Memphis-Shelby County Announces it Will Not Arm Teachers

District rejects legislative plan to put more guns in schools

Officials in Memphis have announced that their school system will not allow teachers to carry guns at school, despite a legislative decision that would allow districts to permit teachers who receive certain training to carry firearms on school grounds.

“We will not allow teachers to carry guns in our schools,” said Superintendent Marie N. Feagins, adding that the law is “controversial.”

Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner said “schools are for learning.”

“… And emergency situations should be handled by trained officers,” Bonner said. 

“And the district has made it a priority to keep them that way through security upgrades and updates,” MPD Interim Chief C.J. Davis continued.

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Ed Commissioner Abuses Tuition Waiver Program

A Broken System

A former Memphis principal writes about a broken accountability system in Tennessee:

We set goals for students to meet 100 percent college readiness, but we don’t align our resources and professional development to help teachers to attain it.

We force teachers to use resources that are not useful because they come with perks and personal gains to the district level administrators.

We promote students to the next grade when they do not meet the standards and expectations of their current grade.

We develop compensation structures based on a mythical system of accountability and achievement goals we know we can’t attain.

He writes more and it’s worth a read.

Similar evidence of a broken system can be found in MNPS, where students in some schools are shuffled into virtual classes due to a teacher shortage that still hasn’t been solved.

His is the frustration expressed by many teachers, parents, and administrators around the state: We set goals, but don’t align our resources to meet those goals. Our state’s BEP is underfunded by some $500 million, we haven’t (yet) funded Response to Intervention, and TNReady has yet to have a successful year. Oh, and to top all of that off, our teachers are paid significantly less than similarly prepared professionals.

Mackin’s voice should be heard — and policy makers should respond not with words, but with action.

For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport


 

Memphis to Join NAEP TUDA

Shelby County Schools is among six districts joining the “Nation’s Report Card” via the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) program.

Here’s the press release:

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) will include six more urban school districts from around the country after a unanimous vote Saturday by the National Assessment Governing Board to expand the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) program.

The six districts — Clark County School District (including Las Vegas); Denver Public Schools; Fort Worth Independent School District (Texas); Guilford County Schools (including Greensboro, North Carolina); Milwaukee Public Schools; and Shelby County Schools (including Memphis, Tennessee) — volunteered to be part of NAEP administration starting in 2017. TUDA is a special part of the NAEP program that provides results of how fourth- and eighth-graders perform in reading and mathematics in some of the nation’s largest urban school districts. The vote of the Governing Board, which sets policy for NAEP, brings the total number of TUDA districts to 27.

 

The idea for a big-city version of NAEP, also known as The Nation’s Report Card, originated in 2000, when the Council of the Great City Schools — a coalition of the nation’s large urban public school districts led by Executive Director Michael Casserly — requested that the Governing Board conduct a trial NAEP assessment for large urban school districts that volunteered to participate. Congress first authorized funding for TUDA in 2002, and increases in funding over time have enabled the Governing Board to expand the program.

 

“The Governing Board values Mr. Casserly’s foresight and leadership and the bipartisan support from Congress, the president and the Department of Education to support the expansion of this program,” said Governing Board Chair Terry Mazany. “TUDA provides school district leaders, parents and civic leaders with objective and comparable data to measure the progress of student achievement over time in many of the country’s largest school districts.”

 

“The addition of these six new cities to the Trial Urban District Assessment of NAEP is a major step forward for the program and will help sustain efforts to improve the nation’s large-city public schools well into the future,” Casserly said. “We are thrilled that 27 cities will be participating in 2017.”

 

TUDA tests representative samples of students and it reports district-level student achievement results, including trends over time. To be eligible for TUDA, a district must be in a city with a population of 250,000 or more, and at least half of its student population must include minority racial or ethnic groups or must be eligible for free and reduced-price lunch. New TUDA districts must be large enough to support testing three NAEP subjects per year in grades four and eight. The six districts join these other school systems:
  • Albuquerque Public Schools
  • Atlanta Public Schools
  • Austin Independent School District
  • Baltimore City Public Schools
  • Boston Public Schools
  • Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools
  • Chicago Public Schools
  • Cleveland Metropolitan School District
  • Dallas Independent School District
  • Detroit Public Schools
  • District of Columbia Public Schools
  • Duval County Public Schools (Jacksonville, Florida)
  • Fresno Unified School District (California)
  • Hillsborough County Public Schools (Florida)
  • Houston Independent School District
  • Jefferson County Public Schools (Kentucky)
  • Los Angeles Unified School District
  • Miami-Dade County Public Schools
  • New York City Public Schools
  • School District of Philadelphia
  • San Diego Unified School District
“We now have an ever-greater geographic representation in TUDA, with four more states included. This will provide the nation with an objective picture of the achievement spanning the diversity of our nation’s students, recognizing that the majority of students in our nation’s schools is now composed of minority populations,” Mazany said.

 

View a list of current and eligible TUDA districts at www.nagb.org/policies/list-tuda-districts.html.

 

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The National Assessment of Educational Progress is the only nationally representative, continuing evaluation of the condition of education in the United States. It has served as a national yardstick of student achievement since 1969. Through The Nation’s Report Card, NAEP informs the public about what American students know and can do in various subject areas and compares achievement among states, large urban districts, and various student demographic groups.

 

The National Assessment Governing Board is an independent, nonpartisan board whose members include governors, state legislators, local and state school officials, educators, business representatives, and members of the general public. Congress created the 26-member Governing Board in 1988 to oversee and set policy for NAEP.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport