the state’s priority list six years after the intervention efforts began.
Four of the six original Memphis schools that were taken over by the state in 2012 are on the newest priority list released last week. And more than a dozen schools that were added to the district later also remain on the list.
For years, the district has fallen short of its ambitious promise to dramatically raise test scores at the schools by handing them over to charter operators — a goal that the district’s founder later acknowledged was too lofty. And researchers with the Tennessee Education Research Alliance recently concluded that schools in the state district are doing no better than other low-performing schools that received no state help.
The audit said that the Comptroller’s office has previously “reported deficiencies in ASD’s internal controls and noncompliance with federal program requirements, resulting in approximately $721,000 of federal questioned cost.”
Sher notes:
On March 30, 2016, the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Inspector General, released an audit of Tennessee’s Race to the Top grant, which included funds spent by the ASD.
“This federal audit identified similar internal control deficiencies and areas of federal noncompliance with the Race to the Top grant at ASD,” the latest Comptroller notes. “During our current audit, we continued to find similar issues relating to fiscal deficiencies and noncompliance, but we have also identified new areas of deficiencies related to human resources and purchasing cards.”
I find the rhetoric to be a deflection from real and valid criticism of the ASD and its approach to school turnaround. While collaboration is certainly a virtue in education, a hard look should be taken at the ASD’s approach. All this nice talk about collaboration avoids these courageous conversations. I think people will find that there are some serious flaws in the way in which the ASD and its operators are taking on the arduous task of school turnaround. I agree with Mr. Manning that working together is important, but if the ASD’s has fundamental flaws and does not address them then no amount of collaboration will help.
By creeping beyond its admirable mission, the ASD has become an example of good intentions gone awry. Focusing on the original goal of using highly focused effort to both improve struggling schools AND learn new strategies to help other schools would be a welcome change.
If you happen to be a young, hip, TFA-type teacher. Non-TFA types not allowed. The video says it’s an ASD event and the video clips appear to have been filmed inside classrooms. It’s not clear who is paying for the event or why only TFA teachers are invited to attend.
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JC Bowman, Executive Director of Professional Educators of Tennessee, offers insight into “summer break.”
It is said that sunshine is the best medicine and the best sunshine is found during the summer. The concept of an Endless Summer was based on a 1964 Bruce Brown movie built on the idea that if someone had enough time and money would it be possible to chase summer across the world. In both the Northern and Southern hemisphere making it endless. Alas, teachers neither have enough time nor money, and it is almost back to school time here in Tennessee. For students, it means summer is coming to an end. For parents, advertisers tell us, it is the most wonderful time of the year.
Teaching has a calendar unlike that of most other vocations. Some mistakenly believe that teachers only have annual instructional time for 180 or so days. The romanticized summer off for teachers is as likely as an endless summer for most of us. Educators have responsibilities beyond their days with students. Others often fail to take in after school hours, lesson prep, weekends, professional learning, parent-teacher conferences, and, “in-service” days to name a few. In urban communities, they have to factor in travel time as teachers, often cannot afford to live in communities where they teach. The same is true of police, fire and hospital personnel.
The argument can be made that teachers knew the task was tough when they took the job assignment. This is true. However, few jobs are as demanding as teaching. Certainly, summers off are a thing of the past. Most educators are paid for 10 months and have money withheld from their check, so they can get paid for 12 months. USA Today points out that across the country, “teachers often trade their summer vacation for other work opportunities to make ends meet. Recent data from the National Survey of Teachers and Principals showed nearly one in five teachers hold a second job during the school year.”
Many parents legitimately worry about the “summer brain drain,” also known as the “summer slide” that children experience. This concept refers to the loss of skills and knowledge that happens in the summer months. David Quinn and Morgan Polikoff review of academic literature summarized several findings regarding summer loss, and concluded that: (1) on average, students’ achievement scores declined over summer vacation by one month’s worth of school-year learning, (2) declines were sharper for math than for reading, and (3) the extent of loss was larger at higher grade levels. None of this attributable to teachers.
Parents who combat this academic issue understand that learning occurs beyond the classroom. They help their children find opportunities to grow and learn. You must engage children in both mental and physical activity, not strictly tied to formal education. If you missed out on these opportunities, it is never too late to supplement a child’s learning. The key is to be actively engaged in your child’s education throughout the year. Parents and students can no longer take summer off either.
Therein lies the problem, absent the concept of year-round school, summer breaks are not equal for all students. The range of activities, including summer camps, family vacations, and home learning activities are different. Access to summer activities may vary for children from different socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. Child care arrangements are also a factor, as well as the education level of parents. Communities need a plan for enrichment activities for these students with increased access for children of low socioeconomic status.
Some children return to school ready to learn, others come back needing to catch back-up, and some even missing necessary prerequisite skills. That should create some valid concerns for annual tests. Writer Seth Godin suggests that “Better decisions, emotional labor and the confidence that comes from education are the future of work. Either you’re on that path or you’re falling behind.”
I would add that Godin’s quote is applicable here as well, and we should acknowledge we are indeed falling behind because we are not addressing the summer loss of learning adequately. We need more parent engagement. Endless summer has to become endless learning for all of us; educators, parents, and students. Surf’s up, and sadly Summer is nearly over.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
An education advocate from Shelby County has been named a finalist for a national award recognizing change agents in education policy. David Pickler, who has served as a school board member, Tennessee School Boards Association leader, and President of the National School Boards Association is a finalist in the 2019 “Invest in Others” Awards. Here’s more from a press release:
David A. Pickler, President of Pickler Wealth Advisors in Collierville, has been announced as one of three national finalists for the Catalyst Award as part of the 13th Annual Invest in Others Awards. Pickler is being honored for his work with the American Public Education Foundation, which will receive a $10,000 donation from the Invest in Others Charitable Foundation. If Pickler wins his category, the donation will increase to $40,000.
The Invest in Others Awards program recognizes the charitable work of financial advisors in communities across the country and around the world. Advisors are nominated for actively giving back to nonprofits to improve their communities and make a difference in the lives of others. Invest in Others received hundreds of nominations this year. Finalists are selected based on their leadership, dedication, contribution, inspiration, and impact on a nonprofit and the community it serves.
David Pickler has been a steadfast supporter of public education for the past thirty years, advocating for K-12 youth locally in Shelby County, Tennessee and more broadly on a national scale. David built upon these experiences in creating the American Public Education Foundation, a national 501c3 nonprofit focused on inspiring K-12 youth. The Foundation’s two core focuses include Financial Literacy and Workforce Development. David has structured these twin pillars intentionally, as they are specifically targeted to address critical needs nationwide both now and in the future. Some of David’s greatest accomplishments in his work with the Foundation include playing a major advocacy role in getting Tennessee to mandate financial education as a high school requirement. Additionally, the Foundation has played a pivotal role in creating innovative partnerships between educators and business leaders in Tennessee to align workforce development initiatives. David strongly believes that public education is the great American equalizer and that children who receive great educations will have the capacity to fulfill their potential as productive adults.
Awards will be presented at the 13th Annual Invest in Others Awards Gala, a premier event attended by over 700 financial advisors and financial services executives, on September 26, 2019 in Boston, Mass.
According to his bio, Pickler has been a staunch advocate of public schools and a leader in the resistance to school privatization:
Pickler was elected President of the National School Boards Association in 2013, leading more than 90,000 school board members. During his tenure, Pickler led the fight to stop the privatization and profitization of public schools; well-funded movements that could ultimately end the promise of public education. As part of the campaign to promote public education, David helped the NSBA launch its Army of Advocates, a movement that gained more than five million members in less than one year. Under his guidance, Pickler also established the “Stand Up 4 Public Schools” red wristband program; a simple way for people to show their support for the 50 million children and 6.2 million employees in public education.
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Nashville education blogger TC Weber focuses on the Mayor’s race in his latest post. Here are some of his observations:
How did you spend your weekend? If you were one of roughly 300 teachers and parents in Nashville you met downtown at Third and Lindsey and then marched to the Howard School Building to cast your early vote for State Representative John Ray Clemmons to become the next Mayor of Nashville.
Regarding momentum building for state representative John Ray Clemmons:
The news out of last week’s forum held by the Panhellenic Society, Urban League of Middle Tennessee, NAACP Nashville, and Interdenominational Ministers Fellowship indicates that it is a distinct possibility. Per the Tennessee Tribune, At the end of the forum, all of the attendees were asked to vote in a straw poll for no more than two candidates vying for Mayor in the August 1 election. Clemmons decisively won the crowd of nearly 300, gaining 46% of the vote. John Cooper came in second with 26%, with David Briley close behind at 25%. Carol Swain suffered a decisive fourth place with 3% of the attendee’s vote.
READ MORE from TC Weber about education in Nashville.
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Williamson County School Board member Brad Fiscus plans to challenge state representative and outgoing House Speaker Glen Casada in the 2020 elections, the Tennesseanreports:
Williamson County Board of Education member Brad Fiscus, 4th District, confirmed on Monday he plans to pull a petition to run against embattled lawmaker Rep. Glen Casada, 63rd District, in the 2020 state House election.
Fiscus, a 22-year resident of Williamson County, was elected as a school board member in 2018 and serves as a director of Next Gen Discipleship ministry as part of the Tennessee Conference of The United Methodist Church.
Fiscus was also heavily involved in Pastors for Tennessee Children, a faith-based advocacy group dedicated to supporting public schools. In his role with the organization, he was a leader in opposing the school voucher scheme that ultimately passed the House under Casada’s leadership.
Fiscus will make the challenge to Casada as Independent.
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