Author Archives: Andy Spears

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Sam Stockard on the ASD Party

Sam Stockard takes on the party atmosphere at the TN Achievement School District (ASD) in his latest column.

Here’s some of what he had to say:

The General Assembly formed ASD in fiscal 2011, and it was allowed to operate “autonomously in all respects, thus preventing the department’s prompt recognition and reaction to ASD’s administrative actions,” the report states. In 2013, the Department of Education even allowed the district to move its financial operations into a separate accounting system.

Isn’t that convenient.

In fact, audits done in 2013, 2014 and 2015 on ASD’s use of federal money showed deficiencies in internal controls and noncompliance with federal programs, “resulting in approximately $721,000 of federal questioned costs.”

Read more about the parties and other expenses at ASD while students were busy in schools run by charter operators — schools that failed to move the needle much in terms of student achievement.

MORE ON THE ASD:

WTF ASD?

Chattanooga in Talks for Expansion Team

A Friendly Reminder

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


 

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Nashville Preschool to be National Model

Chalkbeat has the story of Cambridge Early Learning Center and a U.S. Department of Education grant on discriminatory school discipline practices.

Here’s more:

Cambridge Early Learning Center, a pre-kindergarten program operated by Metro Nashville Public Schools, is one of two schools nationwide selected for $1 million grants from the Technical Assistance Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, the U.S. Department of Education announced last week.

READ MORE>

MORE ON PRE-K:

Ron Ramsey, Pre-K, and a Chevy Tahoe

Should TN Abandon Pre-K?

 

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


 

 

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Understanding Amy Frogge

TC Weber talks to animal rescuer and MNPS school board member Amy Frogge about how she got involved in local education policy. The interview explores her two campaigns and her time on the board.

Here’s what she has to say about how she got started:

Well, I had been doing a lot of work at my children’s elementary school. When my daughter started at Gower Elementary, we had a very small PTO. The year after she got there, we were flooded in 2010 [Nashville was the victim of a flood in 2010], and we ended up having an immense amount of help from our neighbors and people throughout the city – and even people from other states – who were willing to come and help us rebuild our house and clean up the mess after the flood. There was just an immense amount of support, and I decided, in that process, that I wanted to give back to people. So I decided to become more involved at the school. The PTO had recently died out, and so essentially two of us parents offered to try to rebuild parent engagement at the school. We started small, but the more we did, the more exciting it became, and the more we were able to accomplish. We ended up building about 15 new community partnerships for Gower over the course of about a year, and we dramatically increased parent engagement through that process. We learned what an impact that had on the school’s performance and the atmosphere and culture of the school. Five years later, that school had a wait list and its performance improved. People in the neighborhood were excited about the school.

So having seen what happened at the local level, I hoped when I ran the first time that I would be able to do that sort of work on a larger level and support the schools in my area and throughout the city. That’s why I ended up running for school board.

The entire conversation is worth a read and provides helpful insight into Frogge’s approach.

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


 

 

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WTF ASD?

On the heels of announcing bold expansion plans that may take it to Chattanooga, the Tennessee Achievement School District received some bad news from state auditors.

Andy Sher at the Chattanooga Times-Free Press reports:

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.”

At a legislative hearing today, Tennessee Department of Education Deputy Commissioner and Chief Operating Officer Kathleen Airhart told lawmakers that as of July 1, the Department now oversees the ASD’s finances. Airhart said the problems in the audit have been addressed.

Who could have guessed that a school district that spends its funds on cocktail receptions and then hides the social media invite when called out would have problems with fiscal management?

Not to worry, though, now the Department of Education is overseeing ASD operations. Yes, the same group that brought Tennessee the not-so-impressive TNReady rollout is now managing the ASD’s fiscal policy.

Sher called the ASD’s financial management “chaotic” in his article.

The reality is, the entire ASD has been chaotic and rather disruptive.

Auditors are in the business of finding mistakes, of course. It would be one thing if the ASD had a stellar track record of proven results and could blame the audit findings on an unrelenting focus on student success. Unfortunately, the evidence so far suggests otherwise.

So, you have a state-run school district that is failing to produce promised results at the same time it’s spending money with little oversight. So far, that hasn’t resulted in a halt to the ASD’s expansion plans.

Will 2017 be the year the legislature finally regains control of the district it created?

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


 

 

 

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Teacher Issues ARE Student Issues

Thoughts from Knoxville via the SPEAK blog:

This leads me to my final point. I want the media to understand that “teacher issues” ARE student issues. At what point did things that are good for teachers became unequivocally bad for students? Even if we take the most basic stereotypical notion that teachers just want a higher salary, how is that bad for students? If paying higher salaries means getting and keeping high quality educators instead of allowing them to escape across county or state lines, that action directly helps students. Meat and potatoes issues that teachers care about…class size, plan time, discipline, turnover, professional development, toxic testing, under staffing, inadequate funding, etc. all have a direct impact on the success and well-being of our students

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


 

 

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What’s the Purpose of School?

A Knox County educator writes about the purpose of school in a blog post on SPEAK’s blog.

Here’s a bit of what he had to say:

The best answer to why that I have ever heard came from a student. This student had just moved here from another country and was very frustrated, bored and confused by the test prep, test based high stakes accountability and focus that she was encountering for the first time. In expressing her frustration to me she said, “I thought school was supposed to be about us learning to be the best person we can be?” Nothing could be more true. When all is said and done, everything I do as a teacher, everything we do as a school should be in support of that ultimate purpose, helping every child become the best person they can be.

What are your thoughts? What is the purpose of our public schools?

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


 

 

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Chattanooga in Talks for Expansion Team

The state’s fourth-largest school district will soon be in talks to become the next location of an expansion franchise in the school takeover league known as the Achievement School District (ASD). With 33 schools under its control, the ASD is considered the major league in the school takeover world.

Laura Faith Kebede reports on this development at Chalkbeat:

Leaders of the Achievement School District will begin talks with district and community leaders in Hamilton County in the coming months, according to Robert S. White, the ASD’s chief of external affairs.

The development comes despite a lack of current data due to the failure of this year’s administration of TNReady.

League leaders say a lack of data won’t slow them down as they aggressively pursue expansion in 2018 and beyond:

The ASD’s next steps have been made more challenging by the lack of test score data across Tennessee due the state’s late-spring cancellation of most of its TNReady tests. But after the hiatus year, White said he expects the state-run district to continue to take control of priority schools, even as the state rolls out a new assessment by a new test maker this coming year.

“You won’t see that two years in a row,” he said of the takeover hiatus.

The league also didn’t rule out an expansion in Nashville, where a contentious battle in 2014 resulted in Neely’s Bend Middle School “winning” ASD franchise status.

Despite an initial plan focused on stellar turnarounds of struggling schools, the ASD has a reputation for taking low-performing schools, handing them over to charter-operator general managers, and watching as the results are rarely better than under previous management teams.

The Memphis franchise(s) have been plagued with unrest from “fans” expecting the league to live up to its promises.

In fact, one local group has asked the league to stop looking to Memphis for new expansion teams. Due to what it considers market saturation, that’s a request the league is likely to honor in the short term.

Meanwhile, Chattanooga awaits word regarding which eligible school(s) could get the call from the school takeover major league.

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


 

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Mary Holden Talks Common Core

Education blogger and former teacher Mary Holden talks about her experience with Common Core in Part 3 of her teaching story.

Here’s a bit of what she has to say:

Many of the English standards were vague and some of them couldn’t even clearly be assessed at all, and others were so very specific. So I was frustrated by that because I had become well-versed in breaking down a standard and determining the best way to assess mastery of it myself. But now I saw that these standards were part of a bigger plan, and I didn’t like it. I was also dismayed by the influx of informational text and the resulting decrease in literature, as well as CC developer David Coleman’s insistence on how we teach literature. I was becoming increasingly bothered by all of this. This was not why I became an English teacher.

READ MORE>

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


 

 

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TC Takes on the ASD

Nashville parent and blogger TC Weber attended the National Charter School Conference in June and has some thoughts on a panel that featured Tennessee’s Achievement School District (ASD).

Specific to Tennessee, Weber notes comments by the ASD’s Superintendent, Malika Anderson:

Malika Anderson spoke next and spun the narrative that the Achievement School District was a success in Tennessee because schools in Memphis’s Innovation Zone, or iZone as it’s commonly referred to, along with statewide priority schools, were performing so well. She stated that schools had years to improve and had failed to do so until now, and it was only because of the fear of a state takeover that made this happen. She glossed over how far the ASD was from reaching their goals. She completely ignored the fact that many were ready to see the ASD go the way of the RSD and have schools brought back under local oversight. Her argument was that in spite of failing to make real progress, the ASD should still be rewarded with more time for inspiring through fear.

TC provides a comprehensive analysis of the ASD session and issues a warning for other states considering adopting a similar reform model. It’s all well worth a read.

More on the ASD:

A Friendly Reminder

Rhetoric vs. Reality: ASD Edition

So, About the ASD

Tennessee Thunderdome

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


 

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Filling the Wage Gap

Yesterday, I reported on the national wage gap between teachers and other professionals and dug into the data to look at the impact on Tennessee.

It’s pretty disappointing nationally, but the Tennessee numbers are especially disturbing: Below the national average and even about 3 points below the Southeastern average.

We can do better.

Here’s the good news: The Department of Finance and Administration recently released revenue numbers for the fiscal year that ended June 30th. Turns out, we have LOTS of extra money.

Specifically:

Year-to-date revenues for 12 months were $925.0 million more than the budgeted estimate. The general fund recorded revenues in the amount of $852.4 million more than the budgeted estimate, and the four other funds $72.6 million more than the budgeted estimate.

Yes, that’s right, $925 million MORE than we planned on having.

To fully close the wage gap for teachers, we’d need around $500 million which would result in a raise of about $10,000 per teacher.

With this available surplus, Tennessee could become the first state in the nation to close the wage gap completely. And we could do it with $425 million to spare. That’s pretty conservative. Oh, and we could do it without raising a single tax.

An even more conservative approach would be to phase-in wage gap closure over two to three years to ensure revenue is keeping up. That could mean an average raise of about $5000 per teacher in the first year and slightly smaller, but significant raises in successive years.

A move like that would grab national attention. Suddenly, our neighbors in Kentucky and Alabama could no longer say they offer a better value proposition for their teachers.

We would not only deliver on becoming the fastest-improving state in teacher salaries, we’d be doing it in a fiscally responsible, conservative way.

If you’re in college and want to be a teacher, wouldn’t you want to go where you could make just as much as your professional peers? In Tennessee, you’re making 30% less at current numbers. But the budget situation in our state means it doesn’t have to be that way.

The first state in the nation to close the teacher wage gap. It could be Tennessee.

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