As the publisher of Tennessee Education Report, I’m thankful for all the support this blog has received since it started back in January of 2013.
By the numbers, there have been more than 1500 stories posted here, there are nearly 9000 followers on Twitter, and nearly 1300 Facebook followers.
Yes, this is a #GivingTuesday post, but I’m also going to update you on some new developments coming in 2021.
So, first, if you want to go ahead and get the giving out of the way, you can support TNEdReport with a monthly pledge here or make a one-time donation here. Even $5 right now goes a long way toward making this work sustainable.
What’s Next?
Starting in 2021, Tennessee Education Report will be adding a Job Board — so, if you have an education job you’d like to see filled, email me: andy@tnedreport.com
I’m also reaching out to get more writers — so, if you have a story idea to pitch or a column you’d like to see reach a wide audience in Tennessee and beyond, get in touch: andy@tnedreport.com
It’s also likely that a podcast will be added as a regular feature of this blog. It’s important to breakdown education happenings in our state in various formats – got someone I should interview? Email me!
Tennessee Education Report has been relentless in coverage of issues like the TNReady (annual) debacle, the voucher scheming at the General Assembly, the antics of our various Commissioners of Education, and the current COVID-19 pandemic. This level of intensity of coverage will continue. In fact, the aim is to cover more issues in greater depth with more writers and in new formats.
Just when you thought TNEdReport was the best thing ever, it’s getting better!
Thank you for your support – without it, this blog would have gone away years ago.
Bobby Nicholson and his company, Outlier’s Advantage, want Tennessee kids and kids nationwide to have the best possible chance to earn money to attend college. That’s why they created the It Pays to Prep guide. At first, it was a guide to merit-based scholarship criteria for Tennessee schools. Now, they’ve gone national. I asked Nicholson to tell me more about It Pays to Prep and what it means for students headed to college.
1) Tell me more about It Pays to Prep. When did it start? What information is in it?
We published the first edition of It Pays to Prep in 2016. Many families were not aware of the guaranteed scholarship model that most colleges now use. Furthermore, most families weren’t aware of how much money was being awarded for each additional point that their student earns on the ACT. We also were trying to give our students more motivation to put in the work necessary to beat the ACT. Hence, It Pays to Prep was born.
In its most basic form, it gives families an easy way to find their student’s GPA and ACT score and find how much money they will be awarded at different schools. We list the value per year and over four years, the tuition and fees per year at that school, and the amount remaining for families to pay per year. It also lists general information about the school.
It Pays to Prep helps students consider a wide range of colleges that they may not have ever looked into before. It also helps families easily compare schools to each other.
2) This has historically been a guide focused on Tennessee schools — what made you take it national?
Our plan is to become the premier ACT prep provider for high-achieving students nationwide. No one else is compiling anything like this, especially not in the easy to read format that we do. We hope this begins to garner traffic and attention all over the nation and simultaneously spreads the word about the work we are doing at Outlier’s Advantage: ACT Prep Academy.
3) What information is in It Pays to Prep that parents can’t or won’t find from other sources?
Parents can find almost all of the information elsewhere. The benefit of It Pays to Prep is that we spend hundreds of hours finding all of this information, separating the wheat from the chaff, and compiling it all on one easy to read document.
4) What do you see as the biggest challenge for parents and students navigating the college admissions process?
There is so much variation in what students should be doing dependent on their current situation and their goals. Most of the information available is geared towards the average college-bound student. For above-average students, unless they go to a great school, it is often very hard for them to know what they need to be doing and when.
Here are some simple pieces of advice for students who are hoping to win merit-based scholarship money or attend a competitive school.
⁃ Make sure you have at least a 3.8 weighted GPA by the end of your junior year. Big schools are usually only looking at GPAs from freshman through junior year. Students can lose their scholarship based on how they do their senior year, but students cannot gain it. This may change with everything going on because of COVID, but it is best to be safe.
⁃ Take the hardest classes your school offers. Competitive schools have a rating system that ranks how many of the hardest classes you took. This will also better prepare you to be successful at the college level and on your ACT.
⁃ If you are in middle school or younger, set a goal to have read 100 books by the end of your sophomore year of high school. Your reading speed will be one of the biggest determining factors in how you do on standardized tests and how long homework takes in college.
⁃ Take your first ACT before your junior year. Most high schools offer it for the first time in the spring semester of junior year. This is great for most students. However, if you are hoping to win merit-based scholarship money, we would advise taking it as soon as you can after you complete algebra II and geometry. This gives you your sophomore summer and junior year to prep for your ACT, and it gives you your junior summer and senior fall to search for colleges and scholarships.
⁃ Governor’s School applications often need to be submitted before December of your junior year.
⁃ Though it has some reasonable critics, collegescorecard.ed.gov is a must-use resource for students deciding where to go to college. The two metrics that we use it for the most are the percentage of students returning after their first year and the average salary after graduation. These numbers aren’t necessarily representative of what your experience will be like, but they are good at helping to compare schools.
Nashville education blogger TC Weber added a brief note on teacher evaluations in his latest post. He makes a good point: What the hell is the point of teacher evaluation this year? Is there a design for evaluating teachers who are teaching all online one week and hybrid two weeks later and fully in-person the next? Are we really going to rate and rank teachers this year in the midst of a global pandemic? We’re in a state where teachers are getting sick with COVID at a rate that exceeds the general adult population. We’re also in a state where the Governor canceled a planned teacher pay raise and the legislature followed his lead. Now, we’re going to continue with what is, in the best years, a highly flawed evaluation system that could be jobs on the line.
Absolutely ridiculous.
Here’s what TC has to say:
In a similar vein, let’s talk about teacher evaluations. What is the purpose of conducting teacher evaluations under present circumstances? Are we trying to weed teachers out at a time we need every single one of them? Are we trying to increase the usage of best practices when under present circumstances we don’t even know what those are? Or are we trying to make sure that the chain of command remains firmly established? I continue to see no upside in doing evaluations in the midst of a pandemic, and oh so much downside.
For more on education politics and policy, follow @TNEdReport
Your support – $5 or more – makes publishing education news possible.
Over at Dad Gone Wild, Nashville education blogger TC Weber talks about the Florida Virtual School, Common Core State Standards, and MNPS. Here’s a little hint: Tennessee’s state standards are basically Common Core — but don’t tell that to the newest member of the Textbook Commission!
Here’s TC’s take on Florida Virtual School and some apparent law-breaking:
Tennessee school districts are required to teach Tennessee standards using materials drawn from the state’s approved list of materials, or in which a district has obtained a waiver of use. The emergency rules allow a little bit more flexibility when it comes to online learning, but not when a district is delivering in-person instruction.
As part of its response to the challenges presented by COVID-19, Metro Nashville Public Schools chose to purchase a curriculum from the Florida Virtual School in order to standardized instruction across the district. As an added benefit, many of the accountability requirements called for by the state were embedded in the FLVS offerings – attendance, grading, assessments. It was a plan that made a lot of sense in light of the disruption students would experience this year. But to bring to fruition, it required every school to adopt the curriculum with fidelity. Which is something, right or wrong, that did not happen.
At last week’s committee meeting, State Representative Regan brought forth a question as to whether MNPS had been granted a waiver to use the FLVS curriculum. Board spokesman Nathan James did his best to dance around the question, but Regan was relentless, and eventually, it was revealed that no such waiver had been secured despite ongoing collaboration between the DOE and MNPS. Furthermore, MNPS had received written notification that they were in violation of Tennessee state law due to a failure to secure that waiver.
This question of approval is not a new conversation for me. Back when the use of Florida Virtual School was first proposed I raised the question of it requiring a waiver. That question was posed at an MNPS school board meeting by then-school board member Jill Speering back in July. Speering’s question was dismissed and she was assured, no waiver was required.
At issue here is that Tennessee law prohibits the teaching of Common Core State Standards, it takes less than a perfunctory search to identify that Florida Virtual School curriculum is deeply rooted in CCSS. Now that might be a dismissable factor considering the current situation if we choose to ignore the proliferation of CCSS architects currently employed by the Tennessee Department of Education. Be it AchieveTheCore, the Liben Foundation, CKLA, or David Steiner, it’s pretty clear that the department is deeply invested in the theory of CCSS despite their repeated claims to the contrary. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck… it’s probably a duck.
Actually, yes, he did! House Speaker Cameron Sexton has appointed the controversial leader of an anti-Muslim advocacy group to the State Textbook Commission.
House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R-Crossville) has recently appointed Laurie Cardoza-Moore to the Tennessee State Textbook and Instructional Materials Quality Commission. The appointment, which had been vacant since 2019, runs through June 30, 2022. It is unpaid but does cover travel expenses.
Cardoza-Moore is the head of the Franklin-based nonprofit, Proclaiming Justice to the Nations (PJTN), a Zionist organization that ostensibly fights anti-Semitism. While that might seem like a noble cause, PJTN’s tactics are really in support of a Christian return to Israel. They also happen to take a very anti-Muslim way to get there.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has deemed PJTN a hate group for its work, which include initiatives like “Stop Access Islam.” (This designation led Amazon to delist the group from its Smile program last year.)
State Rep. Gloria Johnson of Knoxville weighed-in via Gervin:
“I don’t think we want to invite conspiracy theorists into leadership positions that require objectivity and discernment. Nor do we want to give hate speech a platform and bullhorn,” says Johnson, who serves on the House Education Committee and is a former public school teacher. “When I think about the thousands of Tennesseans who support public education and want to collaborate to make it better, it boggles the mind we would select someone who has gone on a crusade in the national media to malign public education.”
As Gervin notes, Cardoza-Moore’s appointment has not yet been approved. However, it’s unclear if enough House members will have the courage to challenge their fairly new Speaker. Sexton is generally well-respected and often thought to be a supporter of public schools. He opposed Gov. Bill Lee’s school voucher scheme, for example.
Cardoza-Moore’s appointment to the Textbook Commission comes shortly after Gov. Bill Lee named former Rep. Bill Dunn to an advisory role in the Department of Education.
It seems the state’s leadership has spent the time after the recent election stockpiling key advisors who are openly hostile to the state’s public schools.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
Your support – $5 or more – makes publishing education news possible.
The promises made by the Biden campaign drew support from public education advocates across the nation. From those promises, we identified five K-12 priorities that must be kept at the forefront. Whomever the President-elect chooses to lead the Department of Education must be committed to those priorities as well.
Send your email to the Biden team and tell them pro-public education promises must be met.
The Tennessee Education Association has sent a letter regarding concerns with the state’s COVID data relative to public schools to Gov. Bill Lee and included Commissioner of Health Lisa Piercey and Commissioner of Education Penny Schwinn.
Here’s that letter:
Over the past month, TEA has conducted a continuous review of local COVID-19 infection data of educators and students. According to the data, COVID active case rates of school staff are consistently higher—sometimes double—the rates of the communities those schools serve. The data indicate in-person instruction increases infection risk and that Tennessee educators will become ill at a far higher rate than the state’s general population. TEA calls on your administration to immediately
• call for a mask mandate for all school staff and students;
• publish firm state guidance for infection thresholds for school closure;
• provide substantial emergency state school funding for high quality PPEs, updated HVAC and air quality systems, and additional cleaning services;
• enforce all CDC guidelines for school operations;
• fund extended educator sick leave for active cases or quarantines;
• issue guidance to prioritize assigning educators with underlying conditions to remote instruction; • provide additional health benefits and coverage for staff who have been infected; and • provide hazardous duty pay for all staff directly involved with students.
Another state action that should be immediately taken is to either improve the data of the Department of Education statewide COVID dashboard or take down the website. It is clear there are significant errors in the SDE dashboard; gross underreporting is apparent when the student infection numbers are cross-referenced with concurrent Department of Health cases for school-age children. The SDE should require accurate LEA reporting of student/staff COVID cases or stop publishing flawed datasets.
It was demonstrably wrong SDE reporting that led TEA to review six school systems who have local COVID dashboards and publish timely and accurate infection data for students and staff. These systems teach approximately one-quarter of all Tennessee students, a strong sample size providing statewide insights. TEA used this local data to determine highly elevated infection rates among school staff compared to the communities where they serve. The state should require every school system to maintain accurate local COVID dashboards for the remainder of the pandemic.
The importance of in-person instruction to the academic and emotional wellbeing of students is undisputed; however, the demonstrably higher infection rate of Tennessee school staff cannot be ignored. There are actions your administration can and must take to reduce infections until a vaccine can be widely distributed.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
Your support – $5 or more – makes publishing education news possible.
Former state Rep. Bill Dunn will earn $98,000 in his full-time position as senior advisor to state Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn. He will work from both Nashville and Knoxville, according to Victoria Robinson, director of media for the state Department of Education.
Dunn started work Monday, Nov. 9, according to a press release from Gov. Bill Lee.
(Note: the new job will boost Dunn’s state pension, which is based on his highest-paid years. He has worked for 26 years as a representative, which currently pays about $24,000. Look for a follow-up when we get actual numbers.)
Dunn has been a long-time critic of public education in the state, opposing the creation and expansion of a Voluntary Pre-K program and taking the lead in ushering in Lee’s school voucher scheme. The voucher plan has since been declared unconstitutional.
Some speculate that Dunn’s role is in preparation for his eventual takeover of the Department of Education. Schwinn has come under fire for her mismanagement of the DOE, and even Republican allies of Gov. Lee are calling for an investigation into her leadership.
Meanwhile, Dunn is a familiar face at the legislature and a committed privatizer. Whether or not he ultimately receives the Commissioner title, there’s no doubt his influence will be felt in the Department and in pursuit of legislative action.
Will former State Rep. Bill Dunn become Commissioner of Education?
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
Your support – $5 or more – makes publishing education news possible.
Former Nashville School Board member Amy Frogge offers her take on recent election results around the state and what they mean for education policy.
It’s been a rough week for public education in Tennessee. Here in Nashville, John Little, a political operative paid by charter school interests, was elected to the school board. Funded by wealthy (white) elites seeking to profit off public schools, Little has used aggressive and underhanded smear tactics to “disrupt” school board meetings and legislative hearings for many years now. He considers school board work “political theater” (his words), which has been obvious from his tactics.
In Williamson County, former Speaker of the House Glen Casada, who used questionable tactics to pass Tennessee’s most recent unconstitutional voucher law, was reelected to the state legislature. He was accused of offering incentives to lawmakers to vote in favor of vouchers, which resulted in an FBI investigation of the voucher vote. Casada stepped down as Speaker after only months in the position when confronted by a scandal involving racist and sexist text messages that embroiled him and his staff.
In Knoxville, two voucher proponents are heading to the state House of Representatives. Rep. Jason Zachary, who was responsible for the new unconstitutional voucher law last year, flipped his vote only after Casada held the clock open for 40 minutes and allegedly offered bribes for the vote. Nevertheless, he was reelected. Voucher proponent Michele Carringer was elected to fill the seat left open by departing representative Bill Dunn, an ardent voucher advocate in the legislature for many years. Dunn has now been asked by Governor Lee to join the floundering Tennessee Department of Education.
However, there is hope. U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, the most disliked current cabinet leader and perhaps the most despised education leader in U.S. history, will be gone in January. DeVos has consistently diverted public school funding to private schools. The national mood around “school reform” (i.e., school privatization, aka “school choice”) is rapidly changing, and President-elect Joe Biden has promised to name a teacher as Secretary of Education. Fingers crossed that we will not backtrack as a country to the low quality of former appointees under the last several presidents. We have real work to do in Tennessee, but perhaps changes at the top will make their way down to our state.
Former State Rep. Bill Dunn, now an education adviser to Gov. Lee
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
Your support – $5 or more – makes publishing education news possible.
It seems that someone is finally listening to educators from across the state who have consistently complained about poor management at the Tennessee Department of Education. Let’s be clear: Though flippant and abrasive, current Commissioner of Education Penny Schwinn is merely carrying out the privatization agenda of her boss, Gov. Bill Lee.
Still, it’s noteworthy that both Senator Dolores Gresham and Rep. Mark White (who chair the education committees in the Senate and House, respectively) are now calling for an investigation into the financial management practices at the DOE under Scwhinn.
Two legislative leaders are calling for an investigation into the Tennessee Department of Education’s management of millions of dollars earmarked for coronavirus relief, as well as the state’s school voucher program for students with disabilities.
Sen. Dolores Gresham and Rep. Mark White, who chair the legislature’s two main education committees, want the state’s chief internal investigator to look into “questions and concerns” raised about both CARES funding and the 4-year-old voucher program known as Individualized Education Accounts.
Neither lawmaker provided details but, in an Oct. 23 letter to Comptroller Justin P. Wilson, said the concerns “come from every level of education across the state.”
“In light of these outcries,” they wrote, “we respectfully request that your office conduct an investigation into the management of these two areas to determine if they are being administered in accordance with both state and federal law.”
That only took — FOREVER. It’s nice to know the legislature would rather placate a governor hellbent on privatizing our schools instead of actually paying attention.
Here’s …. LOTS of evidence that Gresham and White clearly missed because they are either willfully ignorant or … YOU make the call:
Make no mistake, Bill Lee stands by Penny Schwinn. This is HIS agenda.
Today is Election Day 2020. If you want a different outcome for Tennessee schools, the next time you can vote for someone other than Bill Lee is in November of 2022.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
Your support – $5 or more – makes publishing education news possible!
