That was three years ago. So, what happened? Well, as it turns out, the former Speaker of the House (Glen Casada) and his former Chief of Staff (Cade Cothren) have been indicted in a bribery and kickback scandal related to the voucher vote.
NewsChannel5 reports:
According to the indictment, beginning in October 2019, Casada, Cothren, as well as another conspirator engaged in a fraudulent scheme to enrich themselves “by exploiting Casada and the other conspirator’s official positions as legislators to obtain State approval of Phoenix Solutions as a Mailer Program vendor to provide constituent mail services to members of the Tennessee General Assembly.”
This reportedly began after Cothren’s resignation and after Casada stepped down as the Tennessee Speaker of the House.
While the indictment is not specifically around the voucher vote, the conspirators were directly involved in that event as well.
More to come as this process continues.
For more on education politics and policy, follow @TNEdReport
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Tennessee is on the verge of a whole lot of kids repeating the third grade – changing the landscape of schools and classrooms and increasing demand for elementary teachers during a teacher vacancy crisis.
Here’s why:
A state law that goes into effect this year requires that students not testing at “met expectations” – reading at grade level – according to TNReady results, must be retained or complete a summer remediation program.
An article in the Maryville Daily Times explains what this might mean in practice.
The law applies to students who score at the “below expectations” or “approaching expectations” performance levels on the TCAP exam. Statewide, that could mean two-thirds of third graders, Winstead explained. However, Maryville’s third grade ELA performance last spring was ranked sixth in the state, with 60% meeting or exceeding expectations.
That left 40%, 174 children, potentially affected if the law had been in place. However, with exemptions for new English learners, students with disabilities that affect reading and previously retained students, the number drops to 122.
So, under current law, Maryville would need to prepare for 122 new third-graders in the 2023-24 school year. Of course, some of them would take advantage of the remediation offerings. Let’s say that’s half. That still leaves Maryville needing 3 additional third grade classrooms for 2023-24.
Note, too, that the article says statewide, that number is closer to 66%.
While the intent of the law is to promote a focus on reading in the early grades as a way to set students up for success in future learning, the practical impact could be far-reaching with a range of unintended consequences.
It’s also worth noting that this law was passed without any attendant passage of new funding or new programs to promote reading. No significant increase in teacher pay, no additional funding for support staff, no improved support programs for these kids.
Perhaps the biggest consequence is this: While the law was designed to help kids stay in school by ensuring they read at grade level, the reality is that as kids age, they are more likely to drop out – so, an 8th grader who is 14 rather than 13 may be more likely to give up on school altogether.
For those students truly on the margins, the summer learning or tutoring may help keep them on track. For those farther behind, this could be a precursor to an even higher school dropout rate come high school.
In any case, it seems likely that two out three 3rd grade students statewide will be subject to the impact of this law by summer.
Oh, and the entire law is based on the results of a TNReady test that has been anything but ready in the few years since it has been a part of Tennessee’s education landscape.
In addition to facing challenges in finding and keeping teachers, school districts across Tennessee are struggling to find support staff. One middle Tennessee district still needs 40 bus drivers.
Here’s a post from the Sumner County Schools Facebook page highlighting the high number of bus driver vacancies:
We currently have 40 openings for bus drivers. We appreciate parent’s patience and understanding as our Transportation Department continues to make every effort to maximize the speed and efficiency of every bus route. If you are interested in a career as a bus driver with Sumner County Schools, please click the link below:
That seems like a lot of openings.
What’s going on in your district? Are there enough bus drivers and other support staff?
What’s it like to be a Tennessee teacher during what can best be described as a “War on Knowledge” being waged by Gov. Bill Lee and the General Assembly?
Well, one teacher shares her story – with thanks to The Tennessee Holler for sharing it.
Policy decisions have practical consequences. Maybe Gov. Lee or House Education Committee Chair Mark White would like to go to TN classrooms and start cataloguing the books?
Or maybe they could just repeal ridiculous laws like this one?
Unfortunately, instead, they’ll just keep pushing relentlessly toward full-on privatization of our public schools.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
Four Tennessee schools are now returning to local control after getting taken over by the state ten years ago. The Memphis-area schools were brought into the Achievement School District with the promise from state leaders to turn things around.
But the schools are now returning to Shelby County Schools with no significant improvement in test scores.
“The state has failed miserably in running schools and the state should not be in the business of being a school district, period,” State Rep. Antonio Parkinson said. “The Achievement School District came in and aggressively divided these communities and took over these schools, and then they performed worse than the schools they actually took over.”
The latest data from the Department of Education shows each of the four schools report less than five percent of students performing at grade level. ASD as a whole reports just 4.5 percent of students performing at grade level.
That’s lower than Shelby County schools, with 11 percent of students testing at grade level.
Despite the repeated failure, Gov. Lee has added $25 million to ASD coffers this year.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
Hillsdale College Larry Arnn is mad that people in Tennessee are telling the truth about his intentions. He’s even more mad that he was caught on tape making disparaging remarks about teachers and colleges of education. He’s not sorry about what he said. He’s made that clear. He IS sorry that when he told the truth, it disrupted his plans to shift public money to his private school pushing a Christian Nationalist agenda by way of Hillsdale-affiliated charter schools.
Now, Hillsdale is texting Tennesseans with a link to a page that tells the “truth” about Hillsdale.
Phil Williams of NewsChannel5 has more:
After the huge backlash against @Hillsdale president Larry Arnn saying public school teachers come from "the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges," @GovBillLee's friends are now texting parents with a PR message that Arnn was "telling the truth." https://t.co/KBJEXBwWr5
Here’s the deal: Hillsdale-affiliated charters were rejected by three Tennessee school boards. All three have since appealed to the State Charter Commission. If those appeals are successful, Hillsdale-affiliated charters will open in Tennessee in 2023. They’ll get public money to advance their extreme agenda.
The dark money, pro-privatization group spent heavily to influence key races in the August primary. As Adam Friedman in the Tennesseannotes, Team Kid was joined by other privatization groups in spending that ultimately resulted in the defeat of Republican incumbent House member Terri Lynn Weaver and Senate member Bob Ramsey. Both have opposed using public money to fund private schools.
Some of education groups support charters and others vouchers. Some back both. They operate using the political actions committees of Team Kid PAC, Tennessee Federation for Children PAC and Tennesseans for Putting Students First.
Tennesseans For Student Success, the American Federation for Children Action Fund, 50Can and The Campaign for Great Public Schools are all national education groups with donors that are nearly impossible to track.
The Internal Revenue Service classifies these organizations as 501c4s. This means their donors are only available through nonprofit tax forms, but those forms don’t clearly show where the money comes from.
These groups are spending big to elect even more pro-privatization candidates and that spending is overwhelming the efforts of public education advocates.
Here’s more on the kinds of attacks used by Tennesseans for Student Success when lawmakers fall out of line with their privatization agenda:
Will Tennessee librarians face criminal liability?
In May, I wrote about legislative attempts to criminalize school librarians if so-called “objectionable” books were found in the stacks of their libraries.
Apparently, the incoming District Attorney in Chattanooga is willing to consider criminal liability along these lines as she indicates in the video below.
Gov. Bill Lee has moved quickly to implement his school voucher scheme as courts have cleared the way for it to start this school year.
So far, though, not many families are expressing serious interest.
The Tennesseanreports that as of the first day of school in Memphis and Nashville (the only two districts eligible for vouchers), only 30 applications had been submitted for approval.
As of Monday morning, only 30 families had submitted an actual application, according to information from Department of Education spokesperson Brian Blackley. The department received applications from 40 schools, he said, noting that application process has closed.
While Lee has claimed that several thousand families want the vouchers, that has not yet been borne out in the application process.
Chalkbeatreports that lawyers for parents opposing the voucher plan had asked the court to halt implementation while their case against vouchers proceeds.
Specifically, lawyers noted that if implementation proceeds, Memphis and Nashville combined could lose up to $26 million in funding this year despite no attendant reduction in costs to operate.
“Nothing requires the state defendants to push this forward at a rocket’s pace after the injunction was lifted, just before the school year started,” said Allison Bussell, Metro Nashville’s associate law director, representing the two local governments.
She argued that allowing the program to start will cause irreparable harm to both districts, which she said stand to lose $26 million this school year if 3,000 students shift from public to private schools — while the districts must maintain and staff the same number of schools.
A recent article in The Hechinger Report noted that vouchers have not been shown to improve student achievement, and in fact, have in some cases been shown to actually be harmful.
Vouchers are dangerous to American education. They promise an all-too-simple solution to tough problems like unequal access to high-quality schools, segregation and even school safety. In small doses, years ago, vouchers seemed like they might work, but as more states have created more and larger voucher programs, experts like me have learned enough to say that these programs on balance can severely hinder academic growth — especially for vulnerable kids.
So, vouchers not only cost local districts significant money, but they also harm the very students they are intended to help. Nevertheless, Gov. Lee and his allies are persisting with this perilous plan.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
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