Tennessee Leads appears to have been launched with the help of a group of political finance consultants tied to top GOP leaders in the state.
The address and Registered Agent of the group match that of Political Financial Management, a group that has helped the Tennessee Republican Caucus and Gov. Bill Lee.
The group says it is advocating to have 200,000 students using school vouchers and 250,000 students in charter schools by 2031.
NewsChannel5reports on a program connecting high school students with career opportunities:
High school students in Nashville got a head start on their professional futures this week, participating in a career exploration event that connected them with representatives from different fields and industries.
The event, organized with help from Courtney Morgan, brought together freshmen students to learn about various career paths they might never have considered before.
While state leaders consider expanding the state’s private school coupon program, a new nonprofit takes a bolder approach. A group calling itself Tennessee Leadsregistered with the Secretary of State as a 501(c)(4) issue advocacy organization with the goal of effectively ending public education in Tennessee by 2031.
The group’s goals: 200,000 voucher students (at a cost of more than $1.5 billion/year), 250,000 charter school students (there are 45,000 now), and the implementation of Direct Instruction.
It’s like every bad idea in education got together and formed a band.
So far, though, it’s not clear who the members are. Stay tuned . . .
Chalkbeatreports on improved absenteeism in Shelby County Schools:
Memphis school leaders say a door-knocking campaign and increased outreach has helped put the district on track to reduce chronic absenteeism for the first time since well before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Stacey Davis, the district’s director of attendance and enrollment, said in an October board meeting that almost one-third of Memphis-Shelby County Schools students were chronically absent last year, meaning they missed more than 18 days of class. But she expects that figure to drop to around 26% of students this year.
Every Wednesday, a group of fourth graders at Winchester Elementary put on black aprons and start packing up cardboard boxes with canned vegetables and mac and cheese.
The young volunteers spend their free periods prepping weekend meal boxes for around 30 Whitehaven families who line up outside the Memphis school building each Friday afternoon. It’s a routine that’s been in place since Winchester opened its food pantry in March.
Denise Wilson, a fourth grade math teacher who runs the pantry, said families typically show up once a month for help. She expects the number of families seeking food to increase in the coming weeks because of delayed and missing SNAP benefits, which are affecting one in 10 Tennesseans as the federal government shutdown drags on.
A Nashville education blogger takes on the use of scripted learning:
At a time when recruiting and retaining teachers is harder than ever, scripted instruction is a surefire way to push more of them out. After all, who needs trained professionals when you can browbeat employees into reading from a script?
This relentless pacing will ultimately cost the district its most talented educators. As one high-school teacher told me, “We’re getting to a point where I need to evaluate how much teaching I’m actually doing. Maybe it’s time to do something else.”
When it comes to addressing Tennessee’s teacher shortage, Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton (R-Cookeville) believes it’s time to “think outside of the box,” but his idea to possibly drop the state’s bachelor’s degree requirement for teachers is drawing some criticism.
During Speaker Sexton’s state-of-the-state address last month, he suggested creating a two-year associate degree program for teaching to churn out more educators in Tennessee.
When all else fails, just make it easier to become a teacher and “churn out more educators.”
It apparently hasn’t occurred to Sexton that there is a reason (or several reasons) why people aren’t exactly lining up for teaching jobs.
Perhaps if Sexton floated the idea of improving both pay and classroom resources, more college students would consider K-12 teaching a viable career option.
As it stands, Tennessee teachers are among the lowest-paid in the Southeast and school funding in the state lags behind our regional peers.
Now, though, there’s also an example of what might happen. A school district in Oregon moved starting pay in the district from $38,000 a year to $60,000 a year. In the process, all teachers received at least a 15% raise.
The move was approved by 100% of union members voting.
After announcing the salary schedule change, we had pools of qualified applicants to consider. It was a fun spring. Our administrators were having to have these rich conversations about best fit, really digging into things like, ‘Here’s a full table of highly qualified people; who is going to best fulfill the needs of our school? It’s a conversation that most districts don’t get to have right now.
Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) is studying school start times – perhaps with a look toward changing them to better meet the needs of students and families.
Nashville Public Schools, in partnership with Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s Office and the Metro Nashville Board of Education, is conducting a districtwide review of school start and end times to better align with student well-being, family needs, and transportation efficiency.
This process is just beginning. No decisions have been made. The goal is to gather feedback, data, and community input to make informed decisions about potential changes that will be considered in the early part of 2026.
TC Weber notes that a new nonprofit wants to essentially end public education in the Volunteer State.
But a new nonprofit, Tennessee Leads, has even bigger ambitions: 200,000 voucher students and 250,000 in charter schools by 2031.
If those goals are met, traditional public schools would serve just 550,000 students—a seismic shift.
Gov. Lee and Speaker Sexton want to double the number of voucher students in 2026 – from 20,000 to 40,000 – with a total of 100,000 by 2030. But, Tennessee Leads is pushing for more than that.
The result of meeting this goal would be a rise in unaccountable private education sources – and an end to traditional public education in our state.
