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Disaster

That’s how Nashville school board member Will Pinkston describes Gov. Bill Lee’s proposals to expand charter schools and enact a voucher program. Pinkston’s comments come via The Washington Post and the education column of Valerie Strauss.

Here’s some of what Pinkston has to say:

In Tennessee, our state constitution guarantees “a system of free public schools” — not a system of taxpayer-funded private schools, which is what you’d be creating with vouchers. Setting aside the unconstitutional nature of vouchers, it’s just bad policy at a time when the state is already underfunding our public schools. If your plan is enacted, it will likely end up in court.

Gov. Lee: Tennessee is ranked in the bottom seven states in America when it comes to per-pupil funding. Let’s instead have a conversation focused on large-scale priorities like dramatically improving teacher pay, expanding early childhood education, and committing to adequate funding for all public schools — not privatizing our school systems vis-à-vis charters and vouchers.

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Hacker or Dump Truck

Another testing cycle, more TNReady trouble.

It’s time for testing in Tennessee again. Or, at least, it’s time for schools to begin the time-honored tradition of having students take practice tests to ensure that the state’s testing vendor is getting the job done and the online testing system will work.

Surprising exactly no one, some schools are reporting problems with the testing platform as their students begin practice testing. At least one school reported that at least half the students were unable to access the TNReady test during practice today.

This should definitely encourage students, teachers, and parents as we approach the test-heavy month of April.

Last year, we heard about dump trucks and hackers causing TNReady problems. It’s not clear what the planned excuses are this year.

Certainly, our new Commissioner of Education is working with her team of school choice advocates to devise this year’s round of fake TNReady stories. Then, they’ll come up with lies to tell the General Assembly so no real policy change takes place.

Seriously, though, if your school is or has been engaged in TNReady practice testing, I’d love to know how it’s going. Are you having problems? What are they? Let me know at andy@tnedreport.com


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REFUSED

A Knox County parent has refused to allow her children take the state’s failed TNReady tests each of the last four years. WBIR has more:


A Knox County parent says she has refused to let her kids take TNReady exams for four years.
Elizabeth MacTavish and her husband are educators, and she understands the stress of standardized testing as both a parent and a teacher. 


We are spending millions of dollars on a test that is neither reliable nor valid, the testing companies that we’ve been using continually fail,” MacTavish said. 
Over the past few years, TNReady has had some problems. 
In 2016 the original online testing system failed. In 2017 about 1,700 tests were scored incorrectly. 
In 2018, the state comptroller’s office says there were login delays, slow servers, and software bugs.
Now, the state is looking for a new vendor for TNReady testing. Tuesday, it issued a request for proposal for next school year.
The Department of Education expects the new contract to be $20 million each year. It’s current contract with Questar is $30 million. 

Former Commissioner of Education Candice McQueen, who presided over all the failed iterations of TNReady, perpetuated the myth that not testing annually would result in a penalty from the federal government. In fact, that’s not entirely accurate:

There’s just one problem: The federal government has not (yet) penalized a single district for failing to hit the 95% benchmark. In fact, in the face of significant opt-outs in New York last year (including one district where 89% of students opted-out), the U.S. Department of Education communicated a clear message to New York state education leaders:  Districts and states will not suffer a loss of federal dollars due to high test refusal rates. The USDOE left it up to New York to decide whether or not to penalize districts financially.

Current Commissioner Penny Schwinn has demonstrated she’s not actually listening to parents and teachers as she travels around the state and visits schools. Instead, she is determined to continue to pursue a testing model that has failed students, teachers, and schools across the state.

More than 80% of teachers believe the state should move to the ACT suite of assessments to replace TNReady. A similar number believe TNReady does not accurately reflect student ability.

For now, the state marches on and nothing changes. But, if more parents took the refusal approach, the state could be forced to truly reckon with a broken system.

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Lunchroom Bullies

For the second year in a row, a committee in the Tennessee General Assembly has essentially endorsed lunch-shaming.

Here’s more on yesterday’s shocking vote:

Republicans voted 4-2 to defeat The Tennessee Hunger-Free Students Act—a bill with three measures to ensure students can eat school lunches and not be punished when parents fail to pay meal fees or a meal debt.

The bill sponsor Rep. John Ray Clemmons, D-Nashville, District 55, said the bill would stop school employees from throwing away a served meal if the student could not pay and would also prohibit schools from punishing or shaming students who accumulated a meal debt.

“We certainly do not want to have a child stigmatized or punished in any way for simply incurring a lunch debt at no fault of their own,” Clemmons said. “We have had incidents in recent years in Tennessee where students have been treated adversely or stigmatized in some manner. Whether it’s placed or made to eat in the principal’s office and eat a peanut butter sandwich by themselves simply because they had a lunch debt or being prevented from going on field trips because of a lunch debt.

Last year, an education subcommittee also rejected a bill sponsored by Clemmons that would have prevented lunch shaming. Every legislator who has opposed this bill in the last two sessions has been a Republican.

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Gold Strike

If Tennessee teachers really want to improve the state’s overall investment in schools, including in teacher compensation, they may need to walk off the job.

A new study from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities indicates that in states that have seen recent teacher protests, investment in public education has improved significantly.

More from Chalkbeat:


In four states where teachers walked out of their classrooms in protest last year, education spending is up, helping to make up for deep cuts in those states in the wake of the Great Recession.


That’s according to a new analysis that suggests the walkouts and strikes made a difference in Oklahoma, Arizona, West Virginia, and North Carolina. The report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive think tank, found that baseline state funding jumped 19 percent in Oklahoma last year, while North Carolina and West Virginia both saw 3 percent upticks.

Tennessee’s overall investment in public education is 44th nationally and we actually spend less per pupil in inflation-adjusted dollars than we did in 2010. Additionally, the rate of pay increases for our teachers is relatively small and lags behind the national average:


Average teacher salaries in the United States improved by about 4% from the Haslam Promise until this year. Average teacher salaries in Tennessee improved by just under 2% over the same time period. So, since Bill Haslam promised teachers we’d be the fastest improving in teacher pay, we’ve actually been improving at a rate that’s half the national average. No, we’re not the slowest improving state in teacher pay, but we’re also not even improving at the average rate.

It seems unlikely this will change until policymakers are made uncomfortable. One sure way to cause discomfort is through a massive protest or job action. Tennessee teachers who are tired of the status quo may well need to take to the streets to see real change for them and for their students.

daguerreotype, circa 1852, on display as part of ‘ California Gold Rush’. The Jaunts column will pay a visit to the California Oil Museum in Santa Paula previewing the new exhibit, California Gold Rush. DIGITAL IMAGE SHOT ON 10.31.2000 (Photo by Spencer Weiner/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

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Winning

So, the winner of the 2015 SCORE Prize is now closing its doors for good.

I noted previously that New Vision Academy was in violation of Metro fire code and that a number of students would be forced to leave. Now, it turns out, the entire school is closing down after tomorrow.

The closure of New Vision means some 150 students will now return to traditional public schools in MNPS after 3/4 of the school year has passed.

The troubling development comes as Tennessee Governor Bill Lee is proposing both boosting state tax dollars made available to charter schools and circumventing local school board authority over such schools.

The tireless advocates of “school choice” at any cost will likely note this is just “market forces” making a correction.

The problem is, that “correction” impacts real people. Specifically, 150 middle school kids who are now displaced.

While Governor Lee claims to want to innovate and try new things, he’s simply not looking where he should be. One thing Tennessee has never seriously tried is making a long-term, sustained investment in our schools. In fact, we spend less per student now than we did in 2010 in inflation-adjusted dollars.

We’re seeing Governor Lee propose adding some $200 million to the rainy day fund while students in districts and schools with high concentrations of poverty are facing rain every single day. The numbers suggest we can and must do better.

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Camper vs. Vouchers

House Democratic Leader Karen Camper of Memphis is taking on Governor Bill Lee’s proposed voucher program, which he is calling an “education savings account.”

The Daily Memphian has more:


Camper castigated the governor’s education savings account plan, saying voucher programs in other states resulted in poorer performance by students.
“We must continue to fight against this attack on our public school system,” Camper said in response to Lee’s speech, adding she is “saddened” by governor’s effort to take money from public school programs.

More on Lee’s plan:


Simultaneously, he is asking the Legislature for $25.4 million for education savings accounts and $12 million for a charter schools investment program, doubling the amount of money for charters and setting new rules for access to public facilities while establishing an independent authority to approve charter schools. Formerly known as vouchers, ESAs would provide public money, $7,300 to eligible students, to attend private schools or other alternatives, possibly home schools.

That Lee is advancing an agenda to dismantle public schools should come as no surprise as he has consistently shown his support for voucher programs.

The question for this legislative session is: Will rural legislators join with urban representatives to stop vouchers, or will Bill Lee prevail and begin the privatization of Tennessee’s public schools?

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Pernicious

That’s how Frank Cagle describes the theory of vouchers in his latest column. Here’s some of what he has to say:


But despite some practical problems, it is the pernicious theory of vouchers themselves that is the problem, no matter what you call it. We, as a society, have decided that an educated populace is necessary for the public good. So we pay taxes and fund public schools. Everybody pays taxes. Everybody has an interest in how successful public schools can be. Parents can take some of our tax revenue only if parents pay all the school taxes. Parents have no more right to take money out of the public treasury than anyone else.


If a teacher has 25 students in a public school and two of the students get vouchers to go elsewhere, how does the money work? You still have to fund the classroom. The teacher’s salary. The school staff. You can’t just remove two seats on the school bus. The costs are fixed. The idea that you can take money and issue vouchers without hurting the public schools is just wrong.

Cagle’s argument is nicely summed up in this image from Iowa:

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Bill Lee Doesn’t Trust Your School Board

Governor Bill Lee gave his State of the State address last night and outlined his budget and vision as he begins his first term. Among the items he discussed was the creation of a state charter school authorizer.

Nashville Public Radio has more:


Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee is proposing legislation that would make it easier to establish charter schools.
He announced the plan Monday night during his State of the State address. If it passes, it would allow a sponsor to go directly to a state-run authorizer for approval, instead of a local school district.

The proposed change is significant because current law requires a charter operator to submit a proposal to a local school board first. The local board then evaluates the proposal and makes a decision as to whether or not it would be a good fit for the needs of students in the district. If the local board rejects the proposal, the operator may appeal to the State Board of Education.

The State BOE often looks to the local board’s evaluation of the charter application for guidance. Sometimes, operators revise and improve the application. Sometimes, the State BOE determines the local board made a sound decision based on the evidence, as was the case with Rocketship in Nashville not long ago:


Let’s review. Rocketship was denied expansion by MNPS and the State Board of Education last year. Rocketship applied again. MNPS denied them. Rocketship appealed. MNPS denied the amended application by an 8-1 vote. Rocketship is now appealing based on a technicality instead of working with MNPS to find a satisfactory way to address concerns.

Here’s what MNPS said when they reviewed the Rocketship application:


In summary, with no additional state accountability data to consider, and no compelling evidence presented that provides confidence in the review team, converting an existing low-performing school before Rocketship has demonstrated academic success on state accountability measures would not be in the best interests of the students, the district, or the community.

If Governor Lee’s proposal is successful, schools like Rocketship will now be able to circumvent local input altogether. In this case, MNPS identified key problems with Rocketship and decided an expansion was not in the best interests of the students of the district.

Why shouldn’t charters be required to present a proposal to a local board of education first? Shouldn’t the citizens of a community, by way of their duly elected school board, be able to weigh-in on the appropriateness of a given charter school proposal?

Moreover, why doesn’t Bill Lee trust local school boards?

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TEA on State of the State

Tennessee Education Association President Beth Brown offered these remarks in response to Governor Bill Lee’s State of the State:

“The Tennessee Education Association is pleased to hear Gov. Bill Lee intends to build on the substantial investments made in recent years to increase state funding of our great public schools. TEA supports his commitment to increasing career technical education programs, STEM initiatives and teacher salaries.

The teacher salary funding is substantial at $71 million, making it approximately a 2.5 percent increase. The key will be to ensure that money actually ends up in teacher paychecks. Additionally, if the $25 million going to vouchers and the $12 million earmarked for privately owned charter buildings were redirected to teacher salaries, the state could keep up with the cost of inflation and reimburse teachers for the hundreds of dollars they spend on classroom supplies.  

We have concerns about Lee’s proposal to increase funding for charter schools and pave the way for rapid charter school expansion. Charter schools are proven to destabilize public school budgets and damage existing classrooms where there is rapid expansion. Charter schools need to be a local decision, because local taxpayers bear a majority of the costs. The Tennessee Constitution clearly states that we have a responsibility to provide a quality public education for every student in Tennessee. Improving public schools requires more money, not less, to provide a well-rounded education for students.   

TEA also has deep concerns about massive funding for Education Savings Accounts, which are vouchers with less accountability that are more susceptible to fraud and abuse. In a time when teachers across the state have to dig deep into their pockets for needed classroom supplies, it is discouraging to see funding going to something proven to harm students in other states. Let’s support Tennessee students and teachers by directing taxpayer dollars to our public school classrooms, not vouchers that harm student achievement.     

There are many proven ways to improve public schools, such as reducing class sizes so educators can spend more one-on-one time helping students. We should invest in what we know works, including recruiting and retaining qualified and committed educators, creating inviting classrooms, supplying students with modern textbooks, and providing the other resources that can set all students off toward a great future. That’s how taxpayer funds should be spent.  

I believe we have common ground with the governor around the state TNReady assessment. While we welcome his commitment to ensuring students and educators do not experience the system failures of years past, it is important to recognize that even in a year where there are no issues administering the test, standardized test scores of a test like TNReady are not valid measures of student achievement, teacher effectiveness or school performance.

Students and teachers benefit most when tests are used as diagnostic tools to identify where students may be struggling and need extra instruction. The high-stakes TNReady system we have in place does not equip educators to diagnose and teach. TEA wants to see educators involved in the design and implementation of accountability alternatives, including a proper pre-test/post-test system, creative use of benchmark testing, and other accurate gauges to ensure student progress. TEA members statewide are committed to working with Gov. Lee’s administration and the General Assembly to advocate for legislation that is in the best interest of all Tennessee children.”

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