From the Nashville Public Education Foundation (NPEF):
We’re elated to share that the application for Teacherpreneur will open next week. [Week of 10/5] This unique program harnesses educator innovation to develop and support teacher-driven ideas that help all students thrive. Don’t miss this amazing opportunity to share your big idea and engage in five meaningful professional learning sessions.
Educators will pitch their ideas for the chance to take part in cash prizes totalling $25,000 and seed funding for their idea’s implementation. This innovative program is open to teachers, librarians, counselors, and MNPS and charter school educators.
National privatization groups like the School Freedom Fund (a group largely funded by billionaire Jeff Yass), spent big to change the makeup of Tennessee’s legislature. They got what they wanted—a full menu of privatization options.
This past year, the legislature also removed the accountability guardrails—no state testing for voucher students. The largest group of students taking the vouchers in Tennessee come from families earning nearly $200,000 a year. Four out of five students receiving a voucher were already enrolled in private schools.
The state is now effectively running a nearly $500 million private school discount coupon program. This is what privatizers want to export to every state—and it’s what the federal vouchers are designed to help facilitate.
This week The Tennessean‘s Andrea Williams reported that the Tennessee Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is investigating allegations involving the use of credit recovery in MNPS.
Wade, a former counselor at Stratford High School, has questioned whether MNPS has been following those rules.
Among the examples she has raised is a student who reportedly entered senior year with only 3.5 high school credits but managed to work through Integrated Math I, II and III, along with pre-calculus, in a single year.
Read that again.
Integrated Math I.
Integrated Math II.
Integrated Math III.
Pre-calculus.
One year.
Maybe that’s possible.
But if we’re going to tout graduation rates as evidence of academic success, somebody ought to be willing to explain how that works.
Wade alleges students were routinely pushed into credit recovery even when they weren’t eligible.
Even more troubling, she alleges administrators instructed teachers monitoring test-for-credit exams to advise students to revisit incorrect answers until they reached the required 60-percent benchmark.
Weber is careful to note these are allegations – an investigation is happening.
TC Weber takes a look at MNPS and allegations that the numbers just aren’t adding up:
For years, Metro Nashville Public Schools has increasingly relied on data to tell its story. Graduation rates. Test scores. Growth numbers. Attendance. College readiness. Career readiness. Dashboards. Strategic plans. PowerPoints.
Numbers everywhere.
And when the numbers look good, we are repeatedly told they are evidence that the strategies are working.
Fair enough.
But here’s the problem with building your success story almost entirely around numbers:
Eventually people start looking closely at the numbers.
And lately, more people seem to be looking.
By now, many Nashville education watchers have seen videos of former Teacher of the Year Samira Hardcastle accusing Metro Nashville Public Schools of forcing teachers to change grades and passing students she believes should not have passed.
Tech Goes Home, a program of the Nashville Public Education Foundation (NPEF), distributed its 1000th laptop recently.
More from NPEF’s newsletter:
Last week, Tech Goes Home held a session for families in the Antioch and Cane Ridge clusters and gave away its 1,000th laptop. We’ve been excitedly waiting for this celebratory moment since the end of last school year, and it finally happened. Dr. Diarese George, NPEF President and CEO, attended the session to greet attendees and Tech Goes Home team members and recognize the milestone.
We have provided laptops and technology training to MNPS families through Tech Goes Home since the 2022-23 school year. The program helps combat the digital divide by engaging families in classes that teach digital literacy skills and review technology platforms used by MNPS for parent and teacher communication, grading, attendance information, and more. These classes enable families with more skills to actively participate in their child’s learning. At the end of the course, the families receive a free Chromebook laptop.
The family of a five-year-old boy with autism is suing Sumner County Schools and a district assistant principal, alleging a request for additional behavioral support went unmet before classroom incidents ultimately led to months of juvenile court proceedings.
The federal lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee and amended Sept. 14, names the Sumner County Board of Education and Brandon Smart individually as defendants. The child and his parents are identified by their initials.
According to the lawsuit, after several incidents in August and another incident on Sept. 3, 2025, the district agreed to increase behavioral support, including access to a one-on-one aide. The lawsuit says those supports were ultimately successful and the child continued making educational progress and was promoted to first grade.
In 2025-26, 87 of the nation’s 500 largest school districts (17.4%) changed superintendents, the lowest annual turnover ILO Group has recorded since before the pandemic and returning to pre-pandemic levels. At the same time, the pandemic has taken a meaningful toll on leadership in the top 500 districts: only 78 leaders who were in their seats in March of 2020 remain in their position today.
Since March 13, 2020, these 500 districts have changed superintendents 745 times and only 78 have not changed at all.
One of the 78 “remainers” is Nashville’s Adrienne Battle, who assumed her role in 2019.
What would be left is “a really watered-down Head Start program that removes a lot of the health and safety requirements, quality standards, and comprehensive services,” Katie Hamm, who served as deputy assistant secretary for early childhood development at the Office for the Administration for Children & Families under President Joe Biden, told The Nation.
The bottom line: no class size limits and limited provision for those most in need.
Florida’s new Commissioner of Education is talking big about ending public schools and moving to a system where the state hands out the money and the parents choose from a range of private options.
The taxpayers would put up the money. The “market” would do all the rest. No need for pesky state standards or regulations on the qualifications of educators or rules about the treatment of students with disabilities.
One Trump Ed Department official said (in 2024 before she was with the Administration):
I’m optimistic that, you know, five years from now a majority of kids are going to be in a private school choice program.
The idea that government has an inherent interest in providing a free, public education for every child used to be sacrosanct, except among a small set of radical reformers like Milton Friedman. But a 40-year campaign for “school choice” has quietly gathered steam. Proponents of privatization are now openly acknowledging that their sights are set on eliminating public schools. They want to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education (founded to ensure the civil rights of children in schools) and offer no-strings-attached public dollars to private and religious schools. And now, a lawsuit filed in Nebraska just this month argues that the U.S. system of public schools violates the First Amendment and asks the state to declare public schools unconstitutional.
