Chalkbeat

Teachers can challenge Tennessee law limiting instruction on race, gender, and bias, judge rules

2024-05-09T21:45:13+00:00

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Tennessee teachers can move forward with their lawsuit challenging a 3-year-old state law restricting what they can teach about race, gender, and bias.

U.S. District Court Judge Aleta Trauger denied the state’s motion to dismiss the case.

The Nashville judge also sided with educators over questions of whether they have legal grounds to sue the state, plus whether the federal court is the appropriate jurisdiction to take up complaints about the 2021 state law.

And in a 50-page memorandum to explain her single-page order, Trauger was frequently critical of the statute, which restricts teachers from discussing 14 concepts that the Republican-controlled legislature deemed cynical or divisive. She also cited shortcomings of related rules, developed by the state education department, to outline the processes for filing and investigating complaints, appealing decisions, and levying punishment that could strip teachers of their licenses and school districts of state funding.

“The Act simply invites a vast array of potentially dissatisfied individuals to lodge complaints based on their understanding of those concepts and then calls on the Commissioner [of Education], as a sort of state philosopher, to think deeply about what equality, impartiality, and other abstract concepts really mean and enforce the Act accordingly,” Trauger wrote in her May 2 memorandum.

Meanwhile, educators are at the mercy of the personal biases of authorities, which is “exactly what the doctrine of unconstitutional vagueness is intended to guard against,” she said.

The so-called prohibited concepts law was among the first of its kind in the nation that passed amid a conservative backlash to the racial-justice movement and protests prompted by the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis.

Among its prohibitions are classroom discussions about whether “an individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, is inherently privileged, racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously.”

The law’s defenders note that it permits an “impartial discussion of controversial aspects of history,” or as Rep. John Ragan, the House sponsor, described it: “facts-based” instruction.

But teachers say they don’t know how to be impartial when teaching about the theories of racial superiority that led to slavery and Jim Crow laws. The resulting confusion has influenced the small but pivotal decisions they make every day about how to prepare for a lesson, what materials to use, and how to answer a student’s question, ultimately stifling classroom discussion, many critics of the law assert.

Last July, lawyers for five public school educators and the Tennessee Education Association, the state’s largest teacher organization, filed a lawsuit in federal court in Nashville.

The suit says the language of the law is unconstitutionally vague and that the state’s enforcement plan is subjective. The complaint also says the statute interferes with instruction on difficult but important topics included in state-approved academic standards, which dictate other decisions around curriculum and testing.

Trauger, who taught school for three years before entering law school, suggested that the ambiguity could lead to a lack of due process for educators under the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment.

“That does not mean that a law has to be wise or perfect or crystal clear, but it must mean something concrete and specific that a well-informed person can understand by reading its text,” she wrote in her memorandum.

Kathryn Vaughn, a Tipton County teacher who is among the plaintiffs, called the judge’s decision an important early step in the legal challenge.

“I’m thrilled that the judge listened to our concerns as educators and seemed to understand that this law puts teachers in an impossible position,” she told Chalkbeat on Thursday.

A spokesperson for the state attorney general’s office, which filed a motion for dismissal last September, declined to comment on the new development.

The judge set a June 17 scheduling meeting with attorneys in the case to discuss how to manage the litigation going forward.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to show the state attorney general’s office declined to comment.

Hillsdale-linked charter group withdraws applications in Tennessee

2022-09-29T20:16:22+00:00

A charter group linked to Michigan’s Hillsdale College on Thursday abruptly pulled its three applications to open schools in Tennessee following public outrage over controversial statements made by the college’s president earlier in the year.

Dolores Gresham, who chairs American Classical Education’s board of directors, notified the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission that the charter network was halting its appeals process before the state this year.

The decision came just days before the commission was to vote on the network’s applications to open independently operated, taxpayer-funded public schools in Madison, Montgomery, and Rutherford counties, after school boards in all three places voted overwhelmingly this summer to reject their proposals.

The retreat puts an end — at least, for now — to the contentious battle over the network’s future in Tennessee.

But in a statement, Gresham suggested the group may apply during another year.

“We believe, with complete conviction, that there will be many future opportunities in Tennessee as there are in most of America,” Gresham said. “We look forward to applying for additional charter schools where local parents, teachers and students desire excellent education alternatives.”

In her withdrawal letter to Commission Chairman Tom Griscom, Gresham noted that the panel had declined to delay its scheduled Oct. 5 vote so American Classical could “address concerns and clarify confusion and misconceptions raised by Commission staff in each of the public hearings earlier this month.”

Dolores Gresham chairs the board of directors of American Classical Education.

Gresham, a former Republican state senator who is one of four Tennesseans on the group’s board of directors, did not specify what those concerns were. However, numerous issues — including questions about the adequacy of local public engagement and the network’s plan for serving students with disabilities — were raised during the hearings, as well as in written public comments from Tennesseans.

She also cited the commission’s Oct. 5 “meeting structure” that “will not allow Commissioners to hear directly from community members whose interests lie at the heart of the Commission’s work.”

Chase Ingle, a spokesman for the commission, declined to comment about discussions between American Classical and the state panel’s staff. “Any applicant has the right to withdraw an application in our process,” he told Chalkbeat.

The commission’s vote was expected to test the independence of the commission’s nine members, all of whom were appointed by Gov. Bill Lee.

Earlier this year, Lee said he wanted the Hillsdale group to open at least 50 charter schools in Tennessee. The Republican governor also pushed for a 2019 law creating the appellate panel, leading some critics to charge that the process was skewed to approve more charter schools, especially those related to the small conservative Christian college in south central Michigan.

But scrutiny of the process was elevated when Hillsdale President Larry Arnn declared in June that teachers are “trained in the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country.” The remarks, caught by a hidden camera and broadcast by Nashville WTVF reporter Phil Williams, sparked public outrage directed at both Arnn and Lee, who was on stage with Arnn and has refused to disavow his words.

A spokeswoman for Lee did not immediately respond when asked Thursday about American Classical’s withdrawal.

However, House Education Committee Chairman Mark White, one of Tennessee’s leading charter advocates, said he was pleased with the development.

“I believe this to be a good decision by Hillsdale charters at this time due to the events this past summer,” the Memphis Republican told Chalkbeat, referring to the fallout over Arnn’s remarks.

In August, White had said Arnn’s highly publicized words had made it harder for American Classical and every would-be charter operator in Tennessee.

“It’s set us back years,” he told Chalkbeat at the time.

This story has been updated with new information.

Marta W. Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Where Tennessee lawmakers landed on vouchers, guns, AI, and other education issues in 2024

2024-04-29T10:00:00+00:00

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Tennessee’s legislature is done for the year after a session marked by political infighting over private school vouchers and emotional debates about whether teachers and staff should be able to carry a gun in public schools.

The statewide voucher proposal fizzled after the Senate and House couldn’t agree on the specifics. Gov. Bill Lee quickly pledged to come back next year with another plan.

The bill to arm some school employees easily passed, defying dramatic protests at the state Capitol, a year after a Nashville school shooting in which three children, three adults, and the intruder were killed.

“This was a session of good, bad, and ugly,” Senate Minority Leader Raumesh Akbari said after the legislature adjourned on Thursday.

“Unfortunately, some really really bad bills ended up passing,” the Memphis Democrat added.

Republican leaders hailed the four-month session as a success.

“We accomplished things that will benefit the people of this state,” the governor told reporters minutes after the gavel fell.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee speaks with reporters at the close of the 2024 legislative session on April 25. He's flanked by the General Assembly's Republican leaders.

He cited the passage of a “historically important budget” that includes a consolation prize of $144 million for his Education Freedom Scholarship Act, in case it passes in future years. The failed voucher proposal seeks to give taxpayer money to any family who wants to send their children to private schools, regardless of their income.

“That shows a clear intent that we believe in this concept and that we expect that to get done next year,” Lee said.

By the end of the week, the governor had signed the bill to let some school employees carry guns, which took effect immediately.

The new law marks the biggest expansion of gun access in Tennessee since the killings at The Covenant School. Last year, the legislature appropriated $140 million to help place an armed officer in every public school, but many districts, especially in rural areas, haven’t been able to hire an officer for every campus.

“Districts have the option to choose,” Lee said earlier, arguing that some school systems need to let some employees carry a concealed handgun.

Protesters stage a "die-in" on the rotunda floor at the Tennessee State Capitol outside of the House chambers on April 23, 2024, after state lawmakers passed a bill to let certain teachers and school staff carry handguns in schools.

Legislation at the intersection of schools and guns

Lawmakers sorted through some 230-plus education bills filed in time for this year’s session — about 300 if you count those left over from last year in the two-year General Assembly. They ultimately passed about 70 that directly affect K-12 education.

For the second straight year, they made tweaks to a 2021 reading and retention law to address what many called unintended effects for students in grades three and four. Under a compromise approved on the last day of session, parents and educators of fourth graders will now have input on whether their students get held back because of low reading scores on state tests.

The legislature rejected tighter gun laws sought by Democrats and gun control advocates, and continued instead to pass legislation aimed at fortifying campuses. Among the initiatives: new school fire alarm protocols to take into account active-shooter situations; a pilot program to give teachers wearable alarms; increased safety training for school bus drivers; and guidelines to digitize school maps so first responders can access school layouts quickly in an emergency.

A rare bipartisan bill increases the penalty for anyone who threatens to commit an act of mass violence on school property or at a school-related activity.

Another measure, which Lee has signed into law, requires public schools to teach children age-appropriate firearms safety concepts as early as pre-kindergarten. The video-based training is to begin in the 2025-26 school year and, among other things, will instruct students who find a firearm that they shouldn’t touch it and should notify an adult immediately. The bill bars parents from opting their children out of the training.

So-called culture war issues played prominently again

One new law requires public school students to watch a video on fetal development produced by an anti-abortion group, or something comparable. Another measure will require public school employees to out transgender students to their parents. But a bill designed to ban LGBTQ+ flags in schools failed in the Senate amid concerns of a legal challenge based on First Amendment rights.

Tennessee’s age-appropriate materials law, championed by Lee in 2022 to cull certain titles from school libraries, now includes a definition of “suitable” materials for certain ages and maturity levels. And if a local school board doesn’t address a book complaint within 60 days, the complainant can now take the issue straight to the state textbook commission.

Another GOP bill that passed seeks to make sure that material related to “sexual activity” is excluded from the state’s mandatory family life curriculum for students in kindergarten through the fifth grade.

Meanwhile, legislation sponsored by Democrats directs the state education department to develop a program that public schools can use to teach students the skills of nonviolent conflict resolution.

Lawmakers exit the House of Representatives at the Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville on April 25 after adjourning their two-year session.

Social media and technology also were on the minds of lawmakers.

They signed off on legislation requiring minors to have parental consent to create social media accounts.

In addition, school districts, charter schools, and higher-education institutions must develop and implement their own policies on the use of artificial intelligence in the classroom, if they haven’t already done so. Those policies could include restricting or outright prohibiting the use of AI.

Amid that discussion, one bill requires that Tennessee history be taught in fifth grade. Having that issue codified in state law settles, for now, a debate that erupts whenever the state revises its academic standards for social studies.

Memphis was the focus of more legislation

Rep. Mark White and Sen. Brent Taylor, both Memphis Republicans, drafted several proposals aimed at education in their community.

The legislature passed one bill allowing the University of Memphis to create its own K-12 school district and expand its innovative University Schools model beyond campus borders. University officials said they’ll launch the district this fall, even as they’re still in talks with Memphis-Shelby County Schools about their contract that runs through fall 2026.

Another proposal — giving the governor the power to appoint up to six new members to the board of Memphis-Shelby County Schools — was never heard in committees after White agreed to hold off and work with the existing board and the district’s new superintendent, Marie Feagins, on an improvement plan.

Rep. Antonio Parkinson D-Memphis, has sought for years to shut down the Achievement School District.

A Democratic-sponsored proposal to end the Tennessee Achievement School District, the state’s sputtering takeover and turnaround initiative, passed out of the Senate but not the House. Rep. Antonio Parkinson, the sponsor there, pulled the legislation on the last day of session when White sought to amend the bill. Still, the ASD continues to shrink on its own as its 10-year contracts with charter operators end.

An effort to expand a separate pilot school turnaround project — which started in 2021 in Memphis, Nashville, and Chattanooga — failed to clear budget committees.

Lawmakers passed House Speaker Cameron Sexton’s charter school proposal to create new alternative education options for Tennessee’s at-risk youth. The plan opens the door to residential charter schools, a concern of disability advocates who warned against any measure that could lead to the institutionalization of youth or commingling distinct student populations facing varying issues such as substance abuse, juvenile crime, chronic absenteeism, and teen pregnancy.

Sexton trumpeted his and other charter school legislation headed to the governor’s desk. One bill rewrites state law governing vacant and underutilized public school properties to give charter operators the “right of first refusal” to purchase those public assets.

“This session did more than it’s ever done in our history to continue to put (charter schools) on a path to give parents the choice and alternative to traditional schools,” Sexton said.

A tighter budget meant fewer education initiatives

Passing a budget for state government is the legislature’s only required constitutional duty, and the task was more challenging this year as tax revenues flattened and federal COVID relief funding ended.

Still, Republican lawmakers approved a $1.9 billion package of tax cuts and refunds to corporations and businesses.

Representatives on the floor of the Tennessee House in 2022

They ultimately approved a nearly $53 billion spending plan that allocates an additional $126 million to raise the annual minimum salary for public school teachers from $42,000 to $44,500. The goal is to get to $50,000 by the 2026-27 school year.

Also included is $8 million to hire more school-based behavioral health specialists amid record reports of students experiencing stress, depression, anxiety, and other mental health challenges exacerbated by the pandemic. Another $15 million in non-recurring funds will help charter school operators pay for school facilities and maintenance.

But the legislature killed efforts to hire more school-based nurses and counselors, reimburse teachers for some of their child care expenses, and provide free feminine hygiene products in high schools, as well as separate proposals by a Democrat and a Republican to make school meals free for all students. It also said no to a bill to use tax revenue from Tennessee’s growing sports betting industry to offer child care scholarships to low- and middle-income families.

When the 114th General Assembly convenes next year, it will look somewhat different after this year’s elections. All seats of the 99-member House of Representatives and half of the Senate’s 33 seats will be on the ballot.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Changes to Tennessee’s 4th-grade reading law pass after compromise on retention policy

2024-04-25T22:01:13+00:00

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Parents of Tennessee fourth graders would have input on whether their children get held back because of low reading test scores, under compromise legislation that’s headed to Gov. Bill Lee’s desk.

The legislation also provides additional tutoring to students who advance to the fifth grade, even if they didn’t test as proficient readers or show adequate improvement in grades three and four.

The Senate and House agreed on the provisions Thursday to address longstanding concerns about Lee’s 2021 reading and retention law, which threatens to hold back an estimated 6,000 struggling fourth-grade readers.

Under the current law, which Lee proposed, fourth graders who don’t score well enough on state tests have to repeat fourth grade, and receive no additional learning supports and resources during that year. But legislators said that wasn’t their intent when they voted to strengthen retention requirements for third- and fourth-graders during a special session to deal with disruptions to schooling from the pandemic.

The governor signaled later that he will sign the bill.

The legislature’s vote came on the final day of a 2024 legislative session that began in January — and nearly two weeks after students began testing under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP, which the state uses to determine reading proficiency.

Educators and families called the timing of the bill’s passage ironic, given that lawmakers have received pushback about the law for several years.

“They could have saved many fourth-grade students and their parents a whole lot of anxiety if they’d passed this earlier,” said Michael Ramsey, an instructional coach for Grainger County Schools, near Knoxville.

Different versions of the bill passed last week out of the House and Senate. When neither side backed down, they turned to negotiators to reach a compromise.

Both chambers were in agreement about directing the child’s parent or guardian to meet with the teacher and principal to discuss whether it’s in the child’s best interest to be promoted or held back. But on Thursday, negotiators added that the parent won’t make the final call. The majority will rule.

The final bill also sets TCAP scores as the only promotion criteria, and tutoring as the only required intervention for advancing.

Tennessee 4th graders await test scores — and outcome of debate that could hold back thousands

The House bill, sponsored by Rep. Gary Hicks of Rogersville, would have let schools take into account the results of a local benchmark test too. And it would have allowed families to choose between participating in a summer learning program or tutoring in fifth grade if promoted.

But in a concession, the Senate, where the bill was sponsored by Dawn White of Murfreesboro, agreed to drop its insistence that the changes take place for only two years. That provision likely would have required lawmakers to revisit the law in 2026.

This is not the first time the legislature has revised the law.

Last year, when the statute’s retention provision kicked in for third graders, lawmakers widened criteria to include both TCAP and benchmark test results to determine which third graders are at risk of being held back.

Third grade is considered a critical year for reading because literacy is the basis for all subsequent learning.

But there’s a growing consensus among Tennessee policymakers that third grade is too late to identify and help struggling readers.

Last month, in a rare action, the state Board of Education approved a resolution asking the legislature to refocus the state’s intervention efforts on grades as early as kindergarten.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with Lee signaling he’ll sign the bill.

Gov. Bill Lee says he’ll sign bill to let some Tennessee teachers and staff carry guns in schools

2024-04-26T01:34:18+00:00

Gov. Bill Lee said Thursday he will sign legislation to let some teachers and staff go armed in Tennessee public schools.

“Districts have the option to choose,” Lee told reporters after the legislature adjourned for the year. Some school systems, he added, need that option.

His decision comes despite calls from teacher and gun control groups for the governor to veto the bill, as well as concern that parents won’t be notified if their child’s teacher is armed. In nearly six years as governor, Lee has advocated for parental rights on education matters such as curriculum and library materials.

The impending law becomes one of the most significant public safety actions in Tennessee since an intruder shot and killed three students and three staff members a year ago at a private Christian school in Nashville.

Partisan votes in the GOP-controlled legislature advanced the bill this month despite mass protests at the state Capitol seeking stricter gun laws in the wake of the massacre at The Covenant School.

Since Tuesday’s dramatic House vote sent the bill to the governor’s desk, many of the state’s largest districts, including in its four urban counties, have announced they will not use the option if the bill becomes law. They say their campuses generally have a trained law enforcement officer on duty.

“I think meeting … general threats to an environment with another threat to an environment is not something that we want to participate in,” said Marie Feagins, the new superintendent of Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

Rural districts, where it’s more difficult to hire school resource officers for every school, are more likely to use the option, according to Rep. Ryan Williams of Cookeville and Sen. Paul Bailey of Sparta, the bill’s sponsors.

Under the legislation, carrying a gun would be voluntary, and allowed only if the local school district and law enforcement agencies agree to the policy. The school employee carrying the gun would have to possess an enhanced permit, complete 40 hours of certified training in school policing at their own expense, and pass a mental health evaluation and FBI background check.

Meanwhile, the bill’s passage has put Tennessee in the national spotlight, drawing criticism from gun control groups such as Brady, the nation’s oldest gun violence prevention organization, and Sandy Hook Promise, founded by family members of the 20 children and six adults killed in a 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

“The Tennessee legislature has just dishonored all who were killed at the Covenant School shooting last year by choosing to promote the proliferation of firearms in classrooms,” said Kris Brown, the president of Brady, after the House vote. “There is no evidence to suggest that arming teachers will keep children safe from gun violence. Multiple teachers were armed at Covenant Day School, yet that was not enough to stop six children and school employees from being murdered.”

Tennessee Democrats, who voted against the bill, expressed disappointment that the governor plans to sign the bill.

“This legislation is an affront to every parent, to every Tennessean,” Sen. Raumesh Akbari, of Memphis. “We appropriated a record amount of dollars to fund SROs in every school. But instead we’re leaning into this type of policy.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee 4th graders await test scores — and outcome of debate on policies that could hold back thousands

2024-04-24T22:11:11+00:00

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Carly Fair, who has three children in Tennessee public schools, took on the role of an unpaid mom-lobbyist at the state Capitol this year on behalf of families like hers who have a fourth-grade child at risk of being held back under a 2021 reading law.

The law was well intended, she believes: If children are behind on their reading skills in grades three and four, they need tutoring and individualized attention to help them catch up.

But the law also says students in those critical early years may have to repeat a grade if they don’t score as proficient in English language arts on their annual state test, or show adequate growth as defined by the state.

“It feels like we’ve been in a pressure cooker for two years,” said Fair, whose daughter was one correct answer short of automatic promotion on last year’s state tests known as the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP.

“It was a real blow to her self-confidence,” Fair recalls about her daughter, then 8. “There were a lot of tears.”

Many third graders like Fair’s were able to advance to fourth grade last fall by attending a summer learning camp or receiving tutoring this school year.

But now, their families are waiting anxiously for the results of this spring’s TCAP assessment. If those students don’t demonstrate enough improvement, the law requires them to be held back — without receiving more tutoring or extra learning supports next year.

They’re also watching to see if lawmakers pass legislation to address what they believe are shortcomings in the statute — and outright missteps when it comes to thousands of struggling readers who took advantage of interventions to get promoted.

“The shocking part to me was they get no services, they get no tutoring, they get nothing, other than just retained in fourth grade,” Sen. Dawn White, a Murfreesboro Republican, told lawmakers earlier this year.

White is co-sponsoring legislation to revise the law to give fourth-grade parents a bigger say about retention decisions, and to provide additional learning services for students whose reading skills continue to lag.

She was among legislators who voted for the law in 2021 during a weeklong special session called by Gov. Bill Lee to address pandemic-related disruptions to schooling. The statute, which Lee pushed for, created summer learning camps and tutoring programs that have been popular with most families.

But Tennessee’s new retention policies, which started with last year’s class of third graders, have been controversial.

About 900 third-graders, or 1.2% from that class who took TCAPs, were retained last year. That’s significantly less than earlier projections after many families took advantage of intervention options and an appeals process.

For Memphis 3rd graders, threat of retention has hovered since kindergarten

This year, the state education department projects about 6,000 fourth graders could be retained — without the promise of additional supports.

That, Fair says, seems contrary to the law’s intent, which is to identify struggling readers, then to give them the tools they need to improve.

“TCAPs should be used as an alert system to assemble a team to determine where a student is,” she said, “and then to develop a plan to get them where they need to be.”

Sponsors of this year’s revision bill seem to agree.

Details stand in the way of an agreement

The Senate and House disagree about some specifics and appear to be headed toward a conference committee to try to negotiate a compromise before the legislature adjourns this week.

The House bill, sponsored by Rep. Gary Hicks of Rogersville, allows schools to take into account both TCAP scores and the results of a local benchmark test when determining whether a student is improving enough. If they aren’t, the student’s parent or guardian must meet with the teacher and principal to discuss whether it’s in the child’s best interest to be promoted or held back. If advancing, the student must take advantage of a summer learning program or tutoring during the fifth grade.

The Senate bill, sponsored by White, uses only TCAP results to determine whether the student is improving enough. While it allows parents and educators to jointly decide whether a student can be promoted, it requires tutoring throughout fifth grade, not summer learning, as the required intervention. And it puts the policy in place for only two years.

“We don’t want to come back and go through this all over again in two years,” Hicks, the House co-sponsor, told Chalkbeat after his chamber refused to concur with the Senate version.

But Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg, a Bristol Republican, likes the idea of putting a time limit on the changes. He was against relaxing the retention policy in the first place.

“We drew a line in the sand a few years ago,” Lundberg said, “and it’s a good line.”

Policy decisions trickle down to students

For Fair, whose child attends an elementary school in Nashville, following legislative debates about the issue has been a learning process. Last year, she began attending committee meetings at the state Capitol. Over the months, she’s met with lawmakers, members of the State Board of Education, and even representatives of the governor to talk about her family’s experience.

While officials have been accessible, “the disconnect from reality and how this affects people can happen pretty quickly,” she said.

Fair continued: “The emotional and relational toll that this can have 9- and 10-year-olds is pretty great. I don’t know if high schoolers experience this much pressure with their ACT and SAT tests.”

For now, she and other parents of fourth graders are watching for legislative developments and waiting for TCAP scores. Fair’s daughter took her assessment last week.

“She walked into it a little nervous, but brave,” said Fair. “I’m so proud of her.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Bill to let some teachers and school employees carry guns heads to Tennessee governor’s desk, despite protests

2024-04-23T23:54:26+00:00

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Protesters screamed “blood on your hands!” then lay down on the floor of the Tennessee State Capitol as if they were victims of gun violence, after lawmakers passed legislation Tuesday to let some teachers and staff carry guns at school.

In between, House Speaker Cameron Sexton paused business in the House of Representatives and ordered state troopers to clear the spectator gallery of protesters.

The 68-28 vote came one year after an intruder shot and killed three children and three adults at a Nashville school, prompting mass protests by gun control advocates and ongoing calls for tighter gun laws.

But instead of restricting gun access in one of America’s most gun-friendly states, the GOP-controlled legislature is sending Republican Gov. Bill Lee a bill that would expand it.

Gun control advocates were angry.

“They’re going in the wrong direction,” said Marley Mello, a 15-year-old Nashville student. “Guns are the problem, not the solution.”

Lisa Bruce, a retired Tennessee principal, called it a “Band-Aid to cover a gaping wound.”

“I could maybe get on board with it if we were already doing common sense measures to reduce gun violence in our state,” she said. “But this feels like a huge leap.”

After the bill's passage, students shout in protest in the rotunda of the Tennessee State Capitol.

The bill’s Republican sponsors have said the legislation is needed to provide an armed presence on every Tennessee school campus, especially in rural areas. Nearly a third of the state’s 1,800-plus public schools don’t have a school resource officer, despite an influx of state money to pay for them, due to a shortage in the profession.

On the House floor, Rep. Ryan Williams, of Cookeville, emphasized that carrying a gun would be voluntary, and allowed only if the local school district and law enforcement agencies agree to the policy. The school employee carrying the gun would have to have an enhanced permit, complete 40 hours of certified training in school policing at their own expense, and pass a mental health evaluation and FBI background check.

Republican lawmakers voting for the measure liked that local officials ultimately could decide whether the policy works for their community.

“I trust my local law enforcement. I trust my director of schools. I trust my teacher,” said Rep. Brock Martin, of Huntingdon.

But Democrats said the effort was misguided, shortsighted, and dangerous.

“We’re going to give somebody a little pop gun to go against a weapon of war. It does not work, folks,” said Rep. Bo Mitchell, of Nashville.

Tennesseans would be better served, Democrats argued, if the legislature passed laws requiring safe storage of firearms and background checks, as well as to temporarily remove guns from any person who is an imminent risk to themselves or others — all proposals that have been defeated by Republicans in charge.

The vote came after an hour of debate in which Democrats tried unsuccessfully to change the bill to exclude their counties, ensure parents are notified when their child’s teacher is armed, or remove a clause that shields districts and law enforcement agencies from civil lawsuits over how a school employee uses, or doesn’t use, a gun.

On Monday, one parent at Nashville’s Covenant School, where the shooting occurred on March 27, 2023, delivered a petition signed by more than 5,000 Tennesseans asking lawmakers to vote the bill down.

“While we all want safe schools and an end to gun violence, arming teachers with guns is not the way,” wrote Sarah Shoop Neumann, whose 5-year-old son was enrolled in Covenant’s preschool.

Another Covenant parent, Mary Joyce, called the bill “ludicrous.”

“Had my daughter’s teacher left the classroom to pursue the shooter, a classroom of 9-year-olds would have been left to protect themselves,” Joyce said.

Jeff Bledsoe, the executive director of the Tennessee Sheriffs’ Association, told Chalkbeat he expects few teachers to carry a gun if the bill becomes law. More likely candidates, he said, are school staff members who have a military or law enforcement background.

His organization opposed the legislation in 2019 when Williams sponsored a similar bill. However, it is neutral on the current bill after working with the sponsors to add more requirements before a person can carry a weapon at school.

Alison Beale, a mother and former teacher, is among spectators escorted by state troopers from the House gallery at the Tennessee State Capitol on April 23. Beale, of Hendersonville, is a Democratic candidate for the House.

Two weeks earlier, the bill easily cleared the Senate, where spectators also were ejected from the gallery after defying warnings from Lt. Gov. Randy McNally to stay quiet.

The governor has signaled he likely will sign the measure into law.

“I’ve said for many years that I’m open to the idea, but the particulars are important,” he told reporters last week.

An advocate for parental rights, the governor declined to comment on the bill’s intent to block a parent from being notified if their child’s teacher is carrying a gun.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee’s universal school voucher plan is dead for now, governor acknowledges

2024-04-22T16:34:26+00:00

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In the end, the gulf between competing school voucher bills in Tennessee’s legislature was just too wide to cross.

Gov. Bill Lee acknowledged Monday that his push to create a statewide program — which had been on the ropes for more than a month — was dead for the year after Republican leaders in the Tennessee House and Senate were unable to break through disagreements about testing and funding.

“While we made tremendous progress, unfortunately it has become clear that there is not a pathway for the bill during this legislative session,” Lee said in a statement Monday.

The Republican governor vowed to return with another plan next year and added that he’s disappointed for families “who will have to wait yet another year for the freedom to choose the right education for their child.”

The proposal’s failure hands Lee one of the biggest defeats of his administration, now in its second term.

It also signals that for all the momentum vouchers have in Tennessee — including a string of victories in the courts and legislature — Lee’s statewide proposal remains a divisive policy because of its potential to destabilize urban, suburban, and rural public school districts, and add a new burden on state and local finances.

For now, Tennessee has only its targeted voucher program in three urban counties, which provides taxpayer funding to 2,095 students to pay toward private school tuition, plus a smaller voucher program for students with certain disabilities.

As part of his broader school-choice agenda, the governor wanted his new voucher program to eventually become available to every K-12 student across Tennessee, regardless of their family income, and lawmakers took up two vastly different bills from the House and Senate.

But the chambers deadlocked on two issues, according to Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg, the Bristol Republican who worked with House Republican leaders for weeks to try to reach a compromise.

First, in addition to creating a new private school voucher program, the more expansive and expensive House version sought to dramatically reduce testing and accountability for public school students.

“We had worked really hard to get those measures into place,” Lundberg said, “and believe it would be a step backward for our state.”

Second, the House version proposed increasing the state’s contribution toward public school teachers’ medical insurance coverage from 45% to 60% — and paying for it with funding earmarked for teacher raises.

That funding pathway closed last week when the legislature approved a 2024-25 budget that retained the $125 million that Lee had set aside to increase the annual minimum salary for public school teachers from $42,000 to $44,500, as promised last year by the governor.

“Ultimately, the House and the Senate had looked at education freedom scholarships through two different lenses,” Lundberg told Chalkbeat on Monday. “We looked at it as school choice legislation. The House looked at it as a way to achieve both school choice and education reform.

“Our perspectives were just so different that we could not come together at the end,” he said.

Timing and cost were factors

As lawmakers entered what’s likely the final week of the 2024 session, they worried about the timing of creating an expensive new program in the midst of flattening revenues and during an election year in which most of their names will be on the ballot.

The voucher program would have been expected to grow over time, likely subsidizing tuition for families who would have chosen private schools anyway. In the program’s second year, according to financial analysts, the Senate version’s projected cost was $287 million, while the House version was projected to cost $384 million.

In addition, more than 50 Tennessee school boards were on record opposing the plan. And the research shows little recent evidence that vouchers improve test scores.

The hurdles were especially problematic in the House, where voucher proposals have historically been harder to pass. To win more votes in that chamber, GOP leaders added enticements aimed at public school supporters to reduce testing time for students, require fewer evaluations for high-performing teachers, and give districts extra money to help with their building costs, as well as more funding for teachers’ medical insurance costs.

On Monday, House Speaker Cameron Sexton framed the debate as helpful for future talks even though it didn’t produce a consensus this year.

“Universal school choice came closer to a full vote than it had ever been in the past,” Sexton said in a statement. “We will continue working until all parents have the same opportunity to use their tax dollars to choose the best school for their child.”

Democrats, who were united in their opposition to vouchers, said the governor’s proposal ultimately crumbled because many Tennesseans pushed back on a plan that generated more questions than answers.

“From the start, the governor’s proposal was heavy on talking points and light on the substance of how it would work and how much it actually would cost,” said Sen. Jeff Yarbro of Nashville.

“The funding and the accountability pieces were always going to be the sticking points,” he added, “because voucher proponents really want the funding without the accountability.”

Even as voucher supporters quickly promised to try again next year, groups representing the state’s teachers hailed the governor’s loss as a win for Tennesseans.

“Governor Lee’s proposal was poorly written, arriving late in session, and had zero accountability in the plan,” said JC Bowman, executive director of Professional Educators of Tennessee.

The leaders of Arlington Community Schools near Memphis, who issued a fiery statement in December denouncing Lee’s voucher plan as part of a systematic attack on public schools, said they were pleased by the legislation’s defeat — and troubled that the governor is already talking about next year.

“He hasn’t even taken a day to understand why his signature bill failed,” said Superintendent Jeff Mayo. “That tells me he doesn’t care to listen to our concerns. The end game is to ultimately usher vouchers into Tennessee to fund private schools, despite the lackluster evidence that it will actually help students.”

School voucher opponents were among protesters who rallied at the state Capitol in Nashville on April 17, 2024. By Marta W. Aldrich

Voucher policies have advanced under Lee

For years, school voucher advocates had watched their policy dream come up short in Tennessee before racking up a string of victories after Lee took office in 2019 amid significant turnover in the GOP-controlled legislature.

Lawmakers passed a bill on a narrow, controversial vote in the House of Representatives during Lee’s first year in office to help create an education savings account program.

The targeted program rolled out in 2022 in Memphis and Nashville for students from low-income families attending low-performing schools. Voucher opponents challenged the law in court and had some early legal wins, but the Tennessee Supreme Court declared the law constitutional in 2022.

After the program’s accelerated rollout and the addition of Hamilton County during its second year, the governor took another big step: proposing a separate statewide Education Freedom Scholarship program to launch this fall with up to 20,000 students, and eventually to eliminate all the geographic and family-income restrictions.

Dueling bills from the House and Senate easily advanced through education committees, but stalled for four weeks in finance committees before the governor accepted defeat.

In his statement Monday, Lee reiterated his reasons for pressing ahead, adding that he’s “never been more motivated.”

“It’s very simple,” he said. “This is about every Tennessee student having the opportunity to succeed, regardless of their ZIP code or income level, and without question, empowering parents is the best way to make sure that happens.”

Later Monday, he told reporters he will campaign for his voucher plan this year as he speaks with Tennessee voters and Republican lawmakers up for reelection.

“I won’t stop,” he said, “because I believe in kids, and I believe in their future and ... the freedom that families should have to make choices.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis reporter Laura Testino contributed to this report. Contact her at ltestino@chalkbeat.org.

Timeline: How private school voucher movement gained momentum in Tennessee before hitting a bump

2024-04-23T01:00:00+00:00

As Tennessee lawmakers got to work this year, school voucher proponents appeared to be closing in on their ultimate prize: a state law that would eventually allow for taxpayer funding for most kinds of schooling — public, private, parochial — for any student, regardless of family income.

But Gov. Bill Lee is regrouping after his proposed Education Freedom Scholarship Act, which was supposed to launch in the fall of 2024, stalled in the waning days of the legislative session. Republican leaders cited disagreements on big issues like testing and funding.

The Republican governor has pledged to try again next year.

Tennessee’s embrace of school vouchers for all was never a foregone conclusion. Slimmed-down versions of the idea died many times in the legislature before one finally squeaked through on a controversial vote in 2019.

A group of parents and local governments sued to block it, and the courts initially declared the plan unconstitutional. Those detractors continue to push back on Lee’s latest proposal, with more than 50 school boards on record opposing it.

Also, the research hasn’t supported the case for vouchers as a way to improve academic outcomes. Recent studies find little evidence that vouchers improve test scores. In fact, they’ve sometimes led to declines.

Big doubts remain about the cost, impact, and legal merits of a program that threatens to destabilize Tennessee’s public education system.

So how did vouchers take on an air of inevitability in Tennessee, before Lee’s retreat?

It was a combination of political swings, judicial shakeups that led to a string of court victories, and a pandemic that ignited culture wars and shook faith in public schools. Also, credit behind-the-scenes lobbying, political maneuvers, and heavy influence from out-of-state groups with deep pockets.

Below is a closer look at where the march to universal vouchers began, and how it arrived at this pivotal point in Tennessee:

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Thomas Wilburn is the senior data editor for Chalkbeat. Contact him at twilburn@chalkbeat.org.

Project credits:

Photography and illustrations: Elaine Cromie
Editing: Krishnan M. Anantharaman, Tonyaa Weathersbee

Editor’s note: This project has been updated with developments from the 2024 legislative session.

Tennessee budget keeps $144 million for statewide school voucher program that’s still in limbo

2024-04-19T01:03:18+00:00

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Tennessee lawmakers approved a state budget Thursday that includes $144 million to create a statewide school voucher program that Republican leaders say they’re still working to pass.

The money is in place in case the GOP-controlled House and Senate find a way to reconcile vastly different proposals for the voucher program, which would provide taxpayer funding toward private school tuition for up to 20,000 students. The universal voucher bill, called the Education Freedom Scholarship Act, is Republican Gov. Bill Lee’s top education priority.

But as lawmakers aim to wrap up their 2024 session by next week, the passage of the budget limits options for negotiators seeking to convince House members to compromise on their more expansive — and expensive — voucher bill.

To convince mostly rural representatives who are hesitant about taking funding away from their local school districts for private school vouchers, the House measure also seeks to give public schools $75 per student for building construction and maintenance, as well as money to increase the state’s contribution toward teachers’ medical insurance coverage from 45% to 60%, among other enticements for public school supporters.

Voucher bills stuck in finance committees

Meanwhile, the dueling voucher bills languished in finance committees for a fourth straight week without action, making the proposal’s chances for passage increasingly dim.

Still, Lt. Gov. Randy McNally said it was “premature” to declare the bill dead, as several news reports have done.

Until the legislature adjourns, “it’s still alive,” he told reporters.

McNally said the Senate is poised to approve its voucher bill, which unlike the House’s version requires recipients to take some type of annual test to show their academic progress. The measure, which is sponsored by Majority Leader Jack Johnson and has 17 Senate co-sponsors, also calls for open enrollment across public school systems.

House Speaker Cameron Sexton, whose chamber is more divided over the voucher plan, was reserved in his enthusiasm but pledged to keep working on a deal.

“At the end of the day, it’s an administration bill,” Sexton told reporters. “Until (Gov. Lee) tells us to stop negotiating and working with the Senate, then we’re going to continue to do that.”

Democratic lawmakers have been united in their opposition to either bill — and are staying vigilant as the legislative session enters its final week.

“I’ve seen legislation pass at 2 in the morning that we thought was dead for the year,” said Senate Minority Leader Raumesh Akbari of Memphis, who has served in the General Assembly since 2013.

“Anything can happen; anything has happened,” she added.

Base teacher pay will rise

State revenues are down, one-time federal COVID relief funding is running out, and money is tighter this year after years of budget surpluses.

Against that backdrop, the House and Senate voted along mostly partisan lines to approve a nearly $53 billion state government budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

The spending plan injects an extra $261 million in the state’s K-12 education system, almost half of which will go toward raising the annual minimum salary for public school teachers from $42,000 to $44,500.

“It keeps us on track to bring our base salary for our teachers to $50,000 a year by fiscal year ‘26-’27,” said House Finance Committee Chairperson Patsy Hazlewood, a Republican from Signal Mountain.

Nashville Democrats tried to add numerous budget amendments in both the House and Senate.

Rep. Aftyn Behn and Sen. Heidi Campbell sought to double the number of seats in the state’s pre-kindergarten program by reallocating the $144 million in voucher money. Rep. Bo Mitchell proposed scuttling $15 million in non-recurring funds set aside to help public charter school operators pay for school facilities and maintenance. And Rep. John Ray Clemmons proposed doing away with the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission and investing its funding instead in the state’s K-12 education funding formula.

The amendments were easily defeated.

Democrats also criticized a measure that includes up to $1.95 billion in tax breaks and refunds for businesses, but little tax relief for working families or new investments for impoverished Tennesseans.

“Because of the refusal of this body and our government to address poverty to help the poor and the marginalized, we are continuing to deal with a deficit, not only financially but morally in this institution,” said Rep. Justin Pearson, a Memphis Democrat who voted against the budget.

Hazlewood, the House finance chairperson, countered that the state’s poverty rate has gone down over the past decade. She characterized Tennessee as a “middle-class family” that has to spend its dollars carefully and is prioritizing programs that benefit education, families, safety, health, and social services.

House Finance Committee Chairperson Patsy Hazlewood, a Republican from Signal Mountain (center), discusses highlights of the state's 2024-25 spending plan on April 18, 2024, during a question-and-answer session with reporters. She is flanked by House Speaker Cameron Sexton (left) and House Finance Subcommittee Chairman Gary Hicks (right).

Peppered with questions about what would happen to the $144 million for vouchers if the new program isn’t approved, she said the money can’t be reallocated without the legislature’s approval.

“If there’s no bills (approved) that address that, any monies unspent remain in the budget. We may need those other monies when we come back in next year,” Hazlewood said, adding that the voucher funds also can’t be spent by the governor through an executive order.

Tennessee already has several smaller voucher initiatives. A program for students with disabilities launched in 2017, and the state education department rolled out a targeted pilot program for low-income students in Davidson and Shelby counties in the fall of 2022. It has since added Hamilton County and has 2,095 students enrolled in all three counties.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Bill to let some teachers carry guns advances in Tennessee. Parents wouldn’t be notified.

2024-04-03T00:19:56+00:00

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Legislation to let some public school teachers carry handguns advanced Tuesday in the Tennessee Senate as the Republican-controlled legislature quashed new attempts to tighten the state’s lax firearm laws following last year’s mass school shooting in Nashville.

The bill, which still faces votes before the full Senate and House, would let a teacher or staff member with an enhanced permit carry a concealed handgun at school after completing 40 hours of certified training in school policing at their own expense, as well as passing a mental health evaluation and FBI background check.

The local district and law enforcement agency would decide whether to let faculty or staff carry a gun under the bill co-sponsored by Sen. Paul Bailey of Sparta and Rep. Ryan Williams of Cookeville, both Republicans.

But parents would not be notified if their student’s teacher is armed, which runs counter to the GOP’s emphasis on parental rights and notification on education matters such as curriculum and library materials.

“The director of schools, principal, and the chief of the local law enforcement agency are the only ones notified of those permitted to carry,” Bailey told senators, “and they are not to disclose if someone is or is not permitted to carry on school grounds.”

The 7-1 vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee comes as Tennessee’s legislature continues to pass measures aimed at fortifying school campuses rather than restricting gun access in one of the most gun-friendly states in America.

Last year, after a shooter killed three children and three adults at a private Christian school in Nashville, the legislature allocated $230 million and passed laws to upgrade school facilities, pay for a school resource officer for every school, and ensure school doors remain locked.

Gov. Bill Lee later called lawmakers back for a special session on public safety. But none of the bills that passed specifically addressed concerns about easy access to guns that were raised by the March 27 shooting at Nashville’s Covenant School, where a 28-year-old intruder, who police said was under a doctor’s care for an “emotional disorder,” used legally purchased guns to shoot through the glass doors.

This year, bills moving through the legislature would require age-appropriate gun safety training for school children as young as kindergarten; change school fire alarm protocols to take into account active-shooter situations; create a pilot program to give teachers wearable alarms; increase safety training for school bus drivers; and set guidelines to digitize school maps so first responders can access school layouts quickly in an emergency, among other things.

Meanwhile, Democratic-sponsored legislation to restrict gun access by broadening background checks and promoting secure firearm storage have met swift defeats. Earlier on Tuesday, one House panel dismissed, without discussion, a bill seeking to ban semi-automatic rifles in Tennessee.

School safety is one of the top three education concerns of Tennessee parents, but significantly fewer parents agree that schools are safer when teachers are armed, according to the latest results in an annual poll from the Vanderbilt Center for Child Health Policy.

Sen. London Lamar, a Memphis Democrat who voted against the measure, said more guns aren’t the solution to stopping gun violence.

“I do not think that it is the responsibility of teachers in our state, who have taken the oath to educate our children, to now become law enforcement officers,” she said.

Lamar also expressed concern about one provision to shield districts and law enforcement agencies from potential civil lawsuits over how a teacher or school employee uses, or fails to use, a handgun under the proposed law.

Organizations representing Tennessee teachers and school superintendents prefer policies that place an officer in every school over any that could arm faculty.

But Bailey told the Senate panel that nearly a third of the state’s 1,800-plus public schools still don’t have a school resource officer, despite an influx of state money to pay for them.

Law enforcement groups have struggled to recruit enough candidates because of inadequate pay, occupational stress, and changing public perceptions about the profession.

“Everybody’s got a shortage right now, but it’s been going on for years,” said Lt. Kyle Cheek, president of the Tennessee School Resource Officers Association.

Cheek, who oversees school-based deputies in Maury County, said equipping a teacher for school policing would require extensive training beyond a basic firearms course. And it would raise other concerns too.

“Who takes care of the teacher’s class if they’re going to check out a security issue?” he told Chalkbeat. “It’s a huge responsibility.”

The advancement of Bailey’s Senate bill means the measure likely will face votes this month in the full Senate and House before the legislature adjourns its two-year session.

The House version cleared numerous committees last year, but Williams did not pursue a vote by the full chamber after the Covenant tragedy prompted gun control advocates to stage mass protests at the Capitol.

You can track the legislation on the General Assembly’s website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee statewide school voucher plan stalls as legislature enters final weeks

2024-04-12T00:11:45+00:00

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Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee’s push to create a statewide school voucher system is running out of time as Republican lawmakers work to reconcile significantly different proposals and iron out disagreements over student testing requirements.

After sailing through education committees and building early momentum, the bill has stalled for three weeks in finance committees — without public discussion.

GOP leaders hope to complete the 2024 session by April 26. That leaves two weeks to approve a state budget, decide on dozens more bills, and seek consensus on one of the biggest education proposals of Lee’s administration.

Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg of Bristol and House K-12 Subcommittee Chairman Kirk Haston of Lobelville have been key players during weeks of private negotiations.

“We’re still working on it,” Lundberg said Thursday as he emerged from the Senate chamber. He declined to take questions from reporters.

Privately, several Republican lawmakers have told Chalkbeat the governor’s statewide voucher plan is sputtering and may not have the votes needed to pass in their respective chambers, especially if negotiators tinker too much with the original proposals.

But publicly, the governor and GOP leadership sound hopeful.

“It feels like they’re close,” Lee told reporters after the legislature recessed for the week. “I’m very encouraged.”

Asked about sticking points, Lt. Gov. Randy McNally said the Senate wants to make sure voucher recipients take some type of annual state-approved test that can be used to compare and rank students in order to gauge the program’s academic effectiveness. The House version has no state testing requirements for students who accept vouchers.

House Speaker Cameron Sexton said his chamber is “adamant” that any school choice-related package includes a provision to reduce student testing in public schools. He also indicated that the State Collaborative on Reforming Education, an education research and advocacy group known as SCORE and founded by former U.S. Sen. Bill Frist, is being consulted as negotiations progress.

House Speaker Cameron Sexton and House Majority Leader William Lamberth speak with reporters as the legislative session enters its final weeks.

“We’ve had a lot of conversations this week,” Sexton said about talks between the House and Senate. “So we’re hopeful we can get there.”

Lee’s Education Freedom Scholarship Act, projected to cost $144 million in its first year, would provide taxpayer funding to up to 20,000 K-12 students to pay toward private school tuition. The governor has set aside that amount for the program in his proposed budget.

The Senate’s version also would allow public school students to enroll in any district, even if they’re not zoned for it, provided there’s enough space and teaching staff.

The House’s larger and more expensive version includes a long list of enticements aimed at public school supporters, including reducing testing time for students, increasing the state’s contribution toward health insurance costs for teachers, requiring fewer evaluations for high-performing teachers, and giving districts extra money to help with their building costs.

Democrats in the legislature oppose school vouchers, even while supporting many of the public school provisions in the House bill.

Caucus Chairman John Ray Clemmons said he’s glad to see the bill’s progress slow, but added that Democrats are staying vigilant as the two-year session moves toward adjournment.

“Deals get cut late at night,” said the Nashville lawmaker. “I would encourage citizens of Tennessee who truly value public schools to sleep with one eye open.”

Meanwhile, lawmakers are anxious to head home during an election year. All 99 seats in the House and half of the Senate’s 33 seats are on the ballot this year. Until the session ends, incumbents can’t begin accepting campaign contributions. And Republican members in both chambers don’t appear interested in taking a stance on the controversial voucher bill during an election year if the measure is unlikely to succeed.

More private talks by Republican leadership are planned for the weekend.

The bill is scheduled to be taken up Monday by the Senate Finance Committee and Tuesday by the House Finance Subcommittee. McNally, the Senate’s leader, said the outcomes there will signal the proposal’s chances.

“One of the keys will be as it moves through the finance committee in both houses,” McNally said. “I think if you see that, you probably know that things are going fairly well.”

You can track the legislation on the General Assembly’s website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee’s at-risk youth could see a new education option under charter school bill

2024-04-10T14:00:00+00:00

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A proposal to create new education options for at-risk youth in Tennessee is drawing interest from charter school networks, both inside and outside the state.

Labeled “opportunity” charter schools, the campuses would serve middle and high schoolers dealing with a range of challenges, such as substance abuse and juvenile crime, chronic absenteeism, teen pregnancy, getting held back in several grades, or being at risk of dropping out.

“We’re very interested in the proposal, because it’s directed at a lot of students we already serve,” said Jocquell Rodgers, executive director of Green Dot Public Schools in Memphis, which views the network’s Hillcrest High School campus as a good candidate to become an opportunity charter school. Green Dot’s charter contract to run Hillcrest ends in 2026 under the state’s Achievement School District, or ASD, which appears to be on its way out.

Rodgers likes that the Republican-sponsored bill calls for the state education department to develop different expectations for opportunity charter schools. Those measures likely would focus on college and career readiness instead of academic proficiency.

“It’s very hard to get some of our students to proficiency, which was the promise of the ASD. But we can give them job training and workforce development and make sure they’re on track to graduate, get a job, or go to college or a trade school,” Rodgers said.

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools views alternative education programs — for students who are struggling to attend and succeed in traditional public schools — as a growth area for the sector, especially if accountability expectations are adjusted. Nationally, charter schools already serve 42% of students who are enrolled in alternative education campuses.

Under the legislation by House Speaker Cameron Sexton and Sen. Ferrell Haile of Gallatin, enrolling in an opportunity charter school would be a matter of choice. At least 75% of the school’s students would have to be classified as at risk, and the school also could include a residential setting.

That would be significantly different from most of Tennessee’s current alternative education schools, which were created as mandatory short-term learning programs for students who were suspended or expelled from their traditional public school.

“It has worked in some other states,” Sexton told reporters recently about his charter school proposal. “We think it gives us another public option that could help kids in bad situations.”

Not everyone is on board with the idea.

Even some Republicans are wary of the prospect of opening the door to residential charter schools — a new type of publicly funded but independently run school of choice — or the potential of commingling at-risk student populations on one campus.

And leaders of traditional public schools say they’d prefer to meet the needs of at-risk students in existing local settings. They just need additional money to hire more teachers, counselors, behavior specialists, and social workers, they say, not new programs that divert funding from their school systems.

“We’ve said time and again that districts want to provide our students with more behavioral and mental health supports,” said Gary Lilly, executive director of the state superintendents organization.

Despite those tensions, the opportunity charter school legislation has advanced quickly since sponsors introduced it last month.

Last week, it passed the full Senate 19-7 along mostly partisan lines. It’s scheduled to be taken up Wednesday by the House’s finance subcommittee.

Sexton’s bill is narrower in scope than his 2023 charter proposal

A longtime charter school advocate, Sexton introduced a much broader charter bill last year that riled up the home school community and quickly stalled. That legislation proposed charter schools to serve home school students, in addition to a charter boarding school component.

Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton, a Republican from Crossville, answers reporters questions on April 4, 2024, at the state Capitol.

It also would have allowed operators to apply directly to the state-appointed charter commission without going through local school boards, prompting pushback from leaders of traditional public schools.

This year, Sexton’s proposal removed any reference to home schools. And operators would have to apply directly to the local district for authorization. As under current law, they could appeal to the state charter commission if their application is rejected locally.

“We’re hopeful,” Sexton said last week when asked about the prospects for this year’s bill. “We tried to pass it last year. We had some opposition. We worked through some issues, and I think now we’re in a pretty good place on the House side.”

Proposal goes beyond temporary placement

Tennessee already has hundreds of alternative education schools and programs, mostly through local public school systems.

State law requires at least one alternative school or program for grades 7-12 in each district to serve students who are suspended or expelled, until they can return to a regular school setting. School systems have the option of creating alternative programs for students in grades 1-6. And some districts also have choice-based schools or programs to provide an alternative path for students who, for whatever reason, don’t fit well into a traditional school environment.

Sexton’s opportunity school legislation takes cues from charter school laws in dozens of other states, including California, Florida, New York, and Texas.

“It’s not a temporary placement like under Tennessee law, where students are mandated to attend for a period of time. It’s a choice, where the school becomes a student’s new home school to try to go and learn,” said Greg Lippman, a former California charter leader who recently founded the New York-based Groundswell Network to support local work on alternative education models across the nation.

Last fall, Lippman was in Memphis to talk with educators and nonprofit and community groups during a gathering organized by Bobby White, founder and CEO of the Frayser Community Schools charter network.

And next month, Groundswell will convene a national conversation at Nashville’s Belmont University to discuss school models to serve youths who are overaged and undereducated, involved in the juvenile justice system, foster kids, or facing other educational barriers.

Lippman said that his group is not the source of Sexton’s legislation but that he supports it, as does the Tennessee Charter School Center.

“Many states have a more expansive definition of alternative schools than under Tennessee’s current model,” he said. “It’s not surprising that the speaker’s office would find interested partners with expertise in this area.”

Funding would come through TISA

Under the bill, opportunity charter schools would receive funding through Tennessee’s new K-12 education formula known as the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement, or TISA. The formula allocates more funding for students with higher needs, and the money follows the student to the school where they’re enrolled.

That’s a concern for the bill’s detractors, who say that dividing a finite amount of funding and resources for the same population of students won’t lead to better outcomes.

“Diverting funds to charter schools only rips funding from educational institutions that are constantly exploring ways to meet the needs of all students,” said Mary Jo Holmes, board president for the Tennessee Alternative Education Association.

“What will a charter school do that is better serving than current practices?” she asked, noting that Tennessee’s alternative education approach is based on collaboration among parents, educators, and disciplinarians.

“It is a team decision, not a menu item,” Holmes said.

Connor Grady, a spokesman for Sexton, said that, in addition to TISA funding, opportunity charter operators could partner with philanthropists or apply for federal grants, just as traditional schools and districts can.

Asked for examples of potential opportunity charter operators, Grady listed Goodwill’s Excel Center and groups in Colorado and Massachusetts.

Haile, the bill’s sponsor in the Senate, has said he doesn’t expect many opportunity charter operators to create residential schools due to the cost of such an endeavor. But it’s an option under the bill.

For Rodgers, the Green Dot charter operator in Memphis, the goal is to continue to do “transformation work” in a city with a large number of at-risk youth.

“Memphis-Shelby County Schools doesn’t have enough alternative schools to serve its own population, so maybe this could be a win-win,” Rodgers said. “It’s an opportunity for us to work together to address a big challenge in our community.”

You can track the bill’s status on the General Assembly’s website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Amid clamor from protesters, Tennessee Senate passes bill to arm some teachers

2024-04-10T00:44:08+00:00

Amid outbursts from gun control advocates in the spectator gallery, Tennessee’s GOP-dominated Senate passed a bill Tuesday to allow some teachers and staff to carry concealed handguns in public schools.

The vote was 26-5 vote along partisan lines.

Lt. Gov. Randy McNally ordered the gallery cleared of protesters after issuing several warnings before the vote, but many of them refused to leave, despite the urging of state troopers and warnings that they could be arrested.

Some held up signs that said “We’re still here” and “1 year later, are kids safer?” referring to Nashville’s Covenant School shooting, in which an intruder killed three children and three adult staff members on March 27, 2023.

Others chanted “Vote them out!” and “Let them teach!” as it took nearly 15 minutes to resume debate.

“People were damn mad,” Nashville mom Carol Buckley Frazier told Chalkbeat later.

“Some wonderful amendments were introduced to try to craft something better out of a horrific bill, but every one of them got tabled by the Republican supermajority. We just couldn’t believe it,” said Frazier, who came to the state Capitol to show her opposition to the bill.

A group of parents from The Covenant School were also in the balcony but were allowed to stay. Wearing school colors or with ribbons pinned to their chests, they have had a steady presence on Capitol Hill since the shooting to meet with legislators, attend committee meetings, and advocate for gun reforms.

The legislation still awaits a vote by the full House. If it passes there, Tennessee will be on the verge of enacting a law that most teachers and parents oppose.

The latest results from the annual statewide poll conducted by the Vanderbilt Center for Child Health Policy found that school safety is one of parents’ top education concerns, but significantly fewer parents said yes when asked if schools are safer when teachers are armed.

However, some rural lawmakers have sought the measure for a decade to help districts that can’t place an armed law enforcement officer on every campus, most recently due to a shortage in the profession.

The bill, co-sponsored by Sen. Paul Bailey of Sparta and Rep. Ryan Williams of Cookeville, lays out specific conditions before any school employee could carry a concealed handgun if they’re not a law enforcement officer.

First, the local district and law enforcement agency would have to agree to pursue such a policy.

Second, interested teachers and school staff who have an enhanced handgun permit would have to complete 40 hours of certified training in school policing at their own expense, and pass a mental health evaluation and an FBI background check. That training would have to be renewed every year that the teacher was carrying.

Parents would not be notified if their child’s teacher is armed. And one provision of the bill shields districts and law enforcement agencies from potential civil lawsuits over how a teacher or school employee uses, or doesn’t use, a handgun under the proposed law.

In remarks on the Senate floor, Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Memphis Democrat, noted the irony of any legislation blocking a parent from being notified about a gun in their child’s classroom, given the many GOP-backed laws passed in recent years to restrict curriculum and library materials under the banner of parental rights.

And Sen. London Lamar, another Memphis Democrat, gave an impassioned speech while holding her 8-month-old son.

Sen. London Lamar, D-Memphis, holds her infant son as she speaks against legislation that would allow some Tennessee teachers and staff to go armed in public schools.

“I’m upset. My child is at risk under this bill,” Lamar said. “This bill is dangerous and teachers don’t want it. Nobody wants it.”

Bailey, the Senate sponsor, said the provision about not notifying parents is intended as a deterrent to potential intruders who would not know who is armed and who isn’t.

Any liability for an accident would be borne by the teacher who chooses to carry a weapon under the law, he said.

Sen. Ken Yager, a Kingston Republican, spoke in favor of the bill.

“We are not trying to shoot a student,” he said, “but protect a student from an active shooter whose sole purpose is to get into that school and kill people.”

But Claire Jones, a Williamson County mom and hospice nurse who was at the Capitol on Tuesday, saw it differently.

“When you ask for stricter gun legislation and they actually loosen the laws, that feels intentional,” said Jones, who is running as a Democrat for the House seat currently occupied by Republican Rep. Gino Bulso.

“How did we come from a tragedy like Covenant to this point?” she asked.

You can track the bill’s status on the General Assembly’s website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee Senate passes bill to do away with the Achievement School District

2024-04-02T00:27:56+00:00

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A proposal to shift low-performing schools from Tennessee’s sputtering takeover and turnaround district to other state-approved but locally managed intervention models passed unanimously Monday in the full Senate.

The bill, which is awaiting action in the full House, seeks to phase out the Achievement School District, the state’s most ambitious and aggressive school improvement model, by the end of 2025-26 school year.

It also would strip the state education commissioner’s authority to take over neighborhood schools that are performing academically in the bottom 5%. Under the ASD, the state typically assigned those schools to charter operators to run.

In place of the ASD, the bill would create a school improvement model designed to foster more collaboration between the local district and the state education department.

Tennessee’s education chief would have authority to direct a local district to choose from three turnaround approaches — under a charter operator, a public university, or an independent turnaround expert — for each of its low-performing “priority” schools.

The turnaround work would be locally managed, but with state oversight. For starters, the state would have to approve local districts’ turnaround choices.

“The ASD has not worked for some time, which we can all agree (on),” said Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Memphis Democrat who is co-sponsoring the legislation with Rep. Antonio Parkinson, also of Memphis.

“This will put the control back in the hands of the locals,” she said on the Senate floor.

The bill is one of several legislative proposals seeking to address the failures of the ASD, created under a 2010 state law as part of a package that helped Tennessee win a $500 million federal grant in the Race to the Top competition.

Parkinson’s companion bill has similar goals.

Meanwhile, GOP leaders in the House are pressing for a massive private-school voucher bill that includes a provision to phase out the ASD on July 1, 2026.

All three measures advanced this year after several top Republicans in the GOP-controlled legislature acknowledged that the state-run district isn’t working and should be replaced.

Not only did removing struggling schools from local governance fail to improve student outcomes, but most ASD schools also performed no better than low-performing schools that received no intervention, according to researchers. Among the challenges, the state-run district struggled with high teacher turnover and significant community backlash, especially in Memphis, which became the hub of the ASD’s work.

The ASD, which had a peak of 33 schools in 2016, continues to shrink, especially since 2022, as schools began to complete their prescribed 10 years under the model. Currently, 13 schools are left in its portfolio, the last of which will complete their charter contracts at the end of 2025-26 school year.

“We’ve got to do something different,” Akbari said before Monday’s vote. “This bill would create a partnership between the local district and the state education department to make sure priority schools are receiving meaningful interventions that give it a chance for turnaround.”

How much those interventions might cost is unknown. School turnaround work is expensive, but the legislature’s fiscal analysts said the cost will depend on which turnaround methods and contractors are used for the work.

Akbari and Parkinson have been working with the education department to develop a new school turnaround strategy that doesn’t include the heavy-handed takeover tactics that put the ASD at odds with the districts that previously ran the schools, and their communities.

They also want to keep Tennessee in compliance with the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, which requires each state to have a rigorous improvement plan for schools that are struggling the most.

Some details of Akbari and Parkinson’s companion bills differ. For example, Akbari’s proposal could apply to any of the state’s approximately 95 priority schools, at the direction of Tennessee’s education commissioner.

Parkinson wants to create a hub of school improvement tools for any Tennessee public school to access, no matter how much it falls short or in what area. He wants to avoid adding negative labels to schools beyond existing state or federal designations that are based on their overall achievement, or the achievement gaps among certain student groups.

“You kill the esteem of the school, the teachers, the students, parents, when you label a school as being part of the ASD, or whatever you want to call it,” Parkinson said. “The fact that our state already gives priority designations to schools is enough.”

Even so, Parkinson said his and Akbari’s proposals “aren’t that far apart,” especially on the most important issues.

“There will be no state takeover under either version,” he said. “That’s been a dismal failure for our state. In the process, we’ve wasted over a billion and a half taxpayer dollars. And we’ve fallen short when it comes to some precious years in the lives of ASD students.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee bill to ease reading law’s retention policy for 4th graders clears first hurdle

2024-03-20T01:56:23+00:00

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State lawmakers advanced legislation Tuesday that would put fewer fourth graders at risk of being held back this year under Tennessee’s 2021 reading law.

Similar to changes passed last year to address worries about the state’s tough new retention policies for third graders, the proposal seeks to widen criteria for determining which fourth graders could be held back if they aren’t deemed proficient readers, or aren’t showing adequate growth.

The current policy bases those decisions on the results of state tests this spring in English language arts under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP. Under the proposal that advanced Tuesday, on a unanimous vote by the House K-12 subcommittee, results from a second locally adopted benchmark test could be considered, too.

And if the student doesn’t show enough improvement under either test, the school’s principal and teacher must meet with the parent or guardian to decide whether the child should be promoted or held back. If advancing, the student must receive academic interventions that could include summer learning programs and tutoring during fifth grade.

The Senate Education Committee is scheduled to take up the bill on Wednesday.

Projections show thousands of students could have to repeat fourth grade this year, even after participating in state-funded tutoring and summer learning programs.

Lawmakers have gotten pushback from families and educators about retention policies that began affecting last year’s third graders and this year’s fourth graders under the 2021 literacy law. Backed by Gov. Bill Lee, that law passed during a weeklong special legislative session to address pandemic-related learning disruptions.

Last year, due to the intervention options and an appeals process that many families used, only about 900 third graders, or 1.2% from that class who took the test, were retained because of low reading scores.

But currently, no such alternatives are available for this year’s struggling fourth-grade readers.

“This bill is going to give us some alternative pathways to get from fourth grade to fifth grade,” said Rep. Gary Hicks, the Rogersville Republican co-sponsoring it with Sen. Dawn White, a Republican from Murfreesboro.

The House’s massive school voucher bill, which advanced Monday with a positive recommendation from the chamber’s Government Operations Committee, includes one public school provision to add several pathways to address the fourth-grade retention quandary. But since the Senate’s voucher bill is strictly about school choice, there’s no guarantee that any public school provisions will remain if both versions pass and legislative negotiators have to reach a compromise.

Rep. Mark White, the Memphis Republican who chairs the House Education Administration Committee and is helping to shepherd the voucher legislation, praised Hicks for offering up an option.

“If the omnibus bill doesn’t make it, we don’t want to be left hanging with the fourth-grade retention issue,” White told Chalkbeat earlier. “It’s just in case the other one falters.”

Gary Lilly, executive director of the state’s superintendent organization, said parents and educators have been hopeful for a “legislative fix” to give more options to fourth-grade families.

“As written, we knew the law would put a lot of students in a bad situation,” Lilly said. “Certainly, a lot of legislators agree that something needs to be done. This way retains academic supports for students, but it still allows them to progress to the next grade, provided there’s agreement that it’s in the best interest of the child.”

You can track the bill on the General Assembly’s website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

University of Memphis could become its own K-12 school district under new legislation

2024-03-11T23:26:06+00:00

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The University of Memphis, which operates three high-performing schools for K-12 students on its campus, could become its own school district under new legislation from two Republican lawmakers from Memphis.

Rep. Mark White and Sen. Brent Taylor want the elementary, middle, and high schools on the college campus to come under the supervision of a university-led district and shift out of the purview of Memphis-Shelby County Schools, the state’s largest school system.

Under their proposal, the university also could create more schools, including using charter operators, without having to go through MSCS, with which the university has a contractual arrangement. Those new schools could be located throughout Greater Memphis.

White, who plans to introduce the proposal Tuesday in the House K-12 education subcommittee, said he wants to give the university authority to replicate school models that are generating some of the best academic results in Tennessee. While none of the schools have an academic requirement for entry, all three recently received A grades and reward-school designations from the state for student growth.

But a statement Monday from Memphis-Shelby County Schools suggested the district wants to keep its current arrangement.

“We value our longstanding partnership with the University of Memphis and believe Campus School, University Middle School, and University High School are important parts of the district’s educational options,” the statement said. “We look forward to continuing our partnership.”

Proposal envisions a new university-led governance system

The legislation, called the Innovative School District Act, seeks to introduce a new school governance model using public universities to scale up proven innovations in K-12 teaching and learning. The new pathway would remove oversight by traditionally elected school board members who represent the community’s voice in public education. The measure could have statewide implications if other universities pursue the same track.

Under the legislation, Tennessee’s education commissioner could approve a university-based K-12 school system. School governance would be handled by the university’s board of trustees, which also could appoint several of its members as a committee to perform the functions of a school board.

Not just any higher education institution could seek to become a school district, though. The university would be required to have a comprehensive doctoral program and operate a collection of training schools that offer clinical teaching experiences and mentoring for future educators beginning with pre-kindergarten. Such institutions also typically conduct and publish research on effective teaching techniques.

Currently, the University of Memphis, which serves students from pre-K through high school, is the state’s only public university that meets that standard. In addition to its three campus schools, the university partners with Porter-Leath, one of the city’s largest providers of preschool services, to operate an early childhood academy in the city’s Orange Mound neighborhood. Several other Tennessee universities operate training or laboratory schools, but do not serve the full continuum of students from pre-K through graduation.

White, who chairs the House Education Administration Committee, has talked for years with leaders at the University of Memphis about ways to expand its K-12 work. After opening a high school in the fall of 2022, the university warmed to the idea.

“We did not pursue this legislation,” said Sally Parish, the university’s associate vice president for educational initiatives. “Chairman White approached us about scaling our academic model and our academic success to serve more children. We now have a full compendium of pre-K through 12th grade, and the timing feels right.”

Students concentrate on their classwork at Campus Elementary School, one of three schools operated by the University of Memphis on its campus near midtown Memphis.

Why the shift would matter for MSCS

If the legislation becomes law, the shift to a university-based school system would not be immediately noticeable. While Memphis-Shelby County Schools is their district of record, campus schools already contractually operate under the oversight of the university’s board of trustees. The university has its own policies and procedures, employs all of the schools’ teachers and staff, and provides classroom facilities.

But Memphis-Shelby County Schools, one of Tennessee’s lower-performing districts, would not be able to report the high-achieving campus schools’ scores as part of its own academic data.

Eventually, the university wants to expand beyond its ZIP code.

“One of our challenges is that we have more children on our waitlist than we have in our schools,” said Parish, who oversees the university’s campus schools. “We know there’s a local demand; we just haven’t been allowed to meet it. Our contract with the district caps enrollment at 1,050 students.”

The enrollment cap was part of the contract approved by Memphis’ school board in 2021 to allow the university to open a high school recently on campus to prepare students for college and career. The university’s elementary school opened in 1912 and serves over 400 students. University Middle was founded in 2019 as a project-based STEAM school and serves about 270 students.

School leader sees a chance to diversify enrollment

Campus school programs have faced criticism for not reflecting the diversity of Memphis, where 64% of residents are Black, and nearly a fourth are deemed impoverished. The student population of Memphis-Shelby County Schools is 93% Black and 57% economically disadvantaged.

According to the latest state data, Campus Elementary School’s student population is 24% Black and 7% economically disadvantaged, while students at University Middle School are 48% Black and 10% economically disadvantaged. The state’s demographic data is not yet available for University High School.

Parish believes that with more autonomy and the ability to recruit charter operators to open schools in other parts of the city, the university can diversify its K-12 population and create academic tracks that are more responsive to local workforce needs.

Currently, she said, about 20% of the schools’ students are the children of university faculty and staff; 30% are from families who live within a 2-mile radius of the university; and the rest from the larger Memphis community.

“We’re not shying away from serving a diverse community,” Parish said. “We serve children in every single local ZIP code, but we don’t provide transportation to get to the university, and that’s a barrier that we want to eliminate. Currently, we’re limited in how we can serve students based on what the district allows.”

Having the ability to authorize charter schools would help the university expand to other parts of Greater Memphis, she added.

Tennessee now has 141 traditional school systems operated as city, county, or special school districts. Any of them can authorize a charter school under a 2019 law that created the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission.

The Tennessee Charter School Center, which advocates for charters, is not the driving force behind the new legislation but is consulting with its sponsors.

“What’s most important to TCSC is ensuring that any authorizer in Tennessee is high quality, follows national best practices, and is evaluated by the Tennessee State Board of Education,” said Elizabeth Fiveash, the group’s chief policy officer. “We are working with the sponsors to make sure that is reflected in their proposed language.”

You can track the legislation on the General Assembly’s website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee universal school voucher bill clears two more legislative hurdles after contentious debate

2024-03-07T03:30:14+00:00

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Gov. Bill Lee’s proposal to create a statewide school voucher program easily cleared its first Senate hurdle Wednesday, but took a split vote and five-plus hours of often contentious debate to pass out of a House committee.

The legislation — the most ambitious and controversial education plan of Lee’s five-plus years in office — passed 7-1 out of the Senate Education Committee, with the panel’s lone Democrat casting the dissenting vote.

In the House Education Administration Committee, the measure advanced 12-7, including four Republicans voting against it in the GOP-controlled legislature. Passage came even as Maryville City Schools Director Mike Winstead, a 2018 finalist for National Superintendent of the Year, called vouchers “a bitter pill, maybe some would say a poison pill” that he believes will destabilize K-12 education across Tennessee in the long run.

“You can coat that with a lot of good things and make it go down a little easier,” Winstead testified before the panel. “But in the end, we’re being asked to ingest a poison pill.”

Meanwhile, supporters pounded on the theme of parental choice.

“This is about parents finding the best learning environment for their students,” said Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds.

Lee’s Education Freedom Scholarship Act must clear more committees in each chamber before it can be voted on by the full House and Senate. The House bill now heads to that chamber’s government operations committee, while the Senate bill will be heard next by its finance panel.

Both proposals would start a new voucher program this fall with up to 20,000 students who could use taxpayer funding to attend private schools. Lee wants the program opened up eventually for any K-12 student, regardless of their family income.

The pieces of legislation remain vastly different, however, both in cost and scope.

The Senate bill, starting this year at $95 million and jumping to $333 million in the program’s second year, requires voucher recipients to take some type of tests that can be used to compare and rank students, but not the same rigorous standards-based tests that public school students have to take under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, known as TCAP. The legislation also would allow public school students to enroll in any district, even if they’re not zoned for it, provided there’s enough space and teaching staff.

The House version, starting at $398 million and growing to $425 million in the program’s second year, has no testing requirement for voucher recipients. It includes a long list of enticements aimed at public school supporters, including reducing testing time for students, increasing the state’s contribution toward health insurance costs for teachers, requiring fewer evaluations for high-performing teachers, and giving districts an extra $75 per student — or about $73 million in all in the first year — to help with building costs.

Rep. Chris Hurt, a Halls Republican who voted against the bill, expressed concern that the public school measures could get “stripped out” of the final legislation if Senate and House negotiators head to a conference committee to work out their differences.

And Rep. Charlie Baum, a Murfreesboro Republican who sits on the House Finance Committee, worried about the proposal’s high cost. He noted that Tennessee’s government faces a $400 million shortfall in its current budget.

Rep. Charlie Baum, a Murfreesboro Republican, flagged the high cost of the House voucher bill during a committee meeting but eventually voted for the measure.

“I understand that we’re adding the additional sections to make the bill more enticing, maybe to sweeten the pot,” said Baum, who later voted for the measure. “But it seems like in order to pass a $140 million freedom accounts [voucher] bill, we’re spending an additional $350 million” for public schools.

Baum asked sponsors to consider separate bills to vote on the private school voucher and public school provisions based on their costs and merits. But Rep. Scott Cepicky, a Maury County Republican who is carrying the bill for House Majority Leader William Lamberth, declined.

The voucher proposal, Cepicky said, was the right “vehicle” to address long-standing challenges for public educators.

Rep. Antonio Parkinson balked at that statement though. The Memphis Democrat said lawmakers have the power any time to create legislation to address matters related to public education.

“For some reason, we’ve chosen to create a lemon,” said Parkinson, seizing on the same automotive analogy. “And that vehicle now has all of these great options that are in it, but is tied to four flat tires.”

The House debate waded into the potential for voucher money going to undocumented students or to private schools teaching atheist, Satanic, or Muslim curriculum.

Questions also were raised about whether federally required services for students with special needs would lead to new federal regulations on private schools that accept vouchers. There was little discussion, however, about whether voucher recipients with special needs would receive adequate services from private schools.

Chairman Mark White, a Republican from Memphis, also received complaints from several people who weren’t allowed to testify.

While two people each spoke for and against vouchers, pro-voucher voices included Robby Starbuck, a video director and conservative political activist, and Walter Blanks Jr., a spokesperson for the American Federation for Children advocacy group. White declined to hear testimony from voucher opponents Eric Welch, an elected school board member from Williamson County, and Matt Steinhauer, a Franklin pastor and parent.

In the other chamber, Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Democrat from Memphis, questioned why the Senate bill doesn’t require voucher schools to be held to the same accountability standards as public schools, including TCAP tests, Tennessee’s third grade retention law, and the state’s new A-F designations for schools.

“If the majority of students in that [private] school who are taking these public dollars are performing poorly, will the school face any action based on what’s written in this legislation, where they can no longer accept students who have these vouchers?” Akbari asked.

Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg, who drafted the Senate’s version, responded no.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee contributed to this report.

Tennessee GOP leaders optimistic about universal school voucher prospects after first week of debate

2024-03-01T21:40:10+00:00

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Republican leaders sounded optimistic about the prospect of passing some kind of expanded school voucher program, even as they stared at three markedly different proposals during the first week of public debate in Tennessee’s legislature.

All three pieces of legislation — one from Gov. Bill Lee, one from the Senate, and one from the House — have two things in common.

First, they aim to start a statewide voucher program with 20,000 students and eventually allow any K-12 student to use taxpayer funding to attend a private school.

Second, they’re expensive: Lee’s proposal would cost an estimated $144 million in its first year, while the projected price tag for the Senate’s version is $333 million and the House’s is $425 million, according to the first reports by the legislature’s financial analysts.

Beyond that, there are big differences in scope and approach.

The governor’s seven-page plan, called the Education Freedom Scholarship Act, does not require participating students to take annual tests to measure whether the plan leads to better academic outcomes.

The Senate’s 17-page version, from Majority Leader Jack Johnson, requires voucher recipients to take some type of tests, approved by the state Board of Education, that can be used to compare and rank students. It also would allow public school students to enroll in any district, even if they’re not zoned for it, provided there’s enough space and teaching staff.

The House’s 39-page proposal, filed Monday by Majority Leader William Lamberth, has no testing requirement for voucher recipients. The omnibus-style package also includes a slew of enticements for supporters of public schools, such as reducing testing time for their students, increasing the state’s contribution toward health insurance costs for teachers, requiring fewer evaluations for high-performing teachers, and giving districts an extra $75 per student — or about $73 million in all in the first year — to help with building costs.

Even with numerous legislative hurdles to clear before pivotal votes could happen on the House and Senate floors, the leaders of both chambers talked Thursday about the possibility of letting negotiators resolve their differences in a conference committee.

“Most of the time, the conference committee can work things out,” Lt. Gov. Randy McNally told reporters Thursday after the legislature had finished its business for the week.

“I don’t think either side is just locked in stone,” Lamberth added later.

Meanwhile, the governor told reporters he wasn’t worried that the Senate and House were starting out with very different approaches. He characterized his own proposal as simply a “framework” to get the discussion rolling.

“The encouraging part for me is there is an agreement that everyone wants to get school choice done,” Lee said. “The core tenets are the same. That’s how the legislative process works.”

House Republican leaders angered some within their own party by bringing their measure up for its first vote on the day after filing the massive package.

“This bill was dropped in our lap last night at 5 o’clock,” Rep. Todd Warner, a Chapel Hill Republican, said Tuesday as the measure was debated in the K-12 subcommittee. " We have not had the proper time to vet this bill, to go through it. There are lots of unanswered questions.”

But after two-plus hours of discussion, with representatives from the governor’s office in the room and a designee from House Speaker Cameron Sexton’s office available to break a tie vote, if necessary, the bill cleared its first legislative hurdle 6-2. Warner and Rep. Sam McKenzie of Knoxville voted no, and two other members did not vote. Rep. Kirk Haston, a Republican and public school official from Perry County who chairs the subcommittee, voted yes.

Lamberth, the majority leader from Portland who is sponsoring the House bill, said members were given ample time to review and discuss the bill.

“We will also have at least six or seven weeks before it will be on the House floor,” he said. “Nobody’s rushing any of this.”.

The next votes are expected on March 6 in the House and Senate education committees. If the measures clear those panels, they would head to the chambers’ finance committees and face a tougher audience because of their cost, especially in future years as the program grows.

Tennessee already has a nearly $378 million budget shortfall through the first six months of the current fiscal year, and Lee’s proposed budget would slash corporate business property taxes by hundreds of millions of dollars.

The state’s largest teacher organization also charged that the House bill aims to use money allocated for teacher raises to pay for other parts of the bill.

“The harm this voucher proposal would cause every district in the state cannot be offset by the other components included in the legislation,” Tanya T. Coats, president of the Tennessee Education Association, said in a statement on Friday.

Another financial concern is that the program would increasingly take on the cost of educating students who would have gone to private schools anyway.

Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds, while answering questions this week before the House panel, said more than half of the students enrolled in Tennessee’s current voucher pilot program in Davidson, Hamilton, and Shelby counties had never previously attended public schools. That’s because they enrolled as kindergartners, moved in from out of state, or took advantage of a revision in the 2019 law that opened up applications to families who might have been eligible while Lee’s Education Savings Account program was being challenged in court.

You can track the legislation and view a summary of differences in various proposals in an analysis by The Education Trust of Tennessee.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee reading law’s retention policies should start as early as kindergarten, state board says

2024-03-04T23:54:55+00:00

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Tennessee’s top education policy board is urging Gov. Bill Lee and state lawmakers to refocus efforts to identify and help struggling readers on students in lower grades — as early as kindergarten — rather than waiting until third or fourth grade to intervene.

In a rare action, the state Board of Education unanimously approved a resolution Monday asking elected officials to revisit the state’s 2021 literacy law, which targeted third and fourth graders and strengthened retention rules for students who score poorly on state tests.

Over the past three years, the board has been working through the details and challenges of implementing the controversial law, which passed during a special legislative session called by the governor to address pandemic-related learning disruptions.

The law created popular summer learning camps and tutoring programs. It also included less popular provisions increasing the likelihood that third and fourth graders could be held back a grade eventually if they don’t perform well enough in English language arts under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP.

Third grade, when Tennessee begins to give its students TCAP tests, is a critical year for reading proficiency, because literacy is considered key to all later learning.

The board’s request for the state to reconsider the law’s retention provision is based in part on new tools that Tennessee teachers are using to identify reading problems before the third grade.

“Retaining students in grades K-3 rather than grades 3-4 will ensure that students who are in the most need of additional reading support will have access to foundational literacy skills instruction at a critical point in their foundational literacy development should they be retained,” the resolution reads.

While years of research shows the overall costs and benefits of retaining students are unclear, the general consensus among researchers and educators is that the earlier a struggling student is retained, the better the outcomes for that student.

“Third grade is too late,” Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds told the board last month when members asked whether Tennessee’s reading law is targeting the right age group.

Additionally, Tennessee students in kindergarten, first grade, and second grade now take three tests annually to screen them for potential reading challenges. Data from those tests wasn’t available when the 2021 law passed, but it could be used now to trigger key supports, interventions, and retention decisions earlier in a student’s academic career, the resolution says.

Ryan Holt, who represents Nashville on the board and wrote the resolution, said the law had a good intent but needs a “course correction.”

Executive Director Sara Morrison agreed. “It pushes us in the right direction as a state to look at those earlier grades and use data responsibly to make decisions earlier than third grade, but allows for that backstop to remain in third grade where we have that consistent TCAP measure,” she said.

Thousands of third graders were at risk of being held back last year because of their TCAP scores, but ultimately only about 900 third graders, or 1.2% were retained — not significantly more than in an average school year — thanks to intervention options and an appeals process that many families took advantage of.

The law also requires this year’s fourth graders to be held back if they don’t score as proficient, or show “adequate growth,” on their TCAPs.

Officials are projecting that the fourth grade retention number will be significantly higher than the third-grade rate, because the law allows for fewer exemptions for those students.

Just weeks ago, the state board approved a complex formula for what constitutes enough improvement for fourth graders — but not before several members questioned whether the law is targeting the right age group.

“I just want to encourage us to keep moving in the direction of working with teachers who would say the earlier, the better. Let’s not wait,” said Larry Jensen, a board member from West Tennessee.

Board Chairman Robert Eby, from Oak Ridge, said the body’s decision Monday to send a message to elected officials falls in line with its duty to develop and maintain a master plan for K-12 public education.

“We don’t pass many resolutions,” Eby said. “I think it shows the importance we’re putting on this issue.”

Asked about the board’s resolution, a spokeswoman for the governor reiterated the law’s intent, supports, and impacts.

“Beginning in kindergarten, students have access to high-dosage tutoring and summer school programs that reinforce proven phonics-based instruction,” said Elizabeth Lane Johnson, Lee’s press secretary. “Parents and teachers can track their students’ progress through regular reading screening tests, so they can determine the right path forward based on the unique needs of each student.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis school board appointment bill on hold amid talks with state lawmakers

2024-03-01T11:00:00+00:00

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A state lawmaker is giving the Memphis-Shelby County school board time to devise an improvement plan before pursuing legislation to empower Gov. Bill Lee to appoint up to six new members to the locally elected body.

Rep. Mark White said he has spoken with several current board members and the district’s incoming superintendent, Marie Feagins, since Chalkbeat reported in early February that he’s consulting with the state attorney general’s office on a school governance bill aimed at his home county.

“I’ve told them you’re going to have to manage the district better, and they indicated that they understood,” White said during a recent interview in his office at the state Capitol.

The Memphis Republican wants the board to deliver an action plan to him in March, before the legislature is expected to adjourn in April. The plan, he said, should include how district leaders are addressing challenges with literacy, truancy, graduation rates, teacher recruitment, underutilized school buildings, and a backlog of building maintenance needs, among other things.

MSCS building strategy is in the works. See which schools may be affected.

“Our city is begging for change when it comes to education, and I want to know that this school board has a plan,” said White, who chairs a House education committee.

If the board doesn’t deliver, White plans to file his legislation in the next few weeks.

Several board members have said White’s proposal smacks of state overreach — but they want to collaborate with the lawmaker, who is also locally elected, to advance the school district’s work. Still, there’s confusion about exactly what White wants and when he wants it.

“We do have to come up with those agreements or deliverables that he’s talking about,” said board member Mauricio Calvo, who tried unsuccessfully in January to get the board to set priorities for its next superintendent.

“It’s not just because he is saying that. It’s because we want to get to better outcomes for children, for students,” Calvo continued.

Althea Greene, the board’s chair, did not respond to Chalkbeat’s questions about the status of the talks. She sent a statement through the board’s external communications firm saying, in part, that “we are currently in the process of engaging our community with Rep. White regarding his plan.”

White has cited prolonged frustration with the board’s leadership. His legislation would keep the board’s current elected members, but add others through Lee’s appointments based on recommendations from local officials and stakeholders.

The East Memphis lawmaker met with six of the district’s nine school board members, including Greene and Calvo, during a previously scheduled Feb. 14 meeting at the Capitol, which he called “very productive.”

Six school board members for Memphis-Shelby County Schools pose with Rep. Mark White and Sens. Raumesh Akbari and Brent Taylor during a meeting at the Capitol on February 14, 2024.

Days after, White spoke by phone with Feagins, a Detroit school leader picked by the board in February to be the next leader of the state’s largest school system. Her selection came in spite of White’s 11th-hour request that the board keep interim Superintendent Toni Williams and delay hiring a leader for a second time.

Michelle McKissack, another school board member at the Capitol meeting, is hopeful for more discussions with state officials that include Feagins. More specifically, she wants to understand White’s expectations.

“I would love to have a meaningful meeting with Rep. White,” she told Chalkbeat Thursday, “but I have no idea what his plans are.”

Feagins, who is scheduled to start her new job by July 1, impressed board members during interviews with booklets that included her review of the Memphis district. (Chalkbeat’s request for these public records has not yet been filled.)

Though she does not yet have a contract, Feagins was introduced at Tuesday’s board meeting and has been meeting this week with Memphis leaders. She is also building a plan for her first 100 days on the job, according to a press release from the board’s communications firm.

White has emphasized the need for urgency and expects to meet with Feagins next week to “get better communications.”

The Feb. 14 meeting with school board members included two other state lawmakers representing Memphis: Democratic Sen. Raumesh Akbari and Republican Sen. Brent Taylor. Taylor is listed as the Senate co-sponsor of White’s proposed legislation.

“We all want the same thing: for our kids to read and write and compete on a national and international level,” Akbari said.

“But the elephant in the room was the pending legislation,” she continued, “and I suggested that we set that aside because I don’t think it’s necessary. School board members are elected by the people, and their constituents should hold them responsible.”

White agrees.

“The best fix would be if the citizens of Memphis elect some strong school board members,” he told Chalkbeat. “Five seats are up [for election] this year. We shall see.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Massive House proposal is third universal school voucher bill before Tennessee lawmakers

2024-02-27T03:18:19+00:00

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Three school voucher proposals now before Tennessee lawmakers would create a new statewide program that eventually could open eligibility to all K-12 students, regardless of family income.

But the similarities end there.

The latest version, filed Monday by House Majority Leader William Lamberth, of Portland, has no testing requirements for students who accept public funding to attend private schools. Gov. Bill Lee’s version doesn’t either, but Senate leaders say that approach is a non-starter.

The House plan also would make it easier for middle-class families to access the program during its first year than under the two versions filed last week.

Proposals by the governor and the Senate would reserve the first 10,000 slots for families who are at or below 300% of the federal poverty level. But the House version would bump that to 400% of the poverty level, which equates to $124,800 for a family of four — a departure from Lee’s 2019 Education Savings Account law aimed at low-income families who attend low-performing schools in three urban areas.

The biggest difference, however, is in the House’s sweeping attempt to address a plethora of long-standing concerns by public school officials in a bill purportedly about school choice.

From complaints about overtesting of students to the cost of health care insurance for public school teachers, the 39-page proposal devotes far more pages to existing public school policies than new ones for vouchers.

Last week, House Speaker Cameron Sexton called the upcoming omnibus-style bill an “all-encompassing approach” that’s based on feedback from public school leaders during recent months.

“It’s not just about choice; it is about K-12 education,” Sexton said.

But Democratic leaders vowed that no members of their outnumbered party will support any of the voucher proposals, even if some include policies that they’ve fought for in the past for public schools.

“They’re trying to buy votes,” said Democratic Caucus Chair John Ray Clemmons, of Nashville. “They’re just throwing in everything they can to try to get enough votes to pass this voucher scam.”

Meanwhile, Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, who leads the Senate, said he’d “probably rather stick with the issues at hand” instead of expanding the bill’s scope beyond vouchers.

The legislation could be taken up Tuesday by a House subcommittee and Wednesday in the Senate Education Committee. But GOP leaders say it will be weeks before any votes are held.

Non-voucher proposals for public schools under the House bill include:

Reducing testing time and possibly pivoting from the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program to a different “statewide standardized assessment.”
Increasing the state’s coverage of the cost of medical insurance for teachers and staff from 45% to 60%.
Phasing out the Achievement School District, the state’s turnaround district for low-performing schools, on July 1, 2026.
Adding several pathways beyond those outlined in a 2021 literacy law for fourth graders to get promoted if they don’t score proficient on this year’s TCAP in English language arts.
Reducing the number of required evaluations for higher-performing teachers.
Extending to eight years the validity of practitioner and professional teacher licenses.
Allowing high school students to take career readiness assessments instead of retaking the ACT exam.
Increasing the funding weight for small school systems from 5% to 8% under the state’s new K-12 funding structure known as the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement Act.
Reducing the frequency of student screenings through the state’s learning intervention program known as RTI.

Much of the disagreement over universal vouchers centers on the voucher program’s cost and how much private schools should be held accountable for results if they accept taxpayer money.

All three pieces of legislation would offer 20,000 vouchers this fall. But the House legislation stipulates that the program would increase by 20% annually if funding is available, while Lee wants to open it up to any student in the second year.

The governor proposes to give each recipient $7,075 this fall, which would cover about 62% of the average $11,344 cost of attending a private school in Tennessee, according to Private School Review.

Legislative staff released an initial financial analysis Monday showing the governor’s program would cost $144 million next fiscal year, which Lee has included in his proposed budget; $346 million the following year for an estimated 47,000 participants; and then exceeding that amount in subsequent years when “the liability to the state could significantly grow.”

Fiscal agents said over 1.12 million students would eventually be eligible to participate, including 155,650 students currently attending nonpublic schools.

“Due to the universal nature of the program, it is assumed that students already attending private school will seek the additional funding through the EFS Program,” the analysts wrote.

The analysts also noted that none of the legislative proposals include a plan to help offset an anticipated decrease in local revenue for public schools as students pivot to private schools.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee lawmakers are increasingly ready to ditch the Achievement School District. What’s next?

2024-02-23T11:00:00+00:00

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After a decade of painful takeovers of neighborhood schools, contentious handoffs to charter networks, and mostly abysmal student performance, Tennessee’s Achievement School District appears to be on its way out.

Several of the GOP-controlled legislature’s top Republicans are acknowledging that the state’s most ambitious and aggressive school turnaround model has failed — and should be replaced eventually with a more effective approach.

Meanwhile, Democrats continue to push for legislation designed to end the so-called ASD, created under a 2010 state law aimed, in part, at transforming low-performing schools.

“I expect we will move in a different direction,” Sen. Bo Watson, the powerful chairman of his chamber’s finance committee, recently told reporters.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Bo Watson

The Hixson Republican called the charter-centric school turnaround model an “innovative” idea that fell flat, at least in Tennessee. It would be foolish, Watson added, to keep spending money on an initiative that isn’t working and already has cost the state more than $1 billion — a sentiment echoed by Lt. Gov. Randy McNally and House Speaker Cameron Sexton.

But if the legislature decides to shutter the ASD and Gov. Bill Lee signs off, important questions remain about how Tennessee will support thousands of students in its lowest-performing schools.

How quickly will the shutdown occur?
What will happen to ASD school communities? Currently, the district serves 4,600 students in 12 schools in Memphis and one in Nashville.
Will the state honor remaining contracts with charter operators, the last of which end in 2026?
What statewide improvement strategy will replace the ASD for schools in the state’s bottom 5%? Ninety-five schools currently fall in that category and many have undergone a variety of interventions, with limited success.
And will the U.S. Department of Education approve the change as part of Tennessee’s plan for complying with the 2015 U.S. law known as the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA?

In order to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in federal education funding to support Tennessee students and schools, the state is required to have a rigorous improvement plan for schools that are struggling the most. Since Tennessee’s ESSA plan was approved in 2017, the ASD has served that purpose.

The turnaround district “serves as our most intensive intervention for priority schools,” declares the 401-page plan, the state’s guiding document for K-12 accountability policies. It also commits Tennessee to making school turnaround a priority.

“Students can’t wait,” the plan says. “Schools that have been historically underperforming and are not showing adequate growth must have state intervention.”

Brian Blackley, a spokesperson for the state education department, said scrapping the ASD would require two things: a change in state law and an amendment to Tennessee’s ESSA plan.

If the legislature changes the law, ESSA revisions are doable, according to a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Education.

“Tennessee has the ability to make changes to the design and structure of its local educational agencies, including the Achievement School District, without first seeking approval from the U.S. Department of Education,” the spokesperson told Chalkbeat.

That said, because the ASD is central to Tennessee’s federal accountability plan, the state would have to submit an amendment to the federal government, and “the department will work with the state as needed,” the spokesperson said.

The process likely would take months, since a period of public engagement on potential changes is required.

ASD brought high hopes, hard lessons

While the ASD’s demise has been looming, its birth was filled with hope when Tennessee passed the First to the Top Act, a sweeping education reform package that was the cornerstone of its winning federal Race to the Top grant application.

Taking cues from the successful turnaround of schools in New Orleans and using tens of millions of federal dollars to pay for the rollout, Tennessee’s new law created a state-run district with the power to take over struggling schools and recruit charter management organizations to run them, giving those operators autonomy to design and implement plans for curriculum, instruction, and school leadership. KIPP and Green Dot Public Schools were among national networks that signed on, and the model inspired several local charter groups to form and join the work.

Unlike incremental academic gains associated with school improvement, school turnaround calls for dramatic gains in a short period of time. Founding ASD leaders set an extraordinarily ambitious goal: to move those schools from the bottom 5% to the top 25% of performers within five years.

But the large academic gains never came.

Removing schools from local governance didn’t improve student outcomes. In fact, most ASD schools performed no better than low-performing schools receiving no intervention, according to researchers.

High teacher turnover was a constant challenge, and it became increasingly hard to recruit high-quality charter networks to do school turnaround work.

Community backlash was also significant, especially in Memphis, which became the hub of the ASD’s work and has a long history of charged racial dynamics. ASD critics viewed the takeover of neighborhood schools — and introduction of charter operators who often came from out of state — as another example of racism and reckless social engineering.

The level of poverty in Memphis was another major challenge.

“I think that the depth of the generational poverty and what our kids bring into school every day makes it even harder than we initially expected,” founding superintendent Chris Barbic told Chalkbeat in a 2015 interview. “We underestimated that.”

Chris Barbic, a former charter school leader in Texas, was the founding superintendent of Tennessee's Achievement School District.

The ASD has been shrinking for awhile

The state-run district had a peak of 33 schools after taking control of its last four campuses in Memphis in 2016.

While there’s been no official decision on its future from lawmakers or new recommendations from Lee’s administration, the ASD has been unwinding on its own, especially since 2022, as schools began to complete 10 years under the model.

Originally, the state promised to return ASD schools to their home districts in better shape than when they left. But that policy changed over time, and now there are multiple ways to exit, and even remain a charter school, depending on academic performance.

Some non-charter ASD schools began returning to Memphis-Shelby County Schools, while three charter schools pivoted to the oversight of the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission, another state-run entity, after showing enough improvement to exit on their own. The Memphis district also regained control of a charter school and placed the campus in its own turnaround program known as the Innovation Zone, an initiative created in part to keep the ASD from taking over more schools.

As for remaining ASD campuses, the charter contracts for operators of seven schools are scheduled to expire this summer; two schools after the 2024-25 school year; and four schools at the conclusion of the 2025-26 school year.

But the pandemic complicated an already complex exit process by disrupting state testing. ASD leadership also turned over frequently and downsized staff in the summer of 2022. The chaotic unwinding has put thousands of students, families, and school staff in limbo.

Of the contracts expiring this year, for instance, only two charter schools are set to continue operating in Memphis. Journey Coleman will stay with Journey Community Schools through a new agreement with the Memphis district, while Cornerstone Lester Prep will continue to be run by Capstone Education Group through the state-run charter school commission.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools plans to close MLK College Prep High School, currently run by Frayser Community Schools, and those students are still deciding where they’ll attend school in the fall.

Fairley High School, which lost its bid to remain with Green Dot Public Schools, is expected to return to MSCS oversight. Green Dot has other schools still in the ASD, and the network’s executive director in Tennessee, Jocquell Rodgers, expects their charter contracts will be honored.

“Has it been emotional? Absolutely,” Rodgers said of the lengthy unraveling.

School turnaround work is a difficult and time-intensive process that requires constant engagement with families and the community, Rodgers said. Ideally, there should be collaboration with the local district, she added.

“It is extremely important to bring something to people that they really want, but at the same time, really help them understand what they need,” Rodgers said.

If not the ASD, then what?

Tennessee has doggedly stuck with the ASD, even as its performance has been mostly lackluster.

But January’s abrupt departure of Bren Elliott, Tennessee’s first statewide turnaround superintendent who was hired last August after a three-year search, cast doubts about the future of the state’s school improvement work, especially regarding its most intense intervention tool.

And GOP leaders such as Sexton, the speaker of the House, fueled speculation by hinting that a mechanism for closing the ASD could be part of upcoming legislation for creating a new statewide school voucher program.

There’s little consensus, however, on a replacement strategy for supporting struggling school communities — a requirement under federal ESSA law.

RELATED: School turnaround lessons from Memphis zero in on the need for collaboration at all levels

Rep. Antonio Parkinson and Sen. Raumesh Akbari, both Memphis Democrats, have proposed legislation to prevent the state-run district from taking over more low-performing schools. Instead, the ASD would become a resource hub for school improvement work across Tennessee.

Rep. Antonio Parkinson has been one of the ASD's most vocal critics.

But the measure, which has cleared two key House committees, may not meet ESSA’s standard for a comprehensive school turnaround strategy. Akbari said this week that she’s working on changes before introducing their proposal in Senate committees.

Sen. Ferrell Haile, a Republican from Gallatin, has pointed to Tennessee’s small school turnaround pilot project, approved by the legislature in 2021, as one possibility. Two private vendors, Georgia-based Cognia and Ed Direction of Salt Lake City, Utah, are working with two schools in Memphis, two in Nashville, and one in Chattanooga, as part of the five-year initiative.

But it’s uncertain whether that program can scale statewide. And while four of the schools have shown promise, Hamilton County lawmakers say it hasn’t gone well in Chattanooga. They are shepherding a bill to pull Orchard Knob Middle School before the pilot ends in 2025.

Tennessee Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds, who has the authority to take over more schools and place them in the ASD under current law, has not commented publicly about the district’s future, or a potential new strategy.

If the legislature lets the state-run district run its course through the 2025-26 school year, when charter contracts expire for its last four schools, her department would have more time to develop a plan. The agency would then work with the U.S. Education Department to revise Tennessee’s ESSA plan accordingly.

One important step, according to federal ESSA guidance, is to give the public opportunity to comment on the proposed revision. And educators who are doing turnaround work hope state leaders will take their observations to heart.

Bob Nardo was an early ASD staff member who left to operate Libertas School of Memphis, one of the state-run district’s few success stories.

Just because the ASD didn’t work, he said, doesn’t mean the state should walk away from trying to address persistent challenges that led to its creation. Nardo believes one question should be central to discussions when developing a new plan.

“Are the most vulnerable and at-risk children in our society getting the best opportunity to transform their lives?”

Nardo worries the state could shift to piecemeal interventions, such as grant programs aimed at small-scale improvements, that wouldn’t be as effective as a comprehensive, schoolwide turnaround strategy.

“We have to confront the paradox here that this is both a critically needed and indispensable type of work,” Nardo said, “with the sobering reality that most efforts have not been successful” in Tennessee and across the country.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach her at ltestino@chalkbeat.org.

Whether to test private school students is key difference in dueling voucher proposals in Tennessee

2024-02-21T23:41:17+00:00

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Gov. Bill Lee and Senate leaders unveiled dueling proposals Wednesday to bring universal school vouchers to Tennessee. House leaders are expected to release a third version later this week.

Testing accountability stands out as a key difference in multiple amendments filed as part of a Republican campaign to eventually give all Tennessee families the option to use public money to pay for private schools for their children. The Senate plan also calls for open enrollment across public school systems.

Lee’s seven-page plan does not require participating students to take annual tests to measure whether his Education Freedom Scholarship Act leads to better academic outcomes. The governor has said that parental choice provides ultimate accountability.

The Senate’s 17-page proposal requires recipients in grades three-11 to take some type of norm-referenced tests approved by the state Board of Education, which could include state tests that public school students take under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP.

Assessments must include a third-grade test in English language arts and an eighth-grade test in math; the grades are considered benchmark years for learning those skills. Eleventh-grade recipients would also have to take the ACT, SAT, or a similar exam to assess their readiness for continuing their education after high school.

“The testing component is critical,” Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg told Chalkbeat. “We have a responsibility to share with Tennesseans how this is working.”

The developments show divisions at the state Capitol, despite a GOP supermajority, about key details of the biggest education proposal of Lee’s tenure, even before legislative debate begins in public. Lundberg’s committee is scheduled to take up the issue next week.

The governor wants to start with up to 20,000 students statewide this fall and eventually open up the program so any K-12 student can use a $7,075 annual voucher, regardless of family income. His earlier Education Savings Account law, which squeaked through the legislature with a historic and controversial House vote in 2019, targeted students from low-income families in low-performing schools in Memphis and Nashville but remains underenrolled, even with the addition of Hamilton County last fall.

Cost is expected to be a major hurdle for Lee’s voucher expansion plan in a state that prides itself on being fiscally conservative.

Tennessee government has a nearly $378 million budget shortfall through the first six months of its current fiscal year, according to a revenue report released last week.

Even so, Lee’s proposed $52.6 billion spending plan for the next fiscal year includes $144 million annually for vouchers and $200 million to grow state parks and natural areas, all while slashing corporate business property taxes by hundreds of millions of dollars.

Over the weekend, Republican Rep. Bryan Richey, of Maryville, told a local town hall that, although he supports statewide vouchers, he expects to vote against this year’s proposal over budget concerns and the lack of accountability provisions.

The Daily Times reported that Richey compared the upcoming legislative process to baking a cake as he urged his constituents to engage early with lawmakers while the proposals are in committees.

“Once the ingredients are in the batter and it’s all mixed up, we’re not going to be able to go in there and pull the egg back out or get the oil out,” he said.

Lee’s proposal did not look markedly different from draft legislation that was inadvertently filed in the Senate in late January due to a miscommunication, then pulled a short time later. Vouchers would be funded through a separate scholarship account, not the funding structure currently in place for public schools.

RELATED: Tennessee’s universal school voucher bill draft drops. Here are 5 things that stand out.

But the Senate version aligns funding with the state’s new public school formula known as Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement, or TISA. And it would allow students to enroll in any school system, even if they’re not zoned for it.

“We want open enrollment so you can transfer anywhere,” Lundberg said. “It’s not just for private schools. The funding follows the student.”

House leaders have been huddling for weeks with key stakeholders to get their feedback for an omnibus-style amendment that’s expected to come out on Thursday.

“I look forward to reading the House proposal, but there are obviously already major discrepancies,” said JC Bowman, executive director of Professional Educators of Tennessee, who has been in some of those meetings.

“I really don’t see how these versions can be reconciled this year,” added Bowman, a voucher critic. “If they’re hell-bent on doing this, they need to at least take the time to get it right.”

But a statement from the governor’s office said the various proposals show “an encouraging amount of engagement in this process.”

“The governor has repeatedly emphasized that the Education Freedom Scholarship Act is a framework, built upon the foundation that parents should have choices when it comes to their child’s education, regardless of income or ZIP code,” the statement said.

The bills are sponsored by Senate and House majority leaders Jack Johnson of Franklin and William Lamberth of Portland. You can track the legislation through the General Assembly’s website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee’s reading law gets pushback again as thousands of students could repeat fourth grade

2024-02-16T01:58:33+00:00

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Tennessee’s comprehensive pandemic-era literacy law, which last year provided several interventions to help struggling third grade readers advance to the fourth grade, offers no such escape hatches for those same students to avoid retention this year if they don’t show “adequate growth” under the 2021 law.

Now, as the State Board of Education prepares to vote Friday on what constitutes enough improvement for fourth graders who are at risk, state lawmakers are getting pushback from families whose students could be held back if they score poorly on state tests this spring, even after taking advantage of state-funded tutoring and summer learning programs.

At least 5,000 students are projected to fall in that category, according to the state education department. But some estimates put that number higher.

“I think we’re going to put so much pressure on these kids that it’s going to be a real mess,” said Sen. Rusty Crowe during a legislative hearing Wednesday.

The Johnson City Republican wants to revise the 2021 law so that students and parents who are engaged with their teachers in the learning process don’t get punished. He and Rep. Chris Hurt, a Halls Republican, have introduced legislation to let a struggling fourth grade reader’s teacher, principal, and parents decide collaboratively whether to retain the student based on multiple measures, not just state test results for English language arts under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program.

It’s uncertain whether the General Assembly is willing to revise the law again, especially after making several tweaks last year to widen the criteria for holding back third graders.

Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg repeatedly has said Gov. Bill Lee’s literacy law sets reasonable and appropriate expectations in the state’s long drive to improve reading proficiency.

“We’ve moved the needle from 30% to 40% proficiency [for third graders], but 40% still isn’t acceptable,” the Bristol Republican said at a January legislative hearing.

State board is required to define ‘adequate growth’

The State Board of Education appears poised to approve proposed policy changes that include a definition of “adequate growth” for fourth graders to get promoted if they don’t score as proficient readers this spring.

Chairman Robert Eby told lawmakers this week that he expects a full discussion Friday — but that members ultimately will follow the law, which directs the board to define adequate growth.

The proposed definition is tailored to each student, based on testing measurements that the state already uses to predict the probability that a student can become proficient by the eighth grade, when they take their last TCAP tests.

“It is complicated; it is not something that is easy to explain,” said Sara Morrison, executive director of the state board, during testimony before the Senate Education Committee.

“We do feel like it is statistically robust and makes sense,” she added. “But that doesn’t make it easy, and it doesn’t make it an easy decision for our board.”

Board members have received a lot of public feedback about the matter, including a letter this week from Erin O’Hara Block, a Nashville school board member who worked as Tennessee’s assistant commissioner for data and research in former Gov. Bill Haslam’s administration.

Block called the proposed calculations for measuring adequate growth “confusing,” and suggested that the real problem lies with the law itself.

“Instead of passing this revision of policy, I suggest that your board defer until a later date with a request that the legislature remove this portion of the law based on a lack of clear, transparent, viable, and implementable options,” she wrote.

In an interview Thursday with Chalkbeat, Block said state test scores are being misused because of the law. TCAP results were intended for diagnostic purposes, she said, not for high-stakes decisions such as holding a child back a year at school.

“This law was written quickly in the midst of a global pandemic and passed in a special legislative session. So why aren’t we revisiting it?” she asked.

Legislature drew a line in the sand

The law passed in 2021 during a weeklong session called by the governor to address pandemic-related learning disruptions. The same law created summer learning recovery camps that began that year and tutoring programs that started in 2022.

The interventions have proven popular to help students catch up, but the law’s retention provision — which began with last year’s class of third-graders — has been controversial.

Still, due to the intervention options and an appeals process that many families took advantage of, only about 900 third graders, or 1.2% from that class who took the test, were retained because of their reading scores.

The number of fourth graders expected to be retained this year will be significantly higher, officials say, based on the current law.

Research is mixed about whether holding students back helps or hurts them. Supporters say it spurs additional supports that struggling readers desperately need. Critics worry that retention falls disproportionately on student groups who are already marginalized, such as those who are of color or are economically disadvantaged.

During a workshop on Thursday, several State Board members questioned whether the law is even targeting the right age group — and Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds agreed. Intervention and retention policies aimed at kindergarten and first and second grades would be more effective, she said, adding that “third grade is too late.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

For the first time in three years, Hillsdale group didn’t apply to open a charter school in Tennessee

2024-02-12T23:08:15+00:00

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After gaining approval last year to open two charter schools in Tennessee in 2024, the group associated with Michigan’s conservative Hillsdale College did not apply to open another one in 2025.

Nine applicants met the state’s Feb. 1 deadline to submit proposals to open a charter school for the 2025-26 school year.

Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools received six applications, the most of any district, while Memphis-Shelby County Schools received two, and Rutherford County Schools got one.

But for the first time in three years, Hillsdale-related American Classical Education was not among the applicants.

Dolores Gresham, a former state senator who chairs the group’s board, said Monday that American Classical is focused on opening its first two schools in Madison and Rutherford counties. Both were approved last year in contentious votes.

The pause slows the once-aggressive growth plan of American Classical, which last year identified five growing suburban communities as a potential home to one of its schools. The network is seeking to change the face of Tennessee’s 100-plus charter school sector by introducing a different kind of teaching model and targeting different student demographics.

The group drew national attention in 2022 after Gov. Bill Lee endorsed Hillsdale College’s approach to K-12 education and invited its leaders to apply to open at least 50 charter schools across Tennessee that align with his conservative beliefs regarding civics and history.

But the Hillsdale-related network, American Classical Education, withdrew its first three applications later that year amid public outrage over Hillsdale President Larry Arnn’s comment that teachers are “trained in the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country.”

In 2023, American Classical applied again, this time to open schools in Madison, Maury, Montgomery, Robertson, and Rutherford counties.

Rutherford County’s school board was the only one to approve the network’s application, and that campus is on track to open this fall.

American Classical appealed the denials from Madison and Maury counties to the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission, which overturned the Madison County decision and authorized the Madison Classical Academy after the network failed to come to terms with Jackson-Madison County Schools.

Madison Classical officials have since “exercised their option to delay opening for one year to the fall of 2025,” said Hayden Pendergrass, a commission spokesman, on Monday.

A network spokesman said the delay was appropriate, since the appeals process for the West Tennessee school consumed most of 2023.

According to the state education department, the nine applications received by this month’s deadline to open a charter school in 2025, as well as the districts they’re seeking to partner with, are:

Novus SMART Academy (K-8) — Rutherford County Schools
Encompass Community School — Metro Nashville Public Schools
Journey Northeast Academy — Metro Nashville Public Schools
Nashville School of Excellence — Metro Nashville Public Schools
LEAD Cameron Elementary — Metro Nashville Public Schools
LEAD Southeast Elementary School — Metro Nashville Public Schools
Nurses Middle College Nashville (9-12) — Metro Nashville Public Schools
Memphis Grizzlies Prep STEAM School For Girls — Memphis-Shelby County Schools
Blueprint College and Career Prep — Memphis-Shelby County Schools

In addition, the charter operator for an existing state-run school applied to return to Memphis-Shelby County Schools next year as it exits the Achievement School District. Wooddale Middle Schools has been managed by Green Dot Public Schools as part of Tennessee’s ASD, but the group’s 10-year charter is set to expire.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee lawmaker to file legislation to add appointed members to Memphis school board

2024-02-07T01:40:58+00:00

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A Tennessee lawmaker said he plans to introduce legislation giving Gov. Bill Lee’s administration the power to appoint up to six new members to the board of Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

Rep. Mark White of Memphis cited prolonged frustration with the board’s locally elected leadership when explaining his plans to Chalkbeat on Tuesday.

The nine members currently on the board of the state’s largest school district would remain in office under the proposal.

And the additional members would be appointed later this year based on recommendations from local officials and stakeholders, said White, a Republican who represents parts of East Memphis and the suburb of Germantown.

“I’m very concerned about the district’s direction, and I just can’t sit back any longer. I think we’re at a critical juncture,” said White, who chairs a powerful education committee in the House.

In a statement Tuesday, board Chair Althea Greene said White’s proposal is unnecessary.

“We may have had some challenges, but more interference from the General Assembly is not warranted at this time,” she said. “We have to stop experimenting with our children.”

White’s comments come as the school board is days from selecting a district superintendent to end a tortuous 18-month search process. All three finalists came from out of state last week for final public interviews.

The proposed bill also represents another attempted state foray into oversight of Memphis, spotlighting historic tensions rooted in race, politics, and power, in which both sides claim the moral high ground.

White said he is unhappy with the board’s handling of the superintendent search for a district where strong, stable, and timely leadership is especially critical. Most MSCS students are considered economically disadvantaged and continue to significantly trail state benchmarks in reading and math following devastating pandemic-related academic declines.

“I’m concerned about the three people they’ve whittled it down to, and I’m just not impressed,” said White, who did not specify the candidates’ shortcomings.

There are “highly qualified people in Memphis who know how to improve the system,” White added.

His criticisms echo recent frustrations from some local educators and community members at the prospect of an out-of-state candidate leading Memphis-Shelby County Schools. Some have called for a local candidate or for the board to permanently hire interim Superintendent Toni Williams, the district’s former finance chief.

Board member Michelle McKissack expressed surprise about White’s plan and his comments about the finalists. She praised their qualifications.

“This has been an extraordinarily robust search, and we have listened to all members of the community every way we know how to,” McKissack said.

Adding board members — particularly appointed candidates who don’t have constituents to answer to — would only complicate board governance, she said.

“It’s not going to make board operations any easier when you have a 15-person board,” McKissack said, pointing to the challenges of the previous 23-member body that oversaw the historic merger of the city and county school districts and created Memphis-Shelby County Schools a decade ago.

She added: “They think they have a problem now? Well then get ready.”

White and Sen. Brent Taylor, a Memphis Republican, expect to file their legislation this month and have been working with the state attorney general’s office “to get the language right,” White said.

The legislation could affect upcoming nonpartisan school board elections in which five seats are up for grabs. Greene is the only incumbent to have pulled a petition for the August election since the filing opened on Monday, according to Shelby County Election Commission officials.

White drew a distinction between his proposal and a 12-year-old state initiative to take over low-performing schools, mostly in Memphis, to place them with charter school operators under the oversight of the Tennessee Achievement School District.

“This is not about taking over schools. It’s about putting in place stronger governance over the elected bodies for low-performing districts,” he said.

The Memphis school board is responsible for hiring the superintendent, but also charting the direction for the district, often by prioritizing how to use the $1.2 billion it receives each year, plus the additional hundreds of millions in one-time federal funds. Board members also play a role in addressing issues of their community and educator constituents.

The board struggled with its first superintendent search for a successor to Joris Ray, who left in August 2022 amid a scandal over allegations that he abused his power and violated district policies. Last spring, board members were dissatisfied with the slate of final candidates and chose to scrap the list and reboot the selection process.

The board’s second search last fall generated 22 applicants, according to the search firm the board hired to oversee the process. Just one local candidate, Angela Whitelaw, the district’s top academics chief, was among the five finalists. Following the guidance of their own evaluations and the community’s input, the board selected three finalists:

Yolonda Brown, chief academic officer in Atlanta Public Schools
Marie Feagins, chief of leadership and high schools for Detroit Public Schools Community District
Cheryl Proctor, deputy superintendent of instruction and school communities for Portland Public Schools in Oregon

It’s not the first time that White has introduced bills to give the state the power to intercede in local matters.

He successfully sponsored legislation in 2022 that forced the Memphis district to cede four schools to several nearby suburban districts, including in Germantown, which serves mostly white and affluent students. The move reignited persistent criticisms that the decade-long tug-of-war over the valuable school properties was essentially about race and class. Ultimately, Shelby County commissioners increased taxes, in part to help pay for a new high school for the urban district’s mostly Black students from low-income families.

White also asked the Tennessee attorney general to weigh in last year about potential conflicts of interest for Keith Williams, the executive director of a local teacher union in Memphis who was elected to the board in 2022.

Memphians have long been wary of Tennessee lawmakers who have repeatedly singled out Memphis on education matters. For instance, a controversial 2019 law created a private school voucher program that only applied to Memphis and Nashville, even though local officials overwhelmingly opposed it.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach her at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee budgets $144 million for statewide school vouchers

2024-02-06T02:39:16+00:00

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Gov. Bill Lee renewed his call for private school vouchers for any student across Tennessee on Monday, and he also set aside $144 million in his proposed state budget to pay for the new program for up to 20,000 students in its first year.

For traditional public schools, the Republican governor asked the legislature to raise the annual base pay for teachers from $42,000 to $44,500, in keeping with his pledge last year to get the profession’s minimum salary to $50,000 by the 2027-28 school year. (Raising the base pay has a domino effect and increases the pay of more experienced teachers, too.)

Lee also wants to invest $200 million to grow state parks and natural areas while simultaneously cutting corporate taxes amid a downturn in state revenues. But he maintained that Tennessee has “a very strong economy” to pay for all the changes.

The governor outlined his list of wants Monday evening during his 2024 address before the General Assembly, which will take up Lee’s voucher proposal and the budget in the months ahead.

He opened his remarks by calling Tennessee a “model for economic prosperity” and reminding lawmakers that state revenues are still 40% higher than three years ago.

However, after years of being flush with cash, the state faces a $610 million budget shortfall this year, and many lawmakers are leery of approving a universal school voucher program that Lee wants to be available to any K-12 student in 2025-26. Currently, Tennessee offers vouchers to about 3,000 low-income families in three urban counties, but his Education Freedom Scholarship Act would open them up to families in all 95 counties, eventually with no family income restrictions.

Gov. Bill Lee

“2024 is the year to make school choice a reality for every Tennessee family,” he said, drawing a standing ovation from many legislators — but not everyone in the GOP-controlled legislature — as well as frequent jeers from some spectators in the gallery.

“There are thousands of parents in this state who know their student would thrive in a different setting, but the financial barrier is simply too high,” Lee continued. “It’s time that we change that. It’s time that parents get to decide — and not the government — where their child goes to school and what they learn.”

Lee, a Williamson County businessman who graduated from public schools in Franklin, near Nashville, touted more than $1.8 billion in new investments in public education since he became governor in 2019.

“We can give parents choice and support public schools at the same time,” he said. “You’ll hear me say that over and over again. These two ideas are not in conflict.”

The governor also released his $52.6 billion state government spending plan to begin July 1. The total was down from Tennessee’s $62.5 billion budget for the current fiscal year because of flattening revenues and expiring federal funds appropriated during the pandemic.

He proposed $8 million to hire 114 more school-based behavioral health specialists amid record reports of students experiencing stress, depression, anxiety, and other mental health challenges exacerbated by the pandemic.

Other recurring funding recommendations include $30 million to pay for summer learning programs; $3.2 million to expand access to advanced placement courses for high school students; and $2.5 million to pay for a universal reading screener as part of the state’s literacy initiative, all to offset federal funding that is drying up.

Lee is asking for $15 million in one time funding to help charter schools with facility costs.

The governor also announced that his administration will bring the legislature a bill designed to help parents oversee their child’s social media activity.

“It will require social media companies to get parental consent for minors to create their own accounts in Tennessee,” Lee said.

Such legislation would widen the state’s push against social media giants.

Last fall, Tennessee joined a coalition of states suing Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, which is accused of violating consumer protection laws and deceptively marketing its platforms to adolescents to the detriment of their mental health.

And some Tennessee school districts have joined a growing list of school systems nationwide that are suing major social media companies like TikTok and YouTube over a crisis in student mental health.

But in the wake of last year’s shooting at a private Nashville school — where three children, three staff members, and the shooter died — the governor offered no new initiatives aimed at improving school safety or decreasing gun violence, other than funding to hire 60 more state troopers.

Last year, after the March 27 tragedy, the legislature approved $140 million in grants to place an armed law enforcement officer in every Tennessee public school. But the legislature rebuffed the governor’s call for a law to help keep guns out of the hands of people deemed at risk of hurting themselves or others.

Remarks about Lee’s universal voucher plan, announced in November, drew quick responses from the leaders of the state’s two largest teacher organizations.

“The concept of universal vouchers would be costly to the state, and we urge the Tennessee General Assembly to move slowly,” said JC Bowman, executive director of the Professional Educators of Tennessee.

“In particular, we have concerns over the lack of income-eligibility requirements and accountability,” he continued. “Our state must avoid any program viewed as a tax subsidy for existing private school families or a tax bailout for struggling private schools.”

Tanya T. Coats, president of the Tennessee Education Association, said Lee’s plan shows that vouchers have never been about helping economically disadvantaged families, as the governor first characterized it in 2019.

“The goal has always been to privatize public education and use public dollars to fund private school education, which goes against our Tennessee values,” Coats said.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee House report on federal education funding targets food waste in school cafeterias

2024-01-25T16:00:00+00:00

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Tennessee House members looking into the feasibility of rejecting federal education funding aren’t recommending taking that dramatic action, but they do want a comprehensive study of food waste in school cafeterias under federally funded child nutrition programs.

They also want their chamber to begin reviewing any new federal rules and directives sent to the state education department. And they want to conduct annual hearings into federal requirements for student testing.

The actions are among a handful of recommendations outlined in a 13-page report submitted Jan. 19 by House members to legislative leaders.

During five days of hearings in November to study what federal money Tennessee receives for its K-12 students and schools, House members frequently zeroed in on food waste through school programs funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Rep. John Ragan, an Oak Ridge Republican, suggested that Tennessee could do a better job of overseeing such programs to improve their efficiency, but that more information is needed.

Anderson County Schools, which is located in Ragan’s district near Knoxville, has studied food waste at one of its schools. But few other Tennessee districts have, and there’s no statewide data measuring the amount of uneaten food in cafeterias.

Milk and vegetables tossed in the trash

Nationally, about 41% of milk and 31% of vegetables were discarded from lunch trays, according to the Agriculture Department’s 2019 School Nutrition and Meal Cost Study.

“When you have a $480 million program (in Tennessee), 31% waste is a lot of money that could be devoted to hiring more teachers, buying more classroom supplies, fixing the roof, whatever,” Ragan told Chalkbeat after the hearings.

He said his goal is “not to starve children, but to optimize these programs.”

The House report recommends that the state agriculture and education departments evaluate food waste in public schools, and determine whether to contract with an outside agency to develop an improvement plan.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a list of recommended strategies to encourage students to consume more of the food they take — seemingly simple things like giving students choices, extending lunch time, and letting students save nonperishable foods to eat later.

In Tennessee, some schools have used other strategies such as offering breakfast in classrooms and letting students share unopened, wrapped foods with peers at “share tables,” Debby Thompson, assistant state commissioner of federal programs and oversight, told the lawmakers in November.

Meals under school nutrition programs are served free or at reduced cost to eligible students, and cafeteria operators must comply with federal nutritional requirements.

Meanwhile, in response to a rise in childhood obesity and other diet-related diseases during the pandemic and to improve the health of children and adolescents, the Biden administration has been rolling out more stringent nutrition standards for school meals. The policies reinstate health goals that were rolled back during the Trump administration.

How House and Senate reports on education funding differed

The House report came nearly two weeks after Senate members of the joint legislative panel on forgoing federal education funding issued their own report, citing disagreements with their House colleagues about their findings and recommendations.

The plan had been for the panel to submit a single report about exactly what federal money Tennessee receives for its students and related federal requirements.

The Senate report was cautionary, and much of it mirrored analysis from the nonpartisan Sycamore Institute. It highlighted the risks associated with rejecting about $1.3 billion in federal money and trying to fill the gap with state revenues. Most of the funding goes to support low-income students, English language learners, and students with disabilities.

The House report was more action-oriented and offered recommendations, some of which may not require legislation, said Connor Grady, a spokesperson for House Speaker Cameron Sexton, who has been pushing the conversation for nearly a year.

“The House agreed with the Senate’s options for consideration. However, the Senate would not agree with the House’s actionable recommendations moving forward,” Grady said. “Each body will be moving forward with their own recommendations.”

Sen. Jon Lundberg, co-chair of the legislative panel, said the House recommendations, if followed, could add bureaucratic layers to state government and slow down the work of the education department.

“That’s why we have a (state) Department of Education, to deal with these kinds of issues,” the Bristol Republican said Wednesday.

But Sexton’s office says more oversight is needed on the acceptance of federal funds.

“Allowing the federal government to pass down rules onto Tennesseans with no oversight is our main concern.” Grady said. “The General Assembly and Tennesseans need to know what federal rules are being passed down onto them. We should do everything that we can to be whole and autonomous and independent from the federal government.”

Discussion is not over

Both reports were called “preliminary” by the panel’s leaders, who said the group may continue to meet.

While not in its recommendations, the House report suggested the legislature could get involved in processes for renewing federal grants.

The legislature could “implement a process for legislative authorization of grants, such as requiring grant applications to go before a legislative committee before an agency can submit an application,” the report said.

The House report was submitted by all four Republican representatives on the panel, but not the lone Democrat. Rep. Ronnie Glynn, of Clarksville, refused to sign the document, saying that movement toward rejection of federal funding would be “fiscally irresponsible and discriminatory.”

“The hearings made clear how harmful such a move would be to Tennessee’s school children and how detrimental it would be to taxpayers and our state’s budget,” said a statement about Glynn’s position, issued Thursday by the House Democratic Caucus.

Below, you can read the full House report.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to show that Rep. Ronnie Glynn, a Democrat, did not sign the report.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee governor’s universal school voucher details are being heavily debated — but not in public

2024-02-02T22:33:45+00:00

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Tennessee Republicans are using a legislative maneuver to meet behind closed doors while crafting a statewide expansion of private school vouchers, putting into question whether the public will get ample time to review the legislation and weigh in.

To meet this week’s deadline to file legislation, Senate and House majority leaders Jack Johnson and William Lamberth submitted so-called caption bills that gave a brief description of the intentions of the full legislation that they’ll file later through amendments.

On Friday, neither legislative leader, nor the governor’ office, would say when they expect to unveil the full detailed proposal that’s been anticipated since November. That’s when Lee announced he would push to create a universal voucher program to offer public funding to families who choose to send their children to private schools or some home schools, regardless of family income or what county they live in.

The policy would mark a major change in Tennessee’s K-12 education structure, affecting students, parents, taxpayers, schools, districts, and communities across the state. Currently, vouchers are offered in three counties — Davidson, Hamilton, and Shelby — and only to low-income families.

But the lack of details for the proposed program — ranging from whether participating private schools must be state-accredited to whether participating students have to take the same state tests as public school students — worries some public education advocates. They are concerned the administration is focused on drafting language that will line up the most legislative votes, instead of crafting a research-based policy for release in time to fully study and vet the plan in public forums.

“This debate deserves to be held sooner than later and conducted in the light of day — not in back rooms at the Capitol,” said Gini Pupo-Walker, director of The Education Trust in Tennessee.

When the voucher amendment is introduced, public debate can kick off in legislative committees, and lawmakers can hear directly from their constituents about what parts of the proposal they like and don’t like.

But under House rules, for instance, a vote in a subcommittee can happen the day after an amendment is introduced.

Some voucher critics fear the legislative process could get rushed if the specifics are delayed for weeks, especially since the 2024 session was already expected to be shorter than last year’s session that ended on April 21. That’s because it’s an election year, when the seats of all 99 House members and half the Senate are up for grabs. Legislators can’t accept campaign contributions until they adjourn for the year.

It’s uncertain how much the bill will be amended from draft legislation that Johnson’s office said it accidentally filed earlier in the week, then quickly retracted.

RELATED: Tennessee universal school voucher bill draft drops. Here are 5 things that stand out

In a statement Friday, Johnson, the Senate majority leader from Franklin, said “it is important we get it right.”

Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson speaks at a 2021 news conference at the Tennessee State Capitol. Photo courtesy of State of Tennessee.

“The governor has gone to great lengths to meet with stakeholders and experts to ensure the language is solid, reasonable, and consistent with Tennessee’s outstanding record of fiscal responsibility,” he said. “I look forward to presenting the proposal to my colleagues in the Senate soon.”

But House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Ray Clemmons, whose party opposes vouchers, offered a different explanation.

“They clearly don’t have the votes to pass this voucher scam, and they don’t want to file a bill until they have the votes to get it through the committee process,” said the Nashville lawmaker.

Governor’s proposal generates more questions than answers

Lee has shared his vision in broad terms for his Education Freedom Scholarship Act. The program would start with up to 20,000 students statewide who would get $7,075 next school year for private education services, with eligibility restrictions for half of those. Beginning with the 2025-26 school year, he wants all K-12 students to be eligible, with no eligibility restrictions.

But dozens of unanswered questions remain. Among them:

Will private schools that accept vouchers have to require state licensure for its teachers, in addition to a background screening, to ensure a certain level of professional qualifications and safety?

Will the governor seek to place stipulations on tuition costs and who can use vouchers at participating private schools? (There’s evidence that private schools have exploited similar programs in Arizona and Ohio by raising tuition rates or encouraging students already enrolled in private schools to apply for a government-paid voucher.)

Will the legislation mandate fiscal audits of the program?

Will the program be evaluated to gauge whether it’s leading to better academic outcomes than public schools?

Given the numerous restrictions lawmakers have placed on public school instruction and curriculum in Tennessee over the last decade, will participating private or home schools be allowed to teach anything they want?

Will language be included in the legislation to ensure private schools can’t discriminate against certain applicants, such as students with disabilities, or based on race, religion, or sexual orientation?

Will the legislation attempt to exclude undocumented students from eligibility, as Tennessee’s 2019 education savings account law did?

Caption bills can be helpful, or not

None of those questions are answered in the voucher bills filed on Jan. 31 in the House and Feb. 1 in the Senate.

Broadly written caption bills are an increasingly common tool used by Tennessee lawmakers and lobbyists.

Deborah Fisher, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, said caption bills can be useful — for instance, to address a sudden need such as in the middle of last year’s session, when changes to bolster school safety took on urgency after six people died in a mass school shooting in Nashville.

But caption bills can be abused, by not revealing a bill’s true purpose until it’s too late for the public to notice. They also can become a delaying tactic, allowing legislators to push through legislation in a session’s waning days before constituents can ask questions or opponents can mobilize against it.

In 2019, during Lee’s first year in office, his administration used a caption bill to introduce his education savings account proposal. The amendment that presented the details was filed in mid-March and, in an historic and controversial vote, a further amended version passed the full House less than six weeks later during a season when most school communities are consumed with state testing.

Fisher said there’s adequate time for a full and robust debate on Lee’s newest voucher proposal, “but not if it’s held back too many weeks.”

It takes time for information to filter out to citizens, Fisher added, especially for an issue as contentious and complex as vouchers.

“I think this governor would look better and serve our state better if he showed his hand and let people know the nuts and bolts,” she said.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Future of Tennessee school turnaround work uncertain with departure of first statewide leader

2024-01-31T00:17:47+00:00

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Six months after Tennessee hired its first leader to manage school improvement work statewide, the position is now vacant.

On Tuesday, the state education department confirmed the departure of school turnaround superintendent Bren Elliott, one of Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds’ first major hires. A spokesperson for the agency declined to comment further or answer questions about whether the vacancy will be filled.

When Elliott stepped into the powerful new position, which took multiple searches across three years to fill, she was tasked with overseeing school improvement work in hundreds of schools in urban, suburban, and rural districts as well as Tennessee’s high-profile Achievement School District, or ASD.

Her abrupt departure raises questions about the future of school improvement work in a state that was once considered a turnaround pioneer, thanks in part to a $500 million award in 2010 from the federal Race to the Top competition to implement various education reforms.

The ASD, the state’s most intensive intervention model, was launched in 2012 using mostly charter school operators, and its lackluster performance has dimmed Tennessee’s star considerably in school turnaround circles.

Elliott’s hiring, announced last August, had been viewed as a way to jumpstart the work.

Elliott had been the school improvement chief for District of Columbia Public Schools since 2017. She also worked as a school administrator in Nashville from 2001 to 2007.

In her new job, chief among Elliott’s responsibilities was overseeing the ASD, which at one time had more than 30 schools in its portfolio but has since dwindled to 13 campuses and 4,600 students, mostly in Memphis.

State officials informed ASD operators last week that Elliott was leaving and that Shannon Gordon, the department’s chief operating officer, will assume her responsibilities.

“They did not say anything about … reposting that same position by that name,” said Brett Lawson, executive director of Frayer Community Schools, a Memphis-based charter operator with three ASD schools.

Drew Sippel, chief executive officer of longtime ASD operator Capstone Education Group, was also on the call.

“[Gordon] took all the operators’ questions and committed to giving schools the support and resources needed to be successful,” he said.

Elliott also was responsible for supervising interventions for all of the state’s so-called priority schools — those that score in the state’s bottom 5% academically — as well as schools needing targeted support due large gaps in test scores among groups of historically underserved students, such as English language learners, students with disabilities, or those from low-income families. That encompasses nearly 300 schools.

ASD is at a crossroads

Rep. Antonio Parkinson, a Democrat from Memphis, said Tuesday that Elliott’s swift departure highlights “disarray” in the education department, especially regarding its oversight of the ASD.

Most ASD schools have performed no better than low-performing schools receiving no intervention, according to researchers.

“It’s incredibly alarming given that we’ve invested over a billion taxpayer dollars in a failed experiment,” he said. “We’ve had superintendent after superintendent after superintendent of the ASD. And yet, it has the highest teacher turnover rate and the lowest graduation rate of any district in our state.”

Last year, Parkinson sponsored a bill that would prevent the state-run district from taking over more low-performing schools. Instead, under his legislation that cleared two House education committees, the state would turn the initiative into a resource hub for school improvement work across Tennessee.

Parkinson said he hopes Elliott’s departure will garner more legislative support for his bill, which is co-sponsored by Sen. Raumesh Akbari, also of Memphis.

“What we’re doing now just isn’t working,” he said.

Rep. Mark White, a Memphis Republican who chairs a House education committee, declined to comment when asked about the personnel change and the future of Tennessee’s school improvement work. He said he wanted to confer with agency officials first.

The ASD hasn’t taken over new schools since 2016. Meanwhile, the district is expected to shrink by half later this year as schools reach the end of their 10-year charter agreements and either exit the ASD or close.

There have been at least five ASD superintendents in a decade. The district’s lack of steady leadership has complicated the complex exit process, creating uncertainty for students, staff, and families in ASD schools in Memphis and Nashville.

Another issue is whether or how the state-run district will grow in the future.

State law gives Reynolds, as education commissioner, the authority to identify schools for takeover and place them in the ASD. But since starting her job last July, Reynolds has not publicly discussed her plans for the turnaround district.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach her at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee’s universal school voucher bill draft drops. Here are 5 things that stand out.

2024-01-30T02:30:50+00:00

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Tennesseans got their first glimpse of Gov. Bill Lee’s plan to create a universal school voucher program that could eventually give all families tax dollars to pay for private school.

Two months after Lee announced his proposal, a draft of the Senate bill was inadvertently filed Monday due to a miscommunication, then removed a short time later from the legislature’s website.

Elizabeth Lane Johnson, the governor’s press secretary, said the draft’s “key pillars” are accurate, but she emphasized the document is a “framework” for ongoing discussions.

Johnson said majority leaders in the Senate and House will file so-called “caption bills” this week to outline the legislation’s intent and to meet filing deadlines. Full legislation, with updated details, will be filed later through amendments.

Here are five things that stand out about the plan, based on a Chalkbeat analysis of the eight-page draft.

No testing accountability

While the governor has repeatedly pledged to build accountability into his proposal, the draft wouldn’t require participating students to take state tests, or other assessments.

There’s no accountability provision — or mention of the word accountability — in the draft. There’s also no reporting requirements to track how students are doing, or evaluate the program.

Public school students are required to take annual TCAP tests in math, English language arts, science, and social studies. Students who participate in Tennessee’s current voucher program — which offers education savings accounts, or ESAs, to students in three counties — have to take state tests every year in math and English language arts.

The ESA program’s first test results, from Memphis and Nashville in the 2022-23 school year, were disappointing. Most of the 452 participating students performed worse than their peers in public schools after the program’s swift rollout earlier that school year, according to data from the state education department.

Lee emphasized accountability through parental choice when promoting his plan during visits last month to private schools in Memphis and Chattanooga.

Asked about the omission of testing requirements in the draft, Lee’s press secretary said the governor looks forward to having those discussions with members of the General Assembly.

No language to prohibit discrimination

The voucher movement has some roots in racist opposition to school desegregation in the mid-20th century, and critics have long charged that private schools pick and choose which students they want when accepting public funding through vouchers.

The draft legislation includes no language to prohibit discrimination based on race, creed, color, national origin, religion, disability, or sexual orientation.

Anti-discrimination language is frequently included in state laws regarding eligibility for education programs.

In fact, Tennessee’s 2019 education savings account law requires participating private schools to certify that they will “not discriminate against participating students or applicants on the basis of race, color, or national origin.”

No guarantees for students with disabilities

Private schools would not be required to provide the same level of services as public schools for students with disabilities, according to the draft.

The language says: “Although an eligible student participating in the program does not retain the right to receive special education and related services through an individualized education program, the student may be eligible under the (federal) Individuals with Disabilities Education Act … to receive equitable services through an individualized service plan.”

Essentially, parents in a private school can request some publicly funded special services, but with no guarantee of exactly what their student would receive.

By contrast, public schools are required to provide students with disabilities with specialized support and services determined collaboratively by school leaders and parents.

“In practice, what this means is that students in private schools have a lesser right to disability-related services than those in public schools, and often receive fewer, more generic accommodations and services,” said Jeff Strand, a spokesperson for the Tennessee Disability Coalition.

More private schools could participate, but not from out of state

While Tennessee’s current ESA program is open to state-approved or accredited private, independent, and parochial schools, the draft opens the door to other school categories that have little to no state oversight.

Those include church-related schools or other private schools that the state merely acknowledges are in operation.

The lack of accreditation from schools in those categories may affect a voucher student who wants to transfer back into a public school in the same grade. Public schools may require testing to determine grade level or number of credits.

The language specifies the school must be located in Tennessee, which would prevent out-of-state virtual schools from participating.

But there’s no mention of an application process for a school to participate, as the education savings account program requires.

Nor is there text to support tiny home-run schools, in which the parent must report to their local school district that their child is being home-schooled. However, church-related home schools, which typically have a minimum of 10 students, appear to qualify.

Funding for the new voucher program isn’t a sure thing

As the governor announced earlier, the program would start with up to 20,000 students statewide who would get $7,075 in taxpayer money next school year to attend a private school, or certain home schools.

Half of those students must be considered economically disadvantaged or currently participating in the ESA program. And beginning in 2025, all K-12 students would be eligible to receive vouchers, regardless of their family income.

If 20,000 students participated, it would cost the state $141.5 million a year, which would increase if the program grows in subsequent years. But the draft says any voucher disbursements would be “subject to appropriations and other available funds.”

Tennessee revenues have flattened since the 2023-24 fiscal year began last July, and financial experts have urged lawmakers to rein in spending.

Meanwhile, state lawmakers are closely watching developments in Arizona, the first state to offer universal school choice. That state is struggling to cover the costs of the universal school voucher program approved last year by its Republican-controlled legislature.

Below, you can read the draft legislation.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee education chief Lizzette Reynolds challenged by Democrats over job qualifications

2024-01-22T17:44:45+00:00

House Democrats called Monday for the ouster of Lizzette Reynolds as Tennessee’s education commissioner over questions about whether she meets the state’s legal requirements for the job.

Reynolds has nearly three decades of policy and legislative experience in education at the state and federal levels. But she has no teacher’s license or experience leading a classroom, in apparent violation of a century-old state law requiring the commissioner to be a person “of skill and experience in school administration” and “qualified to teach in the school of the highest standing over which the commissioner has authority.”

Rep. John Ray Clemmons of Nashville, who chairs the House Democratic caucus, and Rep. Sam McKenzie of Knoxville, chairman of the legislature’s Black caucus, said Reynolds should step aside.

“There is no vagueness in this statute,” Clemmons said during a news conference at the state Capitol. “Commissioner Reynolds is legally unqualified, and she must resign.”

If she does not, McKenzie said, Gov. Bill Lee should fire Reynolds and hire a leader who understands the method of teaching, in both theory and practice.

“There are plenty of qualified people out there to lead this great education system we have,” McKenzie said.

Calling for the resignation of Lizzette Reynolds, Rep. John Ray Clemmons points out language in state law listing Tennessee’s requirements to be education commissioner. Clemmons, who is a Nashville Democrat, was joined by (from left) Rep. Ronnie Glynn of Clarksville and Rep. Sam McKenzie of Knoxville.

Reynolds, who has a political science degree from Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, was hired last year to succeed Penny Schwinn.

Her job pays $255,000 a year, up from $236,000 when she started in July. The average salary of a licensed Tennessee teacher was $58,594 in 2021-22, according to the department’s most recent annual statistical report.

Reynolds previously was chief deputy education commissioner in Texas and most recently served as vice president of policy for ExcelinEd, founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to pursue education policies that he believes improve student learning and lessen inequities.

The challenge to Reynolds’ credentials comes as she works to implement multiple sweeping policy initiatives passed by Tennessee lawmakers during Lee’s first term in office.

Tennessee is in its first year of operating under a new education funding formula, and also must enforce a controversial 2021 reading law under which thousands of fourth-graders are expected to be held back this year, based on projections for state test results this spring. In addition, the state is overseeing large-scale tutoring and summer programs in response to learning losses during the pandemic. And Lee is seeking a massive statewide expansion of vouchers to let families use government money to send their children to private schools or some home schools.

Asked about the Democrats’ assertions, a spokesperson for the governor defended Reynolds’ experience, saying her credentials qualified her to serve as commissioner.

“We’re proud of the work she’s doing to accelerate academic achievement and support all Tennessee students,” said Elizabeth Lane Johnson, Lee’s press secretary. “Additionally, though not explicitly required by statute, Commissioner Reynolds is currently enrolled in the [University of Tennessee]-Martin Education Preparation Program to expand upon her previous experience.”

In an interview with Chalkbeat last July, three weeks after starting her job, Reynolds said Lee hired her for her ability to roll out policies.

Asked then about her lack of teaching credentials or experience, she talked about her public school experiences as a student and a parent.

“As a parent of public school kids, I’m as close to the classroom as you’re going to get, because I’m a consumer of the public school system,” she said.

The vast majority of Tennessee’s top education officials have been longtime educators with deep knowledge of and experience in the practice of teaching.

For example, Candice McQueen was the dean of Lipscomb University’s College of Education, which the state rates among its top teacher training programs, when Republican Bill Haslam chose her in 2014 to lead the state education department during his second term as governor. She had won multiple awards for her teaching at both the K-12 and college levels.

Lana Seivers, who served as Democrat Phil Bredesen’s education chief from 2003 to 2008, was a teacher, principal, and district superintendent in Tennessee for most of her career. She also served on a long list of state and regional boards related to K-12 and higher education.

Both McQueen and Seivers held multiple graduate degrees in education.

Several other recent commissioners had backgrounds that, like Reynolds, leaned more toward policy and politics. But they also had some non-traditional teaching experience. Schwinn, who preceded Reynolds in the Lee administration, and Kevin Huffman, who was Haslam’s education chief during his first term, started their careers in the classroom through Teach for America. Schwinn also had a brief stint as administrator over a charter school in Sacramento, California.

JC Bowman, executive director of Professional Educators of Tennessee, called Lee’s hires to lead the education department a “troubling trend,” even as he praised Reynolds for giving access to stakeholders.

“This governor has spurned people from Tennessee from key roles in state government,” he said. “There are highly qualified people from this state who know this state well.”

Leaders with the the state’s largest teacher organization said the governor should respond to questions that are being raised.

“It is Gov. Lee’s responsibility to know Tennessee state law and the requirements to serve as commissioner of education,” said Tanya T. Coats, president of the Tennessee Education Association. “In appointing the current commissioner, it appears his focus may have been on finding someone who would be on board with his privatization agenda and would enforce policies like A-F school grades that undermine our strong public schools.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with comments from the governor’s press secretary.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee private school voucher law hits new obstacle in court

2024-01-11T21:20:49+00:00

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A legal challenge to Tennessee’s private school voucher law is back on track after a state appeals court ruled that a lower court erred in dismissing the case.

The three-judge Court of Appeals said Wednesday that a trial-level judicial panel acted prematurely in 2022 when it declared that Davidson and Shelby county governments, along with a group of parents, had no legal standing to challenge the 2019 Education Savings Account law, which provides families with taxpayer money to pay toward private school tuition.

The appellate court, in sending the case back to the trial court, also said the case’s remaining legal claims are “ripe for judicial review.”

The unanimous decision breaks a string of legal victories for voucher backers in Tennessee, where Gov. Bill Lee’s administration is proposing an expansive new program that would ultimately make vouchers accessible to all students in all 95 Tennessee counties, without the family income limits that are part of the current program.

Lee, who has campaigned on a pledge to expand alternatives to traditional public schools, has sought to capitalize on parent anger over pandemic-era school closures and disagreements over what kids are taught.

Gov. Bill Lee calls for a statewide education voucher program in Tennessee during a press conference in Nashville on November 28, 2023, as Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders offers her support.

First-year test scores were disappointing

Meanwhile, Tennessee Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds told lawmakers Wednesday that the first state test scores of students using vouchers to attend private schools in Shelby and Davidson counties were lackluster.

“The results aren’t anything to write home about,” Reynolds told the Senate Education Committee. “But at the end of the day, the parents are happy with this new learning environment for their students.”

The first results came out of Davidson and Shelby counties in 2022-23, before the legislature added Hamilton County to the program this school year. According to data from the state education department, most of those 452 students performed worse than their peers in public schools after the program’s swift rollout early that school year.

Reynolds told lawmakers she’s hopeful for better scores this spring from participants in all three counties.

“We are only technically a year and a half into implementation,” she said.

Sen. Raumesh Akbari of Memphis, the panel’s lone Democrat, said the early results from the Education Savings Account pilot program should give state leaders pause about rapidly expanding access to vouchers.

“It says ‘pilot’ because we want to see how it works,” Akbari said during Wednesday’s hearing. “And we only have a year and a half of data, and we’re already talking about expanding the program.”

The expectation, Akbari added, was that students using vouchers would perform as well as or better than students in public schools.

Legal challenge enters its fifth year

The legal dispute over Tennessee’s voucher law began a year after the legislature narrowly approved Lee’s ESA bill in 2019, via a controversial House vote. A Nashville judge soon declared the law unconstitutional because it affected only the state’s two largest cities, Memphis and Nashville, without giving them a say. That judge said that legislative approach violated the state constitution’s “home rule” provision.

But a split Tennessee Supreme Court overturned the decision in 2022, clearing the way for the program to launch that fall. Now with three counties participating, the program remains under-enrolled with 2,134 students, significantly below this year’s 5,000-seat cap, according to the state’s latest count.

The case is now being tried on several remaining legal issues, including a constitutional clause that requires the state to maintain a system of “free public schools,” with no mention of private schools.

However, Metro Nashville and Shelby County governments are no longer involved in the case. They withdrew as plaintiffs last year and declined to comment on their retreat.

Plaintiffs behind a second lawsuit, which was filed in 2020 on behalf of 11 public school parents and community members in Memphis and Nashville, are continuing to fight the law in court.

Called McEwen v. Lee, the complaint was filed by the Education Law Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center, collaborators in a national campaign that opposes vouchers and wants public funds used exclusively to support and strengthen public schools. The plaintiffs are also represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee and the Nashville law firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP.

“We are gratified by this Court of Appeals opinion and look forward to pursuing these claims in chancery court,” Chris Wood, a Nashville lawyer helping to litigate the remaining lawsuit, told Chalkbeat on Thursday.

Officials with Nashville’s legal department, which took the lead in litigating the case for Davidson and Shelby counties, said they expected the appellate court’s ruling, but that the favorable opinion does not affect its decision to pull out of the dispute.

A spokesman for the attorney general’s office said the state is reviewing the appellate decision, while a spokesperson for the governor declined to comment on the court case.

“Gov. Lee’s Education Freedom Scholarship Act is an entirely separate legislative proposal, and we look forward to working with the General Assembly to ensure Tennessee parents have choices,” said Elizabeth Johnson, Lee’s press secretary.

You can read the 29-page ruling on the state court website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee senators’ report highlights risks of rejecting federal education funding

2024-01-09T21:28:53+00:00

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Senate members of a joint legislative panel that looked into whether Tennessee should reject more than $1 billion in federal education funding released their own report Tuesday, citing disagreements with House colleagues.

The 12-page report said Tennessee could not make new investments toward other needs if it opts out of federal education funding and tries to fill the gap with state revenues.

The report also noted numerous other avenues for Tennessee to pursue to resolve conflicts between federal and state interests, and it brought up uncertainties created by taking the unprecedented step of saying no to U.S. money.

“Many federal requirements could still apply to Tennessee schools even if the state rejected federal K-12 dollars, creating questions that would likely be resolved in court,” the report said.

In essence, the senators’ report laid out why no state has ever taken the step of rejecting federal funding for its students and schools, even though several such as Oklahoma and Utah have considered it.

The U.S. contribution, for which Tennessee citizens pay taxes, makes up about a tenth of the state’s budget for education — about the same as with other states. Most federal money supports low-income students, English language learners, and students with disabilities.

Sen. Jon Lundberg, the Bristol Republican who co-chaired the 10-member panel, called the report “preliminary” as he and four other senators submitted the document to Lt. Gov. Randy McNally and House Speaker Cameron Sexton.

“At this time, the House and Senate have not agreed to mutual recommendations,” they wrote in an accompanying letter.

Rep. Debra Moody, the Covington Republican who co-chaired the panel with Lundberg, did not immediately respond when asked whether the House members would submit their own report or comment on any disagreements.

Rep. Debra Moody and Sen. Jon Lundberg, both Republicans, co-chaired the joint legislative panel that conducted hearings in November.

But Sexton, who floated the idea nearly a year ago for Tennessee to look into the possibilities, said through an aide that a separate House report is coming.

“The House agreed with [the] Senate’s options for consideration. However, the Senate would not agree with the House’s actionable recommendations moving forward,” said a statement from Sexton’s office.

The Crossville Republican, who is a likely candidate for governor in 2026, had complained about testing requirements and other federal strings attached to acceptance of federal dollars, but has yet to provide a list of the other strings he finds objectionable.

Education advocates have suggested that objections from Sexton and the legislature’s GOP supermajority are related to current “culture wars” about curriculum and the rights of transgender students to use school bathrooms or join sports teams consistent with their gender identity, which may not correspond with their sex assigned at birth.

A year ago, Sexton said Tennessee could tap into $3.2 billion in new recurring state revenues, which would more than cover any lost federal funds for education. But those numbers were based on budget information at that time. State revenues have since flattened.

“Tennessee likely has room in the budget to reject and replace recurring federal funding in K-12 education, but at the expense of other potential investments,” the report said.

The senators also noted that the amount of federal money that Tennessee receives totals more than any of the recurring increases for education over the last decade. It’s also larger than the budgets of all but just a few state agencies, such as TennCare, transportation, education, and corrections.

Lundberg released the report just as the General Assembly reconvened its 2024 session, meeting a Jan. 9 deadline set by Sexton and McNally when they appointed the joint panel in September.

RELATED: Key education issues to watch as Tennessee lawmakers return

He told Chalkbeat later Tuesday that he stands by the report and refused to make changes requested by Sexton’s office.

“We determined it was best to release a Senate report that was solid, based on the testimony we heard and the information we were given,” said Lundberg, who declined to detail the points of contention.

Lundberg, who also chairs the Senate Education Committee, praised the work of the joint legislative panel for clearly identifying the state’s funding sources for education and their related mandates.

“Frankly there are fewer federal strings than I anticipated,” he said.

During four days of testimony in November, the panel heard mostly fact-finding presentations from established nonpartisan researchers, school district leaders, and state officials.

On the fifth day, at the request of House members, the group also heard from representatives of two conservative groups who urged the state to pursue forgoing federal funding. None of the Senate members were present for that final testimony. They said scheduling conflicts prevented them from attending.

The legislative panel declined to hear from Tennessee parents or advocacy groups about how federally funded education programs are run or affect their children.

Last week, several legislative leaders told Chalkbeat they did not expect any new legislation this year out of last year’s hearings.

Below, you can read the full Senate report, with the accompanying letter.

This story has been updated from a previous version.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org

Vouchers, school safety, retention: Key education issues to watch as Tennessee lawmakers return

2024-01-08T11:00:00+00:00

Five years after a bruising legislative battle opened the door to private school vouchers in parts of Tennessee, lawmakers are preparing to take up a controversial bill to create a similar program statewide.

Gov. Bill Lee’s universal voucher proposal, which eventually would make all K-12 students eligible to use public funding to attend a private or home school, is expected to dominate debate after the 113th General Assembly reconvenes on Tuesday.

But other issues affecting students and educators are sure to emerge in a state where education reform has been front and center since 2010, when Tennessee won $500 million in the federal Race to the Top competition to jumpstart changes.

And if the last few years are any indication, a few surprises may surface in the months ahead. Politics and tragedy have shaken up the education priorities of several recent sessions, from an 11th-hour Republican drive in 2021 to restrict classroom discussions about racism and bias to last year’s deadly Nashville school shooting that led to new investments in campus safety and dramatic protests over Tennessee’s lax gun laws.

With the GOP supermajority setting the agenda again this year, here’s a look at some big issues to watch as the opening gavel falls.

School vouchers: Lee’s expansion plan renews long-running debate

In November, the governor said he’ll introduce a new Education Freedom Scholarship Act to offer $7,075 in taxpayer money for each of up to 20,000 students statewide next school year to attend a private or home school, with eligibility restrictions for half of them. In 2025, eligibility would open up to all students, regardless of their family’s income.

The proposal would mark a massive expansion of Tennessee’s voucher program, which is now limited to three urban counties and still under-enrolled. But more than a month after Lee’s announcement, few details have been released.

“I have yet to understand where the financing is coming from,” said Sen. Page Walley, a Republican whose district includes eight rural counties in West Tennessee.

“If we jump to statewide vouchers, I don’t see how we fund it without robbing Peter to pay Paul,” he added.

School safety: Renewed discussion, but no gun laws (it’s an election year)

Tennesseans were unnerved when an armed intruder shot and killed three children and three adults at a private Christian school in Nashville on March 27, in the middle of last year’s legislative session. And the growing impact of gun violence on kids across the state is undeniable.

But Republican lawmakers’ response last year was to further harden schools rather than entertain any proposals to restrict gun access — not even for people who are deemed at risk of hurting themselves or others, as the Nashville shooter had been.

“We’ll be back in January,” parents wanting stricter gun laws vowed in August after a special session on public safety yielded little action on guns.

Spectators watch the Tennessee Senate doing business at the State Capitol during a special legislative session on public safety in August 2023. Lawmakers were called back by Gov. Bill Lee after a mass school shooting in Nashville in March.

Some of them have organized news conferences and rallies at the Capitol this week for students, educators, and others to voice their concerns. Meanwhile, a group of parents from The Covenant School in Nashville, where the tragedy took place, say they’ll continue to advocate for changes to “ensure responsible firearm ownership, safe schools, and accessible adequate mental health care for all individuals across Tennessee.”

GOP leaders anticipate the legislature will revisit many of the proposals left on the table.

They include several measures to let certain citizens or school employees carry handguns in schools, and a bill to require all public and private schools to create alarm policies that differentiate emergencies for fire, weather, or an active shooter.

A new bill, from Republican Sen. Mark Pody of Lebanon and Rep. Susan Lynn of Mount Juliet, would let schools purchase lanyards equipped with emergency alert buttons for school staff to wear around their necks.

But don’t expect the legislature to look seriously at bills to restrict gun access in an election year, according to several key Republicans.

“I do not believe there’s an appetite or pathway to success for any legislation that might be introduced that is going to infringe on constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens,” said Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson, of Franklin.

With the latest State of the Child report ranking Tennessee near the bottom nationally for access to mental health resources, Johnson sees more room for discussion on that topic.

“I think a big conversation in the coming session will be how we strengthen our mental health safety net,” Johnson said, “as well as general access to mental health treatment in Tennessee.”

Third-grade reading law: Lawmakers may revisit retention provision — again

Last year, the legislature widened the criteria, beginning this school year, for determining which third graders are at risk of being held back if they aren’t deemed proficient readers under a 2021 law targeting pandemic learning lag.

Now under the same law, the state may have to retain thousands of fourth graders who test poorly this spring.

“I think we have to look into it,” said Rep. Mark White of Memphis, who chairs a House education committee. “We’ve probably got a lot of fourth graders who have already done summer school and tutoring but still won’t pass that test. It’s never a bad thing to have off-ramps and waivers.”

He added: “I want us to continue looking closer at kindergarten, first, and second grades so we’re not waiting until the third and fourth grades to address these challenges.”

But Sen. Jon Lundberg, who chairs his chamber’s education panel, is less inclined to make more changes in the 2021 law.

“We’ve set the standard for proficiency and for showing adequate growth, and I don’t want to move those,” he said.

Federal education funding: Talk about rejecting it looks like just talk, for now

House Speaker Cameron Sexton surprised many in his own party last year when he floated the idea of Tennessee rejecting more than a billion dollars in federal funding for students, which he said could be offset with state tax revenues.

In November, a task force appointed by Sexton and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally held hearings to explore the possibility. But Lundberg, the panel’s co-chairman, told Chalkbeat afterward that he didn’t expect the state to reject federal funds, even if it can find a way.

Legislative leaders polled by Chalkbeat last week said they haven’t heard of any legislation coming out of the hearings.

“It doesn’t hurt to know where our funding is coming from and how it’s being spent,” said White, the House’s education leader, said of the task force’s discussions, “but I don’t see that conversation going anywhere in the short term.”

Teacher shortages: Vacancies could lead to creative thinking

With Sexton declaring that Tennessee has enough state revenues to cover more than $1 billion in federal funding, plenty of public school advocates asked why the state wouldn’t use that excess instead to accelerate the governor’s plan to raise the minimum salary for teachers to $50,000 by 2027. (This year, the base is $42,000.)

Districts struggled to fill nearly 4,000 vacancies statewide last school year, especially in the middle grades, English as a second language, world languages, and special education, according to one report. And shortages of school bus drivers are a nationwide problem.

Lee told reporters that, while state revenues have flattened in recent months, Tennessee’s economy remains strong.

Gov. Bill Lee speaks with reporters on Thursday after a tour of a Nashville ministry. “We should probably look at our investments in public school funding and investments in teacher pay every year,” he said when asked about the prospect of accelerating pay increases.

“We should probably look at our investments in public school funding and investments in teacher pay every year,” he said when asked about the prospect of accelerating pay increases.

But with the teaching profession facing a post-pandemic crisis in Tennessee and nationally, the legislature could also pursue other avenues to elevate the profession.

Currently, the state covers less than half of health insurance premiums for its teachers, while state employees get 100% of their premiums covered. Moving teachers to the state employee plan could be a boost to both teachers and the local districts that employ them.

Professional Educators of Tennessee has also called on the legislature to develop policies to address child care access and affordability for teachers, more than 80% of whom are female.

“If you want to keep good teachers,” said Executive Director JC Bowman, “ease their burdens so they can focus on their work in school to educate and nurture our future generation.”

To follow this year’s legislative business, visit the General Assembly’s website for calendars, committees, legislation, and livestreams.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

A-F grades come out this week for Tennessee schools. Here’s what to know.

2023-12-18T11:00:00+00:00

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This week, for the first time under a 2016 law, Tennessee will give each of its public schools an A-F letter grade.

The goal, says Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds, is to help families, educators, communities, and policymakers understand how their local schools are doing.

And what better way, she says, than by using a letter-grade system that families are familiar with from their student’s report cards.

But the policy has been controversial since lawmakers began debating its merits nearly a decade ago, and local school leaders worry the grades will actually create confusion for parents and harm school communities.

They say a single grade is more simplistic than simple, and can’t fully capture the quality of learning and support that’s happening in a school, especially for communities where students face extra challenges before even walking into the classroom.

Local concerns escalated when the state education department recently revamped its grading formula in a way that will make it harder for certain schools to get an A or a B.

Here’s what you should know about the upcoming school letter grades, which the state is scheduled to release on Thursday.

What exactly will the grades measure?

As required by state law, the grades must take into account student performance and improvement, as demonstrated on annual tests under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, also known as TCAP. High schools will also be judged on their students’ college and career readiness, based on measures such as ACT scores, postsecondary credits, or industry credentials.

How will the grades be calculated?

The formula weights student proficiency the heaviest, according to the department’s recent presentation to the State Board of Education. Next comes growth, or how much a school’s students improved from one year to the next. A separate factor seeks to assess how well schools are helping their lowest-performing quartile of students to improve.

The formula factors in test scores for English language arts, math, and science for elementary schools, and for all four core subject areas for middle and high schools. But some subjects count more than others.

The state has not publicly released the thresholds for what constitutes an A, B, and so on, based on its tallies of all the data.

Will the grades matter?

Yes, and not just in terms of public perception of a school’s quality. Under Tennessee’s new funding formula for K-12 education, school districts or charter authorizers can face hearings before the state Board of Education if their schools are rated D or F, beginning with the 2024-25 school year.

Ultimately, administrators could be forced to submit a corrective action plan or undergo a state audit of spending and academic programming at the school.

School ratings also can affect the price of real estate in a school’s neighborhood, as well as teacher and student morale. Studies have shown that ratings such as those given by third-party websites frequently are biased and can steer families toward schools serving more affluent, white, and Asian students.

Why is Tennessee grading its schools?

Legislators who voted for the law said A-F school grades would provide a common-sense aid to parents trying to navigate an increasingly complex school choice system.

Big supporters included ExcelinEd, an advocacy group founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, plus other groups that favor giving taxpayer-funded vouchers to families to send their children to private schools. (Gov. Bill Lee recently proposed a statewide expansion of Tennessee’s voucher program, which operates in three counties and has fewer than 2,000 enrollees. The state is not grading private schools that receive vouchers.)

School letter-grading policies were also promoted by the American Legislative Exchange Council, also known as ALEC. Its members are mostly conservative state lawmakers, and its funding comes from foundations, trade groups, and some corporations, according to research from the Center for Media and Democracy.

The law passed in 2016. Why are schools just now receiving their first grades?

The initial grades were to come out in 2018 but got delayed repeatedly, mostly because technical glitches and the pandemic disrupted state testing.

This year, soon after assuming her new job as Tennessee’s education chief, Reynolds prioritized the rollout of A-F grades and launched a process to revise the grading formula, which will use results from tests that already have been administered. The goal of the overhaul, she said, was to generate grades that signify meaningful differences in school performance in a way that makes sense to Tennesseans.

How did the formula change, and what effects will the revisions have on the final grades?

Previously, Tennessee’s grading formula skewed toward growth, which refers to the progress or improvement that schools made toward helping their students meet certain academic standards over the course of a year.

The new formula puts greater emphasis on achievement, or proficiency. Achievement is basically a snapshot of how much students in a school know, and whether enough of them are meeting grade-level standards on their state tests.

The changes will likely mean fewer A’s and generally worse grades than previously expected for many schools, especially those serving students from lower-income families in rural and urban communities.

More broadly, the shift marks a change of course for Tennessee, which was an early adopter of using growth data to evaluate how its students, teachers, and schools are doing. Educators have mostly embraced this model as ultimately the best way to gauge the quality of learning in their classrooms and schools.

Do other states issue A-F letter grades for schools?

As of late 2021, 11 states had such grading measures in their accountability systems, according to the most recent data from the Education Commission of the States.

But several states, including Georgia, Indiana, Michigan, and Utah, have since rolled back those policies. And in Texas recently, a judge blocked the state education agency from issuing grades after several districts sued. The districts charged that the agency had unfairly recalibrated its formula and waited too long to communicate those changes.

Where will Tennessee’s grades be published?

As of last week, state officials had not shared exactly how they plan to release this week’s grades. Chalkbeat continues to track and report on the topic.

Eventually, the department plans to publish all grades, along with school-level TCAP scores from the 2022-23 school year, on the State Report Card. The online tool should be ready to go live with the latest data in January, according to several spokespeople for the department.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Gov. Bill Lee short on details as he rallies for universal school vouchers in Tennessee

2023-12-14T01:51:50+00:00

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Gov. Bill Lee hit the road Wednesday to begin selling his universal school voucher proposal, but offered no new details about how much the program would cost over time, specific ways to hold private schools accountable when receiving taxpayer money, or what the impact could be to public schools.

However, the Republican governor, who announced in late November that he wants to take vouchers statewide, said he expects GOP leaders to file legislation on his behalf before Jan. 9, when the General Assembly reconvenes, answering many of those questions.

Despite skepticism and outright opposition to his plan from many corners of the state, Lee believes the pandemic has changed the calculus so that more Tennesseans — and their elected representatives — are ready to support universal school vouchers. In 2019, Lee’s scaled-down voucher program, using education savings accounts, barely squeaked through the House in a contentious and controversial vote.

“Through the pandemic, parents just became much more engaged with what was actually happening with their children and their education,” said Lee, adding that more parents are demanding more education choices for their children because of disagreements spawned by COVID over school closures and what kids are taught in public schools.

But the voucher proposal also has stoked fierce opposition across the state, especially in the Memphis area.

Last week, Arlington Public Schools released a fiery statement denouncing Lee’s plan as part of a systematic attack on public schools, while the director of Germantown Municipal School District recorded a video declaring that any private schools that accept voucher money should be held to the same standards as public schools. Lakeland’s school board passed a resolution this week opposing the plan, and the chairwoman of the board for Memphis-Shelby County Schools issued a statement Tuesday saying the board was “vehemently opposed” to Lee’s initiative.

Research is also mixed about whether vouchers help improve student performance.

On Wednesday, Lee was joined by House Speaker Cameron Sexton in Memphis at a panel discussion at New Hope Christian Academy, one of 80 private schools currently accepting vouchers through the education savings account program that began in 2022 in Davidson and Shelby counties, expanding this fall to Hamilton County.

While short on specifics, some comments by Lee and Sexton gave insights into the behind-the-scenes negotiations happening to garner support for Lee’s Education Freedom Scholarship Act and to pound out a bill to put before the GOP-controlled legislature.

Academic testing requirements for voucher students unclear

Both leaders expressed openness to adding a facility component to the state’s new K-12 funding formula to help local governments pay for new public school construction or improvements to existing public school campuses — a chronic challenge in a state where schools need about $9 billion of infrastructure investments over five years, according to one recent government report.

Lee said he pushed for the formula overhaul in 2022 “to provide for more nuanced funding” and suggested that facility needs are in line with the new approach.

“If there are particular needs that school districts have, then we should look at that formula and how we more appropriately fund public schools going forward,” he said. “Not just more money, but more wisely spent money.”

The governor also said accountability for participating private schools would be part of his voucher bill, but he did not elaborate on what that would look like.

Currently, private schools participating in the ESA program have to administer annual state tests for math and English language arts to voucher students. But it’s hard to attract private schools to participate under that mandate. And results from those tests during the first year of the program indicate that participants performed worse than their public school peers in Davidson and Shelby counties, according to data from the state education department.

The governor’s press secretary, Elizabeth Johnson, previously told several media outlets that no testing requirements were in the draft legislation, though details were still being hammered out. Johnson did not immediately respond when asked Wednesday if any of those positions have changed as the proposal has evolved.

The draft also didn’t include other accountability measures that public schools must abide by such as third- and fourth-grade retention requirements for students who are deemed poor readers, or A-F grades for schools beginning this month, Johnson previously said.

Taking a different tact, Sexton suggested that Tennessee should rethink its accountability systems for public schools as part of any expansion of private school vouchers.

“Why don’t we treat the high-performing school districts the same as private [schools] and give them more autonomy and freedom to do their job?” Sexton told reporters after the panel discussion.

“Why not reward quality instead of trying to treat all school systems the same regardless of where they are?” he said.

Such a change would begin to unravel a fundamental education policy in Tennessee, where GOP officials previously credited the state’s vaunted accountability systems for historic gains on national tests between 2011 and 2013.

Suburban Memphis leaders oppose planned voucher expansion

The governor emphasized accountability through parental choice during his visit to New Hope.

“We do know that parents know best what’s best for their kids,” Lee said. “When parents have choice, the parents and the children are empowered to live a better life and to move in a better direction.”

Lee later traveled to Chattanooga to participate in a similar event at Chattanooga Preparatory School to promote his proposal.

Sexton, who voted against the 2019 voucher bill but now says he supports universal vouchers, stayed in Shelby County to meet with suburban leaders. Public school officials in those suburbs have been among the noisiest critics of Lee’s proposal.

“In my past 10 years as a superintendent, our legislature has passed hundreds of laws that are crushing the way that we run our schools,” Germantown Municipal School District’s Jason Manuel said in his video recording. “None of these laws will apply to the schools accepting this taxpayer money.”

Manuel called for an even playing field. “Either these schools have to follow all of the same laws we do, or our legislators need to take all the restraints off of our schools and let us get back to the way we have always served our children,” he said.

Private school choice programs have grown in recent years, with states such as Florida, Iowa, and Arkansas passing massive expansions of their voucher initiatives.

But do vouchers work?

According to an ongoing Chalkbeat review of the research, there’s little recent evidence that vouchers improve student test scores. In fact, they’ve sometimes led to declines. But older studies are more positive toward vouchers, and some show that vouchers have a neutral or positive impact on student outcomes later in life.

Research also suggests that targeted voucher programs may not be costly, but universal programs probably will be.

Other education advocates worry that that mostly GOP-driven drive to give parents more choices beyond public charter schools, magnet schools, and other optional programs will accelerate resegregation in schooling.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach her at LTestino@chalkbeat.org

Some social studies teachers wary as national conference meets in increasingly censored Tennessee

2023-11-30T22:54:25+00:00

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About 3,500 social studies teachers converge on Nashville this weekend for their annual national conference, but not without some pushback for meeting in a state with multiple laws aimed at classroom censorship and restrictions related to discussing race and gender.

“Some of our members have worried that this could be a hostile environment for them,” said Wesley Hedgepeth, a social studies teacher in Henrico County, Virginia, and this year’s president of the National Council for the Social Studies.

Even so, attendance is set to surpass last year’s convention in Philadelphia, the group’s first in-person gathering since the pandemic. The last pre-COVID conference, in 2019, drew about 4,000 participants to Austin, Texas.

“There have been concerns about Tennessee’s divisive-concepts law and perceived censorship by the government, as well as the suppression of certain identities,” Hedgepeth said on Thursday, the eve of the three-day conference.

“We’ve been working tirelessly to make sure this is an inclusive conference and remind people that Nashville is a welcoming place,” he said.

Gov. Bill Lee, flanked by GOP legislative leaders, speaks during a press conference at the close of the 2021 session of the Tennessee General Assembly.

Under the leadership of Republican Gov. Bill Lee and the GOP-dominated legislature, Tennessee was one of the first states to impose legal limits on classroom discussions about racism and white privilege. It gave a state commission new authority to ban certain library books statewide. It also enacted restrictions on the rights of transgender students in school. One new law ensures that school and university employees can opt out of implicit-bias training.

And earlier this year, the predominantly white and older House of Representatives ousted two young Black Democratic members for the way they protested the body’s failure to pursue significant gun reforms after a shooter killed three children and three adults at a Nashville school.

Related: The ‘Tennessee 3′ made history. Will their story be taught?

Add in a 2023 state law restricting drag shows — which has since been overturned by a federal judge — and some social studies teachers from elsewhere in the nation were balking at coming to the Volunteer State.

That spurred the council, which is the nation’s premier professional organization for social studies, to issue a three-page statement this spring titled “Why Nashville?”

The paper noted that, in addition to its renowned music scene, Tennessee’s capital city is home to key moments and movements in U.S. history.

On Aug. 18, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving women across America the right to vote.

And in 1960, at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, a group of college students including Diane Nash formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Nashville. The chairman was a young John Lewis, a student at Nashville’s Fisk University, who went on to become a civil rights icon and longtime congressman from Georgia before his death in 2020.

“We remain committed to providing a safe and welcoming environment for all social studies educators to come and learn with us in Nashville,” the organization’s statement said.

The last time the group held its national conference in Tennessee was in 1993. The state’s affiliate organization submitted a 2017 pitch for a return to Nashville, and organizers soon signed contracts with local hotels and convention facilities. That was before the national racial reckoning spurred by the 2020 police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and a conservative backlash to subsequent anti-racism protests. Tennessee has been at the forefront of culture wars ever since.

Related: How the age-appropriate debate is altering curriculum

This spring, after the legislature expelled the two young Black Democratic members, the National Council for the Social Studies issued a four-page rebuke of the Tennessee House of Representatives. The statement called the ouster an attack on the foundational principles of democratic and republican norms and said that, intentionally or not, the state was sending its students a message that the rights to free speech, peaceful protest, and holding their elected officials accountable are “reserved for those who have a specific view or perspective.” (The two lawmakers were later reelected by their local constituents.)

Rep. Justin Pearson raises his newly signed oath of office after being reinstated to the Tennessee General Assembly on April 13, 2023, days after the Republican-controlled legislature ousted him and another Democratic lawmaker over the way they protested the state’s lax gun laws.

The vagueness of Tennessee’s censorship laws also is having a chilling effect in classrooms and school libraries. In Memphis this fall, for instance, the co-authors of a Pulitzer Prize-winning book about Floyd were told not to talk about systemic racism during an appearance at Whitehaven High School.

“It’s like walking on eggshells,” said Laura Simmons, an eighth-grade U.S. history teacher from Bedford County, south of Nashville. “We want to give our students the information they need, including multiple viewpoints and narratives. At this point, I think most social studies teachers are just feeling out the climate of their school, their parents, and their administration.”

As president of the Tennessee Council for the Social Studies, Simmons is co-chair of this year’s national conference and helped to plan it, along with Hedgepeth, the national president. Attendees represent all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and nine other countries. About 10% are faculty at colleges and universities.

The 2023 conference theme is “Social Studies: Working in Harmony for a Better Tomorrow,” with sub-themes about inclusivity, elevating local narratives, and seeking partnerships beyond physical and political borders.

Featured speakers include Isabel Wilkerson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Caste” and “The Warmth of Other Suns,” and Albert Bender, a Cherokee activist, historian, political columnist, and freelance journalist. Jelani Memory, author of the bestselling “A Kids Book About Racism,” will talk about tackling difficult topics with young learners.

“We are not shying away from controversial issues,” said Simmons, a 22-year teacher in Tennessee. “Our philosophy is to make sure we’re giving our educators the things they need to best help their students.”

Ultimately, said Hedgepeth, the conference is focused on the future of social studies, which research shows is systematically marginalized in the U.S. education system, from kindergarten to college.

“This is a critical time right now, with the war in Israel and Palestine, the upcoming presidential election, and how politics have divided our country after COVID and other traumatic events,” he said. “I think we are seeing the consequences of a lack of social studies education echoing across our country — from how we relate to others to how we digest media to how we discern between what is true and false.”

“If you don’t teach social studies,” Hedgepeth said, “you don’t get those skills. It’s as simple as that.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee governor proposes extending school voucher program statewide, eventually to all students

2023-11-29T01:32:04+00:00

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Gov. Bill Lee proposed Tuesday to take Tennessee’s education voucher program statewide, starting with up to 20,000 students who would get taxpayer money next school year to attend a private or home school.

The Republican governor also called for all K-12 students to be eligible for vouchers beginning in 2025.

Lee’s Education Freedom Scholarship Act, offering $7,075 annually for each participant, would mark a massive expansion of eligibility for a voucher program that was billed as a pilot project and is now in its second year. The state’s education savings account program, which currently is limited to three urban counties, has just under 2,000 enrollees.

During an announcement in Nashville attended mostly by lawmakers and allies, Lee said statewide voucher eligibility was his vision for Tennessee during his first gubernatorial campaign in 2018, when he called for more education choices for parents.

“Parents know what’s best for their child as it relates to education,” he said, adding that the vouchers would give all Tennessee families the freedom to choose a good fit, whether it’s in public, private, parochial, or home schools.

His plan would eventually eliminate income requirements and change who could benefit from the vouchers. Rather than giving students from low-income families an opportunity to attend private schools — the original stated purpose of Lee’s education savings account program — the universal vouchers Lee now proposes could also subsidize tuition costs for students from more affluent families who already attend private schools.

It’s uncertain whether the final legislation would hold private or home schools accepting voucher money to the same accountability standards that public schools are subject to, including testing requirements or the A-F letter grades that the state is preparing to give out for the first time in December.

“The final details of this legislation aren’t worked out,” Lee told reporters after his announcement. “This is Day One. This will be a legislative effort.”

But Lee’s proposal will face a battle when the General Assembly reconvenes in January. Even under a GOP supermajority, Tennessee’s voucher law squeaked through the House of Representatives in 2019, after sponsors agreed to limit the program to a few urban areas.

The open-ended cost of universal vouchers will be an issue in a state where financial experts have warned lawmakers recently that Tennessee’s government needs to control spending in coming years. Lee said his voucher proposal would be funded through a separate scholarship account, not the funding structure currently in place for public schools, but he didn’t provide a cost analysis.

Lee is trying to ride the momentum of other states with Republican-controlled legislatures — including Florida, Iowa, and Arkansas — that passed massive expansions of their voucher programs this year amid parent anger over pandemic-era school closures and disagreements over what kids are taught in public schools.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a fellow Republican who signed a law in March creating a school voucher program in her state, appeared on stage with Lee for his announcement. She heralded the work of their states as part of a “conservative education revolution,” with vouchers as a centerpiece.

More important for the legislative battle ahead were pledges Tuesday by Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally to advance Lee’s voucher agenda. Sexton, a charter school advocate and likely candidate for governor in 2026, voted against Lee’s education savings account bill in 2019 and did not say why he now supports Lee’s proposal.

However, the legislature’s Democratic leaders said Lee and GOP leadership are in for a fight — similar to the one in Texas, where a bipartisan coalition of Democrats and rural Republicans beat back Gov. Greg Abbott’s school voucher bill this month during a special legislative session.

During a morning news conference, Tennessee Democrats charged that statewide vouchers will weaken public schools and lead to cuts in everything from school personnel to arts and athletic programs, plus increased property taxes for residents. And they pledged to work across the aisle with Republican lawmakers who have been skeptical of vouchers from the outset.

“On the House side, we’re already reaching out to local officials to join us in supporting public schools,” said Rep. John Ray Clemmons, a Nashville Democrat and House caucus chairman, noting that public school districts are typically the largest employers in the state’s rural communities.

From left, Sens. Raumesh Akbari and London Lamar, both of Memphis, listen as Rep. John Ray Clemmons, right, of Nashville, criticizes Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee’s education voucher expansion proposal during a news conference on November 28, 2023.

Democrats also warned that, under the governor’s plan, private schools will be able to choose the voucher students they want to accept, especially from families that are already bound for a private education.

“What this is is a coupon program for rich families who do not want to pay the full price of tuition,” said Sen. London Lamar of Memphis, leader of the Senate Democratic caucus.

Meanwhile, leaders of groups both for and against vouchers said they were mobilizing for the fight ahead.

Among the pro-voucher contingent is Americans for Prosperity in Tennessee, part of a conservative network backed by the billionaire Koch brothers, and the American Federation for Children, whose founding chairperson was Michigan billionaire Betsy DeVos.

Groups opposing Lee’s plan include the state’s two largest professional organizations for educators, the Tennessee Education Association and Professional Educators of Tennessee.

Tennessee has been a battleground state in the school choice movement, with a coalition of conservative political organizations using out-of-state money to campaign against incumbent lawmakers who oppose vouchers.

Lee’s newest proposal, if approved, would put Tennessee on track to become the 10th state to adopt a universal voucher program, joining Arizona, Ohio, Oklahoma, North Carolina, and West Virginia. But the change would happen before state officials have enough data to evaluate the effectiveness of its current education savings account program, which launched last year in Davidson and Shelby counties and this year in Hamilton County.

For the 2024-25 school year, Lee proposes to provide 10,000 “scholarships” for students who are considered economically disadvantaged, have a disability, or are eligible for Tennessee’s current education savings account program. Another 10,000 would go to a universal pool of students across the state.

Beginning in 2025-26, Tennessee would offer vouchers to any K-12 student.

A one-page promotional document circulated by the governor office said Tennessee would prioritize “currently enrolled students, low-income and public school students if demand exceeds available funding.”

For years, Tennessee has been in the bottom tier of states in funding public education and remains in the bottom half nationally, even with a $1 billion increase this year as part of Lee’s overhaul of Tennessee’s education funding formula.

In 2020-21, before the latest investment, national data ranked the state 37th for per-student funding. And in its annual grades for education funding, the Education Law Center gave Tennessee two F’s for funding level and effort, and a D for funding distribution.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Nashville, Shelby County withdraw challenge to Tennessee private school voucher law after long fight

2023-11-17T23:54:28+00:00

Nashville and Shelby County governments have pulled out of their more than 3-year-old legal dispute with the state over a 2019 private school voucher law.

The paperwork to withdraw their latest appeal was filed quietly on Aug. 25 with the Tennessee Court of Appeals, according to court documents.

The pullout by Tennessee’s two largest counties is the latest setback for efforts to overturn the controversial education savings account law, the signature legislation of Gov. Bill Lee’s first year in office.

The law, which allows the state to give taxpayer money to eligible families to pay toward the cost of private school tuition, was declared unconstitutional by a Nashville judge in 2020 because, at the time, it affected students only in Nashville and Memphis, where local officials have consistently opposed vouchers. But after several appeals, the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled in favor of the state in 2022 and resurrected the law, allowing the program to launch last year in the two counties. This fall, the state rolled out the program in Hamilton County after lawmakers voted earlier this year for expansion.

On Friday, Nashville Law Director Wally Dietz declined to comment about the decision to pull out of the suit, as did E. Lee Whitwell, chief litigation attorney for Shelby County government.

Nashville Law Director Wally Dietz criticizes a Tennessee Supreme Court ruling upholding the state’s private school voucher law during a news conference on June 1, 2022, soon after the court’s decision.

But Dietz, whose office has been leading the charge on the Nashville-Shelby lawsuit, noted that the legal challenge remains alive through a second lawsuit filed in 2020 by the Education Law Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of 11 public school parents and community members in Memphis and Nashville. Their appeal is pending before the state’s appellate court.

The state Supreme Court’s ruling in May 2022 rejected Metro Nashville and Shelby County’s argument that the voucher law violated a “home rule” provision in the Tennessee Constitution. The latest court battle has been over whether plaintiffs in both lawsuits have legal standing to pursue the case based on other legal claims, such as a constitutional clause that requires the state to maintain a system of “free public schools,” with no mention of private schools.

In a split vote in late 2022, a three-judge panel of Davidson County Chancery Court dismissed those claims. Soon after, attorneys behind both lawsuits appealed that ruling to the Tennessee Court of Appeals.

Chris Wood, a Nashville lawyer helping to litigate the remaining lawsuit, said the pullout by Metro Nashville and Shelby County has no bearing on his case filed jointly with the Education Law Center, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the ACLU.

“We’re still here,” Wood said Friday. “Our case has always been our case. And while it’s good to have other folks working with you, this really doesn’t have an impact on what we’re doing.”

A spokesperson for the Tennessee attorney general’s office did not immediately respond when asked Friday about the development.

Currently, Tennessee’s education savings account program has fewer than 2,000 students enrolled in 75 state-approved private schools in the three counties where it operates, significantly below this year’s 5,000-seat cap.

Rep. Mark White, a Memphis Republican who chairs a House Education Committee, has said he expects to file legislation next year to take the program statewide.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tenn. hearings on federal school funding leave out parents and local advocacy groups

2023-11-15T11:00:00+00:00

A legislative panel exploring whether Tennessee should reject federal funding for its K-12 students isn’t allowing public testimony from Tennesseans about how federally funded programs are run or how they affect their children.

And it’s not hearing from Tennessee-based advocacy groups either.

However, two conservative advocacy groups from outside the state are set to weigh in on the discussion Wednesday as the panel wraps up five days of hearings.

Steve Johnson, a former member of the Michigan House of Representatives, is scheduled to speak to the GOP-led committee on behalf of the Center for Practical Federalism, part of an association of state-level free-market think tanks. The group’s website says it seeks to educate people on the benefits of federalism, which it describes as a system of government where “some authority belongs to the national government, and much more resides with states, communities and the American people.”

Also on the agenda is Sal Nuzzo, senior vice president of the James Madison Institute, a Florida-based think tank that lists “limited government” among its guiding principles. His biography says he was appointed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to serve on that state’s government efficiency task force. He also has worked with longtime antitax activist Grover Norquist, the bio says.

The testimony will mark a departure from proceedings that have been mostly fact-finding presentations during the previous four days of hearings with established nonpartisan researchers, school district leaders, and state officials.

The panel, created by the speakers of the House and Senate in September, is to report back to Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature by Jan. 9 on its findings and recommend strategies for rejecting potentially millions of U.S. education dollars in order to avoid federal regulations that cover everything from mandated student testing to civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ students.

If Tennessee opts to forgo any federal funding for its students, it would be the first state to do so. Federal dollars typically make up about a tenth of state education budgets and provide additional support for students who are from low-income families, have disabilities, and are learning the English language. The money also provides targeted support for certain needs ranging from rural education to technology and charter schools.

Estimates of the impact of federal education funding in Tennessee have varied from $1.1 billion to $1.9 billion since House Speaker Cameron Sexton first floated the idea in February. On Tuesday, officials with the state education department attributed the variance to additional federal education relief in recent years due to the pandemic.

For the current fiscal year, they said, Tennessee is projected to receive about $1.3 billion from the federal government, or about a tenth of the total spending on the state’s K-12 students. The rest of the money comes from the state and local governments.

State officials also reported that all 148 Tennessee school districts receive one or more federal grants, affecting a wide swath of the state’s nearly 1 million public school students. Of those, nearly 152,000 students are considered economically disadvantaged; about 129,000 receive special education services; and more than 66,000 are learning the English language.

Sexton and other GOP leaders have said Tennessee would continue services currently funded by the federal government and would fill the gap with its own funding if it decides to go that route.

Advocates for people with disabilities weren’t invited

Sen. Jon Lundberg and Rep. Debra Moody, who chair education committees in their respective legislative chambers, co-chair the special legislative panel and set the agenda for meetings that began on Nov. 6.

Rep. Debra Moody and Sen. Jon Lundberg, both Republicans, co-chair the joint legislative panel exploring whether Tennessee can replace the money it receives from the U.S. government with state funds so it won’t have to comply with mandates tied to the federal funding.

Last week, Lundberg told Chalkbeat that his committee has not allowed testimony from parents or education advocacy groups in Tennessee because the focus of the hearings is on efficiency and federal requirements for accepting federal dollars, not whether the state will continue to provide those services.

“Our charge is not to look at eliminating programs, or adding programs,” said Lundberg, a Bristol Republican. “It’s about, if we say we don’t need the federal government to provide X program, can we as a state do it more efficiently and serve this student population more effectively?”

Among the groups left on the sidelines was the Tennessee Disability Coalition, an alliance of organizations and individuals that advocate for full and equal participation of people with disabilities in school and all other aspects of life.

Sen. Raumesh Akbari of Memphis, one of two Democrats serving on the special legislative committee, had asked the panel’s co-chairs to invite the coalition to give a presentation about the intricacies of the federal Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act, known as IDEA, and the services it covers for students with disabilities. However, the coalition received no invitation, said Jeff Strand, the group’s coordinator of government and external affairs.

None of the panelists who have testified thus far have spoken in depth about IDEA, its services, or impacts.

“Some panelists have even mischaracterized the tenets of IDEA that are codified in (Tennessee state law), with one even saying that IDEA is in the code in its entirety,” Strand said.

Committee leaders also declined a request from Tennessee parents to testify on behalf of Rise & Shine, a grassroots advocacy group organized after a mass shooting in March left three children, three adults, and the shooter dead at a private school in Nashville.

“It’s hard for me to see this as a neutral facts analysis that’s not political when they’re talking to outside organizations and not more Tennesseans who have a perspective and experiences with these federal programs,” said Maryam Abolfazli, a Nashville mom and the group’s founder.

“It feels like they view our voices as emotional pleas, rather than a way to get insights into how these programs and funding work for Tennessee families,” she told Chalkbeat.

School leaders and education commissioner air concerns

Moody, the House co-chair, declined to comment Tuesday when asked why testimony is needed from the two out-of-state groups, or whether it’s appropriate before a fact-finding panel.

Johnson, with the Center for Practical Federalism, did not respond to questions from Chalkbeat on Tuesday asking how and why he got on the agenda. But Nuzzo, with the James Madison Institute, said through a spokesperson that he was invited to speak by Rep. John Ragan, an Oak Ridge Republican serving on the committee. “He inquired whether the James Madison Institute had relevant expertise that could be helpful for the legislative panel to consider,” said the spokesperson, who said the institute provides research, legislative education, and testimony in Florida and throughout the country.

Those testifying so far have been researchers with the state comptroller’s office; the legislature’s fiscal review committee; and the Sycamore Institute, a nonpartisan research group and think tank in Tennessee.

The committee also heard from Austin Reid, the legislative director of the National Conference of State Legislatures; and from four school district superintendents who said Tennessee schools could use more funding if the state has the resources to reject federal funding and fill the gap with state revenues.

Many of those testifying warned that Tennessee will enter uncharted territory if it opts to reject federal money. And Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds, who started her job in July, echoed those concerns on Tuesday in her first testimony before state lawmakers.

“Many federal requirements are also codified in Tennessee state law, and the issue of accepting or rejecting federal education funding is a complicated one, with numerous legal implications and uncertainties,” Reynolds said.

“For these reasons, it’s hard to project exactly how decisions (to opt out of federal funding) would play out,” she added.

Possible ramifications could include budget cuts or tax increases during a future shortfall or recession; protracted court battles over federal requirements that may still exist for schools even if funding is refused; and Tennesseans having to pay federal income taxes for education support that would go to other states.

Correction: Nov. 17, 2023: A previous version of this story said Sal Nuzzo, with the James Madison Institute, did not respond Tuesday to questions from Chalkbeat asking how and why he got on the agenda. The story has been corrected to include a response from an institute spokesperson, which was emailed to Chalkbeat Tuesday night.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Marta at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Senate leader doesn’t expect Tennessee to reject federal money for students

2023-11-16T23:27:17+00:00

A leader of the panel exploring whether Tennessee can reject federal education funding says he doesn’t expect the state to do so, even if it can find a way.

Sen. Jon Lundberg, who co-chairs the special legislative committee looking into the idea, said that based on what the panel has learned during two weeks of hearings that ended on Wednesday, it would be premature to make big changes in the funding streams for Tennessee students.

The Bristol Republican also expects the panel’s work to continue “well into 2024″ as members seek information from the U.S. Department of Education about rules and regulations tied to acceptance of federal funding.

“My expectation is that we’re not going to say no to federal funds. We’re not going to kick more than a billion dollars back to the U.S. government,” Lundberg told Chalkbeat on Thursday.

“But I do think that, as a legislative body, we are going to be more judicious in reviewing federal rules and proposals that are passed on to the state education department and state Board of Education,” he said.

Advocate for education equity: ‘We’re taking this seriously’

This month’s hearings by the GOP-led legislative group mark the furthest any state has gone toward forgoing U.S. education dollars, which typically make up about a tenth of a state’s spending on K-12 education.

The 10-member committee, created by speakers of the House and Senate, has a Jan. 9 deadline to submit its findings and recommendations to the Republican-controlled General Assembly.

House Speaker Cameron Sexton, who touted the idea in February, has said the state wants more autonomy over how its students are taught. He said the state would fill the federal funding gap with state money and continue programs that are currently federally funded.

Most of the federal money received in Tennessee — estimated at about $1.3 billion annually by state education department officials this week — provides additional support to low-income students, English language learners, and students with disabilities. Other federally funded programs target certain needs ranging from rural education to technology to charter schools.

The opt-out talk has angered many Tennesseans who pay federal taxes and whose children benefit from federally funded programs or receive civil rights protections through federal oversight. Advocates of historically underserved students are prepared to mobilize if the committee’s work generates legislation to reject any part of federal funding.

For now, they’re monitoring the panel’s work.

“We’re taking this seriously, because this would be such a consequential step for the state to take,” said Gini Pupo-Walker, who leads The Education Trust in Tennessee. “We’re trying to ensure lawmakers are getting accurate information during the discussions.” (Related: What it would mean for kids)

Tennessee-based advocacy groups such as The Education Trust and the Tennessee Disability Coalition, as well as those representing parents and educators, were not invited or allowed to testify during the hearings — a decision that Lundberg said was designed to keep the committee on mission. Instead, the testimony came mostly from state and nonpartisan researchers, officials with the Tennessee education department, four local school district leaders, and a federal policy expert with the National Conference of State Legislatures.

“Our charge was not to look at how to cut funding, but how to change that funding stream from federal to state dollars,” Lundberg said.

Panel leaders expect to gather more input

As of Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Education had not received questions from the Tennessee panel but stands ready to provide “technical assistance” as needed, a spokesperson said.

The federal department, which was listed on the agenda for one meeting last week, did not send representatives to testify because the agency never received an invitation, the spokesperson said.

Lundberg, who initially told the committee that federal officials were “unable to attend,” clarified on Thursday that the no-show was due to a “miscommunication.”

But he expects the panel will have numerous questions for federal officials, and that the back-and-forth process could take months.

Eventually, the committee may also seek legal opinions from the state attorney general’s office. Because no state has rejected federal education money before, Tennessee officials expect numerous challenges in court if the state takes a step in that direction.

“I notified the speakers that we potentially won’t complete our work by the Jan. 9 deadline,” Lundberg said. “We have to get this right, not just quick.”

Rep. Debra Moody, the Covington Republican who co-chairs the panel, said in a statement that her intention is to “continue gathering pertinent information so the working group can release a complete and competent report.”

Lt. Gov. Randy McNally said he’s pleased the panel is taking its fact-finding mission seriously.

“I have no issue with an extension, if needed, and I look forward to reading the group’s final report when it is completed,” McNally said through a spokesman.

As part of their fact-finding mission, there’s no discussion of committee members touring the state to see the kinds of services provided under federally funded programs to determine whether the state has sustainable finances and operational capacity to continue them.

For instance, federal money helps support homeless students, career and technical education labs, and after-school programs that provide tutoring, enrichment, and meals to students from low-income families.

Pupo-Walker, from The Education Trust, said any comprehensive investigation should include that type of research.

“I think it would be a disservice,” she said, “not to see firsthand how those federal dollars play out in the lives of children and families and schools and their communities.”

You can see a state analysis of county-by-county budget information that includes public education, at the General Assembly’s website. The nonpartisan Sycamore Institute has also produced two recent reports about federal education funding in Tennessee.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Marta at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Why this award-winning school superintendent donates his bonus back for his students every year

2023-11-02T10:00:00+00:00

If his school community had to choose between himself and its nine therapy dogs, David Snowden jokes that “the director of schools would have to go.”

Now in his 23rd year as leader of Franklin Special School District, south of Nashville, Snowden has championed the canine program since Mattie Grace became the school system’s first trained therapy dog in 2018.

Five years later, each of the district’s eight schools has a canine companion on site, as does its central office, to provide emotional support to students and staff.

Snowden says the program is popular — and needed. Even before the pandemic, faculty and staff were seeing an increase in student anxiety, depression, and mental distress.

But all of the comfort and joy brought by the pups wouldn’t be financially possible if Snowden hadn’t donated his performance bonus back to his home district to help cover the cost. It’s a practice he’s done every year since coming to his suburban district in 2001 — to acknowledge and reward the collective work of the students, teachers, and staff who surround him.

“It takes a team effort to be successful,” he explained.

In all, Snowden has returned about a quarter of a million dollars in bonus money to pay for various needs over the years, whether to hire tutors, buy chargers for Chromebooks, or provide water bottle refilling stations during the pandemic.

His colleagues call him a “true servant leader,” but his peers across the state recently gave him another title: Tennessee Superintendent of the Year. Because of the honor bestowed on him in September by the state’s superintendents organization, Snowden will represent Tennessee in February in San Diego at the national competition sponsored by the American School Superintendents Association.

In a recent interview with Chalkbeat, Snowden talked about why he chose a career in education, how he tries to bring out the greatness in others, his strategy for dealing with negative politics, and what gives him hope for the future.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What led you to a career in education?

Other than my parents, the most influential and inspiring people in my life were teachers and coaches. Any and all successes I may have had, both personally and professionally, are directly related to their support and mentorship. With my own career, I wanted to provide students with those same positive influences to help them become as successful as possible.

Tell us about your own experience as a student and how it affects your work today.

Growing up in rural Mississippi, I was an average student who enjoyed school but struggled with self-confidence. Fortunately, I had teachers who supported and inspired me to achieve higher than what I thought I could. With those influences, I became a fairly good student by high school. But those early struggles still resonate with me as I watch our great teachers positively connect with and encourage students each day. Every child is not going to excel at the very highest levels, but we know every child can be successful with the help and support of great teachers.

Describe an interaction with a student or teacher that made a lasting impression on you.

When I was an assistant high school principal in Pascagoula, Mississippi, my initial interaction with this particular student didn’t make a lasting impression. However, the note I received from her 20 years after she graduated made me realize that we, as educators, can have a positive impact on the lives of students, even when we don’t immediately see the fruits of our labor.

This young woman was constantly late to school and class and seemed to have a terrible attitude in general. I tried to get through her tough exterior but never thought my counsel resonated. When I wrote her a detention note, she routinely wadded it up like trash as she left my office. She managed to graduate from high school, so that end result was positive. Fast forward 20 years. I received a note from her (written on the back of a detention notice, no less) thanking me for all of our interactions through the years and the advice I had given her. She wrote that she never would have graduated, had it not been for those “tough love” conversations and my support. I still have that note!

What’s the best advice you ever received, and how have you put it into action on the job?

“Be yourself.” “Do your very best each and every day.” “Listen more than talk.”

Leaders shouldn’t try to be someone they are not. No matter how hard they may try, most people can see through the facade.

Doing our best means to never accept the status quo and to always be open to new ideas and growth.

I strive to be a good listener and to model one of Stephen R. Covey’s principles of highly effective people: “Seek first to understand and then to be understood.” If someone doesn’t understand a person, there is no way they can effectively address their problem, issue, or idea. When we are engaged listeners, we understand better.

Kindergarten students at Moore Elementary School surprise Snowden at a 2023 leadership team meeting to congratulate him for his Tennessee Superintendent of the Year award.

What’s one thing you’ve read that has made you a better educator?

Many years ago, I read “Good to Great,” by Jim Collins, about why some companies become great, while others merely remain good. It made me realize the importance of always striving for continuous improvement. “Good is the enemy of great,” he wrote, so we know if we are not improving, we are regressing. He also said that you have to be willing to “face the brutal facts” of why you are not where you want to be in order to achieve greatness. It is important to create a culture of collaboration and trust in order for continuous improvement to occur.

In education, as we constantly analyze and utilize data, we must do our best to determine the root causes of our successes, as well as what’s at the root of areas that need improving.

What were the biggest challenges for you as a school leader during the most recent school year, and how did you address them?

The negativity we heard from some corners about public schools and public school educators in Tennessee was definitely a challenge. Those comments were not based on fact but came from people who want to disparage public education — in my opinion, for their own benefit. We responded by accentuating the positive aspects of public education at every opportunity and highlighting the work of public school teachers in our district and across the state. Our school board members also spoke out publicly about the unfair and unfounded attacks on public education.

What were the biggest rewards?

One of the biggest rewards centered on the resolve of our teachers and leaders to work together for student success, despite the challenging political environment. Our parents were great partners and supporters as they gave our teachers perks on a regular basis and frequently volunteered their time. And we saw continued local investments in facilities for our students, including a new state-of-the-art performing arts center, a new gymnasium, and a new athletic complex. All of these facilities provide our students with high-quality venues to showcase their gifts and talents.

Many students are facing heightened challenges with mental health. What do you think are the root causes, and how is your team helping to support them?

Schools are a microcosm of society, and we’re seeing the struggles of many people from all walks of life. This was true even before the pandemic.

Snowden checks in with Blake, a therapy dog at Franklin Elementary School, and his handler, art teacher Jennifer Alvarado.

We provide training related to trauma and how best to help individuals and groups of students to overcome the residual effects of adverse events. Being better informed about the effects of trauma is important so we can recognize those signs and provide specific support.

Through a partnership with a local clinic that provides behavioral health counseling services, we now have a mental health therapist at every school in our district, most of them five days a week.

In 2018, we launched a therapy dog program with one canine at Johnson Elementary School. The initial plan was to add a dog each year. But seeing the clear positive impact, we fast-tracked the initiative and now have a therapy dog in each school. We even have a dog at the central office to provide support for both students and adults.

How do you take care of yourself when you’re not at work?

The goal is to stay active, whether it’s walking or working out. I enjoy playing golf, which gives me an opportunity to soak up some Vitamin D while trying to improve a not-so-good golf game. My wife, Kathy, and I like to travel, so we are always thinking about our next adventure.

What gives you hope at this moment?

My hope always lies in people and their human spirit. Even though there is a great deal of divisiveness today in our society, we believe that through perseverance, love, and character, we will return as a society to that place of mutual respect and understanding. Obviously, that doesn’t mean everyone will agree on every issue, but we can disagree without being disagreeable. As educators, we have to model how best to interact and effectively communicate with each other to enhance our community, state, and country.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee should boost education funding, not reject federal money, school leaders say

2023-11-08T01:01:44+00:00

A state committee studying whether Tennessee should reject federal education dollars heard a unified plea from public school leaders not to do that — and to instead invest the state’s excess revenues in K-12 students, teachers, and schools.

“The needs are so great,” said Toni Williams, interim superintendent of Memphis-Shelby County Schools, Tennessee’s largest district, during remarks Tuesday before the panel.

She described dozens of school buildings that are over a century old, outdated HVAC systems, and the need to mitigate everything from mold to rats. Last year, a library ceiling collapsed at Cummings K-12 Optional School, injuring the school librarian and two other staff members.

Toni Williams, interim superintendent of Memphis-Shelby County Schools, speaks to state lawmakers on Nov. 7, 2023.

“This year has been incredibly difficult,” Williams said of her district’s work to address its ailing infrastructure while also providing teachers and staff with competitive pay and preparing for an end to federal COVID relief funding.

The plea from Williams and three other district leaders ran counter to the panel’s charge to develop a strategy on “how to reject certain federal funding or how to eliminate unwanted restrictions.”

Tennessee receives about $1.8 billion in federal funds for education. The U.S. government generally covers about a tenth of a state’s spending for public schools. No state has ever said no to federal funding for its students.

But leaders of Tennessee’s GOP-controlled legislature say they’re frustrated by the federal oversight that’s attached to receiving the money. Many of them believe the state can afford to forgo federal funding and fill the gap with state money.

The committee, appointed by the speakers of the House and Senate, kicked off hearings into the matter this week and is to report its findings and recommendations to the General Assembly by Jan. 9.

Federal funding cutoff could force tax increases later

On Monday, officials with the state comptroller’s office reported that districts in low-income and rural areas depend the most on federal funding. That money is directed to schools that serve disadvantaged students and programs that target certain needs ranging from rural education and English language learners to technology and charter schools.

On Tuesday, researchers with the Sycamore Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, said “much is unknown” if the state opts to pull out of the federal funding stream.

“There’s no precedent upon which to make projections,” said Mandy Spears, the institute’s deputy director.

Even with lower-than-projected revenues and experts predicting stagnant revenues ahead, Spears told the panel that Tennessee likely has room in its budget to replace federal dollars with state money. However, possible ramifications could include budget cuts or tax increases during a future shortfall or recession; protracted court battles over federal requirements that may still exist for schools even if funding is refused; and Tennesseans having to pay federal income taxes for education support that would go to other states.

Spears said federal requirements tied to federal funding provide an extra layer of accountability that’s important to many students and their families because of Tennessee’s history of racial discrimination, school segregation, and exclusion of students with disabilities from public schools.

“Students and families in these protected classes may worry that such practices could return in the absence of federal oversight,” Spears said.

Later Tuesday, the panel asked school district leaders numerous questions about staffing costs related to federal compliance and whether replacing federal funds with state money would give them more flexibility. They also questioned the superintendents about whether their districts measure how much federally funded food is wasted in school cafeterias.

They don’t.

“We just report the number of meals served every day,” said Williams of Memphis-Shelby County Schools, where food and nutrition is the second largest federally funded program at a cost of $89 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Williams said 60% of the district’s 100,000-plus students are considered economically disadvantaged.

“Some of these students wouldn’t have an opportunity (to eat), if not for our food and nutrition program,” she said.

District leaders say extra funding is needed

Asked for a list of burdensome requirements associated with federal education funding, none of the school leaders spoke up. But they spoke at length about the need for more funding for public schools and their students.

Marlon King noted that Madison-Jackson County Schools, where he is superintendent, is among several districts in West Tennessee making investments to develop the future workforce for Ford Motor Co.’s new electric pickup truck plant in nearby Haywood County.

Hank Clay, chief of staff for Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, worried that any move toward eliminating federal funding or oversight could tempt districts to shift money that helps their most vulnerable students, especially when school leaders are dealing with other challenges around teacher pay and school facilities.

“If there’s funding on the table to replace these federal dollars, we would welcome that, but ask that it be in addition to — because our students deserve it,” Clay said.

Matt Hixson, who leads schools in Hawkins County, called infrastructure a “huge concern” and noted that his rural district is staring at a $15 million price tag for roof replacement at two high schools. That cost is borne by local taxpayers.

“The only way we have to fund some of those projects is to stand in front of my peers in the county and say we need more tax money,” he said. “I’m a taxpayer too. I’m not a fan of big taxes.”

Earlier this year, the Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations reported that the state needs to invest more than $9 billion in its K-12 education infrastructure over five years, an increase of nearly 9% from an assessment done a year earlier.

Of that amount, about $5.4 billion is needed for renovations and technology improvements, while nearly $3.6 billion is needed to build additions and new schools.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee’s first A-F letter grades for schools will stress proficiency

2023-11-03T00:01:41+00:00

After months of asking Tennesseans how the state should judge its public schools when giving them their first A-F letter grades, Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds mostly ignored the feedback.

In her first major initiative since taking the helm of the state education department in July, Reynolds chose a school grading system that elevates the importance of proficiency — whether students are meeting certain academic standards on state tests — over the progress that schools make toward meeting those standards over the course of a year.

Her plan, unveiled on Thursday, will mark a sharp change of course for Tennessee, considered a pioneer in emphasizing growth measurements to assess its students, teachers, and schools.

It’s also significantly different from what Tennesseans have asked state officials for since Reynolds announced in August that an overhaul in the state’s grading system was coming. The overwhelming feedback at 10 town halls, meetings with stakeholders, and in nearly 300 public comments was for keeping the calculation focused on growth, as it has been the last five years.

Reynolds’ plan is similar to the model backed by ExcelinEd, the education advocacy group founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and where Reynolds previously served as policy director.

It will still include improvement as a factor, as required by a 2016 Tennessee law, but achievement will get more weight than under the original formula — and there won’t be a way for schools to meet the achievement criteria by meeting certain improvement goals, according to a presentation to the state Board of Education.

“This version is recalibrating that balance point and is going to say more about where the kids are in those schools right now,” said David Laird, assistant commissioner of assessment and accountability in the education department. “It is less of a referendum on maybe what the school’s impact has been, but it’s more clearly articulating their challenges right now.”

The department also announced that the grades will be released in mid-December, a month later than previously planned. State officials say they need more time to verify data going into the grades.

This is the first time the state will issue its letter grades since the 2016 law requiring them took effect. Previous attempts were called off because of testing glitches and the pandemic.

There are several other changes to the calculation.

The formula will factor in test scores for science and social studies, although not as much as for math and English language arts, which were the focus of the original model.

Gone is data related to chronic absenteeism. A new factor will be how well schools are helping their lowest-performing quartile of students to improve. For high schools, college and career readiness will be included, based on measures such as ACT scores, postsecondary credits, or industry credentials.

The debate about growth vs. proficiency was the biggest concern for school leaders who have been waiting and planning for grades for five years.

Focusing on proficiency likely will mean fewer A’s and generally worse grades than expected for many schools, especially those serving students from lower-income families in rural and urban communities.

Beyond the stigma of getting a D or an F, officials representing those schools eventually may face hearings before the state Board of Education or audits of their spending and academic programming.

Several board members worried that teachers could flee schools graded D or F, exacerbating the challenges faced by schools in high-poverty areas, where students face extra challenges before they even walk into a classroom.

“It’s a struggle for me to think about saying everyone should pull themselves up by their bootstraps, when some folks have a closet full of boots, and some have none,” said Darrell Cobbins, who represents Memphis on the board.

Many education advocates worried the state could return to an era when schools with many affluent students coasted to the top ratings, while doing little to show they were helping students improve. Meanwhile, schools in high-poverty areas will have little chance to earn an A or B, they told Chalkbeat.

“Measuring only absolute proficiency for 50% of a school’s grade will most certainly disadvantage our highest poverty schools,” said Erin O’Hara Block, a school board member for Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, who served on the working group giving input to the state.

“I’m not sure what this system is supposed to motivate for schools, nor how it will truly inform parents on differences in what various schools can offer to their children,” she said.

Reynolds said the letter grades are a tool to provide families and school communities with information they can use to make decisions, not necessarily to incentivize schools to improve.

“We want to tell the truth about whether or not our kids are actually achieving,” she said.

But Gini Pupo-Walker, director of the Education Trust in Tennessee, is hopeful the grades will somehow be tied to extra resources to help struggling schools.

“We look forward to learning more about how the state plans to support schools that receive D’s and F’s,” she said, “and ensure schools are paying attention to the success of all students.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee rushes to revamp its A-F letter grades for schools. Educators cry foul.

2023-10-26T10:00:00+00:00

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It was supposed to make things simpler.

A 2016 Tennessee law required the state to assign each public school a letter grade, A to F, based mostly on student test results. The intent was to give parents and communities an easy way to assess the quality of education at each school.

Nothing about it has been simple, though. Since the law took effect, the state hasn’t issued any grades, mostly because of testing glitches and the pandemic.

And now there’s a new complication: As the state prepares to finally issue its first grades in November, the education department and its new leader are revamping the grading formula. The changes likely will mean fewer A’s and generally worse grades than expected for many schools, especially those serving students from lower-income families in rural and urban communities.

The rollout will be a jolt to many Tennessee public school leaders, who have been waiting and planning for these grades for five years, thinking they understood what the criteria would be. And beyond the stigma, the grades could have real consequences: Officials representing schools that get D’s or F’s eventually may face hearings or audits of their spending and academic programming.

“It almost seems like we’re trying to change rules after the game’s already been played,” said Brian Curry, a school board member in Germantown, during an August town hall in Memphis to discuss potential changes with state officials.

Why the letter grades for schools matter

Tennessee’s 2016 school report card law didn’t include consequences for schools that get low grades.

That changed last year, when Tennessee passed a new system for funding K-12 education.

Under the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement Act, or TISA, school districts or charter authorizers can face hearings before the state Board of Education if their schools get D’s or F’s on the state report card, beginning with the 2024-25 school year.

Ultimately, administrators could have to submit a corrective action plan or undergo a state audit of spending and academic programming at the school in question.

State board member Darrell Cobbins, whose district includes Memphis schools, acknowledges that the increased funding that came with TISA warrants additional accountability. But he wonders about the feasibility of what the law asks of the all-volunteer board. Holding hearings for potentially hundreds of schools will be a “major undertaking,” he said.

The board is working with a consultant, Bellwether Education Partners, to develop a review process that Cobbins hopes will be logical, consistent, and explainable.

At the crux of the state’s late change is a long-running debate over proficiency vs. growth — whether students should be judged based more on whether they meet certain academic standards, or on how much progress they make toward those standards. Where the state lands in that debate is especially important for schools where students face extra challenges even before they walk into a classroom.

But many public school leaders believe there’s a larger political motive behind the sudden drive by Gov. Bill Lee’s administration to change the rules: advancing his school choice agenda.

Under a 2019 voucher law pushed by Lee, Tennessee now provides taxpayer money to help some families send their children to private schools. But the program has fewer than 2,000 students enrolled in the three counties where it operates, significantly below this year’s 5,000-seat cap. Lee wants to expand enrollment and eventually take the option statewide.

“School choice has got to be part of what’s driving all this,” said Mike Winstead, director of Maryville City Schools and a former Tennessee Superintendent of the Year.

“Think about it,” he continued. “If you have an A or B school in your community, that may not motivate parents to want to pull their kids out of public schools to use a voucher.”

Several other district leaders brought up the same concern to state officials at town halls hosted by the department in August and September to get public feedback about revising the grading formula. But state officials flatly deny there’s a connection between the voucher law and changes to the grading formula.

The grading law “was passed to promote transparency, and families should be able to know and to understand how their students’ schools are performing,” a department spokesman said in a statement to Chalkbeat.

Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds said the goal of the new formula is to generate grades that signify meaningful differences in school performance in a way that make sense to Tennesseans, whether they reflect proficiency, growth, or other criteria that are ultimately chosen.

“Whether you are a student, parent, teacher, policymaker, or an interested community member, school letter grades will empower all Tennesseans with the information they need to support K-12 public education and our local schools,” she said.

Tennessee initially adopted growth-focused model

State law requires that Tennessee’s model for grading schools take into account student performance and improvement, as demonstrated on annual state tests, and it allows inclusion of other reliable indicators of student achievement. The statute directed the education department to come up with a formula to turn those results into a single letter grade for each school, to be published online on the State Report Card.

When developing the calculation under former Republican Gov. Bill Haslam’s administration, the department stressed achievement and growth in math and English language arts. And it created two pathways for schools to demonstrate achievement.

One way was based on what the state calls “pure achievement,” meaning that a certain percentage of a school’s students demonstrated a required level of proficiency, skill, or knowledge. By this metric, a school that started the school year with a high proficiency rate was likely to receive an A even if it had not improved student learning during the school year.

The other way rewarded schools that met certain goals to move their students toward proficiency from one year to the next. The idea was that all schools, especially those serving low-income students or that have historically performed poorly, should have an opportunity to get an A as long as they make strong progress toward the state’s achievement goals.

So even the achievement part of the grading formula could be fulfilled with strong growth. In this way, Tennessee was an early adopter of a growth-heavy model when developing its accountability system.

“All means all!” became the mantra of then-Education Commissioner Candice McQueen as she worked with education stakeholders for nearly a year to design a system to incentivize improvement for all students — whether they are considered low, average, or high achievers — as well as for all schools, regardless of their demographic makeup.

Tennessee had modest success with that approach, even though the actual letter grades were never issued. Before the pandemic hit in 2020, students were showing incremental growth in math and reading based on some of the nation’s highest proficiency standards.

But state lawmakers have become increasingly impatient with the pace of improvement, especially in reading. About a third of the state’s students meet grade-level standards on the English language arts test, which requires students to demonstrate the ability to read closely.

“School choice has got to be part of what’s driving all this. Think about it. If you have an A or B school in your community, that may not motivate parents to want to pull their kids out of public schools to use a voucher.” — Mike Winstead, Maryville City Schools director

“At the end of the day, I want to know: Can you add, subtract, multiply, and divide, and can you read, regardless of how much you have grown from one year to the other?” said Rep. Mark Cochran, an Englewood Republican, during one legislative hearing about the state’s emphasis on growth.

Meanwhile, the legislature has sought to provide more options for families dissatisfied with the performance of traditional public schools by introducing private school vouchers and allowing charter schools to open statewide.

Now as Tennessee revamps its school grading system, Lee’s administration is poised to shift weight in the equation from growth to pure achievement. Reynolds wants the state to do that by eliminating the growth pathway for demonstrating achievement. Growth would still be a component of the overall grade, as dictated by state law, but a much smaller part.

“I want to be very clear that when we’re talking about academic achievement, we’re talking about academic achievement,” Reynolds, the new education commissioner, said at an Oct. 12 meeting of education stakeholders.

State hears strong calls for retaining growth focus

Reynolds, who was sworn in to her post in July, launched the reevaluation of the grading system about a month later as her first major initiative. She invited Tennesseans to weigh in on how the state should measure a school’s academic success. At the time, state officials said all options were on the table.

At town halls, meetings with stakeholders, and in nearly 300 public comments from Tennesseans, state officials heard a common theme: Keep some kind of growth option as part of the achievement calculation. Measuring student performance with a single letter grade requires nuance, many educators said, and the growth-based model allows that.

“Is having a campus that has only 15% reading proficiency really a B school, if those kids cannot read?” — Lizzette Reynolds, Tennessee education commissioner

A formula that’s weighted too heavily toward pure achievement, they warned, would produce grades that essentially mirror the economic profiles of the schools — with high-income communities getting the A’s and B’s — and families wouldn’t be able to use the grades to differentiate the performance of one high-poverty school from another.

“Given the strong correlation between achievement and poverty, I think it’s really difficult to talk about just achievement in isolation. We really need to balance this with growth,” said Madeline Price, policy director for the State Collaborative on Reforming Education, at an Oct. 5 meeting of the stakeholders group.

“All schools, especially low-income and traditionally low performing schools, should have a very real opportunity to receive an A” if they significantly improve student performance, the leaders of Tennessee’s school superintendent organization wrote in a letter to Reynolds.

Meaghan Turnbow, who coordinates programs for English language learners in fast-growing Rutherford County Schools, south of Nashville, noted pitfalls in a model that emphasizes proficiency over growth.

“We have students come to our district from all over the world with various education levels and English levels,” she wrote in a public comment. “Year to year they grow, but it may be several years before they are considered meeting or exceeding expectations.”

Tennessee Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds speaks to a gathering of school superintendents in September. Reynolds has signaled that she wants to narrow the way the state judges student performance.

But soon after asking for public feedback, Tennessee’s new education chief signaled that she wanted to narrow the way the state judges student performance.

During an Aug. 29 town hall in Chattanooga, Reynolds acknowledged that the education department, before scuttling plans to issue grades in the fall of 2022 under former Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn, had run the numbers but didn’t like what it saw. For instance, she said, a school with 80% of its students reading on grade level might have received a B, but so might a school that had only 15% of students reading on grade level, while also demonstrating high growth.

“Is having a campus that has only 15% reading proficiency really a B school, if those kids cannot read?” Reynolds asked.

“We should celebrate growth,” she continued. “We should also celebrate achievement, because at the end of the day, kids can grow. But if they never get on grade level, they don’t have much of a future, particularly when it comes to reading and math.”

How a single school could get conflicting evaluations

The A-F grading system, as required by the state, was billed as a simple, common-sense tool to help parents understand how their child’s school is doing and compare schools.

But changes the department is making could add a new layer of complexity for school communities.

When Tennessee developed its accountability plan in 2017, it opted for a single system to satisfy both the state law and a 2015 federal accountability law called the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA. That way, “we’re not sending different messages to parents and the general public,” said Winstead, the Maryville schools director who served on the state task force that developed the plan.

ESSA doesn’t require A-F grades, but it directs the state to use its own criteria to identify schools that are academically in the bottom 5%, plus other schools showing low performance or significant disparities across groups of students who are Black, Hispanic, economically disadvantaged, or English learners, or have learning disabilities. Such schools become eligible for additional federal funding.

Because of the link between the two laws, the schools that would earn the lowest grades under Tennessee’s current formula are the same ones that would get federal support to help them improve. And educators would work with a common set of goals, priorities, and incentives.

Changes that the Tennessee Department of Education is making could create two separate accountability systems, producing conflicting assessments of how a school is doing.

Under Reynolds, the Tennessee education department appears ready to decouple the state’s A-F system from its federal compliance plan. The change would result in Tennessee having two accountability systems, potentially producing conflicting assessments of how a school is doing.

For example, if the new state formula places less emphasis on certain student groups than the federal system does, a school that has big racial or economic disparities in student performance could still earn high grades from Tennessee based on overall proficiency rates. Meanwhile, a school with low proficiency rates would get a D or an F, even though it may serve certain groups of students better than an A or B school.

Mary Batiwalla, former assistant commissioner of assessment and accountability in Tennessee, says what’s going on here has parallels in Texas, where Reynolds used to be chief deputy commissioner. Officials there changed their grading criteria this year to apply to schools retroactively. However, after some school districts sued that state over the changes, Texas delayed the release of its grades.

Texas lawmakers are also in the midst of a special session on vouchers to debate whether students should be able to use public dollars to attend private schools. Batiwalla worries that officials in both states are hijacking the grading systems for political aims, not to incentivize school communities to improve.

“If you want to do vouchers, do vouchers,” said Batiwalla, an outspoken critic of Reynolds’ efforts. “Don’t take away this policy tool that has the potential to drive improvement from the rest of the public schools.”

Proficiency focus could shortchange some students

Other tweaks are likely when Tennessee releases its new equation in the days or weeks ahead, just before giving schools their first set of grades.

“If you want to do vouchers, do vouchers. Don’t take away this policy tool that has the potential to drive improvement from the rest of the public schools.” — Mary Batiwalla, former assistant commissioner, Tennessee Department of Education

The department has heard calls to include social studies and science scores in the calculation, as well as data related to third-grade reading, participation in tutoring programs, and postsecondary indicators like dual enrollment and career and technical education offerings, just to name a few. There’s also a growing consensus around ditching student absenteeism data, which is a factor in the current equation.

But most educators have their eye on the growth vs. proficiency debate. They worry that greater emphasis on proficiency will motivate schools to focus on improving “bubble kids” — those scoring just under proficiency — instead of working to improve students at all levels of achievement.

“You’re incentivizing bad choices that serve just a few kids instead of all kids,” Winstead said.

Winstead’s suburban school system should be fine. Maryville City Schools, near Knoxville, is one of the state’s highest-achieving districts and stands to benefit if Tennessee’s revamped grading formula puts more weight on proficiency. But Winstead philosophically disagrees with the approach that the state appears to be taking.

“This is going to demoralize a lot of school communities,” he said, “teachers, kids, and parents — folks who have done incredible things to move kids forward.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org. Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Tenn. study on rejecting federal education funds has ‘no predetermined outcome,’ leader says

2023-10-05T14:50:17+00:00

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A leader of the group of lawmakers exploring whether Tennessee can feasibly reject nearly $1.9 billion in federal education funding says that the panel’s work will begin in early November, and that its findings — not politics — will guide its recommendations.

“There is no predetermined outcome for this working group, or for what the information we gather is going to show,” Sen. Jon Lundberg, a co-chair of the panel, said Wednesday.

“We want to look at what federal education money we get, where it goes, what we’re required to do to get those funds, and ultimately what’s the return on the investment,” the Bristol Republican told Chalkbeat. “I think this will give us a good overview.”

Lundberg, who also chairs the Senate Education Committee, was responding to criticism from Democrats that Republicans are seeking to undermine public education, cater to charter and private school interests, and advance the political aspirations of House Speaker Cameron Sexton, a Crossville Republican and likely candidate for governor in 2026.

In February, Sexton said Tennessee should consider forgoing U.S. education dollars to free schools from federal rules and regulations, and should make up the difference with state funding. On Sept. 22, he and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, an Oak Ridge Republican, appointed eight Republicans and two Democrats to the working group to look into the idea and report back by Jan. 9, when the General Assembly convenes a new session.

Most of the federal money the state receives supports low-income students, English language learners, and students with disabilities. Tennessee school districts that are most reliant on U.S. dollars tend to be rural, and have more low-income and disabled students, less capacity for local revenue, and lower test scores in English language arts, according to a recent report from the Sycamore Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.

Sen. Jon Lundberg

On Thursday, Lundberg and co-chair Debra Moody, a Covington Republican who chairs a House education committee, released the panel’s schedule showing five days of meetings in November, with the kickoff meeting on Nov. 6.

If the committee finds ways for the state to feasibly wean itself from federal education money that Tennesseans help generate through their taxes, Lundberg expects legislation to come out of its work. But he acknowledged that state revenue collections have lagged in recent months, potentially making it harder to cut the cord.

“Revenues are a valid concern, but that’s not our charge at this point,” he said. “We just want to do a deep dive on where we stand.”

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Bo Watson warned lawmakers in August that Tennessee likely will need to begin curbing state spending. But on Wednesday, he endorsed the panel’s task.

“I think it’s premature to say whether there will be budget constraints,” said the Hixson Republican. “Evaluating our programs and our funding is always a healthy exercise.”

Even if officials decide the state can afford to pass on federal funds, JC Bowman, executive director of Professional Educators of Tennessee, questions whether it could effectively manage resources designed to support underserved communities and ensure equal access to education.

He cites the Achievement School District as one example of poor oversight for a state-run program intended to serve students attending low-performing schools. The turnaround district took over dozens of neighborhood schools beginning in 2012, mostly in Memphis, and turned many of them over to charter operators. But it has had few successes to show for its decade of work.

Lundberg said that example shouldn’t stop the state from investigating the possibility.

“Do I trust the state more than the federal government? Absolutely,” Lundberg said. “I think that government that operates closest to the people is the best government.”

Gov. Bill Lee has said he’s open to the idea and denounced what he called “excessive overreach” by the federal government. However, he didn’t give specific examples on education when answering questions from reporters last week.

Advocates for historically underserved student populations say federal oversight is needed to ensure that the state and local districts adequately provide for every student and school.

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats pointed out that the federal government provided nearly $30 million last year to public schools in Cumberland County, which Sexton represents. That’s 44% of the East Tennessee district’s budget. Three school districts in Anderson County, where McNally lives, received $31 million in U.S. funds, which covered 32% of their budgets.

You can look up exactly how much federal education funding is on the line for every Tennessee county.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with information about the panel’s meeting schedule.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee charter panel leader backs 5 school appeals, including one from Hillsdale group

2023-10-02T23:47:13+00:00

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The head of a powerful Tennessee commission is recommending the state overturn five of eight local school board decisions denying charter school applications, including two in Memphis and one from a group linked with conservative Hillsdale College.

The recommendations from executive director Tess Stovall, released Monday, will be a key factor in votes set for later this week by the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission. The panel, whose nine members were appointed by Gov. Bill Lee, was created under a 2019 law pushed by the governor in his campaign to open more high-quality charter schools across Tennessee.

If the commission concurs with her recommendations as it usually does, Tennessee would become home to two classical charter schools operated by American Classical Education, a network affiliated with Hillsdale, a small conservative Christian college in south central Michigan.

Their opening would begin to fulfill a key education priority for Lee, who has said he wants the Hillsdale group to open at least 50 charter schools in Tennessee.

But Lee’s courtship of Hillsdale has attracted controversy. It is part of his ambitious plan to revamp the state’s charter sector in part by widening its student demographics beyond low-income urban areas. The governor is also supporting classroom history lessons like Hillsdale’s that emphasize America’s strengths rather than its shortcomings.

Additionally, Stovall recommended Monday that a Memphis school exiting the state-run turnaround initiative known as the Achievement School District should retain its charter, despite not moving out of the state’s bottom 5% of Tennessee schools academically in 10 years.

Stovall also said the commission should overturn the Nashville school board’s votes to reject two charter applications.

In its first two years of operation, the commission granted five out of 16 appeals.

Tennessee meets Hillsdale

American Classical drew national attention in 2022 after Lee endorsed Hillsdale’s approach to K-12 education, and invited its leaders to apply to open charter schools in Tennessee that align with his conservative beliefs regarding civics and other topics.

That drive stalled over public outrage in response to Hillsdale President Larry Arnn’s comment that teachers are “trained in the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country.” And the fallout prompted the network to withdraw applications to open three charter schools.

But this year, American Classical is trying again. It’s already gotten approval by Rutherford County’s school board to open a school in the fast-growing suburban enclave south of Nashville.

Stovall is recommending the state OK another American Classical school in Jackson-Madison County Schools, which is projecting an 8% increase in enrollment because of the impending arrival of Ford’s electric truck assembly plant in nearby Haywood County.

The West Tennessee district’s school board voted in July to deny American Classical’s application, saying the charter school would have a “substantial negative fiscal impact” to the school system. But based on its own financial analysis, staff for the commission rejected that claim, while Stovall commended American Classical’s identification of a school leader and target community.

However, Stovall recommended the state reject another appeal from American Classical to open a school in Maury County, a growing area southwest of Nashville. She cited concerns with the group’s enrollment projections, and dinged the operator for not identifying a school leader or the community in which the school intends to locate.

“Overall, the sponsor has several significant gaps within its proposed plan that it must address before it is ready for approval,” Stovall said.

Recommendations split on four Memphis appeals

In Memphis, Stovall sided with the appeal filed by Capstone Education Group to continue operating Cornerstone Prep Lester, one of five schools seeking to remain open as they prepare to exit the Achievement School District, or ASD, at the close of the 2023-24 school year.

A charter management organization, Capstone has operated Cornerstone in the city’s Binghampton community since the 2012-13 school year but never met its academic goals for automatically exiting the turnaround district.

However, Stovall said Cornerstone has shown improvement the last three years and appears to be “on track” to continue that trajectory.

“A significant reason for my recommendation to approve the application is the track record of the network, [which] has demonstrated that it can have success in school turnaround work in Memphis as it has achieved priority exit status with two of its three ASD-operated schools,” she said.

Stovall also recommended the state OK the application of Empower Memphis Career and College Prep, which wants to open a K-8 charter school focused on career and technical education in the city’s Orange Mound community.

The Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) board denied Empower’s application over concerns that Orange Mound already has too many unoccupied classroom seats while the district seeks to right-size its footprint. But Stovall said Empower’s application is of high quality, and that the commission may want to let the operator see if it can meet enrollment goals; Empower proposes to start with 100 students and eventually grow to 450.

Stovall recommended that the commission reject the other two appeals from Memphis.

One is from Green Dot Public Schools to continue operating Fairley High School in the Whitehaven area after exiting the ASD. The other appeal is from Pathways in Education, a school for nontraditional high school students that once operated two locations under the ASD.

Stovall agreed with the Memphis-Shelby County board that Green Dot has not shown “a clear path to tangible growth, achievement and success for Fairley students” to merit granting a new 10-year charter.

Without a charter operator, the fate of schools like Fairley exiting the ASD has been left up to local school officials. But Fairley, at least, appears poised to remain open under the oversight of Memphis-Shelby County Schools. Its supporters and alumni have turned out in droves imploring officials to maintain operations.

“I am confident in MSCS’s statement in the public hearing that, if the school is returned to MSCS, Fairley High School will remain open and in operation” under the district’s school turnaround program known as the Innovation Zone, or iZone, Stovall said.

In recommending the rejection of Pathways in Education’s appeal, Stovall noted that both of the applicant’s previous schools under the ASD were contract schools, not charter schools, and therefore were held to a different standard.

“As currently proposed, I have doubts as to whether the sponsor’s proposed plan could meet all requirements of charter schools and be successful under the current school accountability framework,” Stovall said.

Stovall also recommended overturning two Nashville school board denials of charter applications.

Invictus Nashville appealed to the state to let it open a Montessori school next year with up to 144 students in the city’s McGavock neighborhood. And Florida-based Noble Education Initiative proposed to open Nashville Collegiate High Schools in the Cane Ridge area.

The Metro Nashville school board said both groups failed to fully meet the state’s standards in academics, operations, and finance. The board also said opening the schools would negatively impact Tennessee’s second largest school district.

However, the commission’s staff disagreed based on their reviews of the applications and an analysis of the district’s finances.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee legislative panel will look into rejecting federal education funds

2023-09-25T21:13:40+00:00

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When Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton floated the idea in February of the state rejecting U.S. education dollars to free schools from federal rules and regulations, most supporters of public education hoped it was nothing more than political posturing.

But on Monday, Sexton and his counterpart in the Senate, Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, took the significant step of creating a legislative panel to conduct a comprehensive review of Sexton’s pitch.

The panel will look into the feasibility of doing without federal support for K-12 students and report back to legislative finance and education committees by Jan. 9. Currently, Tennessee receives up to $1.8 billion from the federal government for its schools, most of which supports low-income students, English language learners, and students with disabilities.

Federal funds typically make up about a tenth of a state’s K-12 budget.

No state has ever rejected federal funding for its students and schools.

But Sexton has said that by rejecting the federal funds that Tennesseans help generate through their taxes, the state can avoid the federal strings attached to those dollars, and make up the funding difference with state money.

McNally, in a statement Monday, cited the state’s “excellent financial position” while deeming Sexton’s proposal as “worthy subject of examination and study.”

Tennessee has been flush with cash in recent years, but its revenues have begun to flatten.

Last month, when the legislature approved $100 million in one-time funding during a special session on public safety, Sen. Bo Watson, a Hixson Republican who chairs his chamber’s finance committee, warned that Tennessee needs to tighten spending in the future. And last week, state Finance Commissioner Jim Bryson reported that state revenues for August — the first month of Tennessee’s fiscal year — were $39 million less than budget estimates.

Sen. Raumesh Akbari of Memphis, one of two Democrats named to the panel, said the trend should diminish any appetite to forgo federal cash.

“Most of us know how important federal funds are to our state budget, whether for our schools, roads, or health care,” Akbari told Chalkbeat. “My goal on this task force is to support the continued use of federal funding for K-12 education.”

“Besides,” she added, “Tennesseans pay federal taxes. Why should our tax dollars go to support schools in Georgia or California or New York, and not our own schools?”

Many Republicans, though, bristle at the federal oversight tied to receipt of federal education dollars.

Most notable are civil rights protections for students based on race, sex, and disability. Tennessee’s Republican-dominated government has challenged the spirit of those protections by passing laws in recent years to restrict classroom discussions and library books related to race, gender, and bias, as well as to prohibit transgender youth from playing girls sports and restrict which school bathrooms they can use.

“This working group will help provide a clearer picture of how much autonomy Tennessee truly has in educating our students,” Sexton said in a statement Monday.

A spokeswoman for Gov. Bill Lee said he looks forward to reviewing the panel’s findings.

The governor “remains committed to working with the General Assembly to ensure all Tennessee students have access to a high-quality education, while pushing back on federal overreach,” said Elizabeth Johnson, Lee’s press secretary.

The speakers appointed the 10 members to the exploratory panel, five from each chamber:

Sen. John Lundberg, R-Bristol (co-chair)
Rep. Debra Moody, R-Covington (co-chair)
Sen. Raumesh Akbari, D-Memphis
Sen. Joey Hensley, R-Hohenwald
Sen. Bill Powers, R-Clarksville
Sen. Dawn White, R-Murfreesboro
Rep. Ronnie Glynn, D-Clarksville
Rep. Timothy Hill, R-Blountville
Rep. John Ragan, R-Oak Ridge
Rep. William Slater, R-Gallatin

In a Sept. 22 letter creating the joint working group, the speakers outlined four tasks:

Identify the amount of federal funding the state, districts, and schools receive and the laws associated with accepting such funds;
Examine how the state, districts, and schools use or intend to use the funding, and whether there are conditions or requirements for accepting such funds;
Report on the feasibility of the state rejecting federal education funding;
Recommend a strategy on how to reject certain federal funding or how to eliminate unwanted restrictions placed on the state due to receiving the funding.

Last month, the Sycamore Institute reported that Tennessee distributed $1.1 billion in federal funds to school districts across the state — or about 11% of total district revenues — in 2019-20. The nonpartisan think tank also calculated that each of Tennessee’s 142 school districts received between $314 and $2,500 per student in federal funds, accounting for 3% to 20% of each district’s total revenues.

The group’s report said school districts most reliant on federal dollars tend to be more rural, and have more low-income and disabled students, less capacity for local revenue, and lower test scores in English language arts.

Tennessee already ranks in the bottom fourth of states in spending per pupil, and eliminating a key funding source would have serious consequences, said Gini Pupo-Walker, executive director of The Education Trust in Tennessee.

“We would not only redirect Tennesseans’ federal tax dollars to other states in the country, but we would have to dip into our rainy day fund in order to maintain our current level of education funding, limiting our capacity to invest in our students in the future, particularly those most in need,” Pupo-Walker said.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Education, which in February called Sexton’s proposal “political posturing,” said students need more — not fewer — resources to support academic recovery following the pandemic, as well as to address a crisis in youth mental health.

“Any elected leader in any state threatening to reject federal public education funds should have to answer to their local educators and parents in their community about the detrimental impact it would have on their community’s education system and their students’ futures,” the spokesperson said.

A statement from the Tennessee Disability Coalition said the group wants to work with the panel “as a resource in conveying the vital importance of federal education funding for students with disabilities.”

“As the past 50 years have shown us, these funds and associated regulations have dramatically improved outcomes for Tennessee students with disabilities and served to protect them from institutionalization, segregation, and marginalization,” the group said.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include a comment from the U.S. Department of Education.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee hires leader to jump-start school turnaround efforts statewide

2023-09-01T01:00:09+00:00

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Tennessee has appointed a school improvement leader to manage all of its school turnaround work under a powerful new position that will touch urban, suburban, and rural districts.

Bren Elliott, who was a Nashville school administrator from 2001 to 2007 and has been school improvement chief for District of Columbia Public Schools since 2017, will begin her job as state turnaround superintendent on Tuesday.

The Tennessee Department of Education announced Elliott’s hire on Thursday, three years after launching its first search to fill the job. The position is considered key to jump-starting school improvement work in Tennessee, which has helped pioneer several turnaround models with limited success.

Bren Elliott, Tennessee’s new school turnaround leader, returns to the state from Washington, D.C., where she was a school improvement leader. Elliott has previously been a teacher, principal and administrator in Nashville.

She is among the first major hires for Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds, who started her job on July 1 with an early focus on school accountability.

Elliott’s experience in school improvement “will be an asset to the state and provide intentional support to these schools to ensure all students receive a high-quality education,” Reynolds said in a statement.

Chief among Elliott’s new responsibilities will be overseeing the Achievement School District, the state’s most aggressive lever for improving low-performing schools. The state-run district, which takes over schools and assigns them mostly to charter operators to manage, has itself struggled, with little to show so far for its turnaround efforts over the past decade.

Elliott also will be responsible for supervising interventions for all 95 of the state’s so-called priority schools — those that score academically in the bottom 5% — as well as schools that need targeted support due to large achievement gaps among groups of historically underserved students such as English language learners, students with disabilities, or those from low-income families.

In all, nearly 300 Tennessee schools fall in those categories.

She will also work closely with local leaders of district-level turnaround initiatives, from the Innovation Zone in Memphis and Nashville to the Partnership Network in Chattanooga.

“I look forward to working with our schools most in need of support and intervention, including the Achievement School District, to improve student achievement and help all students in these schools succeed,” said Elliott.

Turnaround efforts are at a crossroads

For many local school improvement leaders, the education department’s naming of a statewide turnaround chief came as a surprise. Under Gov. Bill Lee, the department launched multiple searches to fill the job, even naming three finalists in 2021. But those searches stalled due to the pandemic, budget issues, and uncertainties about what direction the state wanted to take its turnaround work.

Victoria Robinson, the department’s spokeswoman, said making the hire was a priority for Reynolds.

“Dr. Elliott was identified several months ago as a potential candidate, and since that time has completed the interview, hiring and other processes with the state, including with Commissioner Reynolds and TDOE leadership,” Robinson said.

Reynolds has not said what she has planned for the ASD and other turnaround work. State law gives the commissioner the authority to identify schools for state takeover and place them in the ASD.

Under Reynolds’ predecessor, Penny Schwinn, the department unveiled a new vision for the ASD that would have had a “smaller footprint” and new takeovers, but none of the updates materialized.

The ASD, which launched in 2012, has been mostly a disappointment. Under charter management, its schools typically performed no better than low-performing schools receiving no intervention. As a result, Tennessee has not taken control of a neighborhood school since taking over four in Memphis in 2016.

Most of the ASD’s schools are Memphis, with a few in Nashville, but the district has shrunk by more than half to just over a dozen schools in recent years. A few have closed, some have returned to their local districts, and many that have shown the most improvement have moved under the oversight of a new state commission for public charter schools.

A lack of steady leadership in the ASD has complicated the complex exit process for schools once their charter contracts expire. The district’s last leader, Lisa Settle, departed in summer 2022. Since then, other staff with the education department have managed it.

Elliott has Tennessee ties

Elliott, who is a member of Chiefs for Change, an influential national education leadership network, is a native of North Carolina and no stranger to Tennessee.

She was a teacher and administrator in Nashville public schools for 15 years, and spent her last year at the district as a director focused on priority schools. She earned her master’s degree from Tennessee State University.

In 2020, Elliott lost a bid to become director of Metro Nashville Public Schools to Adrienne Battle, who was the interim leader at the time. This summer, Elliott was a superintendent finalist for Huntsville City Schools in Alabama, which also picked its interim leader instead.

Before joining the Washington, D.C., school district, she spent eight years as an administrator for two school districts in North Carolina, where she focused on support services for students in Wake and Guilford counties.

As the state’s overarching turnaround leader, Elliott also will work with local officials who manage district-run turnaround models.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools operates the Innovation Zone with funding assistance from the state. The so-called iZone gives its schools autonomy over curricular, financial, scheduling, and staffing decisions, similar to charter schools.

State officials also have worked closely with Hamilton County Schools’ Partnership Network, a model that seeks greater collaboration between the state and the local district.

But the ASD is the state’s most scrutinized turnaround program.

This spring, state Rep. Antonio Parkinson received bipartisan support for a bill that would revamp the state’s turnaround model and halt school takeovers altogether.

On Thursday, the Memphis Democrat said the department needs a school turnaround leader, whether his legislation passes or not next year.

“We need to be utilizing and putting our efforts and resources behind those practices that actually work,” Parkinson said, “and stop feeding millions and millions of dollars into the practices that didn’t work.”

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee’s special session on public safety ends with little action on guns

2023-08-30T01:56:49+00:00

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Parents who lobbied for curtailing access to guns after a horrific school shooting in Nashville blasted the Tennessee legislature’s special session on public safety, which ended Tuesday without the passage of a single bill targeting the state’s lax gun laws.

In their six days of work, lawmakers approved three bills designed to speed up background checks, provide free gun locks to Tennessee residents, and require an annual state report on human trafficking.

Another approved measure, which appropriates money to cover the estimated $340,000 cost of the session, also includes extra funding for school safety officers, mental health resources and workers, and an advertising campaign encouraging gun owners to lock up their weapons.

But none of the bills that passed specifically address concerns about easy access to guns that were raised by the March 27 shooting at Nashville’s Covenant School, where a 28-year-old intruder used legally purchased guns to shoot through glass doors and kill three students and three adults. Authorities said the shooter, who died after being shot by police, was under a doctor’s care for an “emotional disorder.”

The disconnect — after days of protests, prayers, and pleas for meaningful reforms — left parents, students, and gun control activists angry.

“We’re talking about life and death, and this legislature has basically done nothing,” said Sierra Barnett, a mother of two preschoolers in Mt. Juliet, near Nashville.

Barnett was among the throng of mostly female demonstrators who showed up daily during the session to urge lawmakers to pass a bill letting judges order the removal of firearms from people at risk of hurting themselves and others.

“I’m devastated, and I hope people are paying attention,” she said tearfully in the Capitol Rotunda after lawmakers had exited. “I’m praying there’s an uproar across the state of Tennessee.”

Governor calls extra funding a victory

Gov. Bill Lee, who was largely absent during the gun debate after lawmakers convened on Aug. 21, framed the session’s output as “important, difficult, and hopeful.”

“We made progress and elevated a conversation about public safety that will continue into the future,” he told reporters.

In his remarks, Lee cited the legislature’s appropriation of more than $100 million in additional one-time funding as a victory, including:

$50 million to bolster community mental health agencies;
$30 million for safety upgrades at higher education education institutions;
$10 million in K-12 safety grants to provide school resource officers for charter schools or school safety officers for schools that can’t immediately hire an SRO due to a shortage of law enforcement officers;
$12 million for sign-on and retention bonuses for mental health workers in the state Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services;
$4 million for behavioral health safety net grants;
$3 million for a scholarship program for people wanting to work in the mental health field;
$1.6 million to provide free gun locks to Tennessee residents and to pay for an ad campaign on gun safety through the state Department of Safety

Gov. Bill Lee speaks with reporters about the results of Tennessee’s special legislative session on public safety that adjourned on Aug. 29, 2023.

“Our state is safer today as a result of this session,” said Lee, noting that the legislature also invested $230 million more in school safety earlier this year.

But outnumbered Democrats slammed the governor and GOP leadership for results that they called “fluff” and “solution-less.”

“It’s been a complete waste of time,” said House Minority Leader Karen Camper, of Memphis. “The people wanted more and expected more.”

“No one should leave this building saying we made Tennessee safer,” said Senate Minority Leader Raumesh Akbari, also of Memphis, where 115 children have been injured or killed in gun violence since January.

“People made a lot of promises. When we come back in January” for the regular legislative session, Akbari added, “we sure as hell better do something.”

Lee’s proclamation put gun control proposals out of reach

More than a hundred bills were filed based on Lee’s official proclamation, which called lawmakers back to the Capitol and identified 18 potential topics, from school safety to juvenile justice to mental health. But the governor backed off of his early proposal for a law to keep guns out of the hands of people having a mental health crisis.

Democrats complained that parameters set by Lee left little room for meaningful gun reforms in one of the most gun-friendly states in America. For instance, Lee said lawmakers could pass measures that encourage safe storage of firearms, but not enact penalties for failing to do so.

A gun control advocate holds up a sign outside the Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville on August 21, 2023, the first day of the legislature’s special session on public safety.

Lee’s proclamation opened the door, however, to proposals that could put more guns in schools — several of which advanced out of House committees but ultimately stalled.

One proposal to let citizens with enhanced permits carry handguns in schools narrowly failed in the House Education Committee after clearing two earlier panels, while Rep. Ryan Williams of Cookeville pulled his bill to arm teachers who meet certain requirements. Williams said the legislature can take up his bill next year in regular session.

The House sought to pass more than a dozen bills, including ones requiring all public and private schools to create alarm policies that differentiate emergencies for fire, weather, or an active shooter; expand handgun carry policies at private schools to include pre-K; enact harsher penalties for juvenile offenders; and increase penalties for stalking.

But the Senate worked to limit the number of bills debated. On the session’s third day, its education committee met for less than a minute and tabled all 21 items on its agenda.

Ultimately, the Senate’s refusal to negotiate differences with the House led to an abrupt adjournment of both chambers.

“You’ve done nothing!” “Do your job!” “Vote them out!” chanted spectators as Republican leaders gaveled out their daily sessions.

Legislative process unraveled amid political infighting

Democratic Reps. Justin Jones of Nashville and Justin Pearson of Memphis speak with supporters and reporters after adjournment.

The session in Nashville was frequently chaotic, with issues about school and public safety often overshadowed by political infighting, the expulsion of protesters, GOP efforts to limit public access to the Capitol, a lawsuit over new House rules prohibiting spectators from holding up paper signs, and several incidents of representatives shoving each other on the floor of the House in the tense minutes after adjournment.

“Things got hot,” House Speaker Cameron Sexton said about brief physical interactions that involved him, Republican Reps. Justin Lafferty of Knoxville and Scott Cepicky of Culleoka, and Democratic Reps. Justin Jones of Nashville and Justin Pearson of Memphis.

“We’re moving forward from it,” Sexton said when asked if he would pursue disciplinary action against those involved. “At this point, I think everybody needs to figure out how to calm down.”

Parents of several students at The Covenant School, who actively lobbied for several bills to bolster school safety and mental health, said they had hoped for more out of their elected officials. Several were in tears at various points throughout the week as they tried to advocate for legislation on behalf of their children and the victims killed at their private Christian school: Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney, all age 9; custodian Mike Hill and substitute teacher Cynthia Peak, both 61, and Katherine Koonce, 60, the head of the school.

Sarah Shoop Neumann, joined by other parents at The Covenant School, speaks during a press conference on the steps of the Tennessee State Capitol on August 21, 2023.

“Today is a difficult day,” said David Teague, a father of two children at Covenant. “A tremendous opportunity to make our children safer and create brighter tomorrow’s has been missed. And I am saddened for all Tennesseans.”

Sarah Shoop Neumann, another Covenant parent, called for respectful, thoughtful, bipartisan debate going forward to work to diminish gun violence.

“Those who are not of this mindset do not deserve a seat in the House or the Senate,” Neumann said, “and we will work toward ensuring every one of those seats is replaced by someone who has a true desire to listen to their constituents over firearm association lobbyists.”

“We will be back in January.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Bills to let Tennessee teachers and citizens carry guns in schools advance in legislature

2023-08-23T01:00:37+00:00

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Two bills that would let some teachers and citizens carry handguns in Tennessee public schools cleared a House subcommittee Tuesday, but Senate leaders signaled they’ll work to stymie the proposals in their chamber.

Meanwhile, House Republican leaders continued to crack down on behaviors from gun control advocates deemed as disruptive during the second day of a special legislative session on public safety.

The developments reflected mounting tensions in Tennessee’s splintering gun debate after Gov. Bill Lee called lawmakers back to the Capitol in response to a Nashville school shooting that left six people and the shooter dead — and prompted mass demonstrations from gun control advocates during the legislature’s regular session.

While GOP leaders want to focus this week on juvenile justice and mental health issues, polls show that most Tennessee voters want them to tighten the state’s lax gun laws. However, because of the limited scope of the governor’s proclamation, the legislature won’t take up gun control measures during its special session.

And Lee, whose wife knew two of the adult victims at The Covenant School, where the shooting occurred on March 27, appears to have abandoned his proposal for keeping firearms out of the hands of people having a mental health crisis. Since issuing his proclamation for the special session two weeks ago, he’s had no visible presence at the Capitol and made few public appearances.

A day after the House’s GOP supermajority passed rules that will limit debate, ban signs, and allow fewer members of the public inside the Capitol, state troopers escorted several women holding up paper signs with anti-gun messages from a legislative hearing room. Minutes later, troopers cleared the packed room of everyone but lawmakers, staff, and media after a handful of people ignored several warnings against clapping during committee business.

“Everything feels really raw right now,” said Linda McFadyen-Ketchum, a retired teacher and leader with her Nashville-area chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.

“People are angry and frightened,” she said, especially over any notion that the solution to gun violence is more guns.

Proposals would put more guns in schools

Both GOP-sponsored bills that advanced in the House Civil Justice Subcommittee would open the door to people other than law enforcement officers having guns in schools.

One measure would let a teacher or school staff member carry a concealed handgun after completing 40 hours of certified training in school policing at their own expense, as well as passing a mental health evaluation and FBI background check.

It would be up to the local district whether to let employees carry firearms under the legislation sponsored by Rep. Ryan Williams of Cookeville and Sen. Paul Bailey of Sparta.

But the school’s parents and students would not have to be notified under this legislation, which runs counter to the GOP’s emphasis on parental rights and notification in other areas of education, such as curriculum and library materials.

A second bill would allow a person with an enhanced permit, which requires eight hours of training, to carry a handgun openly or concealed in any K-12 public school building, campus, or bus. The proposal also would apply to law enforcement officers and military personnel, whether on duty, off duty, or retired.

The bill, sponsored by Bailey in the Senate and Rep. Chris Todd of Jackson, is opposed by Lee’s administration, which budgeted an extra $140 million this spring to place a full-time, armed officer in every public school in the state, beginning this school year.

Todd countered that many schools still don’t have SROs because of a shortage of law enforcement officers. And he noted that private schools already can set policies so that some employees carry handguns.

Several citizens spoke against any measures that would place additional burdens on teachers.

Sarah Shoop Neumann, a parent at The Covenant School, said she believes the tragedy would have been worse if teachers had focused on anything but keeping students safe in their classrooms as the shooter walked the hallways.

Sarah Shoop Neumann, joined by other parents at The Covenant School in Nashville, speaks during a press conference on the steps of the Tennessee State Capitol on Aug. 21, 2023.

Fighting back tears, she recounted conversations with Covenant teachers who described how their hands shook while they worked to keep their students quiet, hidden, and secure.

“They are heroes,” she said. “They enacted every protocol in place perfectly, and they could not have done those things if they were also meant to be armed and go out and attack the shooter.”

More votes are scheduled

Both House bills are scheduled to be taken up Wednesday in the Civil Justice Committee. But their path in the Senate looks harder, judging by the actions and comments of several GOP leaders in that chamber.

The Senate Judiciary Committee was scheduled to take up the Senate version of Todd’s bill on Tuesday, but didn’t vote on it. The committee, chaired by Todd Gardenhire of Chattanooga, passed only three of 55 bills on its calendar before adjourning.

The bills must clear committees chaired by Sens. Todd Gardenhire and Jon Lundberg (front left).

In the days after the Covenant shooting, Gardenhire said he would defer any action on gun-related legislation until next year.

The Senate version of Williams’ bill — to let some teachers carry firearms — is scheduled for a vote Wednesday in the Senate Education Committee.

But on Tuesday, Sen. Jon Lundsberg of Bristol, who chairs the panel, indicated he would vote against it.

Any bills to allow guns in schools “require a great deal of input from multiple stakeholders,” he told Chalkbeat. “I believe they would require several weeks of testimony and input.”

Currently, special session business is scheduled through Thursday, although leaders could extend it several more days.

Also Tuesday, three bills to create so-called extreme risk protection orders failed in the same House subcommittee where members of the public were kicked out. Those bills, sponsored by Democratic Rep. Bob Freeman of Nashville, would allow courts to order temporary removal of firearms from people at risk of hurting themselves or others.

Authorities said the 28-year-old shooter at the Covenant School was seeing a doctor for an “emotional disorder” and had legally obtained multiple weapons.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee legislature will avoid gun control in special session prompted by mass school shooting

2023-08-22T00:12:11+00:00

As Tennessee lawmakers and lobbyists returned to the state Capitol Monday to discuss guns and public safety, 12-year-old student Juliette Dominguez showed up too, in hopes that her perspective would make a difference.

Fresh from two days of classroom instruction on how to respond if an armed intruder breaks into her school, Juliette was frustrated that Tennessee is focusing on preparing school communities to defend themselves from people with guns — instead of taking action to restrict gun access from people at risk of hurting themselves or others.

“Why is this something that children should have to worry about?” asked Juliette, a seventh grader in Goodlettsville, north of Nashville.

Gov. Bill Lee called the special legislative session in response to a school shooting in Nashville in which three 9-year-old children and three adults were killed. The session is expected to last a week.

But any drive to tighten Tennessee’s gun laws has been squelched by a Republican supermajority in one of the nation’s most gun-friendly states, even as a recent poll of Tennessee voters showed significant bipartisan support for various gun regulations.

More than a hundred bills have been filed based on Lee’s official proclamation identifying 18 potential topics, from school safety to juvenile justice to mental health. But Lee’s proclamation never uses the word “gun,” and it mentions “firearms” only in relation to measures that would encourage safe storage of weapons, but with no new penalties allowed.

The House also passed new rules Monday in response to the body’s dramatic expulsion in April of two Democratic members for the way they protested the body’s failure to pursue significant gun reforms this spring. Under the changes, Speaker Cameron Sexton can suspend recognition of members for escalating amounts of time if he determines they are disrupting legislative business, speaking off topic, or impugning another member. The rules also limit the number of people allowed in the chamber’s galleries, as well as the nearby rotunda.

“The rules that are being put forward now are to limit freedom of speech,” said Rep. Justin Pearson of Memphis, who was expelled and then reelected in a special election this month. “With these rules, you are silencing our constituency.”

Lee called lawmakers back after acknowledging that the March 27 attack on The Covenant School confounded many elements of Tennessee’s school safety policies, including a sweeping plan that Lee had proposed just weeks earlier to require all K-12 public schools to keep their exterior doors locked, among other things.

Eventually, the legislature increased funding to further fortify both public and private schools but rejected the governor’s late proposal for a law allowing authorities to temporarily remove guns from people having a mental health emergency.

Gun control advocates, who held mass demonstrations after the tragedy and while lawmakers were in their regular session, returned to the Capitol as lawmakers prepared to start the special session, even as Nashville police recommended that people avoid the downtown area this week if possible.

At the invitation of a coalition of Christian groups, hundreds of people, including Juliette and her family, encircled the stone building in the morning to pray for passage of meaningful gun restrictions.

“I’m tired of people saying there’s nothing we can do, because we seem to be able to do things about everything else,” said Juliette’s mother, Jen. “We’re quick to yank books off of library shelves, or limit how students can dress. Why are guns impossible?”

Jen Dominguez stands outside of the state Capitol with her children Juliette, Alice, and Celia, after participating in a prayer circle for gun control on Aug. 21, 2023.

Meanwhile, a group of parents of surviving students at The Covenant School endorsed 10 bills that they said offer a start. They praised proposals to beef up school safety plans but said there’s an urgent need for new laws to keep guns out of the hands of people having a mental health crisis and for the state to provide more mental health care. They also criticized several bills that could allow teachers to be armed in school.

“As the spouse of an educator and the child of a retired educator, I am acutely aware, especially this time of year as we head back to school, of the heavy demands and lack of margins many of our teachers currently have,” said David Teague, the parent of two children at The Covenant School. “We should not add armed security guard to their list of extracurriculars.”

The Covenant School serves about 200 students in preschool to sixth grade. The six people killed there were students Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney, all age 9; and three school staff members: custodian Mike Hill and substitute teacher Cynthia Peak, both 61, and Katherine Koonce, 60, the head of the school.

Authorities said the 28-year-old shooter was seeing a doctor for an “emotional disorder” and had legally obtained multiple weapons.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee teachers group drops one of two lawsuits challenging new state laws

2023-08-11T20:37:24+00:00

Tennessee’s largest teacher organization, which recently challenged two new state laws affecting educators, has quietly dropped its lawsuit about payroll dues deduction, while its other lawsuit over classroom censorship moves ahead in federal court.

The Tennessee Education Association asked a state court to dismiss its case challenging a 2023 law that prohibits local school districts from making payroll deductions for employees’ professional association dues.

A three-judge panel, which had let the payroll ban proceed while the case was being tried, granted TEA’s request for a dismissal on Monday.

Meanwhile, a federal judge has set a Dec. 12 meeting with all parties in TEA’s other lawsuit to discuss how that case will proceed. The teachers group has joined with five public school educators to challenge a 2021 state law restricting teachers from discussing certain concepts about race and gender with their students.

The federal case is being spearheaded by the Free and Fair Litigation Group, a nonprofit firm created by two veteran prosecutors who led the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into Donald Trump’s business dealings. The firm’s focus is on pursuing high-impact cases that bolster democracy.

“TEA’s challenge of the prohibited concepts law is unrelated to the payroll lawsuit. We believe we have a strong case and that federal court will rule in favor of Tennessee teachers,” TEA President Tanya Coats said Thursday.

TEA filed its first lawsuit after Gov. Bill Lee pushed through a new law linking the controversial ban on payroll dues collection to a popular provision aimed at raising teacher pay.

The lawsuit charged that Lee’s strategy violates the state constitution’s single-subject requirement for laws.

A new state court — with judges from Davidson, Fayette, and Hamilton counties — had temporarily blocked the law from taking effect on July 1 while attorneys for TEA and the state made their arguments in the case. But the panel lifted that order on July 28 after deciding the plaintiffs were unlikely to win based on the merits of their arguments. The judges said the bill’s caption of “being relative to wages” was broad enough to address payroll deductions too.

“TEA is still confident in the merits of our case and believes we would have ultimately received a favorable ruling,” Coats said in response. “But TEA decided not to pursue the lawsuit because it is unlikely that the court would rule on the case this school year.”

When the payroll ban passed the legislature in April, the teachers group began converting members to online dues payment. Most members have made the switch, according to Coats.

Whether the payroll changes will lead to a drop in TEA membership is uncertain.

The latest numbers from the National Education Association showed that Tennessee’s organization had 36,218 members in 2020-21, down 4% from the previous year.

But Coats, who is an educator from Knox County, suggested that TEA’s recent advocacy work for public school communities is having the opposite effect. If anything, she said, educator frustration with the new laws has “energized” support for the organization.

“TEA is signing up new members every day and converting the remaining members from payroll deduction,” she said. “The attempt from some state leaders to silence educators has only strengthened educators’ resolve to fight for their students and the profession they love.”

The state’s new dues law also affected Professional Educators of Tennessee, the state’s second largest teacher organization. That group mostly uses its own online system to collect dues, but also had payroll deductions set up with eight school districts.

JC Bowman, the group’s executive director, agreed with TEA that the legislature should have considered the matters of teacher pay and payroll deductions separately. But he worried that TEA’s legal challenge over the payroll issue could have put pay raises at risk.

“That part was concerning to us,” Bowman said Friday. “If that had happened, we would have interceded (in court) on behalf of our members.”

The law’s pay schedule sets Tennessee’s base salary for teachers at $42,000 for this school year; $44,500 for 2024-25; $47,000 for 2025-26; and $50,000 for 2026-27. A raise in the base pay also affects how more experienced teachers are paid.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee picks vendor with no voucher experience to manage its education savings accounts

2023-08-10T10:00:00+00:00

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After failing to reach contract terms with its first choice to run its growing private school voucher program, Tennessee has turned to a young Indiana company with a small staff, modest cash flow, and no state-level experience managing education savings accounts.

The state education department signed a $3.675 million, five-year contract in May with Student First Technologies to help run the voucher program, bypassing Florida-based ClassWallet, whose proposal ranked first in the state’s bidding process.

Officials for the state and its new vendor say they’re on track to take all of their new electronic platforms live by January to automate the application and payment processes for education savings accounts. The voucher-like program lets eligible families receive taxpayer funding to send their children to private schools.

But Tennessee’s selection of 6-year-old Student First Technologies has raised eyebrows within the industry. The company faces a tight timeline to stand up new systems that need to work well enough to build public trust in the controversial program, which launched last fall in Shelby and Davidson counties and expands to Hamilton County this school year.

Gov. Bill Lee, who spent considerable political capital convincing the legislature to approve a voucher program, has a big stake in a smooth rollout. It’s no secret the Republican governor wants to expand voucher eligibility beyond Memphis, Nashville, and Chattanooga.

“Gov. Lee doesn’t need any more controversy or negative headlines about education savings accounts if he wants to grow this beyond a few urban counties,” said Kent Syler, a political science professor at Middle Tennessee State University.

Help wanted: New technology to support growing voucher programs

In January, Tennessee invited companies to submit proposals to manage its education savings accounts, as well as its individualized education account program for students with autism, developmental delays, and other disabilities.

Both programs have been overseen so far by a small team of employees at the state education department who review applications, confirm enrollment with private schools, pre-approve funds, and then disburse and monitor those funds.

“There’s a lot of work that we do by hand,” said Nate Parker, who was the state’s school choice administrator, during a presentation last October to the State Board of Education.

But the number of voucher users is projected to grow significantly beyond last school year’s enrollment of about 700 students with ESAs and 338 students in the IEA program. As of Aug. 4, the number of ESA participants enrolled in participating private schools for 2023-24 had more than doubled.

Shifting the management of both programs to automated platforms will be “transformational” in terms of efficiency and growth, Parker said.

Tennessee bypasses the market leader

Chalkbeat reviewed hundreds of pages of documents from the bidding process, obtained through a public records request from the Tennessee Department of General Services, which oversaw the process.

ClassWallet eclipsed four other bidders in the state’s evaluation this March of all technical and cost proposals to run the program, as well as each company’s level of experience. It’s the market leader and currently manages ESA programs in five states: Arizona, Indiana, Missouri, New Hampshire, and North Carolina.

On a 100-point scale, ClassWallet scored more than 20 points higher than Student First. Also submitting proposals were Merit International, Odyssey, and LiftForward Inc.

ClassWallet is no stranger to Tennessee, having landed the state’s initial two-year contract to manage its voucher platforms in 2020 under a controversial no-bid process. But just months before the program was to launch, the work ground to a halt due to a legal challenge to the state’s 2019 voucher law.

Once a 2022 court order allowed the program to proceed, ClassWallet was eager to work with Tennessee again. In its latest proposal, the company trumpeted nearly a decade of experience providing education-related online platforms, a staff of hundreds of employees, significant financial capital, and the ability to activate new platforms quickly. On average, it’s taken ClassWallet 48 days to get state-level voucher programs up and running once the work begins, the company said.

But negotiations between ClassWallet and the state broke down within weeks of the state announcing its first choice.

State officials declined to give specifics about what happened, as did Jamie Rosenberg, the founder and CEO of ClassWallet.

“While ClassWallet remains disappointed by the outcome, ClassWallet respects the decision made by the Tennessee Department of Education,” Rosenberg said in a statement.

Gov. Bill Lee answers questions about the restart of Tennessee’s education savings account program during a meeting on July 20, 2022, with Memphis-area private school leaders gathered at St. Benedict at Auburndale High School, a Catholic school in Cordova, near Memphis.

ClassWallet’s exit opened the door for a new player

Student First Technologies officially launched in 2017 to develop technology platforms for the growing number of publicly funded school choice programs.

According to the bios of the firm’s co-founders, Chief Executive Officer Mark Duran and Chief Technology Officer Forrest Fowler came from “alternative education backgrounds” that included homeschooling and learning pods, as well a mix of public and private school experiences.

Their company’s first focus: scholarship tax credits, which allow taxpayers to get full or partial tax credits when they donate to nonprofit groups giving private school scholarships to students.

Within two years, the company’s portfolio grew from two to 15 states and programs distributing over $100 million annually in family-directed education support. Then in 2019, Student First shifted its focus to education savings accounts and microgrants, and created a new online platform — dubbed Theodore — to manage them and its scholarship tax credit work.

Among the company’s biggest technology contracts is for Indiana Learns, a $20 million microgrant program providing after-school tutoring to help students in that state catch up from learning lag caused by the pandemic.

Tennessee’s program is the company’s first full-fledged entry into the education savings account arena.

“It’s a great addition to our portfolio of programs that are helping students access education opportunities,” CEO Duran said in an interview with Chalkbeat.

Student First’s platform can adapt to any type of education funding program, Duran said, adding that the company’s microgrant work is relatively similar to ESA management.

“So we’re very confident,” Duran said. “While this might be our first statewide contract for a state-administered ESA, the technical capabilities are similar.”

But concerns about the state’s choice linger based on the company’s technical proposal, which showed a total income of just over $230,000 and net income of nearly $69,000 between Dec. 1, 2022, and Feb. 28, 2023. Beyond its two founders, the proposal identified three full-time employees, as well as nine others doing freelance, consulting, or part-time work — with an eye on expansion.

“We have made offers to highly qualified professionals who have committed to joining the team upon award of this RFP,” the proposal said.

ClassWallet’s proposal, by contrast, reported that it had 244 employees, and that FACTS Management, a subcontractor, employs another 360.

Asked whether Student First has the staff, expertise, and financing to complete its tasks for Tennessee, a state spokesperson said the state’s evaluation of the company’s proposal “confirmed that the vendor meets the requirements and is able and willing to provide the services as outlined in the contract.”

And Lizzette Reynolds, Tennessee’s new education commissioner, called Student First a “great choice” based on her previous policy work at ExcelinEd, a pro-voucher advocacy group that keeps abreast of the vendor pool.

Last week, Duran said his firm has added full-time staff and continues to look for qualified developers, product managers, project managers, and other employees.

“As currently staffed, our team is very well equipped to take care of Tennessee,” he said. “But as a growing company, we’re also keeping an eye out for other people who might be a good addition.”

Duran added that the company’s organizational structure allows it to respond quickly to technical questions and any issues that may surface with Tennessee’s platforms.

“We are the only organization that has a co-founder as chief technology officer leading a U.S.-based technology development team,” he said. “This ensures that our product development and data security remain top quality.”

Vendor has a long list of deadlines to meet

Student First’s platform for Tennessee will go live in stages over the next six months, starting this month with the portal used by 75 state-approved private schools participating in the program in and around Memphis, Nashville, and Chattanooga.

Training for private school leaders began this week, while training for families with ESA accounts is to begin Sept. 1. The family portal to manage payments is scheduled to go live on Sept. 8 for students already approved to participate this school year. Providers of outside-of-school services such as tutoring and therapy are set to join the platform in mid-November. And the portal for families to apply to participate in the voucher program in 2024-25 is scheduled to open by Jan. 15.

Students at St. George’s Independent School say the Pledge of Allegiance before the start of a chapel service in the Collierville school’s gym in 2016. St. George’s is among 33 private schools in the Memphis area approved by the state to accept education savings accounts during the 2023-24 school year.

The state’s focus, according to a statement from the education department, has been to ensure that school administrators feel confident about their platform before parents access and make payments within the system.

“Everything is on schedule,” Duran added.

As for customer relations, the contract requires Student First to handle any technology issues — from system glitches to password resets — while staff at the education department handles questions about the program. Asked how many people are on that team, a department spokesperson responded only that “all members of the ESA team are responsible for ESA oversight.”

Passing ESA laws is hard. Implementation is harder.

Rep. John Ray Clemmons, a Nashville Democrat who opposes vouchers, is not surprised that the state chose a novice vendor to run ESAs.

The entire initiative, he said, is “misguided” and erodes support and funding for public education. Oversight and accountability over student learning via state-funded ESAs are also problematic, he said, as is the potential for discrimination against students who are too troublesome or expensive to teach, or who have beliefs that conflict with the beliefs of participating private schools.

“I don’t think the goal here is to improve student outcomes, and I don’t think this governor’s administration is particularly concerned about how well the program is executed,” said Clemmons, who chairs his party’s caucus in the House. “This whole endeavor is clearly designed to steer public money to private hands.”

Robert Enlow is the president and CEO of EdChoice, which supports programs like Tennessee’s that offer taxpayer-funded choices beyond traditional public schools. He says ESAs are already becoming entrenched in the nation’s K-12 landscape. For instance, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, South Carolina, Utah, and West Virginia now offer ESAs for most or all of their families.

Nineteen states are expanding their school choice programs in 2023, according to a national campaign to promote awareness about education options.

But Enlow cautions that “the devil is in the details.” There must be transparency, clarity, competence, and communication about payment options and processes, the appropriate use of ESA funds, and timely disbursements to private schools and other vendors offering private services.

“Passing strong ESA laws is hard, but implementing these programs with excellence is harder,” Enlow said. “The details of implementation have to be done well.”

Early reports of fraud in Arizona’s voucher program or delayed IEA payments in Tennessee haven’t helped to build trust with either the public or providers. And the logistics of managing ESAs can be daunting, including determining which educational expenses are allowable, as states put purchasing power directly in the hands of families.

At the same time, Enlow points out that the vendor pool for automating ESA services is young compared with, say, companies that manage third-party payments for large government programs such as Medicaid.

“It’s pretty early, which is another reason why we should be patient,” Enlow said. “These things do take time.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee governor calls lawmakers back to address guns, public safety after school shooting

2023-08-08T23:09:47+00:00

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Defying Tennessee’s powerful gun lobby, Gov. Bill Lee said Tuesday he’s calling lawmakers back to the state Capitol on Aug. 21 to take up public safety proposals after a shooter killed three children and three adults at a Nashville school this spring.

The Republican governor, whose wife knew several of the adult victims at the private church campus known as The Covenant School, wants legislators in one of the nation’s most gun-friendly states to pass a law to keep firearms out of the hands of people who could hurt themselves or others.

The 28-year-old shooter at The Covenant School was shot and killed by police on the campus after using legally purchased firearms in the March 27 attack. Authorities later said the shooter was seeing a doctor for an “emotional disorder.”

In calling for a law allowing “temporary mental health orders of protection,” Lee has tried to satisfy gun rights advocates who view any restrictions as an infringement of Second Amendment rights.

“As our nation faces evolving public safety threats, Tennessee remains vigilant and is taking continued action to protect communities while preserving the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens,” Lee said in a statement.

But Democrats said Lee’s official proclamation doesn’t go far enough to try to address the proliferation of guns across Tennessee.

“For such a broad call, this proclamation somehow manages to miss the target,” said Rep. John Ray Clemmons of Nashville, who chairs the House Democratic Caucus.

Lee’s proclamation is important because it sets the legal parameters for what they can and can’t take up.

The list of what’s fair game is long and includes mental health resources, providers, and related Medicaid coverage; school safety policies; measures encouraging safe storage of firearms; and timely law enforcement access to criminal and juvenile records, as well as to records for individuals “who are subject to mental health commitment.”

It also includes stalking offenses, reports from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation regarding human trafficking, the structure or operations of state or local courts, and limiting the circumstances in which juvenile records may be expunged.

The call comes after the governor met privately this summer with small groups of lawmakers to talk through his proposal and their ideas for quelling gun violence and increasing school safety in hopes of eventually passing meaningful legislation.

Then just a week ago, police in Memphis shot a man suspected of trying to enter a Jewish school with a gun.

Meanwhile, advocates on both sides of the gun debate have pressed Lee to pursue or abandon the special session.

Last weekend, the state’s Republican executive committee adopted a resolution encouraging Lee to back off, while groups like the National Rifle Association and the National Association for Gun Rights have urged legislators to oppose any gun control measures.

“We expect Tennessee Republicans to stand firm in their defense of the Second Amendment and vote to adjourn the special session upon its start in August,” Dudley Brown, president of the gun rights association, said last month.

On the other side, numerous gun control advocates have launched campaigns promoting firearm safety legislation. A Democratic-backed bus tour of the state kicks off Wednesday in Memphis to talk with Tennesseans about gun violence. Everytown for Gun Safety is spending $100,000 on digital ads, while Voices for a Safer Tennessee released a video message featuring the mother of Evelyn Diekhaus, one of the victims, on what would have been her 10th birthday.

“What’s more important?” asked Katy Dieckhaus, in her emotional plea for “responsible firearm safety laws that will work toward protecting our children and their right to life.”

The shooting at Covenant happened as lawmakers were meeting in their regular session, sparking daily mass demonstrations at the Capitol by Tennesseans protesting loose gun laws, especially those allowing easy access to military-style semiautomatic weapons.

Lawmakers responded by passing the governor’s sweeping school safety plan, which pumped $230 million more into hardening public and private K-12 schools by hiring additional armed security guards, upgrading school buildings, and placing a homeland security agent in every Tennessee county, among other things.

But most of them rebuffed Lee’s proposal to pass a law to restrict gun access for people experiencing a mental health crisis. Instead, after a House vote to expel two Democratic representatives for the way they protested the failure to pursue significant gun reforms, the GOP-controlled legislature rushed to adjourn in May without revisiting those laws. Lee quickly vowed to call a special session on the matter.

The governor has lobbied for Tennessee to pass a law on “extreme risk protection orders” and has avoided references to a so-called red flag law, which he has described as a “toxic political label.” Nineteen states have such laws on the books, including Florida, which passed its version after 17 people were murdered in the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, despite numerous complaints to law enforcement about threatening statements by the 19-year-old gunman.

An extreme risk order allows courts to temporarily remove guns — typically for up to a year — from people deemed a threat to themselves or others. Family members or law enforcement often must petition a court for an order.

Soon after issuing his proclamation, Lee came under fire from both sides of the debate.

Senate Democratic Leader Raumesh Akbari of Memphis said the governor’s proclamation will prevent most gun safety reforms from being debated during the upcoming session.

“A promise to do something to stop future shootings was made to Covenant parents, but sadly this proclamation eliminates many paths forward,” Akbari said in a statement.

Victims in the Nashville shooting were students Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney, all age 9; and three school staff members: custodian Mike Hill and substitute teacher Cynthia Peak, both 61, and Katherine Koonce, 60, the head of the school.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Teachers sue over Tennessee law restricting what they can teach about race, gender, and bias

2023-07-26T18:58:23+00:00

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Tennessee’s largest teacher organization has joined with five public school educators to legally challenge a 2-year-old state law restricting what they can teach about race, gender, and bias in their classrooms.

Their lawsuit, which was filed late Tuesday in a federal court in Nashville by lawyers for the Tennessee Education Association, maintains the language in the 2021 law is unconstitutionally vague and that the state’s enforcement plan is subjective.

The complaint also charges that Tennessee’s so-called “prohibited concepts” law interferes with instruction on difficult but important topics included in the state’s academic standards. Those standards outline state-approved learning goals, which dictate other decisions around curriculum and testing.

The lawsuit is the first legal challenge to the controversial state law that was among the first of its kind in the nation. The law passed amid a conservative backlash to America’s reckoning over racism after the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis and subsequent anti-racist protests.

Rep. John Ragan of Oak Ridge, one of the Republican sponsors of the legislation, argued the law was needed to protect K-12 students from being “indoctrinated” with social concepts that he and other lawmakers considered misguided and divisive such as critical race theory. That academic framework, which surveys of teachers suggest are not being taught in K-12 schools, is more commonly found in higher education to examine how policies and the law perpetuate systemic racism.

Tennessee’s GOP-controlled legislature overwhelmingly passed the legislation in the final days of their 2021 session, just days after the bill’s introduction. Gov. Bill Lee quickly signed it into law, and later that year, the state education department set rules for enforcement. If found in violation, teachers can be stripped of their licenses and school districts can lose state funding.

Only a small number of complaints have been filed and no penalties levied during the law’s first two years on the books. But Ragan has introduced new legislation that would widen eligibility for who can file a complaint.

The lawsuit seeks to overturn the law and asks for a court order against its enforcement.

The complaint claims the statute fails to give Tennessee educators a reasonable opportunity to understand what conduct and teachings are prohibited.

“Teachers are in this gray area where we don’t know what we can and can’t do or say in our classrooms,” said Kathryn Vaughn, a veteran teacher in Tipton County, near Memphis, and one of five educators who are plaintiffs in the case.

“The rollout of the law — from guidance to training — has been almost nonexistent,” Vaughn added. “That’s put educators in an impossible position.”

The lawsuit also charges the law encourages arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement and violates the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which forbids any state from “depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.”

“Laws need to be clear,” said Tanya Coats, president of the teachers group known as TEA, which is leading the litigation.

She said educators have spent “countless hours” trying to understand the law and the 14 concepts banned from the classroom — including that the United States is “fundamentally or irredeemably racist or sexist;” or that an individual, by virtue of their race or sex, “bears responsibility” for past actions committed by other members of the same race or sex.

TEA says the ambiguity of those concepts has had a chilling effect in schools — from how teachers answer a student’s question to what materials they read in class. To avoid the risk of time-consuming complaints and potential penalties from the state, school leaders have made changes to instruction and school activities. But ultimately, it’s students who suffer, Coats said.

“This law interferes with Tennessee teachers’ job to provide a fact-based, well-rounded education to their students,” Coats said in a news release.

The 52-page lawsuit gives specific examples of how the ban is affecting what nearly a million public school students are learning — and not learning — daily across Tennessee.

“In Tipton County, for example, one school has replaced an annual field trip to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis with a trip to a baseball game. In Shelby County, a choir director fears that his decades-long practice of teaching his students to sing and understand the history behind spirituals sung by enslaved people will be perceived as ‘divisive’ or otherwise violative of the Ban,” the suit says. Other districts have removed books from their curriculum as a result of the law.

The governor’s office typically does not comment on pending litigation, but Lee’s press secretary, Jade Byers, provided this statement on Wednesday in response to the lawsuit: “The governor signed the legislation because every parent deserves transparency into their child’s education, and Tennessee students should be taught history and civics with facts, not divisive political commentary.”

Tennessee targeted anti-CRT policies early

Tennessee was among the first states to pass a law limiting the depth of classroom discussions about inequality and concepts such as white privilege.

In March, Tennessee’s education department reported that few complaints had been filed with local school districts based on the law. And the department had received only a few appeals of local decisions.

One was from the parent of a student enrolled in a private school in Davidson County. Because the law does not apply to private schools, the department found that the parent did not have standing to file an appeal under the law.

Another complaint was filed by a Blount County parent over the book “Dragonwings,” a novel told from the perspective of a Chinese immigrant boy in the early 20th century. The state denied the appeal based on the results of its investigation.

However, Blount County Schools still removed the book from its sixth grade curriculum. And the lawsuit described the emotional toll of the proceedings on a 45-year teaching veteran who was “entangled in months of administrative proceedings, with her job on the line, because of a single parent’s complaint about an award-winning work of young adult literature that the Tennessee Department of Education approved and the local elected school board adopted as part of the district’s curriculum.”

The department also declined to investigate a complaint from Williamson County, south of Nashville, filed soon after the law was enacted. Robin Steenman, chair of the local Moms for Liberty chapter, alleged the literacy curriculum “Wit and Wisdom,” used by Williamson County Schools in 2020-21, has a “heavily biased agenda” that makes children “hate their country, each other and/or themselves.”

A spokesman said the department was only authorized to investigate claims beginning with the 2021-22 school year and encouraged Steenman to work with Williamson County Schools to resolve her concerns.

Department officials did not immediately respond Wednesday when asked whether the state has received more appeals in recent months.

Meanwhile, critics of the law worry about new legislative efforts to broaden its application.

Under the state’s current rules, only students, parents, or employees within a district or charter school can file complaints involving their school. Ragan’s bill, co-sponsored by Sen. Joey Hensley of Hohenwald, would allow any resident within a public school zone to file a complaint.

But critics argue such a change would open the door to conservative groups, like Moms for Liberty, to flood their local school boards with complaints about instruction, books, or materials they believe violate the law, even if they do not have direct contact with the teacher or school in question.

The prohibited concepts law is separate from 2022 Tennessee law that, based on appeals of local school board decisions, empowers a state panel to ban school library books statewide if deemed “inappropriate for the age or maturity levels” of students.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include comments from the governor’s office and one of the plaintiffs.

Marta W. Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee’s new education chief says implementing policy is her strength and the governor’s priority

2023-07-24T10:00:00+00:00

Three weeks into her job as Tennessee’s education chief, Lizzette Gonzalez Reynolds says her charge from Gov. Bill Lee is to implement existing major policy changes — from how reading is taught to the continued rollout of private school vouchers — not to craft new initiatives.

She feels prepared for that role, having overseen state-level education policy work in Texas for nearly a decade, including six years as its No. 2 administrator. She also has years of policy and political experience at the federal level, and most recently led policy work for the advocacy group ExcelinEd, founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

“Implementation is kind of my sweet spot,” Reynolds said. “When I was chief deputy commissioner in Texas, that’s what I did.”

Among her priorities in Tennessee: executing new programs to develop stronger readers; troubleshooting the switch to a new K-12 funding formula as of July 1; strengthening school models to prepare students for success after high school; and operating and expanding Lee’s controversial voucher program that gives taxpayer money to eligible students to attend private schools.

Meanwhile, much of the work to roll out a comprehensive new school safety package, approved this spring after a mass school shooting in Nashville, has shifted under a new law to the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security.

Since her official start on July 1, Reynolds’ schedule has been packed with meetings with staff, lawmakers, government officials, and education stakeholders.

Among the latter is JC Bowman, executive director of the Professional Educators of Tennessee, who described Reynolds as “straightforward and direct.”

“She made it clear that she is here to serve students and educators in Tennessee. … I think she will do well here if she will stay above the political fray,” said Bowman, who was a frequent critic of Reynolds’ predecessor, Penny Schwinn.

This week, the new commissioner travels to Memphis, home to the state’s largest school district, for introductions with local officials and community leaders.

Last week, in her first media interview since Lee announced her hiring in May, Reynolds sat down with Chalkbeat to talk about her background, priorities, and leadership style. Since she’s on a learning curve in a new state, questions about policy specifics were off the table.

But she was open about her own K-12 experiences as a public school kid growing up in Harlingen, Texas, a heavily Hispanic community in the Rio Grande Valley near the U.S.-Mexico border.

She described how, as a Hispanic American and a female, she experienced discrimination. As a first-generation college graduate and the oldest of four children of working-class parents, she benefited from scholarships and financial aid. And, as a parent of three children, one of whom was diagnosed with a disability in elementary school, she tapped both public and private schools to find the best fit for her family.

Reynolds said she jumped at the chance to join the administration of Lee, a Republican businessman who pushed for sweeping changes to education in his first term and was easily reelected last year.

“Tennessee has always been the bellwether state of doing things that challenge the adults in the system to continue to do better,” she said. “I want to be part of that story.”

Below are highlights of Chalkbeat’s interview, which has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

Getting to know you on a personal level, describe your own education experience. Did you go to public schools? Private schools? How did they shape you?

My only early experience in a private school was attending a Catholic school in pre-K. From kindergarten through 12th grade, I went to public schools in Harlingen.

From an early age, my mom drilled into me that “you got to go to college.” So I was always in a competition to be at the top of my class. I was going to be an astronaut, by God!

“I was going to be an astronaut, by God!”

I loved math but, when I took trigonometry in high school and it wasn’t connecting, my teacher was like, “You know, you’re a girl. You really don’t need to be doing this. You probably should just drop my class.” So I did.

I was shy and I couldn’t wait to get out of Harlingen. I was blessed with a great school counselor. When I told her I wanted to go to college, she said, “OK, here’s what you need to do.”

I got a merit scholarship to attend Southwestern University, where people in the financial aid office became my best friends and I was able to cover tuition increases through a combination of work-study and Pell grants. By then, I wanted to become an accountant. But after taking a political science class with a truly dynamic professor, I changed my mind. I wanted to save the world.

Your selection was announced by the governor’s office on the same day that Schwinn’s impending departure was announced. How did you come to this job?

A lot of the work I did for the Foundation for Excellence in Education (ExcelinEd) was not only to advocate for its policy agenda but to work across the country with other advocates and supporters and philanthropy. I was on the proverbial “list” of people across the country who might be interested in being a state-level deputy or chief. And I’ve paid my dues. I had thought maybe I might lead the Texas Education Agency someday. But I wasn’t actively looking. I’d been at ExcelinEd almost seven years and loved my job.

This spring, the governor’s office here called and wanted to talk about Tennessee’s chief position and I said, ‘Of course I’ll talk.’ What a great opportunity to meet Gov. Lee, who had a great relationship with Gov. Bush. (During the week of April 11) I came to Nashville and met with (Chief Operating Officer) Brandon Gibson and then interviewed with the governor the next day.

“Tennessee has always been the bellwether state of doing things that challenge the adults in the system to continue to do better.”

When I walked into his office, everybody was so awesome. Gov. Lee looked at me and said, “Why do you want to be commissioner of education in Tennessee?” I basically said, “Who wouldn’t want to be commissioner here?” Tennessee has always been the bellwether state of doing things that challenge the adults in the system to continue to do better. It’s still strong in accountability and assessment. There’s great work passed in this administration and previous administrations. And then, just the fact that the governor really cares about education, that it’s a priority.

Tennessee is just a good place to be. I want to be part of that story and the continued success of this state with kids. At this agency, we don’t touch kids every day, but we help influence what happens in the classroom because of the supports and resources that we provide.

When I walked out of the governor’s office, I said to myself, ‘I want to work for that man and I’m going to be really disappointed if I don’t get the offer.’

About a week and a half later, I got the offer.

What did you and Gov. Lee talk about in your interview? Why do you think he picked you?

Bottom line, this job was going to be about implementation and execution of the agenda passed through the legislature and through his leadership and (Penny Schwinn’s) leadership at the agency. A lot has already been done. Now the hard work is the implementation piece and that is kind of my sweet spot.

“Tennessee is where reform really percolated and expanded and continues to live.”

When I was chief deputy commissioner in Texas, that’s what I did: Making sure resources are there, thinking about the right resources, bringing folks in to support those implementation efforts — all the pieces of the puzzle that need to come together to ensure that kids and educators get what they need to be successful.

But sometimes implementation also requires you to say no to some things or to certain vendors.

Because of your policy work with ExcelinEd, with its focus on school choice and privatization, many stakeholders think your selection suggests that voucher expansion and advancing choice programs are Job One for you under this administration. How would you respond?

First of all, it’s not about privatization. Our No. 1 priority at ExcelinEd was to improve the system because we know that about 90% of our kids are in a public school system. Second priority is the options outside the system, which includes ESAs (education savings accounts, a kind of private school voucher), charter schools, open enrollment, public school choice, letting parents go where they want to go in the public school system. Third priority is reimagining the system, so really thinking about what other ways we can develop these comprehensive high schools. That’s how we think at ExcelinEd, and that’s why I think I was a good candidate for this job.

Yes, ESAs are part of the package, but it’s not the only package. There is no silver bullet when it comes to education. ESAs are great, but they’re not for everybody. It all depends on the parents and the families and what they want to do and what options they want to pursue.

It wasn’t that long ago that a Tennessee governor wouldn’t think of choosing an education commissioner who didn’t have teaching experience. But you don’t, nor do you have a teaching license. How will you have “street cred” with educators here, given that your background is primarily in policy and politics?

As a parent of public school kids, I’m as close to the classroom as you’re going to get because I’m a consumer of the public school system. To say that my experience is irrelevant, I don’t think it’s very fair. But in that vein, I also want to listen and learn. Earlier today, for instance, I met with folks at the Tennessee Education Association (the state’s largest teacher group).

I’ve got to come at it with empathy and support. Have I done their job every day? No, I haven’t. But we’re all in this together. I’m going to listen. I’m going to engage and implement in a way that is fair and where the decision-making is transparent.

The department has had a number of significant departures in recent months, including Chief Academic Officer Lisa Coons and Deputy Commissioner Eve Carney, who was a veteran manager responsible for many of the state’s biggest education programs and initiatives. How are you building out your cabinet and filling out gaps in leadership? Will you look inside or outside of the state?

I’m looking for the best qualified folks, but my preference is to find people in Tennessee. We just hired Kristy Brown from Jackson as our chief academic officer. We need to fill the role of chief program officer, and I’d love to find a Tennessean for that. I don’t feel the need to look outside of the state because I think there’s a lot of qualified people here. Tennessee is where reform really percolated and expanded and continues to live.

Have you and your family officially moved from Texas to Tennessee, or do you plan to?

I’m here and I’m moving soon into a place in East Nashville. My husband is staying in Austin with our youngest son, who’s a rising junior, until he finishes high school. Our son wants to look at colleges here, so I’m super excited.

I don’t know if I’ll go back to Austin to live. We’ll see.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

TCAP scores are in for Tennessee school districts. Look up how your district did.

2023-07-18T21:14:52+00:00

Most Tennessee school systems increased their students’ proficiency rates in math and English language arts last school year, according to district-level test scores released Tuesday by the state.

The latest scores generally mirrored statewide data released last month that showed gains across all core subjects and grades, even exceeding pre-pandemic proficiency rates in English language arts and social studies.

But large learning gaps remain, especially for historically underserved students including children with disabilities, those from low-income families, and students of color.

The results are an important marker as school systems work to recover from steep learning losses in 2021, when the first test scores from the pandemic period declined dramatically across Tennessee and the rest of the nation.

The scores also give a localized snapshot of how school districts are doing with tutoring, summer school, and other programs designed to accelerate learning after the pandemic.

Below, you can look up how your school district performed in English language arts and math in 2022-23 under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP.

You also can delve further into local results, including scores in science and social studies, via Tennessee’s new online dashboard on its State Report Card.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent covering the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Thomas Wilburn is Chalkbeat’s senior data editor. Contact him at twilburn@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee’s TCAP test scores climb for second straight year after pandemic

2023-06-29T19:00:00+00:00

Tennessee’s third set of test scores from the pandemic era improved again across all core subjects and grades, even exceeding pre-pandemic proficiency rates in English language arts and social studies.

State-level results released Thursday showed an overall increase in proficiency since last year for public school students, and a surge since 2021, when the first test scores from the pandemic period declined dramatically across the nation.

But the performance of historically underserved students — including children with disabilities, those from low-income families, and students of color — still lags. Those groups of students, who already trailed their peers before disruptions to schooling began in 2020, also spent the longest time learning remotely during the public health emergency caused by COVID-19.

The latest scores continue the state’s upward trend of pandemic recovery, based on standardized tests under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, also known as TCAP.

The academic snapshot suggests that Tennessee’s early investments in summer learning camps and intensive tutoring are paying off to counter three straight years of COVID-related disruptions.

Gov. Bill Lee called the results “encouraging,” while interim Education Commissioner Sam Pearcy praised educators, students, and their families for their hard work.

“These gains signal that we’re focused on the right work to advance student learning,” Pearcy told reporters during a morning call. “And as a result of that, we know that we will all continue to keep our foot on the gas to keep this momentum rolling.”

Beginning in the third grade, Tennessee students take TCAPs in four core subjects. This year’s students exceeded pre-pandemic levels in English language arts and social studies, while improving in math and science.

As previously reported, Tennessee’s third-grade proficiency rate jumped by over 4 percentage points to more than 40% on tests given this spring. Many of the other 60% have to participate in learning intervention programs to avoid being held back a year under a new state law.

Results for historically underserved student groups reflected both good and bad news.

The good news: Improvement for students of color, children from low-income families, those with disabilities, and those learning to speak English mostly paralleled the gains of their more affluent, white, or nondisabled peers.

The bad news: Tennessee isn’t closing those persistent gaps. Our analysis below focused on overall performance in English language arts.

The statewide data is available online by clicking “2023 State Assessment” on a new dashboard of the Tennessee Report Card.

District-level results, which are being reviewed by district leaders, are scheduled to be released in July.

And for the first time under a long-delayed change to the state’s accountability policies, this year’s TCAP results will be used to help calculate A-to-F grades this fall for Tennessee’s 1,700-plus public schools. The state has deferred the new accountability measure for five years because of testing and data disruptions, most recently caused by the pandemic.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with graphics and analysis.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Kae Petrin is a data and graphics reporter for Chalkbeat. Contact Kae at kpetrin@chalkbeat.org.

The ‘Tennessee 3’ created a historic teachable moment. Will schools be allowed to teach it?

2023-06-16T19:34:07+00:00

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When Wyatt Bassow and Ava Buxton missed classes one morning this spring to see democracy in action in Tennessee, they witnessed history that they acknowledged probably wouldn’t be fully taught at their high school less than a mile away.

Justin Pearson, one of two young Democratic lawmakers who were dramatically expelled from office just a week earlier by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, was taking his oath of office again that day outside the state Capitol in Nashville after being voted back in by officials in Shelby County.

A few days earlier, Rep. Justin Jones of Nashville had been reinstated after a similar vote by his city’s council.

Both men had been ousted from the legislature for staging a protest on the House floor urging gun reforms after a mass school shooting in Nashville. The votes temporarily robbed some 140,000 Tennesseans in the state’s two largest cities of their representation.

“What I’ve learned these last few weeks is that democracy is incredibly fragile,” said Bassow, a senior at Nashville’s Hume-Fogg High School, as he cheered Pearson’s reinstatement in the shadow of the Capitol building.

“But because of the power of the people,” he added, “we were able to fix this.”

Less certain, the students said, is whether the controversial ouster of the two young Black Democrats by the House’s all-white GOP supermajority would be fully discussed at their school, or any public Tennessee school, as part of a course in U.S. government, civics, history, contemporary issues, or social studies.

While Republican leaders maintain the ouster was not racially motivated, the racial optics were undeniable, as was the supermajority’s suppression of legislative voices with whom they disagreed.

Cameron Sexton, a Republican from Crossville, is the speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives.

Meanwhile, Tennessee is at the front of a conservative-driven wave of censorship about what can and cannot be taught in K-12 schools.

A 2021 state law restricts classroom discussions about systemic racism, white privilege, and the ongoing legacy of slavery. Republican Gov. Bill Lee, who signed the law, has championed civics education that emphasizes American exceptionalism and plays down the origins of present-day U.S. injustices.

School libraries are under scrutiny too, especially for materials that have to do with race and gender. A 2022 law gives the state unprecedented authority to overrule local school boards and remove certain materials from libraries statewide. And a 2023 law puts book distributors and publishers at risk of criminal prosecution if materials they provide to Tennessee schools are deemed obscene.

“We definitely have noticed that a silencing is happening in our schools.” —Ava Buxton, student

“We definitely have noticed that a silencing is happening in our schools,” said Buxton, also a senior at Hume-Fogg, when asked whether the expulsions of Jones and Pearson had been discussed in her classes.

“Thankfully, our teachers are wonderful and intelligent educators who do their best to give students the space we need to have important conversations,” she continued. “But I think these conversations would go much deeper if our teachers didn’t have the fear of these new laws hanging over them.”

The rise, fall, and rise of the Tennessee Three

The expulsions of the two Black lawmakers came during the dramatic last weeks of a tumultuous legislative session gripped by large citizen protests over Tennessee’s lax gun laws, after an armed intruder killed three children and three adults at The Covenant School in Nashville on March 27.

Frustrated that House Speaker Cameron Sexton was not allowing them to voice the concerns of demonstrators during debates, Pearson, Jones, and Rep. Gloria Johnson of Knoxville took their protest to the House floor, where Jones and Pearson alternately used a bullhorn to shout “Gun control now!” and “Power to the people!”

In the process, the trio broke the chamber’s rules of decorum. GOP-sponsored ouster resolutions accused the so-called Tennessee Three of “knowingly and intentionally bringing disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives.”

(From left) Reps. Justin Jones of Nashville, Gloria Johnson of Knoxville, and Justin Pearson of Memphis speak at a press conference on April 4, 2023, about GOP-sponsored resolutions to kick the three Democrats out of office.

Ultimately, Republican representatives voted overwhelmingly to kick out the two young Black men, while Johnson, who is older and white and was less vocal during the protest, kept her seat by a single vote.

The last time the House had expelled multiple members was in 1866, when six representatives were thrown out for conspiring to deprive the chamber of a quorum during a special session to ratify the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Two others have been expelled in more recent times, one for soliciting a bribe, and the other for sexual misconduct.

By contrast, the ousters of Jones and Pearson over their peaceful protest of gun violence — now the No. 1 killer of children and teens in America — seemed heavy-handed to their supporters. The House could have chosen simply to censure them for breaking House rules of decorum instead of kicking them out altogether.

In a subsequent four-page rebuke, the nation’s professional organization for social studies teachers denounced Tennessee’s House as attacking foundational principles of democratic and republican norms. Intentionally or not, the state was sending Tennessee students a message that the rights to free speech, peaceful protest, and holding their elected officials accountable are “reserved for those who have a specific view or perspective,” the National Council for the Social Studies wrote.

“Just as disturbing,” the group continued, “this action sends a message to the larger community that civil discourse and active citizenship will result in punishment rather than in finding consensus in ways that uphold the principles of democracy and the functioning of our republic … (which) will have a long-term impact on our students’ faith in the democratic process and our constitutional principles.”

Tennessee’s living history drama was filled with teachable moments

Political science and social studies experts say it’s hard to narrow down the events in Tennessee this spring to one teachable moment.

Tens of thousands of citizens descending on the Capitol to protest gun violence after a school shooting and the subsequent expulsions and reinstatements of Jones and Pearson are rich runways for academic inquiry. Among the issues: freedom of speech, legislative rules of decorum, the enduring influence of racism on public policy, and — as Bassow, the Nashville student, articulated — the fragility of democracy.

Students protest outside the Tennessee State Capitol on April 3, 2023, during a demonstration against gun violence and the state’s lax gun laws after a deadly school shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville.

John Geer, a political science professor who helped to launch the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy, heartily agrees with Bassow.

“The teachable moment is that democracy fundamentally rests on genuine competition among political parties,” said Geer. “But because of supermajorities in our state legislatures, the minority party has no real influence and is left to scream or complain. They’re not part of the governing process. There’s no give and take, no compromise. Meanwhile, the majority party has so much power that they don’t need to negotiate, and that leads to excesses.”

It didn’t take long for resources to become available to help teachers broach the controversies in Tennessee as well as in Montana, where that state’s House speaker silenced Democratic Rep. Zooey Zephyr, a transgender lawmaker who refused to apologize for telling colleagues they would have “blood” on their hands if they supported a ban on gender-affirming care for youths.

Facing History and Ourselves, a nonprofit group that creates resources about current events to spawn thoughtful classroom discussions, zeroed in on two issues in its lessons: how to discuss politics in non-polarizing ways and the implications of using rules of decorum to censure legislators.

“What norms should guide our conversations about political issues?” asks the group’s lessons designed for middle and high school students.

“How could rules around speech be used to silence people?”

Parameters have narrowed on what teachers can teach

The availability of resources doesn’t mean such questions are being regularly asked in Tennessee classrooms, however.

The state’s public school teachers don’t have much wiggle room on what they’re allowed to teach. They’re also under increased scrutiny over the resources they can use.

“Tennessee civics is really nowhere in the standards. If something isn’t in the standards, it’s probably not going to be taught.” —Bill Carey, Tennessee History for Kids

Teachers are guided by hundreds of state-approved academic standards that set learning goals by subject and grade, and that dictate decisions around curriculum and testing. And social studies teachers already are hard-pressed to cover all of the standards for their subjects during a single school year. Even if they do, only a few courses offered in grades five, eight, and 12 include standards that might lend themselves to discussions about the Tennessee Three.

“Tennessee civics is really nowhere in the standards,” said Bill Carey, who sells resources for educators through his nonprofit Tennessee History for Kids. “And if something isn’t in the standards, it’s probably not going to be taught.”

Social studies lessons, in particular, are monitored closely by parents and activists.

In 2015, some complained that some Tennessee teachers were “indoctrinating” students into Islam in their seventh-grade world history classes, prompting state officials to order an early review of those standards.

More recently, amid a conservative backlash to anti-racism protests after a white policeman killed Black American George Floyd in Minneapolis (an incident that prompted a federal investigation into systemic racism on the police force), Tennessee was among the first states to enact a law intended to restrict K-12 classroom discussions about race, racism, and gender.

Specifically, the 2021 law prohibits teachers from discussing 14 concepts that the state has deemed divisive, including that the United States is fundamentally or irredeemably sexist or racist, or that an individual is inherently privileged, racist, sexist, or oppressive because of their race or gender.

Educators have complained that the law and the state’s rules for enforcing the statute aren’t clear about exactly what teachings cross the line. But teachers found in violation could have their licenses suspended or revoked, while their school districts could face financial penalties.

“To be honest, I just didn’t mention this in class. I am just overly cautious with what I cover in class for now.” —Tennessee social studies teacher

The potential fallout has influenced small but pivotal decisions that educators make every day in Tennessee and in other states that have passed similar laws targeting so-called critical race theory: how to answer a student’s question, which articles to read as a class, how to prepare for a lesson, which examples to use.

That includes whether to discuss the Tennessee legislature’s vote to expel Jones and Pearson, which made national headlines.

“To be honest, I just didn’t mention this in class,” said one Tennessee social studies teacher who asked not to be identified, for fear of retribution. “I am just overly cautious with what I cover in class for now.”

Students ‘come up with all these great questions’

Mark Finchum, executive director of the Tennessee Council for the Social Studies, says the law — and a related climate of fear — has had a chilling effect on teachers who might normally contemplate lessons about the Tennessee Three, or perhaps about the insurrection at the Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. But it also depends on the teacher.

“If you’re a new teacher who is teaching in an area of the state where you feel insecure, you may not want to go there,” Finchum said. “But if you’re an experienced teacher and feel strongly about these events and how your students can learn from them, you may go ahead.”

Erika Sugarmon falls in the latter category.

One Friday at White Station High School in Memphis, students showed up to Sugarmon’s weekly current events discussion with lots of questions about the expulsion. The day before the legislative vote, many White Station students had walked out of school to show support for gun reforms called for by the Tennessee Three.

“The kids come up with all these great questions. Sometimes there’s not an answer,” said Sugarmon, a veteran educator who teaches courses in U.S. government.

Protesters listen from the gallery of the House of Representatives at the Tennessee State Capitol on April 3, 2023, while demanding gun reform and justice for The Tennessee Three.

But it’s important to give students a safe and constructive space to discuss hard things, added Sugarmon, who is also an elected official on the Shelby County Commission, where she cast a vote to reinstate Pearson to his seat.

One student in her class brought up racism, she said, prompting a conversation about why Tennessee lawmakers have sought to ban some books and squelch classroom discussions about racism.

“Students have been very vocal about not just what happened with Pearson, but with state laws in general,” said Sugarmon.

She encourages them to explore source documents to formulate their own options.

Evidence-based discussions are the way that teachers should take up politically charged topics with their students, Vanderbilt’s Geer said.

“The evidence should be your guidepost,” he said, “while avoiding injecting ideology into the classroom.”

“Yes, facts need to be interpreted,” Geer added. “But if we can agree on a basic set of evidence, we can have a conversation. And that’s an important part of democracy.”

Maya Logan, a rising senior in Memphis at Germantown High School, talked about the lawmakers’ expulsions with her friends, but didn’t discuss the event as part of her 11th-grade American history class. Just the same, the deadly shooting at Nashville’s Covenant School, which prompted the protest and led to the expulsions, was a big deal to her. And as a young Black person, she related to Pearson and Jones, who are among the youngest members of the House.

Logan hopes this year’s events at the state Capitol will resurface as discussion topics during her senior year when she takes a U.S. government class. She has important questions. And she’s looking for answers.

“These are people,” she explained, “that are setting things up for us for our futures.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Laura Testino is a reporter for Chalkbeat Tennessee, where she covers K-12 education in Memphis. Contact her at ltestino@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee teachers group sues over new law banning local payroll deductions for dues

2023-06-13T22:07:05+00:00

Tennessee’s largest professional teachers organization is challenging the constitutionality of a new state law that prohibits school districts from making payroll deductions for employees’ professional association dues.

The Tennessee Education Association filed its lawsuit Tuesday in Davidson County Chancery Court on behalf of its local education associations and 41,000 members statewide. The complaint names Gov. Bill Lee’s administration, which pushed for the change, and the state education department as defendants. Several local education associations have joined the suit.

The law passed in April after Lee proposed legislation linking the controversial ban on payroll dues collection to a popular provision aimed at raising teacher pay.

That link is the crux of the problem, according to TEA leaders who charged that the strategy violates the state constitution’s single-subject requirement for laws.

“Sliding a payroll dues deduction ban in a bill to raise the minimum pay was a cynical attack on Tennessee teachers,” TEA President Tanya Coats said in a statement. “We look forward to our day in court.”

Lee, speaking with reporters during a school visit Tuesday afternoon in Sumner County, said he had no misgivings about a law that both gives to teachers and takes away.

“The intent of that was to give teachers a pay raise and to make sure that taxpayer dollars are used appropriately and not inappropriately,” Lee said. He contends that districts bear costs for administering a dues deduction program.

The lawsuit is the latest volley between Lee’s administration and the influential teachers organization, which has criticized many of the Republican governor’s policies. The TEA has channeled teacher concerns about a 2021 law that, beginning this year, puts students at risk of having to repeat third grade if they don’t score as proficient on a single standardized test used by the state to gauge reading levels. The group also has opposed Lee’s efforts to expand private school vouchers and charter schools in Tennessee.

Lee’s proposal singled out the TEA

In filing its lawsuit, the TEA asked for a restraining order, as well as temporary and permanent injunctions on the payroll dues deduction ban, which is set to take effect on July 1.

In addition to challenging the law’s breadth, the complaint charges that it negates current negotiations and legal contracts between school districts and local teacher associations that include provisions allowing dues deductions for thousands of members.

Steve McCloud, the TEA’s chief attorney, said more than half of Tennessee’s teachers work under such agreements.

“The law is unconstitutional, and we filed suit to protect the rights of our membership to have their voluntary dues dedicated from their paychecks, something they have been able to do for many decades as a matter of convenience and at no cost to school districts,” McCloud said.

Supporters of the policy change said it doesn’t prevent teachers from joining the TEA or electronically paying their dues directly to the organization.

Automatic dues deductions “are a thing of the past,” Republican House Majority Leader William Lamberth declared this spring when arguing for the bill on the floor of his chamber.

But critics from both sides of the aisle noted that the law singles out teachers as the state’s only public employees prohibited from having their dues collected through payroll deductions.

“The state actually takes dues out for different organizations. … Let’s be consistent,” Republican Rep. Gary Hicks, of Rogersville, told the House when urging members to strip the dues deduction provision from the legislation.

Sen. London Lamar, the Memphis Democrat who chairs her party’s caucus, said Tuesday that the law’s ban on dues deductions will further diminish the collective power of Tennessee educators.

“All workers, including teachers, deserve the freedom to organize for better pay, benefits and working conditions — without interference from politicians,” Lamar said in a statement.

Dues provision survived challenge in the legislature

Lee’s annual state address in February drew mostly polite applause — until he promised legislation to increase teachers’ minimum salary from $41,000 to $50,000 over the next four years.

His brief comments about teacher compensation prompted two standing ovations from lawmakers in a state that ranks toward the bottom in K-12 funding and where many teachers have to work 10 to 15 years to reach a salary of $50,000.

Once unveiled, the governor’s proposal — to increase minimum pay to $42,000 this year and $50,000 by the 2026-27 school year — included a surprise provision targeting the TEA and its longstanding process for collecting membership dues.

“Both of these items, the governor believes, are good public policy,” said Brent Easley, the governor’s legislative director, when pressed about including a dues ban in a teacher pay bill.

The legislation stayed intact, despite an initial House vote to remove the dues language. Many opponents eventually backed off in the legislature’s rush to adjourn for the year.

It’s uncertain whether the policy change could lead to a drop in the number of teachers on TEA rolls. The organization already has lost significant power over the last half century.

In 1978, lawmakers banned teachers from striking and in 2011 did away with their collective bargaining rights. No teacher is required to join the organization as a condition of employment.

Still, TEA maintains a strong grassroots network and makes contributions to both Republican and Democratic candidates through its political action committee. That PAC, which is funded through separate contributions and not through dues, has given $1.3 million to state candidates and causes over the last four campaign cycles, according to the Tennessee Journal.

The Professional Educators of Tennessee, a rival organization, already uses its own collection systems for membership dues.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Key Tennessee education official Eve Carney resigns amid leadership transition

2023-06-05T23:30:24+00:00

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The leadership transition at the Tennessee Department of Education accelerated this week with the resignations of two high-level officials, including a veteran manager responsible for many of the state’s biggest education programs and initiatives.

Deputy Commissioner Eve Carney will step down on June 30, a department spokesperson confirmed Monday.

The departure of Meghan McLeroy, the department’s chief officer responsible for supporting schools and districts statewide, is effective Aug. 1, the spokesperson said.

A staff member with the department since 2008, Carney currently oversees state-level work involving federal programs, school choice, testing, accountability, school improvement, and the state-run Achievement School District for low-performing schools. She is among the deepest wells of institutional knowledge within the department.

Her resignation comes at a critical time as Lizzette Gonzalez Reynolds prepares to take the helm of the department on July 1 after Penny Schwinn ended her four-year tenure as commissioner last week.

Carney — who is one of four remaining members from Schwinn’s original cabinet — was expected to play a key role in helping Reynolds as the new commissioner from Texas faces myriad challenges.

Tennessee is shifting to a new education funding formula on July 1, enforcing a controversial new third-grade retention policy for struggling readers, operating large-scale tutoring and summer learning programs to help students catch up from the pandemic, expanding its private school voucher program to a third major city, and fortifying its school buildings after a Nashville school shooting left three students and three staff members dead on March 27.

The state also is scheduled to start giving A-to-F grades to its 1,700-plus public schools this fall after delaying the new accountability policy for five years because of testing and data disruptions, most recently caused by the pandemic.

A former Tennessee high school teacher and former chief of districts and schools for the department, Carney became Schwinn’s go-to manager to oversee high-level, high-profile programs.

She often stepped in to provide oversight amid employee turnover in Schwinn’s first months on the job. And last summer, when the Tennessee Supreme Court lifted a 2-year-old order to let the state resume work on its new private school voucher program, Schwinn turned to Carney to launch the rollout in a matter of weeks.

Carney was viewed as a possible successor to Schwinn, especially after Chiefs for Change, a national network of education leaders, named her in January to its latest cohort of “future chiefs,” considered a springboard for administrators seeking top jobs.

But in May, when Schwinn announced plans to step down at the end of the school year, Gov. Bill Lee went out of state to find his new education chief. Reynolds has political and policy experience in Texas and Washington, D.C., and most recently oversaw policy for the advocacy group ExcelinEd, founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

Lee also named Sam Pearcy, the department’s deputy commissioner of operations, to serve as interim education commissioner until Reynolds’ arrival. Pearcy was sworn in on June 2, after Schwinn’s last day on June 1, said department spokesperson Brian Blackley.

An alum of Teach for America, Pearcy joined the department in 2011 as part of the team overseeing school reform work under Tennessee’s $500 million award for the federal Race to the Top program.

McLeroy, another early member of Schwinn’s cabinet, has been with the department since 2011. She also initially helped to lead the state’s Race to the Top work.

The department plans to reassign Carney’s and McLeroy’s responsibilities to existing staff by the end of June, Blackley said.

Earlier this spring, Lisa Coons, the state’s chief academic officer, left Tennessee to become superintendent of public instruction for Virginia’s education department.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Over 25,000 Tennessee 3rd graders retook reading test this week to try to meet new promotion policy

2023-05-26T21:44:49+00:00

More than half of Tennessee third graders at risk of being held back because of their reading test scores took another test this week to try to advance to fourth grade without summer school or tutoring.

The state began offering the retest on Monday. By Friday, 25,304 third graders had submitted a second reading assessment, said Brian Blackley, a spokesman for the state education department.

Preliminary scores from the initial test in the spring indicated that about 60% of Tennessee’s 74,000 third-graders could be at risk of being held back under a new state retention policy for third graders who struggle with reading. But that number is before factoring in exemptions under the law.

The testing do-over marks the end of a pivotal school year for third graders, who were kindergartners in 2020 when the pandemic shuttered school buildings and caused unprecedented learning disruptions.

A 2021 law enacted a tough new retention policy starting this school year for students who don’t test as proficient readers by the end of third grade. The law also created several learning intervention programs to help students catch up.

Since the 2022-23 retention policy is based on the results of a single test under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, retesting using a similar “TCAP-style test” was part of the state’s plan for giving third graders another opportunity to improve their score.

The retesting window continues through June 5, but schools were expected to complete most of the do-overs this week so families can get their students’ results back sooner.

State officials have pledged that test vendor Pearson will return new scores within 48 hours after submission.

To get promoted to the fourth grade, third graders who who score as “approaching” reading proficiency must either attend a summer program with a 90% attendance rate, then show adequate growth on a test administered at the end of the program; or they must take advantage of state-funded tutoring throughout the 2023-24 school year.

Third graders who score in the bottom category of readers known as “below” must participate in both intervention programs to get promoted to fourth grade.

Summer learning camps start as soon as next week at some schools, although the schedule varies by district. For instance, Nashville’s program starts on June 1, while Memphis-Shelby County Schools launches its summer learning academies on June 20.

This week’s retests, via the state’s online Schoolnet platform, started off bumpy in some districts due to technical issues but smoothed out after the first day, Blackley said.

There were “isolated tech issues” on Monday in some districts that were “fully resolved,” Blackley said. “Our testing vendor, Pearson, has been troubleshooting effectively to manage and will continue to do so throughout the entire window,” he said.

Blackley added that technical problems will not delay the return of scores.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee school district sues social media companies over student mental health ‘crisis’

2023-05-26T16:22:07+00:00

A Tennessee school district has joined a growing list of school systems across the nation that are suing major social media companies like TikTok and YouTube over a crisis in student mental health.

Clarksville-Montgomery County Schools filed its lawsuit earlier this month through California-based Frantz Law Group and Tennessee-based law offices of Lewis Thomason.

Chris McCarty, a Knoxville attorney who is helping to coordinate litigants, said other Tennessee districts are interested in joining the suit.

The case’s arrival in Tennessee comes as the nation’s top health official issued a warning this week about the risks of social media to young people.

U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said that while social media can be beneficial, its effects on adolescent mental health are not fully understood and it “can also have a profound risk of harm.”

His 19-page advisory could strengthen the case of school systems complaining that they’ve been left to deal with the fallout of apps that they contend are harmful to the social and emotional health of children and adolescents.

In Clarksville-Montgomery County, school officials say they’ve fought an “uphill battle” in recent years against cyberbullying, mental health disorders, classroom disruptions, threats of school violence, and young people’s access to inappropriate content. Located along the Kentucky border and near a U.S. Army base, the district operates 45 schools for its 38,000 students and is Tennessee’s seventh largest school system.

“It is time for social media companies to be held accountable for the lack of monitors, controls, and cooperation to protect children and our society,” the district wrote in a May 11 email notifying parents, employees, and other stakeholders about the lawsuit.

Among other things, the district is seeking changes to the companies’ products, funding to pay for education and treatment programs on excessive use of social media, and an unspecified award for damages.

“This is an effort to bring about real change,” McCarty told Chalkbeat on Thursday.

Problems tied to social media are ‘a daily thing’ in school

The school system’s 109-page complaint charges that social media giants like the owners of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube are causing harm to students who use their products via algorithms that are designed to cause addiction.

The lawsuit also contends that the companies have caused a mental and emotional health “crisis” among students that is marked by an increase in anxiety, depression, thoughts of self-harm, and exploitative content that encourages disorderly behavior, unhealthy social comparison, and cyberbullying.

“If you ask any principal or teacher how often they deal with problems related to social media, it’s not a monthly or weekly thing. It’s a daily thing,” McCarty said.

A spokeswoman for Google, which owns YouTube, called the complaint’s allegations “simply not true.”

“Protecting kids across our platforms has always been core to our work,” said Ivy Choi. “In collaboration with child development specialists, we have built age-appropriate experiences for kids and families on YouTube, and provide parents with robust controls,”

A Snapchat spokesman said the safety and well-being of the app’s users is a top priority and that Snapchat is not designed to encourage passive scrolling.

“We aren’t an app that encourages perfection or popularity, and we vet all content before it can reach a large audience, which helps protect against the promotion and discovery of potentially harmful material,” the company said in a statement. “While we will always have more work to do, we feel good about the role Snapchat plays in helping friends feel connected, informed, happy, and prepared as they face the many challenges of adolescence.”

The other companies named in the lawsuit did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Suit follows school district cases against Juul Labs

In January, when Seattle public schools became the first district to sue tech giants over student mental health, legal experts were split on the potential impact.

One expert told Chalkbeat the suit could lead to sweeping changes in the industry. But others said it could fizzle out.

In the months since, dozens of other school systems have filed similar lawsuits charging that social media companies are maximizing profit at the expense of the mental health of young audiences. Those audiences spend significant amounts of time on the platforms and report associating them with stress and anxiety, according to plaintiffs.

An attorney for Frantz Law Group, which specializes in class-action and mass-action lawsuits, said Thursday that about 500 school systems in 32 states have retained the firm to pursue similar litigation.

The firm represented more than a thousand school districts in earlier lawsuits against Juul Labs Inc., which makes nicotine vaping devices, over claims about the company’s marketing to adolescents. A series of settlements in recent months have funneled billions of dollars in payouts to individuals, states, cities, and school systems.

Many of those same school systems, including Clarksville-Montgomery County Schools, are now working with the same lawyers to pursue legal action against social media companies.

“When we mentioned social media was the next fight, the district was the first one to jump out of the gate,” said McCarty about Clarksville-based school system.

Proving a mental-health link could be difficult

William Shinoff, the attorney leading the litigation for the Frantz Law Group, said this week’s U.S. surgeon general advisory backs up many of his firm’s claims.

“It’s extremely helpful,” Shinoff said, “as it restates what we are alleging in our lawsuit.”

But while there’s significant frustration with social media companies in the court of public opinion, drawing a direct connection between their products and student mental health isn’t necessarily straightforward. For instance, what about the pandemic’s emotional effect on children and teens, as well other stressors and the role of parent supervision?

“We’re having a mental health crisis in general and everybody wants to point the finger at social media,” said Pamela Wisniewski, a social media expert and Vanderbilt University associate professor of human-computer interaction.

She noted that a severe shortage of therapists and affordable treatment options contributes to a public health threat spanning racial and ethnic groups, urban and rural areas, and the socioeconomic divide.

“We should look at reform holistically,” Wisniewski said, “to better support schools, provide more mental health training, and create stronger communities to create a network of social support.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include a response from Google.

More Tennessee 3rd graders tested proficient in reading this year, but 60% face risk of retention

2023-05-22T21:20:36+00:00

Tennessee’s third-grade reading proficiency rate jumped by more than 4 percentage points to 40% on this year’s state tests.

But that means up to 60% of its third graders could be at risk of being held back under the state’s tough new retention law.

The results, based on preliminary scores, showed some level of improvement in all four of the state’s reading performance categories. The percentage of third graders who scored as advanced readers, the state’s top performance category, rose 3 percentage points to 13%, the largest figure in over a decade.

Tennessee released the statewide data Monday as families began receiving news about whether their third graders scored well enough on spring tests to move on to fourth grade.

While the state won’t release the final scores until this summer, the preliminary scores offer the first statewide glimpse at the effects of a controversial 2021 law passed in an effort to stem pandemic learning loss and boost Tennessee’s long-lagging scores for reading.

Gov. Bill Lee, who championed the 2021 law, called the gains “historic.”

And Penny Schwinn, the state’s outgoing education commissioner, pointed to Tennessee’s new investments and strategies for literacy, including an array of programs to train teachers on phonics-based reading instruction.

“While we still have a long way to go before we reach the goals laid out in legislation,” Schwinn said, “I appreciate the ongoing efforts of Tennessee schools as they implement summer and tutoring programs to provide students not yet on grade level with the supports they need to thrive.”

Scores set students on varying pathways to promotion

Tennessee has about 74,000 third graders. The early data showed 35% scored as “approaching” proficiency, down 1 percentage point from last year; and 25% scored “below” proficiency, down by 3 percentage points last year in the state’s bottom category. Another 27% were deemed to have met the state’s threshold for reading, up 2 percentage points from last year.

Those who weren’t deemed proficient readers may retake the test this week to try to improve their score, or may have to attend learning camps this summer or tutoring sessions this fall to be eligible to advance to fourth grade.

But the state’s numbers do not factor in students who are automatically exempt under the law. Those include third graders with a disability or suspected disability that affects reading; students who have been previously retained; and English language learners with less than two years of instruction in English language arts.

“Exemption decisions will be dealt with at the local level, in compliance with the law,” said Brian Blackley, a state education department spokesman.

District officials spent the weekend analyzing preliminary scores that the department shared with school leaders late Friday afternoon.

Knox County Schools was among the first school systems to report district-level results, with more than a third of its third graders at risk of retention. The district shared scores with families on Friday night and gave them until Sunday to sign up their child to retest this week. More than 1,200 Knox County third graders retook the test on Monday, said spokeswoman Carly Harrington.

About 38% of Nashville students face possible retention based on an analysis of performance and exemptions by Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools.

Chattanooga-based Hamilton County Schools reported that more than one-fifth of its third graders either did not score proficient in reading, or did not meet the state’s exemption criteria. “We are in the process of notifying families right now,” spokesman Steve Doremus said Monday.

In Rutherford County Schools, a large suburban district south of Nashville, about 30% of third graders may have to satisfy additional learning requirements to be eligible to advance to fourth grade.

School officials in Memphis did not immediately answer Chalkbeat’s questions about third-grade performance.

“We’re working to support the families of our third-grade students over the next few days as they prepare for retests, appeals, our MSCS Summer Learning Academy, and end-of-year celebrations,” Memphis-Shelby County Schools said in a statement.

In releasing statewide data on Monday, the department reversed course from its stance last week.

Historically, the state has not publicly released data from preliminary student-level scores, which are protected by federal confidentiality laws. Blackley said Friday that would continue to be the case. On Monday, however, he said the public release of some statewide results was an attempt to increase transparency because of the high stakes for third graders.

“We understand there’s a lot of interest,” he said, “so we wanted to give a comprehensive view of third-grade data for English language arts as soon as possible.”

Critics of retention law step up their criticisms

This year’s third graders were the youngest students affected by school disruptions during the pandemic. Their kindergarten year was shortened by three months when Gov. Bill Lee urged public school officials to close their buildings in March 2020 to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

Lee later called the legislature in for a special 2021 session to address ongoing learning disruptions. Lawmakers authorized the creation of summer programs and tutoring during the school year for elementary and middle school grades, while also approving new reading proficiency requirements for third graders to advance, beginning this school year.

The resulting state-funded learning interventions have proven popular, but the retention policy has received widespread criticism.

It’s “worth remembering this broken 3rd grade retention policy was rushed into law during a 4-day special session without any input from educators or families,” state Sen. Jeff Yarbro tweeted over the weekend.

The Nashville Democrat questioned the adequacy of the state’s financial investment in education, its interpretation of scores from the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, and the law’s focus on third graders.

“Maybe, just maybe, our efforts should focus on instruction & interventions in K-2 (if not earlier),” Yarbro wrote.

In Memphis, Sen. Raumesh Akbari said the possibility of holding back thousands of third graders based on a single test score was “manufactured chaos.”

“There are so many student interventions we could be supporting to improve reading comprehension. High-stakes testing, with the threat of failing third grade, is not one of them,” said Akbari, who chairs the Senate Democratic Caucus.

Many school officials also question whether TCAP is the best measure of a child’s ability to read.

“The promotion requirements around one TCAP data point don’t portray simple ‘reading ability,’” Rutherford County Schools Superintendent James Sullivan said in a statement.

“Instead,” he said, “the TCAP third grade English Language Arts assessment is a measure of a student’s performance on all Tennessee Academic ELA Standards including the ability to interact, decipher, comprehend, and analyze comprehensive text.”

Adrienne Battle, director of schools in Nashville, said her district did not agree with the law’s retention policy, but is working with its families to navigate the law’s impacts.

“It is important for children, parents, and the community to understand that if a student didn’t score proficient on this one test, it does not mean they failed, that they cannot read, or that they are not making learning progress,” Battle said. “Tennessee has some of the highest standards in the nation for student expectations.”

Local pushback caused legislators to revisit the law during their most recent legislative session. Among other things, lawmakers widened criteria for determining which third graders are at risk of being held back, but the changes won’t take effect until next school year.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Laura Testino contributed to this report from Memphis. Contact her at ltestino@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee’s 3rd-grade retention law requires ‘adequate growth’ to advance. Here’s what that means.

2023-05-19T22:15:06+00:00

When Tennessee lawmakers passed a tough third-grade retention law in 2021, they ordered districts to provide academic interventions like summer learning camps to help struggling readers get promoted on time.

The law also says third graders who score just below reading proficiency must show “adequate growth” on a test given at the end of those camps in order to advance to fourth grade.

But the statute didn’t define “adequate growth,” and policymakers have debated ever since what that ambiguity means.

On Friday, the State Board of Education provided an answer: To get promoted, students who scored as “approaching” reading proficiency on their state test this spring must improve by at least 5 percentage points on another state test given at the end of their summer learning program.

“This definition is intended to capture a reasonable amount of growth a student could achieve during the four-week camp, relative to the student’s achievement during an entire school year,” said Sam Pearcy, Tennessee’s deputy education commissioner, while presenting his department’s recommendation to the board.

The definition was the most pressing question lingering over the controversial new retention policy outlined in the state’s 2021 learning acceleration law. That policy, which kicks in with this year’s third graders, is expected to cause thousands of students to attend summer school in the next few months or undergo tutoring next school year to avoid being held back.

Questions and complaints pick up as score data goes out

Members of the state board said they’ve received other questions daily about the law — everything from tutoring access to how to appeal to the state to get exempted from the policy. State-provided tutoring is Tennessee’s other intervention program for struggling readers under the 2021 law.

“We’re going to continue to work through the process,” board Chairman Bob Eby, of Oak Ridge, said Friday. “It’s not perfect, but the intent is right.”

Warren Wells, a board member from Shelbyville, said critics have called the retention law “ridiculous” and said that it “wasn’t thought through.” But he countered that it was the right response to unprecedented learning disruptions caused by the pandemic.

“This year is going to be hard,” Wells acknowledged, “but we are going to continue to look at it and make sure that we make the best decisions for the future of our children.”

Also late Friday afternoon, school districts received preliminary scores from the state tests taken this spring, kicking off a busy few days of analysis and communication with parents about what those results mean. Most families should have information by Monday or Tuesday about how their third grader performed, so that they can make decisions about whether their student should retest next week to try for a better result, or will have to enter learning intervention programs this summer or fall.

The preliminary testing information won’t be publicly released, however, said Brian Blackley, a spokesman for the education department.

Early reading scores for individual third graders are confidential, said Blackley, and “meant to give districts prompt, actionable data as quickly as possible to help students and families.”

Statewide and district-level results from the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP, will be released publicly this summer, he added.

Board irons out a wrinkle in ‘adequate growth’ policy

Before approving the definition for “adequate growth,” the board made a late change to the department’s recommendation to address concerns that some third graders who scored “approaching” proficiency this spring could unwittingly be penalized for retaking their reading test next week.

If those students improve their baseline score on the do-over but still aren’t deemed proficient readers, they would have to score even higher on the summertime post-test to improve by 5 percentage points.

“Then there’s no incentive for the individual to take that retake test,” Eby said.

For such cases, the board set spring TCAPs, not the retake assessment, as the baseline test.

The “adequate growth” requirement will not apply to students who scored “below” proficiency, the state’s bottom category, on either the TCAP or retake tests. The law requires those students to participate in both a summer learning camp and state-funded tutoring throughout fourth grade to get promoted.

All rising fourth graders who participate in summer camps also must maintain a 90% attendance rate in those programs, as stipulated in the law.

School leaders welcome answers

The post-test won’t be the TCAP, but state officials say testing vendor Pearson is developing the assessment to be a “TCAP-style” test. Questions will align with state academic standards, and the test will not include the writing portion that TCAPs do.

“Post-test results are able to be returned immediately because they exclude a writing component which takes more time to score,” according to one state document. “Adequate growth calculations will be returned within five business days of the administration of the post-test.”

While third-grade TCAPs were conducted with pencil and paper, the post-test will be conducted on devices using Schoolnet, an online platform launched by the state in 2020 to provide free and optional assessments to school systems.

Districts must use Schoolnet to give retake tests next week, as well as tests at the end of summer camp. Many schools already use Schoolnet to give extra benchmark tests to third graders during the school year, and the state delivered last year’s summer post-test via the platform as well.

Several district leaders told Chalkbeat they were comfortable with the state’s newly set growth bar.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools already targets growth of 3 to 5 percentage points during each of its three tutoring terms during the school year.

“So 5 percentage points is pretty close to the gauge we’re using internally for tutoring,” said district spokeswoman Cathryn Stout. “It’s on the high end, but it’s in the realm of possibility.”

Breckan Duckworth, who oversees summer programming for Hamilton County Schools, said it’s difficult to gauge whether the state’s growth definition is reasonable because it depends on whether the post-test is as rigorous as TCAPs.

“I do know that our kids tend to show growth and do well on the assessments that are provided during summer programming,” Duckworth said.

“Would I be happier if it was a little lower than 5 percentage points? Absolutely,” she said. “But at this point, it’s not going to keep me up at night.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Reading test scores go out today in Tennessee. The stakes are higher than ever for third graders.

2023-05-19T10:00:00+00:00

The end of the school year — typically days of celebrations and send-offs — will be filled instead with more high-stakes testing and weighty decisions about summer school for thousands of third-grade students under Tennessee’s new learning and retention law.

On Friday, school districts are scheduled to receive preliminary scores from state tests given this spring, kicking off a busy few days of analysis and communication with parents about what those results mean.

Most families should have information by Monday or Tuesday about how their third grader performed.

Students scoring as proficient readers will advance to the fourth grade, as expected. And third graders who scored below proficiency can retake a reading test next week to try for a better result. Students who still score below proficiency on the retest must enter learning intervention programs as soon as this summer or fall to help them catch up, or they can present their case to the state on why they should be exempted.

The dizzying pace was set in motion by a 2021 law that drew a line in the sand on reading proficiency beginning with this year’s class of third graders. Those students were kindergarteners when the pandemic hit and ushered in unprecedented disruptions to learning.

Memphis mom Charmeal Neely-Alexander says the state’s new third-grade policy is the latest example of how school has been tough from the start for her daughter, now 9: The pandemic interruptions began in kindergarten, and now there’s the pressure of high-stakes testing.

“I’ve never seen anything so daunting,” Neely-Alexander said of the consequences attached to this year’s Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, known as TCAP.

Students ‘approaching’ proficiency have two options

While the precise number of third graders at risk won’t be known until after Friday’s data dump, 64% of last year’s third graders — almost 46,000 students — would have been identified as eligible for retention had the new policy been in place for them, according to a recent state comptroller’s report. That number, however, does not factor in exemptions or appeals that are expected to significantly decrease the actual number of students at risk for retention this year. (For instance, students who have a disability or suspected disability that affects reading are exempt from the new policy.)

In short, the law says third graders who score as “approaching” reading proficiency have two options to advance to the fourth grade: They must either attend a summer learning camp and maintain a 90% attendance rate, then show adequate growth on a test administered at the end of the program; or they must take advantage of state-funded tutoring throughout the 2023-24 school year.

Third graders who score in the bottom category of readers known as “below” must participate in both intervention programs to get promoted to fourth grade.

Most districts are strongly urging students who either scored in the bottom two categories or missed the spring TCAPs due to illness to test again during the state’s window for retesting between May 22 and June 5. Officials with the state education department say their testing vendor will return new scores within 48 hours after those tests are submitted.

But the state’s largest district, Memphis-Shelby County Schools, is making the testing do-over mandatory for third graders at risk of retention.

“It’s another opportunity for the child to score proficient,” said Chief Academic Officer Jaron Carson.

“We’re going to make the most of the time we have,” added district spokeswoman Cathryn Stout, noting that the school year doesn’t end in Memphis until May 26.

Thousands register for summer learning programs

Meanwhile, because of the tight timeline at the end of the school year, administrators have been encouraging families to register their third graders for summer learning camps before they know the test results. Many districts are beginning those programs in early June.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools expects about 2,700 third graders to participate in summer learning academies hosted by 21 schools June 20 to July 19. That’s out of about 6,000 third graders in the school system’s district-run schools.

Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools has 3,600-plus students — more than half of its third-grade class — signed up for its summer program that begins on June 1, while Knox County Schools has more than 1,500 of its 4,500 third graders registered for camps that start June 5. In Hamilton County, more than a third of its 3,300 third graders are signed up to participate, also beginning on June 5.

The numbers are expected to fluctuate significantly, however, in the next few weeks, depending on TCAP and retest results.

“We will keep registration open throughout the end of the school year to ensure every third-grade student who needs a seat has one,” said Sean Braisted, spokesman for Nashville’s district.

Flexibility is key to staffing this year’s summer camps

School leaders and teachers have been communicating with third-grade families throughout the school year about the new law and its significant implications for their students.

They’ve also been planning how to quickly scale up their summer programs for third graders, especially related to staffing, depending on how many students ultimately show up.

“We have to prioritize summer learning experiences for rising fourth graders because of the implications of law, and that has meant limiting the enrollment of other grade levels for the first time since these camps were offered,” said Erin Phillips, executive director of learning and literacy for Knox County Schools.

“That’s a challenge,” she continued, “because we want to do what’s best for every student. But we know we have to prioritize that rising fourth-grade group. We have to have enough staff.”

For Memphis-Shelby County Schools, staffing is already in place to accommodate an influx of third graders, says Stout, thanks in part to a $2,000 bonus being paid to those teachers, in addition to a $31-an-hour wage.

“We feel confident that we’ll be fully staffed,” she said. “It’s important to remember that 1 in 4 MSCS students attended some type of summer program with us last summer, so it’s given us a lot of experience and served almost as a preview of what to expect this year.”

Breckan Duckworth, who oversees summer programming for Hamilton County Schools, said many teachers have become accustomed to the extra pay after working in state-mandated summer programs the last three years.

“For the first time, we’ve not had any problem with staffing summer programs,” Duckworth said. “We’ve actually had to turn away a few classified staff and certified teachers because we don’t have a spot for them.”

Interventions are disruptive, but designed to help

For Neely-Alexander, the Memphis mom, all of the classroom focus on TCAP testing felt “rushed” this year. And she’s bothered that the summer camp could be mandatory. But she still views the learning interventions as a win-win for her daughter, who will spend the summer with other kids, since it will also provide her family with free summer child care.

Regardless of her daughter’s scores, “she’s going to go anyway to the summer learning academy,” Neely-Alexander said.

As for school leaders, their messaging about required interventions has focused on extra opportunities to support struggling readers, not judging them for needing extra support.

“We know that for some families, this will interrupt their summer plans and there’s a mix of emotions involved,” said Stout, with the Memphis district. “But we also know that 1 in 7 people in Shelby County struggles with literacy. I hope that, as a community, we really rally around these students.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Laura Testino contributed to this report from Memphis. Contact her at ltestino@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee governor sets special legislative session for Aug. 21 after Nashville school shooting

2023-05-08T22:45:00+00:00

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced Monday that he will call the legislature back Aug. 21 for a special session to address firearms and public safety concerns following a deadly school shooting in Nashville this spring.

“There is broad agreement that action is needed,” Lee said in a statement.

The goal, he said, is to “pursue thoughtful, practical measures that strengthen the safety of Tennesseans, preserve Second Amendment rights, prioritize due process protections, support law enforcement and address mental health.”

The governor also invited Tennesseans to provide input about the issues through an online form.

Lee’s announcement came just over two weeks after GOP lawmakers raced to complete their business early for the year while refusing to take up gun reform legislation from the Republican governor or their Democratic counterparts.

It was an anemic ending to a tumultuous session gripped by massive citizen protests after the shooting at The Covenant School left six victims and the gunman dead. The tragedy sparked calls for stricter gun laws and led to the ouster of two young Black lawmakers who took the protest to the House floor. Both men, Reps. Justin Jones of Nashville and Justin Pearson of Memphis, were quickly reinstated by local officials.

Meanwhile, gun violence continues to ravage communities across the nation, most recently in Texas where a gunman killed eight people and wounded seven others during a weekend shooting spree at a Dallas-area outlet mall.

In Tennessee this spring, lawmakers approved new policies and funding to further fortify school campuses, including at private schools like Nashville’s Covenant. Legislative discussions about limiting gun access mostly focused on people who are having a mental health crisis. Authorities said the Nashville shooter, who was later killed by police, was seeing a doctor for an “emotional order.”

Lee signed an executive order aimed at strengthening background checks on firearm purchases. He also proposed legislation that he said would help keep guns out of the hands of people deemed at risk of hurting themselves or others, his first embrace of a gun reform measure in one of the nation’s most gun-friendly states.

But his proposal hasn’t garnered much support from either side in the intense debate about gun access.

Joining forces with gun lobby groups, Republican leaders called Lee’s plan a “non-starter” and ended the session without taking up the measure. Groups advocating for gun control argued that Lee’s proposal — which allows three to five days before a court hearing would occur after law enforcement petitions for an order to seize firearms — doesn’t go far enough. That waiting period “could be the difference between life and death,” according to the group Everytown for Gun Safety.

Lee has avoided the phrase “red flag law” in describing his desire for new “order of protection” legislation.

“My proposal is not a red flag law,” he told reporters last week in Memphis. “It is unique to Tennessee (and) based on existing laws that we have in place.”

He continued: “We all believe that we should find a way to separate those who are of a dangerous mental condition who are a danger to themselves and others from having access to weapons. I have asked the General Assembly to look at multiple ways to do that. I’ve actually given a proposal to find a way forward to do that. We have to remember, too, that it is important that while we find a way to separate those that are a danger from weapons, we also have to protect the constitutional rights of every Tennessean. That is a balance that we have to find going forward.”

On Monday, Lee said he expects the General Assembly to bring forth its own ideas and pledged that discussions will take place throughout the summer before the session convenes.

Gov. Bill Lee delivers his 2023 state address to a joint session of the Tennessee General Assembly on Feb. 6.

But Doug Kufner, a spokesman for House Speaker Cameron Sexton, was cool about Sexton’s leadership in forging a workable solution.

“The speaker will continue his travel schedule throughout the state this summer and fall to assist members and meet with Tennesseans on a wide array of issues and policies,” Kufner said. “He is looking forward to those discussions as we all await Gov. Lee’s proposed legislative package for the announced special session.”

Democrats, by contrast, called the special session an opportunity to address the longstanding problem and growing threat of gun violence.

“The people demanding action have brought us to this moment,” said Sen. Raumesh Akbari of Memphis, “and now we need every Tennessean who cares about this issue to tell their elected leaders to show up in August and support legislation that truly addresses gun violence.”

Akbari, who is Senate minority leader, added: “Once we see the official call for the special session, we’ll know exactly what kind of legislation can be introduced. But we already know that broad majorities of voters, from all parts of the state and all political backgrounds, support common sense gun reforms, like extreme risk protection orders, waiting periods, and universal background checks.”

According to a recent Vanderbilt University poll, 82% of registered Tennessee voters support a so-called red flag law that would temporarily restrict access to guns for individuals who are at a high risk of harming themselves or others.

Two former governors, Republican Bill Haslam and Democrat Phil Bredesen, wrote recently that red flag laws are a good place to break through the impasse over gun reform.

And in an opinion piece published last week by Forbes, former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, a Republican who is also a physician, wrote that lawmakers should not only pass a red flag law, but consider raising the legal age for purchasing guns and banning high-capacity magazines and assault-style weapons.

Frist called firearm-related deaths “an official public health crisis.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat reporter Laura Testino contributed to this report from Memphis.

Texan Lizzette Gonzalez Reynolds to lead Tenn. education department as Penny Schwinn exits

2023-05-01T20:01:44+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Sign up for Chalkbeat Tennessee’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the Shelby County public school system and statewide education policy.

Penny Schwinn will step down as Tennessee’s education chief at the end of this school year and be replaced by a former Texas administrator who currently oversees policy for the Jeb Bush-founded advocacy group ExcelinEd.

Lizzette Gonzalez Reynolds will become the first Hispanic American to lead Tennessee’s education department when she starts her job on July 1.

Meanwhile, Schwinn told reporters Monday that she plans to continue living in Tennessee and will share her next venture at a later date.

“It’s just the right time for me and my family,” said Schwinn, a mother of three young children, about leaving after more than four years as education commissioner.

The changes, announced Monday by Gov. Bill Lee, come at a critical time for the state’s 1 million public school students and just a few months into the second term of an administration that has been one of the most active in history on changing education policies.

Tennessee is shifting to a new education funding formula, enforcing a controversial new third-grade retention policy for struggling readers, operating large-scale tutoring and summer learning programs to help students catch up from the pandemic, expanding its private school voucher program to a third major city, and fortifying its school buildings after a Nashville school shooting left six people dead on March 27. Replenishing Tennessee’s teacher supply is also a priority.

Reynolds brings policy experience, if not classroom chops

In Reynolds, Lee has chosen a leader who is heavy on political and policy experience but who has little to no experience leading a classroom.

Lizzette Gonzalez Reynolds

In conjunction with her appointment, she will actively work toward her Tennessee teaching license.

“The governor has full confidence in her ability to serve Tennessee students, families, and teachers,” said Jade Byers, Lee’s spokeswoman.

Reynolds graduated in 1987 with a political science degree from Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, before embarking on nearly three decades of policy and legislative work in education at the state and federal levels.

In her home state, she was deputy legislative director for then-Gov. George W. Bush and later served as chief deputy commissioner for the Texas Education Agency.

At the federal level, she worked in the Bush administration under U.S. education secretaries Rod Paige and Margaret Spellings.

Since 2016, Reynolds has been vice president of policy for ExcelinEd, launched by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in 2008 to pursue education policies that he believes improve student learning and lessen inequities. They include emphasizing early literacy and school accountability, and giving families more education choices such as charter schools and vouchers.

She currently sits on the boards of several nonprofit education organizations, including KnowledgeWorks Foundation and the Texas-based charter school operator IDEA Public Schools. Her LinkedIn profile also lists advanced studies in education leadership from the Pahara Institute.

Schwinn leaves with a mixed record

Schwinn’s departure comes after more than four tumultuous years of overseeing schools during a global pandemic and while ushering in sweeping changes in how the state funds its schools and students, and how it teaches its students how to read.

The pandemic, she said, was easily her greatest challenge, spurring Tennessee to become a national leader in providing specialized programs to bolster learning for students who fell behind.

“When we look at the last four and a half years and the pretty incredible challenges that we’ve faced in education across this country, I cannot think of a state that has shown more leadership than Tennessee,” she said.

Schwinn was 36 when Lee hired her for one of his most important cabinet jobs days before his first inauguration in 2019.

She had been on a fast track after starting her career in 2004 in Baltimore with Teach for America and later founding Capitol Collegiate Academy, a charter school in her hometown of Sacramento, California, where she still serves on the board of directors. Schwinn served briefly in leadership roles for Sacramento’s school district and Delaware’s department of education before becoming chief deputy commissioner of academics for Texas in 2016.

Her tenure in Tennessee has been marked by both big wins and big controversies.

She helped Lee deliver a major victory last year with the rewrite of the state’s 30-year-old education funding formula to let funding follow the student, and set aside more money for students with higher needs. She also shepherded numerous major initiatives, including a comprehensive plan to improve literacy, help students recover from pandemic learning loss, and expand grow-your-own teacher training programs.

But in her first nine months on the job, nearly a fifth of the education department’s employees left, mostly from resignations. And early on, she frustrated lawmakers who said she rolled out initiatives and took administrative shortcuts without ample legislative input, review, or approval.

On Monday, Schwinn thanked Lee for “taking a chance on me,” adding: “It has been a very tough and very rewarding job.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with new information about Reynolds.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee school employees could skip implicit-bias training under bill headed to governor’s desk

2023-04-22T01:00:16+00:00

A bill allowing Tennessee school and university employees to opt out of implicit-bias training is headed to Gov. Bill Lee’s desk.

The measure easily passed Friday in the Republican-controlled Senate and House over the objections of Democrats who argued that the policy is the wrong direction in a state where students of color make up about 40% of Tennessee’s public school population, while the vast majority of the state’s teachers are white.

The legislation is the latest example of the legislature’s efforts to stifle or silence conversations about diversity in education.

In 2021, Tennessee became one of the nation’s first to enact a law limiting how race and gender can be discussed in the classroom, including conversations about systemic racism. Last year, the legislature passed another law that could lead to a statewide ban of certain school library books, some of which deal with matters of race and gender.

Implicit-bias training is designed to increase self-awareness around subconscious prejudices and stereotypes that may affect how individuals see and treat people of another race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic background.

A significant amount of research in education says that implicit biases may contribute to racial disparities, such as differences in student achievement, learning opportunities, and school discipline between Black and white students. But it’s less clear whether training about implicit bias actually changes behaviors.

In Tennessee, it has been up to local school districts, charter schools, and public universities to determine whether to offer or require implicit-bias training for their employees.

Sen. Todd Gardenhire said his bill doesn’t ban schools from offering the training or employees from participating. It just protects school employees from disciplinary action or firing if they choose to opt out.

“You want to have that course, have it all day long, but don’t make me do it,” said the Chattanooga Republican.

But Democrats worried that those who opt out might be the ones most in need of self-reflection, based on research that says, for instance, that teachers are more likely to discipline Black children than white children for the same conduct, or give boys higher grades in math than girls.

“This is simply to give our educators another tool to make sure that all students are treated with equity and dignity and respect,” said Rep. Justin Jones, a Nashville Democrat.

Gardenhire and the bill’s House sponsor, Rep. Jason Zachary of Knoxville, charged that some trainings in Tennessee have crossed the line beyond building self-awareness into ideologically driven presentations that are themselves rooted in biases.

“All of this depends on a developer or a designer that designs the course. But who checks the checker?” Gardenhire asked.

In House debate, Rep. Sam McKenzie, a Knoxville Democrat who voted against the bill, suggested that instead of the state letting employees opt out, trainers and their courses should be screened to ensure they represent best practices in implicit-bias training.

And in the Senate, Sen. Jeff Yarbro said the purpose of implicit-bias training isn’t to make people feel bad about themselves but to educate people who work with students to avoid stereotypes.

“The data is 100% clear that implicit bias is a real thing that has real effects in classrooms across the country,” said the Nashville Democrat, “and certainly Tennessee is no exception.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee legislature sends governor pared-down school voucher expansion bill, omitting Knox County

2023-04-21T19:45:13+00:00

Tennessee lawmakers agreed Friday to expand the state’s private school voucher program to Hamilton County — but not to Knox County — as they prepared to wrap up their legislative session for the year.

The House had approved a bill on Wednesday to add both counties to the program now operating in Shelby County and Metro Nashville to let eligible families use taxpayer money toward private school tuition.

But the Senate, which voted in February to extend vouchers to Chattanooga-based Hamilton County, rejected the wider House expansion bill on Thursday without explanation.

On Friday, the House voted 57-27 to concur with the Senate version and send the measure to Gov. Bill Lee for his signature.

The final bill, while pared down, marks the first major expansion of the private school voucher program, which launched last fall under a 2019 law that cleared a series of legal hurdles last year but still faces challenges in court.

With 44,000 students, Hamilton County Schools is one of the state’s largest districts.

Lee pressed for the law to give parents more education choices for their children. But detractors say that private school vouchers do not improve student outcomes and divert scarce resources from public schools that serve most students who are disadvantaged or have special needs.

Tennessee’s law caps enrollment at 5,000 students in the program’s first year. The program has significant room to grow, based on the latest numbers from the state education department.

As of April 14, the state had approved 705 applicants to use vouchers this school year to exit Memphis-Shelby County Schools and Metro Nashville Public Schools. Of that number, 453 applicants had submitted proof that they’ve enrolled in state-approved private school and are using their voucher of nearly $8,200 toward tuition.

While there was no discussion on the Senate floor about reasons fo rejecting the House’s proposed expansion to Knox County, none of the three Republican members who represent that area — Sens. Richard Briggs and Becky Massey and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally — supported it.

“I think we have a very good school system in Knox County and that parents already have a lot of choices,” Briggs told Chalkbeat last month.

He noted that students in his district have the option to attend magnet schools, a charter school, specialized learning academies, and international baccalaureate programs, and to transfer among the district’s 90 schools, as long as there’s space available.

“The last time we voted on (school vouchers) in the legislature, the majority of our Knox County delegation voted against it,” Briggs added. “And there’s definitely not support for them among our citizens.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee legislature dismisses gun bills in rush to adjourn, defying protests after school shooting

2023-04-21T00:12:59+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Sign up for our free Tennessee newsletter to keep up with the Shelby County public school system and state education policy.

Tennessee’s legislature raced Thursday to complete its business early for the year while refusing to take up gun reform legislation from Republican Gov. Bill Lee or Democratic lawmakers, three weeks after a mass shooting at a Nashville school.

The inaction on guns came despite weeks of daily peaceful protests by thousands of students, parents, and gun control advocates calling for new laws to restrict gun access.

From the Senate floor, Majority Leader Jack Johnson announced the legislature was on track to wrap up this year’s session by Friday after his chamber approved the state’s $56.2 billion budget for next year — the only measure it’s constitutionally required to pass. The House approved the spending plan a day earlier.

Several recent surveys of Tennessee parents and voters show strong support for gun safety measures such as background checks and so-called red flag laws to prevent people who may be experiencing a mental health crisis from having access to weapons. Authorities have said the Nashville shooter, who was shot and killed by police, had been under a doctor’s care for an undisclosed “emotional disorder” before killing six people at The Covenant School on March 27.

But with prospects for gun reform dimming this year, Tennesseans who have been raising their voices were aghast Thursday at the Republican supermajority’s unwillingness to look seriously at their concerns about lax gun laws.

“They are shrugging their shoulders at us and ending their session quickly. But we are not going to stop,” said Nashville mom Leeann Hewlett, who was among the first demonstrators to show up outside of a legislative office building on the day after the shooting.

“We are not going to forget the children and adults who died at The Covenant School. We’re not going to forget that guns are the leading cause of death for kids in Tennessee,” said Hewlett, who has an 8-year-old daughter.

Leeann Hewlett, a Nashville mom, speaks at a rally organized by Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America on March 28, 2023, the day after a shooter killed six people at a Nashville school.

Lee, whose wife was a close friend of one adult victim in the Nashville shooting, offered up his own proposal Wednesday after lawmakers ignored his call last week to bring him legislation that would help keep guns out of the hands of people deemed at risk of hurting themselves or others. Nineteen states have such a policy.

Meanwhile, the National Rifle Association mobilized its Tennessee members this week against any legislation that resembles a red flag law. And the House Republican caucus released a statement labeling any such proposal a “non-starter.”

In a last-ditch effort on Thursday, Sen. Jeff Yarbro delivered an impassioned speech on the Senate floor asking his colleagues to take up gun reform legislation stuck in a key committee that voted to defer action on any gun-related bills until next year.

Yarbro said his legislation is based on Florida’s red flag law, which passed with bipartisan support after a shooter killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland in 2018. The Nashville Democrat is also the sponsor of a so-called safe storage bill to require people to secure weapons left in vehicles and boats so they don’t fall into the hands of criminals.

“How do we not feel shame for failing to do anything?” asked Yarbro, noting that Nashville also has suffered mass shootings at a church and a Waffle House restaurant in recent years.

“We have the substance, we have the process, we have the time. The only question is whether we have the will,” said Yarbro, pleading for at least 17 of the Senate’s 33 members to support his request to call up his bill.

The Senate responded by voting 24-7 to table his motion, mostly along partisan lines.

Afterward, Yarbro tweeted that adjourning the session without voting on a single bill to limit gun access means the legislature is betting voters will “move on” to other issues when it reconvenes next January.

“Prove them wrong,” he said.

The developments came as the legislature has been under national scrutiny over the House’s expulsion of two young Black lawmakers, who have since been reinstated, over their demonstration on the House floor to highlight their body’s inaction on gun violence.

Still, lawmakers sent a bill to the governor this week to shield Tennessee gun and ammunition manufacturers and sellers from lawsuits. That measure had been in the works before the shooting.

Thursday also marked the 24th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colorado, in which two students shot and killed 12 classmates and one teacher before taking their own lives.

From the Columbine shooting in Colorado to the Covenant shooting in Nashville, 175 people have died in 15 mass shootings connected to U.S. schools and colleges, according to a database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today, and Northeastern University. (The database defines a mass shooting as resulting in the death of four or more people.)

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Bill to extend private school vouchers to Hamilton and Knox counties clears Tennessee House

2023-04-19T19:06:15+00:00

Tennessee’s House voted Wednesday for a bill to extend vouchers to Hamilton and Knox counties, just months after the purported pilot program launched in Shelby County and Metro Nashville to let some families use taxpayer money toward private school tuition.

The proposal passed 57-35 and now returns to the Senate, which voted in February to add Hamilton County before the House sponsor introduced an amendment to include Knox County, too.

If it becomes law, the wider expansion bill will bring Gov. Bill Lee’s education savings account program to all four of the state’s urban districts.

The push shows the Republican-controlled legislature’s desire to expand the program quickly after it cleared a series of legal hurdles that had delayed its launch as a pilot program under a 2019 law. The law still faces challenges in court from the Shelby County and Metro Nashville governments.

The state comptroller’s first report on how well the pilot is working isn’t due until Jan. 1, 2026, but that hasn’t stopped Republican lawmakers from pursuing a quick expansion.

“Why would you add two additional counties to an unproven, unsubstantiated program?” asked Rep. Sam McKenzie, a Knoxville Democrat, before voting against the bill. A pilot program, he argued, is designed to test an idea’s effectiveness on a small scale.

“This will actually help us collect more data by having more counties,” responded Rep. Mark White, a Memphis Republican who is co-sponsoring the measure with Sen. Todd Gardenhire of Chattanooga.

Critics say private school vouchers do not improve student outcomes and divert scarce resources from public schools that serve the bulk of students who are disadvantaged or have special needs — also leading to more segregated schools.

White said parents simply want more options for their children’s education. He added that he is seeking to add Hamilton and Knox counties at the request of several lawmakers who represent those areas, including Republican Rep. Michelle Carringer of Knoxville, who spoke on the floor in favor of the bill.

But several Democrats representing both counties said the support of some GOP lawmakers wasn’t good enough.

“The citizens of Knox County, the majority of them, do not want vouchers,” said Rep. Gloria Johnson of Knoxville.

Rep. Yusuf Hakeem, a Chattanooga Democrat, represents Hamilton County and previously served on the local school board.

Rep. Yusuf Hakeem, of Chattanooga, added: “What you’re telling us is that it’s not relevant what the parents think in those communities. It’s not relevant what the community leaders think.”

Tennessee’s voucher law caps enrollment at 5,000 students in the program’s first year, far above the current enrollment.

As of April 14, the state education department had approved 705 applicants to use vouchers this school year to exit Memphis-Shelby County Schools and Metro Nashville Public Schools. Of that number, 453 applicants had submitted proof that they’ve enrolled in state-approved private school and are using their voucher of nearly $8,200 to pay toward tuition, a department spokesman said.

The program is already poised to expand next school year under a separate bill passed earlier this session and signed into law Monday by Lee. That measure extends voucher eligibility to students who attended private or home schools during the last three school years. Previously, a student had to move directly from a public to private school.

You can track the bill to extend vouchers to Hamilton and Knox counties on the state legislature’s website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Changes in Tennessee retention law will come too late for third graders this year

2023-04-14T20:08:03+00:00

Tennessee lawmakers are moving toward a consensus on how to improve the state’s controversial new third-grade retention policy for struggling readers, but whatever they decide won’t be in time for this year’s class of third graders.

Those students, who were in kindergarten when the pandemic began, face the highest stakes when the state’s testing window opens next week for grades 3-8 under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP.

In a Senate finance committee this week, Republicans quashed Sen. Jeff Yarbro’s proposal to delay implementation of the strict retention policy for one year.

“We are too late for this year,” said Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg of Bristol when Yarbro, a Nashville Democrat, asked if anything in the proposed changes for next year would alleviate concerns about this year’s launch.

“I have significant concerns that we are not ready,” Yarbro countered, “and that, even more importantly, our schools and our families are not ready for the disruptions that this is going to cause this year.”

But the GOP-controlled committee stuck with its plan and advanced a bill under which, beginning next year, Tennessee would widen criteria for determining which third graders are at risk of being held back if they aren’t deemed proficient readers.

Unless the full legislature intervenes before adjourning in the next few weeks, this year’s decisions on who gets held back or sent to remedial programs will be based solely on TCAP reading test results. That’s the current criterion under a 2021 law that lawmakers passed in response to pandemic learning losses.

If the proposed revisions are approved as expected, the state would widen criteria beginning with the 2023-24 school year to consider results from a second state-provided benchmark test, too — but only for third graders who score as “approaching” proficiency on their TCAP.

The full Senate is scheduled to vote on the measure next Tuesday.

The 2021 law also established summer learning and tutoring programs to help struggling students catch up.

This year’s third graders who score as “approaching” reading proficiency must attend a summer learning camp and demonstrate “adequate growth” on a test administered at the camp’s end, or they must participate in a tutoring program during fourth grade.

Third graders who score “below” proficiency, which is the bottom category of results, must participate in both intervention programs. (There are exemptions. To learn more about Tennessee’s current retention and remediation policy, visit the state education department’s answers to frequently asked questions.)

The existing policy is expected to affect thousands of students this year.

Last fall, when the Tennessee Organization of School Superintendents examined TCAP data for the state’s 70,000 third graders in 2021-22, the group found that about 45% of them would have been affected if the new retention policy had applied to them, before any exemptions were considered.

And in Memphis-Shelby County Schools, the state’s largest district, officials estimate that more than 2,700 third-graders are at risk of being held back.

Chalkbeat spoke recently with Dale Lynch, executive director of the superintendents group, about implications of the learning and retention law, both this year and next year. Here are five questions and answers:

What should Tennesseans understand about the status of the state’s third-grade reading and learning support law?

Dale Lynch is executive director of the Tennessee Organization of School Superintendents

There’s a lot of misunderstanding about what’s happening in the legislature with this law. A lot of people think that someone is going to wave a magic wand and all of this will go away. But there’s no chance the legislature will completely do away with the law they passed in their special session in 2021. And nothing’s going to happen this year to change third-grade retention policies for this year’s students. We’re talking about next year.

What about this year, though? What’s happening now with our third-grade students, their families, and their teachers?

There’s a lot of anxiety, especially as TCAPs approach. Parents are feeling a great deal of stress, and the pressure being put on third-grade teachers is at an all-time high. Meanwhile, our superintendents are trying to figure out how to staff an appropriate summer school program to provide these interventions for more students. How many kids will we have? We don’t know yet. Districts are supposed to get the raw score data from TCAPs by May 19th, and most of the camps are starting in May. So I think a lot of school districts will go ahead and encourage students to plan to come, even if they don’t know their test results yet. That’s not necessarily bad. But it would be nice if we had some time to figure this out.

It’s one thing to provide learning interventions like summer camps, but they also need to be effective. What’s the best way to do that?

First, I want to emphasize that our organization likes and supports the parts of the law that add these supports for our students. We like the summer programs and tutoring and additional learning opportunities. Our state needs to continue doing this.

The best way to make them effective is to have your most effective teachers in there. So for this summer, district leaders are trying to figure out how to get their most effective teachers to extend 200 days of instruction to 220 or 240 days. That’s a challenge.

Is there any collateral damage as we try to help students catch up from pandemic disruptions?

I worry that we’re at risk of hurting our best teachers at a time when we’re looking for ways to retain them. There’s nothing more important in education for a student than a high-quality teacher. The best teachers produce the best results. But we can’t keep pushing more and more on teachers without them reaching a breaking point.

What else should we know as district leaders try to plan for more third graders participating in summer learning programs?

For school system leaders, the amount of money they thought they’d be getting for summer school programs is lower than they were anticipating. They’re also trying to figure out the budgeting process under TISA [the state’s new student funding formula that stands for Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement], which starts with the new school year. It’s a lot of big things happening at once.

This year’s TCAP testing window runs from April 17 to May 5. You can learn more about the testing program on the state education department’s website.

You can track the bills to revise the retention law on the General Assembly’s website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Governor calls for Tennessee law to keep guns from ‘dangerous people’ after Nashville school shooting

2023-04-11T19:46:00+00:00

Gov. Bill Lee called Tuesday for a new Tennessee law to help keep guns out of the hands of people deemed at risk of hurting themselves or others, his first full embrace of a gun reform measure in one of the nation’s most gun-friendly states.

Lee said that he’s asked legislative leaders to create and pass new “order of protection” legislation that strengthens existing law designed to protect domestic violence victims. He wants the GOP-controlled General Assembly to deliver a broader bill to his desk in the next month, before adjourning for the year.

Later Tuesday, the governor signed an executive order to strengthen background checks for buying firearms in the state.

The announcements came two weeks after a shooter killed six people at a Nashville school and one day after another mass shooting at a bank in neighboring Kentucky.

“We can’t stop evil, but we can do something,” Lee said. “And when there is a clear need for action, I think that we have an obligation … to remind people that we should set aside politics and pride and accomplish something that the people of Tennessee want us to accomplish.”

Lee’s call to action comes after thousands of Tennesseans rallied for stricter gun laws during daily protests at the State Capitol since the March 27 tragedy left three children and three staff members dead at The Covenant School, a private Christian campus serving about 200 children.

The shooter, who authorities later said was seeing a doctor for an “emotional disorder,” was shot and killed by police on site.

Authorities in Louisville are still investigating what led an employee of Old National Bank to pull out a rifle and open fire in his workplace on Monday, killing five people and injuring nine others.

“What happened in Kentucky yesterday might be averted by a piece of legislation that we’re talking about delivering today,” said Lee, who said he spoke with that state’s governor, Democrat Andy Beshear.

The two mass shootings hit close to home for both leaders. Lee’s wife, Maria, who is a former teacher, was a friend and former co-worker of two of the adult victims at Covenant. And Beshear said he lost one of his closest friends.

Extreme risk protection orders allow law enforcement to intervene and temporarily take away a person’s weapons if a judge deems that person is at risk of hurting himself or others. Florida passed a so-called red flag law allowing such protection orders after a shooter killed 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in 2018.

Lee did not use the phrase “red flag law” in describing his desire for new ”order of protection” legislation.

Instead, he called his proposal the next step beyond his comprehensive school safety package, which overwhelmingly passed the House last week and is expected to clear the Senate in the next week.

After the Covenant shooting, Lee’s administration revised the package and his proposed budget to include more than $200 million more next year to place an armed security guard at every Tennessee public school, boost physical security at public and private schools, and provide additional mental health resources for Tennesseans. Currently, about two-thirds of the state’s public schools have a law enforcement officer on site.

Lee held his press conference at a Nashville police precinct after meeting earlier with officers who responded to the active-shooter alert at Covenant.

“Protective orders are led by law enforcement,” Lee said. “They have a high standard burden of proof. There is due process.”

The governor acknowledged that passing an order-of-protection law in the legislature could be difficult — a key Senate committee voted last week to defer action on any gun-related legislation until next year — but said he is hopeful for bipartisan support “to get this done.”

“I’m one that believes that really difficult circumstances can bring about really positive outcomes,” Lee said, adding: “I certainly believe it’s that time.”

Democrats already have proposed several pieces of legislation aimed at gun reforms, including one on expanded protective orders. Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, the Senate’s top Republican leader, said after the Covenant shooting that he’s open to that approach, as long as it includes protections against false or fraudulent reporting.

House Speaker Cameron Sexton raised similar concerns on Tuesday.

“As we look at mental health orders of protection, they must have a level of due process, protections from fraudulent claims, and a quick judicial hearing for individuals who pose imminent threats,” Sexton said in a statement.

But Senate Minority Leader Raumesh Akbari expressed no reservation. The Memphis Democrat praised Lee for prioritizing legislation to restrict gun access and curb gun violence.

“We are ready to work with the governor,” she said, “and we urge our Republican colleagues in the legislature to move quickly to put gun reform legislation on his desk.”

Gun violence is the leading cause of death for children in America.

After a mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, Congress passed a law to provide federal funding for states that enact red flag laws. And in February, President Joe Biden announced that the Justice Department would give $231 million to states to implement crisis intervention programs like red flag laws.

Red flag laws are relatively new, and their impacts are still being studied.

In Colorado, where a law went into effect three years ago, nearly 400 cases have been filed so far seeking protective orders against gun owners, according to a review by Colorado Public Radio. Of those, more than a dozen respondents had allegedly talked about carrying out mass shootings in places like grocery stores, theaters, and neighborhoods, with varying levels of planning. More than a dozen others talked about a “suicide by cop” or otherwise ambushing police officers, and one had threatened to assassinate political leaders.

In most cases, the person was reported to own multiple guns, in one case as many as 31 firearms.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Two Tennessee Democrats voted out of GOP-controlled legislature for their gun protest

2023-04-07T01:20:37+00:00

After days of loud protests by Tennesseans begging their legislature for tighter gun laws following a mass shooting at a Nashville school, state lawmakers acted decisively Thursday on a gun-related matter.

But their votes did not require universal background checks to buy a firearm, or ban so-called “bump stock” devices used for rapid-fire shooting, or reinstate a permit requirement for Tennesseans to carry an open or concealed handgun.

Rather, the Republican-controlled House expelled two members — both Democrats — for the way they protested the body’s failure to pursue significant gun reforms after the tragedy that left seven people at The Covenant School dead, including three children, three adult staff members, and the shooter.

With a required two-thirds vote, the House kicked out Rep. Justin Jones of Nashville and Rep. Justin Pearson of Memphis, the chamber’s two youngest Black members. An expulsion resolution against a third Democrat, Rep. Gloria Johnson of Knoxville, a retired teacher who is white, failed by a single vote.

Hailed by supporters as “The Tennessee Three,” the trio angered Republicans after they went to the front of the House floor and led chants with gun control supporters who had filled the chamber’s gallery on March 30, four days after the shooting.

Jones and Pearson alternately used a bullhorn to shout “Gun control now!” and “Power to the people!” All three legislators later acknowledged that, in violation of House rules, they were not formally recognized by House Speaker Cameron Sexton to speak at the podium and occupy the area for nearly an hour.

“What they did was try to hold up the people’s business on the House floor,” said Sexton, who led the charge to expel the trio for “disorderly behavior” and “knowingly and intentionally bringing disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives.”

The three Democrats, in making their case to fellow legislators during nearly six hours of expulsion proceedings, said their goal that day was to advocate for thousands of protesters, many of them students, who had come to the State Capitol that week to demand stricter gun laws.

“I was fighting for your children and your grandchildren,” said Jones, 27, in closing remarks to his colleagues in the House.

Expulsions strengthen GOP supermajority

The votes stripped Jones and Pearson of their status as lawmakers during the most important month of a pivotal legislative session, temporarily robbing some 140,000 Tennesseans in the state’s two largest cities of representation.

Their expulsion further diminishes the minority party’s ability to provide any kind of check-and-balance on the House’s Republican supermajority, which in recent years has helped pass laws allowing the state to ban certain library books, restrict what teachers can say in their classrooms about race and gender, and mandate anti-LGBTQ policies.

Even before the ouster of Jones and Pearson, Republicans outnumbered Democrats 75 to 23 in the House.

But perhaps more urgently, the chaotic sideshow has diverted lawmakers’ attention from the work that — based on large protests day after day at the state Capitol and student walkouts Wednesday in cities like Memphis — a growing chorus of Tennesseans are demanding to make their schools and state safer.

Lax gun laws, especially those allowing easy access to military-style semiautomatic weapons, have been the top concern of students, parents, educators, and gun control advocates calling for change since the shooting at The Covenant School.

Hundreds of protesters, mostly students, climb the steps to the Tennessee State Capitol during a March for Our Lives demonstration on April 3, 2023, to call for stricter gun laws.

The 28-year-old intruder, a former Covenant student, used two assault-style rifles and a pistol, all purchased legally, to carry out the attack. Police investigating the shooting have not determined a motive.

“This is the time for action,” said Rep. Bob Freeman, a Nashville Democrat who represents the district that is home to The Covenant School.

The big question, he said, is whether Republicans and Democrats can break through their partisan conflicts to find a sensible way forward to address gun violence.

“People are begging for us to do something across this state,” Freeman said earlier this week. “And instead of us having meaningful conversations, we’ve been distracted with an expulsion of some of our members who were speaking out for exactly what the people across the state are begging us to do.”

Democrats roll out bills to restrict gun access

Gov. Bill Lee is sticking with a school safety approach aimed at fortifying campuses instead of restricting gun access. The Republican governor wants to pump more than $200 million more into hardening K-12 public schools by hiring additional armed security guards, upgrading school buildings, and placing a homeland security agent in every Tennessee county, among other things.

“Fortifying our schools right now in this state is absolutely what we need to do,” House Majority Leader William Lamberth said Thursday before representatives voted 95-4 to approve the governor’s package.

On Wednesday, Democrats laid out their own action plan. Instead of current GOP-backed legislative proposals that suggest the answer to gun violence is more guns, they announced five pieces of new legislation that they believe would begin to reel in gun access in one of the most gun-friendly states in America.

Rep. Bob Freeman of Nashville, surrounded by other Democratic lawmakers, outlines new legislation to restrict gun access in Tennessee during a news conference on April 5, 2023.

Among them: passing a so-called red flag law, also known as an extreme risk protection order, that allows law enforcement to intervene and remove weapons if a judge deems the owner is at risk of hurting himself or others.

Parents of the Nashville shooter had expressed concern that their adult child, who had been under a doctor’s care for an undisclosed “emotional disorder,” had purchased guns.

Democrats also want to require universal background checks to buy a firearm; ban bump stock conversion kits and high-capacity magazines that make gun violence more lethal; and re-establish gun permits, training requirements, and mandatory background checks for individuals who want to carry firearms in public.

Meanwhile, the last of the funerals for the school’s six victims was held Tuesday for Mike Hill, Covenant’s 61-year-old custodian. The other five victims were Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney, and Hallie Scruggs, all age 9; Katherine Koonce, 60, the head of school; and Cynthia Peak, 61, a substitute teacher that day.

This story has been updated with the outcomes of Thursday’s expulsion votes.

Marta W. Aldrich is a senior correspondent who covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee lawmakers advance bill to let teachers carry firearms without notifying parents

2023-04-05T23:06:20+00:00

Legislation to let some teachers carry firearms in Tennessee public schools advanced Wednesday in the House as state lawmakers and citizens clashed over the best way to protect students after last week’s deadly school shooting in Nashville.

The proposal would let a teacher or staff member carry a concealed handgun at school after completing 40 hours of certified training in school policing at their own expense, as well as passing a mental health evaluation and FBI background check.

The 12-6 vote in the Education Administration Committee came with one member present but not voting: Republican Rep. Kirk Haston, who works for Perry County Schools.

It would be up to the local district whether to let teachers go armed under the legislation sponsored by Rep. Ryan Williams of Cookeville and Sen. Paul Bailey of Sparta, both Republicans.

Williams said the principal and district director would be notified who in their schools are authorized to carry, as would their local law enforcement agencies. But the school’s parents and students would not be notified under his legislation, which runs counter to the GOP’s emphasis on parental rights and notification in other areas of education such as curriculum and library materials.

The development in Tennessee comes more than a week after an armed intruder shot and killed three 9-year-old children and three adult staff members at The Covenant School, a private Christian school with about 200 students in Nashville’s Green Hills community. As gun violence at schools has spiked over the last few years, educators nationwide have grappled with how to address acute safety concerns without militarizing their campuses or ignoring the rights of students, their parents, and educators.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, at least 29 states allow individuals other than police or security officers to carry guns on school grounds.

Most Tennessee parents say school-based gun violence is one of their top concerns, but significantly fewer agree that schools are safer when teachers are armed, according to the latest poll conducted by the Vanderbilt Center for Child Health Policy.

Williams told the committee that his bill is permissive.

“If your district and your local law enforcement agency does not want to participate, they simply do not have to do that,” he said. “But if you’re from a small rural district where resources are limited and you don’t have the ability to provide [school resource officers] for your community or an SRO at all, this would give you an opportunity to find a different pathway.”

Even if the Tennessee bill clears the full House, it’s not likely to pass in the Senate this year.

Bucking gun control advocates who have called for an urgent response to the tragedy, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted Tuesday to defer all gun-related legislation — including the companion bill to let teachers go armed — until 2024, the second year of the legislature’s two-year session. Chairman Todd Gardenhire, a Republican from Chattanooga, said he didn’t want to rush legislation as the city mourned the victims and police continued their investigation.

Emotions have been running high about the issue, including at the state Capitol.

Williams’ House bill would apply to public schools but not schools such as Covenant, which is a ministry of the Presbyterian church that sits on the same campus. Staff at Tennessee private schools already have the option to let some staff go armed if their administrators approve.

During Wednesday’s debate, people spoke passionately for and against the policy proposal. Here’s a sampling of what we heard:

“If more guns in more places made us safer, we’d be the safest state on the planet, and we’re not.” — Jason Sparks, Nashville parent, representing Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, which opposes the bill

“The greatest benefit, I believe, in this bill is it allows our local [districts] to put a sign outside the front of their schools that says there may be someone in this facility that carries a concealed weapon. … Deterrents are the greatest asset we have.” — Rep. Ryan Williams, R-Cookeville, the House bill’s sponsor

“It’s terrifying to know that I could go to school and not know who has a firearm.” — Keernan Reed, student, Hillwood High School in Nashville

“If you think that we’re going to have an SRO in every one of our schools tomorrow, you’re fooling yourself. … Folks, that’s four to five years away that your children will be at risk.” — Rep. Scott Cepicky, R-Culleoka, who voted for the bill

“This approach may harm the very ones that we say that we are trying to protect — harm that comes when someone overpowers a teacher, takes their gun, or a young teacher is mistaken for an active shooter by a law enforcement officer, a teacher losing their cool with a student and aiming a gun as a threat or worse.” — Krista Westerfelt, mother of three children, who opposes the bill

“I’ve checked with one of my school superintendents in my district, and he’s for this bill.” — Rep. Todd Warner, R-Chapel Hill, who voted for the legislation

“As I looked at the [police] body camera footage [from the Covenant School shooting], these men were extremely nimble, tactical, and they took that building systematically and left no stone unturned. This is not easy work in terms of the training and preparation.” — Rep. Sam McKenzie, D-Knoxville, who voted against the bill

“According to Giffords Law Center, armed adults frequently mishandle guns in schools. Their study shows that there have been nearly 100 publicly reported incidents of mishandled guns in schools over the last five years, including a case where a teacher unintentionally fired a gun in class during a safety demonstration, and a loaded gun falling out of a teacher’s waistband while on the playground.” — The Education Trust in Tennessee, in an April 5 letter to House Education Committee members asking them to oppose the bill

You can track the bill on the General Assembly’s website.

Marta W. Aldrich is a senior correspondent who covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

With Nashville school shooting fresh, Tennessee Senate panel defers gun bills until 2024

2023-04-04T23:10:21+00:00

A day after thousands of Nashville students marched on the Tennessee State Capitol demanding urgent action to restrict guns, a key legislative committee voted instead to defer action on any gun-related legislation until next year.

The move in the Senate Judiciary Committee came eight days after a 28-year-old shooter killed six people, including three children, at a small private Christian school in Nashville.

The 7-2 vote, spearheaded by Chairman Todd Gardenhire of Chattanooga, came along party lines in the Republican-controlled panel.

The delay was anticipated after Gardenhire told Tennessee Lookout recently that he planned to move for an extended delay and would not allow the committee to be “turned into a circus by people with other agendas.”

“The agenda on the table now is respecting the privacy of the victims’ families that were gunned down and (to) let that healing process start,” Gardenhire told the news organization.

Gun control advocates, however, suggested that any delay would be an affront to the memories of the six victims of the March 27 shooting: 9-year-old students Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney, and Hallie Scruggs; and school staff members Mike Hill, Katherine Koonce, and Cynthia Peak.

“We don’t need a day to mourn. We need a day of action,” said retired teacher Linda McFadyen-Ketchum, who leads the local chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, at one of several demonstrations near the Capitol since the shooting.

Nashville students and others favoring stricter gun laws protest outside the Tennessee State Capitol on April 3, 2023, during a demonstration against gun violence, mobilized by the youth group March for Our Lives.

The Judiciary Committee already had passed a bill that would drop Tennessee’s legal age to carry a gun from 21 to 18. The Senate panel removed a provision, which is still in the House’s version, to apply the legislation to rifles as well as handguns.

Among the deferred bills are several opposed by gun control advocates, as well as some legislation they support.

One bill would arm public school teachers and staff with a concealed handgun if they are willing, have a state-issued permit, and complete firearms training. Staff at Tennessee’s private schools already have that option if their administrators approve.

Gun control advocates support a so-called safe storage bill requiring people to secure any weapons they leave in vehicles and boats as a way to keep them from falling into the hands of criminals. That measure was deferred, too.

Sen. Jeff Yarbro, the bill’s sponsor, had planned Tuesday to introduce new legislation to the Senate panel to create a so-called red flag law, similar to the one that passed in Florida after a 2018 shooting killed 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Such laws create a process to petition the courts so police can step in and temporarily take away firearms from a person who threatens to commit suicide or kill others.

“Pathetic,” Yarbro tweeted after the committee’s vote to defer all the bills.

The Nashville Democrat added: “We’re not going to give up. We’ll do what we can to bring SB1029 or some other bill to the floor to move this legislation forward.”

Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, who leads the Senate and said last week that he would support a red flag law, left an open door.

“Chairman Gardenhire and the Judiciary Committee elected to roll a handful of bills to the beginning of next year, as is their prerogative,” McNally said in a statement. “While the committee will likely close today, this does not mean the committee cannot reopen at the call of the chair.”

The committee’s vote came after little discussion. Two Memphis Democrats, Sens. Sara Kyle and London Lamar, were the sole votes against a delay in hearing Yarbro’s bill.

“Every member has a right to be heard,” Lamar said. “This was a bad move, and I’m disappointed.”

Vanderbilt University student Helena Spigner was also mostly disappointed in Tuesday’s developments. A local leader of Students Demand Action, which helped organize Monday’s student walkout in Nashville, the 19–year-old does not favor arming teachers. But she had hoped lawmakers would show a sense of urgency to reevaluate Tennessee’s lax gun laws because of last week’s mass shooting.

“These deaths could have been prevented by better laws,” said Spigner, who is studying to be an elementary school teacher. “By taking a year off, we’re waiting for the next tragedy, when we should be preventing the next tragedy.”

Interest in a red flag law rose in Tennessee after police reported that the Covenant shooter, who was fatally shot by police 14 minutes after entering the school, had been under a doctor’s care for an undisclosed “emotional disorder.”

While the Senate’s speaker was supportive of the policy, House Speaker Cameron Sexton has been less interested. He initially said “everything” was on the table in the wake of the tragedy but told reporters Monday that red flag laws are just a way “to take away guns” and have “nothing to do with (mental health) treatment.”

As he brought forth his new proposals Monday that include further fortifying school campuses, Gov. Bill Lee also stopped short of supporting a red flag law. He invited lawmakers to bring him legislation that would prevent people who are in the midst of a mental health crisis from having access to weapons, as long as the measure would not impede Second Amendment rights.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Nashville students rally for tougher gun laws, as governor seeks armed guards for every school

2023-04-03T23:12:22+00:00

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Thousands of Nashville-area students walked out of their schools Monday and converged outside the Tennessee State Capitol to demand stronger gun laws after last week’s mass shooting at a small private school in the city.

The walkout began at 10:13 a.m., marking one week since Nashville police received the first call about an active shooter at The Covenant School, who killed three children and three adult staff members on March 27.

“We all want to live through high school,” said 17-year-old Amy Goetzinger, one of the earliest students to arrive at Monday’s rally, “and that’s why we’re here today.”

Meanwhile, Gov. Bill Lee proposed another $155 million to place an armed security guard at every Tennessee public school, boost physical school security at both public and private schools, and provide additional mental health resources for Tennesseans. Currently, about two-thirds of the state’s nearly 2,000 public schools have a law enforcement officer on site.

The governor said those steps, if approved by the legislature, would immediately increase safety for students and teachers. He promised more actions will follow.

“There is a serious conversation needed about school safety,” Lee said. “It must begin with the recognition that we cannot control evil, but we can do something.”

The student protest was mobilized through March for Our Lives, a youth-led movement for stricter gun laws that was formed after the 2018 shooting that killed 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

In a tweet calling for Monday’s walkout, the group noted Tennessee’s legislature has passed laws in recent years banning or restricting many things — but not assault weapons.

“It’s not drag queens, it’s not books, it’s not Black history, it’s not trans rights — GUNS are KILLING KIDS,” the tweet said.

Later Monday, parents and elementary-age kids participated in an ABC Not NRA rally, just as lawmakers convened for this week’s legislative business.

Students chant: ‘Ban assault weapons!’

The protests were the latest in a string of peaceful but loud demonstrations against Tennessee’s lax gun laws after the 28-year-old intruder used military-style guns to shoot through a locked glass door and enter the private Christian school, indiscriminately shooting victims before being shot and killed by police.

In a police update Monday, authorities said they have not identified a motive behind the shooting but have determined that the attacker, identified as Audrey Hale, acted alone and had been planning the massacre for months. Police said Hale fired 152 rounds of ammunition at the school before being fatally shot about 14 minutes after entering.

Easy access to military-style guns was the No. 1 concern identified by students as they assembled on Nashville Legislative Plaza and at one point climbed the steps to surround the stone Capitol building. Under a misty rain, they chanted “Ban assault weapons!” “Do your job!” and “This is what democracy looks like!”

More than a thousand people filled Nashville’s Legislative Plaza to demand gun reforms as lawmakers prepared to convene at the Tennessee State Capitol on March 3, 2023.

An hour into the rally, hundreds more students and faculty from Vanderbilt University marched in on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard yelling “Fee-fi-fo-fum, watch out, Bill Lee, here we come.”

“Guns are the No. 1 killer of children, of teenagers, and of college-age students, both in the United States of America and right here in Tennessee. That’s not normal,” Jayce Pollard, a 20-year-old Vanderbilt student, told the crowd.

Fifteen-year-old Clara Thorsen said she walked out of Hillsboro High School, a public school just down the road from where the shooting happened, to show solidarity with other youth who fear for their lives under the state’s current gun laws.

“I want to be part of this and make change in our society, because we sure need it,” said Thorsen, who came with several classmates driven to the Capitol by her mom.

Margo Jenkins, another 15-year-old from Hillsboro High, said she came as a student journalist for her school’s newspaper. She planned to write a piece about “the power of protest.”

Citing safety concerns, Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools had urged students to assert their voices by participating in “walk-in rallies” inside the district’s 23 high schools, instead of attending the protest at the Capitol.

But district Director Adrienne Battle said later that most students who walked out worked with their parents and school leaders to follow appropriate procedures.

“While most students aren’t of age to vote, their voices in this conversation matter greatly,” Battle said, “and I hope lawmakers and officials will listen.”

Lee stands by his policies on gun access

The governor was flanked by top Republican lawmakers as he spoke with reporters for the first time in the week since the shooting.

Gov. Bill Lee speaks with reporters about Tennessee’s response to Nashville’s mass school shooting.

Pressed about state laws governing gun access, Lee said he prefers to keep a 2021 statute that he led the charge for allowing residents 21 and older to carry handguns in public without a permit.

A bill in the legislature would lower the age to 18.

“I think the bill that I proposed and brought forward is a bill that is designed for law-abiding citizens,” Lee said.

In reference to police reports that the shooter had been under a doctor’s care for an undisclosed “emotional disorder,” the governor encouraged the General Assembly to bring him legislation that would prevent people who are in the midst of a mental health crisis from having access to weapons — as long as the measure would not impede Second Amendment rights.

“That is the way forward,” he said.

But one Democratic leader was unimpressed by the governor’s immediate proposals to further fortify school campuses, without calling for significant gun reforms.

“It’s been a whole week since The Covenant School shooting, and Bill Lee has yet to utter the word gun,” said House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Ray Clemmons, of Nashville.

“I am appalled that Governor Lee would rather militarize our schools and make our children feel imprisoned in their own learning environment than reach across the aisle to pass common sense gun safety legislation,” Clemmons said.

The governor said he welcomed Monday’s protests. His message to the students? “You’re heard!” Lee said. And “please don’t let this be the last time you come to the Capitol.”

Students wave signs on the steps of the Capitol during the March for Our Lives rally.

But 19-year-old Vanderbilt student Iman Omer said elected officials aren’t hearing the voices of Tennessee’s children and youth who fear for their safety in school.

“We all are living in constant fear of gun violence,” she said, “and that’s because gun violence is all around us.

“And we won’t accept it anymore.”

This story has been updated.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Nashville school shooting prompts Capitol protest, and a fresh look at Tennessee gun policies

2023-03-31T02:15:46+00:00

Hundreds of angry protesters, most of them high school students, flooded inside Tennessee’s Capitol Thursday calling for stricter gun laws after an armed intruder killed three children and three adults days earlier at a small private school in Nashville.

Chanting “Save our kids!” and “Not one more!” protesters gathered outside of legislative chambers where lawmakers were in session and could hear the students’ shouts reverberating from the Capitol rotunda.

“I’m terrified,” said 17-year-old Keanna Hoskins, who went to the protest instead of attending school that day. Her message to lawmakers: Legally purchased military-style guns, like the ones used in the Nashville shooting, are “completely outrageous.”

“I want them to do something so schoolchildren aren’t slaughtered,” said the Nashville student, “and I really hope I’m not just yelling for no reason.”

Meanwhile, Lt. Gov. Randy McNally and House Speaker Cameron Sexton expressed openness to a so-called red flag law, which would permit a court to order the temporary removal of firearms from a person believed to present a danger to themselves or others. And Republican Gov. Bill Lee, who has huddled daily with GOP legislative leaders following Monday’s slayings at The Covenant School, is revisiting his administration’s sweeping school safety proposal that focuses on fortifying public schools, according to the bill’s sponsors.

“We absolutely have to focus on all schools now, public or private, wherever a child in Tennessee is attending school,” said House Majority Leader William Lamberth, who is carrying the governor’s proposal in his chamber.

Jade Byers, the governor’s press secretary, said Lee will share more “in the coming days” about new proposed safety measures and funding to pay for them.

Shooting exposed holes in state’s safety policies

It was a dramatic day on Capitol Hill as elected officials acknowledged this week’s mass shooting confounded many elements of Tennessee’s school safety policies and proposals, including the governor’s bill to require all K-12 public schools to keep their exterior doors locked, or risk losing escalating amounts of state funding with each violation. The measure also requires that private security guards receive active shooter training before they’re posted at schools.

At The Covenant School, a private Christian school in Nashville’s affluent Green Hills community, there was no armed security officer on site. The intruder entered by shooting out the glass in a locked side door.

The tragedy occurred just two months after the governor’s annual address identifying school safety as one of his top priorities. And last summer, following a mass shooting at a Texas elementary school, Lee signed an executive order directing school officials and local law enforcement to work together to double down on safety protocols.

But the Covenant shooting, according to 17-year-old Allison McMahan, showed the state’s focus on hardening campuses isn’t enough. Stricter gun laws are needed, too, she said.

“There’s actually a gun shop down the street from my school,” said McMahan, who attends Nashville School for the Arts, a local public magnet school. “I feel so uncomfortable seeing that gun shop as I’m going to school every day. I don’t want guns to be so accessible.”

The protest was organized via social media posts inviting students and parents to rally at the Capitol. More than a thousand people showed up outside for a peaceful demonstration before hundreds moved indoors for several hours. Law enforcement removed some noisy protesters from the Senate chamber’s gallery, where several children held signs that said “I’m nine,” in reference to the age of the three children who were killed.

In the rotunda, where most protesters were milling and chanting, they jeered at adults who, with a police escort, emerged occasionally from legislative chambers to go to a nearby restroom.

A crowd of mostly students chant and hold up signs calling for stricter gun laws in the rotunda of the Tennessee Capitol.

“You can tell we’re being heard, because they’re not looking us in the eyes when they come out,” said a 16-year-old student named Sophia who declined to give her last name.

She said she hoped to “shame” lawmakers into action and added: “They’re supposed to represent us. Even though we can’t vote, we still live in their state. This is our home, too.”

The Covenant School serves about 200 students in preschool to sixth grade. Killed were students Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney; and three school staff members: custodian Mike Hill and substitute teacher Cynthia Peak, both 61, and Katherine Koonce, 60, the head of the school.

Both Peak and Koonce were friends and former co-workers of Gov. Lee’s wife, Maria, a former teacher, when they worked together at another private school, the governor said in a video message to Tennesseans released on Tuesday.

On Wednesday night, Nashville held a citywide vigil, attended by first lady Jill Biden, to remember the victims. And on Thursday, families began to announce funeral plans as the police investigation continued to reveal more about the shooter.

Lawmakers signal openness to red-flag law

Authorities have not identified a clear motive for why Covenant was targeted by a person they identified as Audrey Hale, a former student at the school. Police reported that Hale, who purchased the guns legally, had been under a doctor’s care for an undisclosed “emotional disorder.”

McNally, who leads the Senate, said he would support a red flag law, provided it has safeguards against false reporting.

Sexton said it’s uncertain whether a red flag law could have prevented this week’s attack, but added, “We should be open to any conversation.”

“We need to talk to law enforcement about what tools do they need in those situations where someone is so dire, they’re planning to commit suicide or harm others,” said Sexton, who also wants to look closely at the role of mental institutions in Tennessee.

Democrats, who are significantly outnumbered by Republicans in the legislature, welcomed discussion about ways to lessen the likelihood that a person having a mental health crisis can legally purchase or possess a firearm.

“It’s just common sense,” said Sen. Jeff Yarbro of Nashville, “and doesn’t strike me as infringing on anyone’s rights.”

In an interview with Chalkbeat last summer, the governor said he has “a lot of concerns about red flag laws — not only on issues of mental health but their effectiveness in general.”

Marta W. Aldrich is a senior correspondent who covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

As Nashville reels from school shooting, Tenn. lawmakers consider loosening gun restrictions

2023-03-29T02:42:19+00:00

Nashville teacher Charlene Culbertson arrived at work early Tuesday morning. But she hesitated to walk into the building, a public elementary school not far from the church school where a shooter had killed three children and three adults a day earlier.

“I sat in my car until I felt like I had a good enough mask on to be who my kids expect to see,” said Culbertson, who teaches 20 preschoolers at Shwab Elementary School.

“My little students seem fine today, but I am not,” she said. “This has been a hard day.”

Teachers and students returned to class at Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools after police released chilling video footage overnight showing how a 28-year-old intruder, armed with two rifles and a pistol, shot through a glass door to The Covenant School in Nashville’s affluent Green Hills community.

The shooter, who had legally purchased multiple firearms from five Nashville-area gun stores, entered the school and began firing at students and staff before being killed by a police SWAT team.

Monday’s attack brings the U.S. count to 15 mass school shootings — resulting in the deaths of four or more people — since 1999’s Columbine High School massacre in Colorado, according to The Associated Press.

“Hearing all of this is heartbreaking. We’re scared,” said 16-year-old Jennie Li, who decided to come to a rally at the Capitol with her younger sister, Mary, instead of going to class at the magnet school they attend in downtown Nashville. They wanted their student voices heard.

Tennessee has one of the nation’s highest rates of gun deaths, including murders, suicides and accidental shootings. It also has some of the most permissive gun laws.

In 2021, it enacted a law that lets most Tennesseans 21 and older carry handguns without first clearing a background check, obtaining a permit, or getting trained on firearms safety. “Guns are essentially ubiquitous” in the state, a part of the culture, said Nashville Mayor John Cooper.

And state lawmakers in the Republican-controlled legislature are considering numerous pieces of gun legislation to make firearms even more prevalent.

One bill, sponsored by Sen. John Stevens of Huntingdon and Rep. Rusty Grills of Newbern, would drop that age from 21 to 18. The House version would let people carry rifles and shotguns in public without a permit.

Another bill, sponsored by Sen. Paul Bailey of Sparta and Rep. Ryan Williams of Cookeville, would allow faculty or school staff members to carry a concealed handgun on school grounds with a permit.

Both measures were scheduled for votes Tuesday in various committees but, after Monday’s deadly shooting, legislative leaders delayed taking up any contentious gun-related legislation until next week.

“Yesterday was a tragic event in this country and this state and in Nashville, and we need to be respectful of those victims and the families of those victims,” said Sen. Todd Gardenhire, a Chattanooga Republican who chairs his chamber’s judiciary committee.

Gov. Bill Lee agreed. He signed the controversial law to loosen restrictions for gun ownership and has questioned the effectiveness of red flag laws that would restrict gun access for people who are most likely to misuse them.

“There will come a time to discuss and debate policy,” but not immediately, Lee said in a video message released late Tuesday. He called on Tennesseans first to pray for the families of the victims and the shooter, the school, police, and others “who are hurting and angry and confused.”

Among the hurting is Becca Dryden, a Nashville parent who spoke at a rally outside of legislative offices in downtown Nashville. About a hundred people showed up to the Tuesday event, sponsored by Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, which has a chapter in Tennessee.

“This is a really scary time to be a parent,” Dryden said through tears, “and I just want my kids to live a full life. I want them to live. I want to pick them up from school every day — alive.”

Becca Dryden, a Nashville mother of two children, speaks Tuesday at a rally against gun violence, held outside of the Nashville offices of state legislators who are considering gun legislation. The rally was sponsored by Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.

Amanda Rosenberger, a college professor in Cookeville, said she survived a 1992 school shooting while attending Bard College at Simon’s Rock in Massachusetts — and still carries the trauma with her every day.

“I’m tired of seeing people crying on the television. I’m tired of it,” Rosenberger said. “I don’t want to be one of those people any more. We need to stand up for our kids.”

Linda McFadyen-Ketchum, a retired teacher who leads the advocacy group’s Tennessee chapter, criticized GOP leaders for delaying business on gun legislation. The time to act, she said, is now, while the slayings of 9-year-olds Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney and school staff members Katherine Koonce, Mike Hill, and Cynthia Peak were fresh on everyone’s minds.

“I don’t have any more tears, y’all,” McFadyen-Ketchum told the crowd. “We’ve been crying since Sandy Hook. We’re cried out. We don’t need a day to mourn. We need a day of action.”

On the other side of Nashville, eighth-grade teacher Kelly Ann Graff had lots of tears. She cried on the way to work on Tuesday. To get through the school day, she put her emotions on the back burner and tried to support her students by answering their questions honestly in an age-appropriate way.

But she’s also worried about the well-being of her co-workers at Thurgood Marshall Middle School, as well as educators across the nation who are overworked, underpaid, undersupported, and grappling with the growing threat of gun violence.

The teachers are not OK, she said.

“I’m very afraid of us moving on too quickly from this event,” Graff said. “I’m afraid that prioritizing normalcy will enable this new normal of mass school shootings. This shooting hit close to home, and that’s a fact that we need to sit with.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Shooter kills 3 children, 3 adults at Nashville private church school

2023-03-28T19:48:51+00:00

A person armed with multiple guns killed three children and three adults at a private Christian school in Nashville Monday morning before being fatally shot by police.

As details of the police investigation and images emerged Tuesday, school families and local leaders were still trying to piece together what happened, a task familiar to a growing number of U.S. communities that have faced the tragedy of a school shooting.

The three student victims at The Covenant School were young, all 9 years old, authorities said. One of three adult victims was Katherine Koonce, the head of school. The others were a custodian and a substitute teacher.

While school shootings in the United States have increased in the last two decades, they are rare at private schools. Sarah Wilson, executive director of the Tennessee Association of Independent Schools, which represents private schools, said she believed this was the first shooting at a private school in Tennessee.

Tennessee’s efforts to improve school security have largely focused on public schools rather than private ones and generally emphasize fortifying school campuses rather than reducing the number of firearms.

Brad Goia, director of independent schools for the Nashville Area, called the shooting a “horrible tragedy.”

“It has devastated all of us because, first and foremost, we are heartbroken for Covenant,” said Goia, who is also headmaster of Montgomery Bell Academy, an elite all-boys college prep school in Nashville. “The suffering that the Covenant community is feeling also heightens the ways that all of us are vulnerable, that the unthinkable can happen anywhere.”

Nashville is perceived as a relatively safe place, Goia said, “but these events reshape our view of the world.”

The Covenant School was founded in 2001 as a ministry of Covenant Presbyterian Church. The campus sits atop a hill in an affluent part of Nashville known as Green Hills and is the educational home to some 200 students in preschool to sixth grade. Students have Bible classes and attend daily chapel services.

The school’s motto: “shepherding hearts, empowering minds, celebrating childhood.”

Police responded to a call at 10:13 a.m. about an active shooter at the school. Identified by police as 28-year-old Nashville resident Audrey Elizabeth Hale, the shooter came to the campus armed with two rifles, a 9-millimeter pistol, and “significant” ammunition for the firearms, police said.

Police said the shooter entered the school through a side door after shooting out the glass, then proceeded to the first and second floors, firing multiple shots before being fatally shot by the police on the second floor.

Drake said police believe the shooter fired at students at random. The student victims who were fatally shot were in several locations.

Police identified the student victims as Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney. The adults killed were Cynthia Peak and Mike Hill, both 61, and Koonce, 60, the school’s leader.

Nashville Mayor John Cooper praised the police response.

“Guns are quick, they don’t give you much time,” Cooper said. “So even in a remarkably fast response, there was not enough time. And those guns stole precious lives from us today in Nashville.”

Drake, the police chief, said, “I was hoping this day would never ever come here in this city, but we will never wait to make entry to go in and stop a threat, especially when it deals with our children.”

Children from The Covenant School arrive in school buses at Woodmont Baptist Church to be reunited with their families after Monday’s shooting.

Shooter was a former student at the school

Police initially described the shooter as a woman. But the shooter’s gender identity was unclear, given some conflicting statements from authorities. According to The Tennessean, police released the shooter’s birth name, and said that the person used he/him pronouns.

The shooter previously attended the school, police said, but it is unclear when or for how long. Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake said Monday afternoon that the shooter did not have a criminal history and that it was too early to describe a motive for the shooting.

Police searched the shooter’s home and found writings and documents planning the attack, including a map and plans for entering and shooting. The notes included additional locations, but police couldn’t confirm whether any of the locations were planned targets.

The three weapons that were brought into the school were among seven that the shooter had purchased legally from five different Nashville-area gun stores, Drake said in a briefing Tuesday.

Gov. Lee’s safety bill focuses on public schools

Gov. Bill Lee, who tweeted that he was “closely monitoring” the situation and praying for the community, identified school safety as one of his top priorities during his 2023 address to Tennesseans. His proposals so far have mostly focused on beefing up security protocols at public schools.

Recently, Lee proposed a sweeping school safety bill, requiring all K-12 public schools to keep their exterior doors locked, or risk losing escalating amounts of state funding with each violation.

Despite having one of the nation’s highest rates of gun deaths, Tennessee has enacted numerous laws under Lee’s leadership to loosen requirements for gun ownership. In 2021, he signed a law allowing most Tennesseans 21 and older to carry handguns without first clearing a background check, obtaining a permit, or getting trained on firearms safety.

This year, however, the governor’s administration has opposed several new bills from Republican lawmakers who want to loosen those regulations even further.

At the White House on Monday, President Joe Biden called the shooting “a family’s worst nightmare” and called again for a federal ban on “assault” weapons, a term that’s used to describe certain military-style semi-automatic firearms.

“We have to do more to stop gun violence; it’s ripping our communities apart — ripping the soul of this nation,” Biden said. “And we have to do more to protect our schools, so they aren’t turned into prisons.”

Shooting rattles a tight community

State Rep. Bob Freeman, a Nashville Democrat whose district includes the Covenant School, said that in a small city like Nashville, it is inevitable for many residents to have connections to Covenant’s children and families.

Freeman said he heard Monday from one school family who found out their child was safe but knew two of the children who died.

“And tonight, families across Nashville and our state are going to have to have some tough conversations with their children trying to explain why this has happened and to assure them that they are safe at school,” he said.

Claire Walker, a second-grade teacher at another private Christian school nearby, felt anguish as she pushed her newborn son in a stroller past the entrance to The Covenant School, where some Nashvillians had already begun to place bouquets of flowers in memory of the victims.

“We have many good friends whose kids go here, and my heart has been with them all day,” said Walker, who had just seen the list of victims and found no names of children she recognized.

“But they’re other people’s kids,” she added quickly, “and they were just 9 years old.”

Before landing her current job, Walker had interviewed for a teaching position at The Covenant School and had even toured the school with Koonce, the headmaster who was among the adult victims. “She was sweet,” said Walker, shaking her head in disbelief.

“I’ve got a 7-week-old and a 20-month-old, and it’s terrifying to think that they’re going to be in school in a couple of years,” Walker said.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Laura Testino covers the Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Contact her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee’s latest private school voucher expansion proposal would add Knox County, too

2023-03-23T23:13:53+00:00

Tennessee’s private school voucher program, currently limited to eligible students attending public schools in Memphis and Nashville, would expand to all four of the state’s urban districts under new legislation.

A bill to extend the program to Chattanooga-based Hamilton County Schools passed last week in the Senate. And under a new GOP measure filed recently in the House and facing its first vote next week, the bill could be amended to include Knox County Schools, too.

Rep. Mark White of Memphis, who is co-sponsoring the expansion bill with Sen. Todd Gardenhire of Chattanooga, said Thursday that he is seeking to add Tennessee’s third largest district at the request of some Republican state lawmakers from the Knoxville area.

The proposal marks the latest effort to expand eligibility for Gov. Bill Lee’s education savings account program, which gives taxpayer money to eligible families to use toward private school tuition.

The program launched last fall as a pilot program under a 2019 voucher law that surmounted a string of legal obstacles and continues to be challenged in court. The law allows up to 5,000 students to participate in the program’s first year, but according to the Tennessee Department of Education, the state has approved just over 700 applications so far for families wanting to exit Memphis-Shelby County Schools and Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools this school year.

The House Education Administration Committee, which White chairs, is scheduled to consider the expansion bill and White’s Knox County amendment on March 29.

Rep. Mark White, of Memphis, chairs the House Education Administration Committee.

Rep. Bryan Richey has filed a more ambitious amendment to take vouchers statewide, but White does not expect a vote on the Maryville Republican’s proposal.

“If he tries to run that amendment, it will kill Gardenhire’s bill,” said White. “I told him, ‘Don’t run it this year; run it next year.’”

That comment — and this year’s expansion bill — are indicative of the larger goal of the governor and many Republicans, according to Rep. Gloria Johnson, a Knoxville Democrat who opposes vouchers.

“They’re going to push the envelope,” Johnson said, “until all of Tennessee’s public tax dollars for education are going to private schools and charter schools. And none of those schools are being held to the same standard as our traditional public schools.”

Lee, who recently began his second term as governor, has said he wants both high-quality public schools and more education choices for families, even as vouchers and charter schools redirect funding away from traditional public schools.

When Gardenhire filed the original expansion bill in December, he said Hamilton County Schools would be the only district affected. But White said state lawmakers from several other counties approached him later about including their local school districts, too.

On Wednesday, Gardenhire told Chalkbeat that he supports the effort to add Knox County to his legislation. If the House approves it, he plans to bring the bill’s expanded scope back to the Senate for a vote.

But several other Knox County lawmakers, including at least one Republican, say they will vote against any expansion.

“I think we have a very good school system in Knox County and that parents already have a lot of choices,” said Republican Sen. Richard Briggs of Knoxville.

Briggs noted that students have the option to attend magnet schools, a charter school, specialized learning academies, and international baccalaureate programs, and to transfer among the district’s 90 schools, as long as there’s space available.

Knox County’s school board has passed multiple anti-voucher resolutions through the years. However, that body has become more divided since 2022 elections when a new state law opened the door to partisan school board races and drew local education policy under the influence of the national political divide.

Jennifer Owen, a Knox County school board member who was not up for reelection last year, said she opposes vouchers.

“I’m getting texts from a lot of concerned people here,” Owen said of the expansion amendment. “I think people who push this kind of thing brand it as school choice, and people just don’t know what that means. But in fact, we already have lots of learning options for kids.”

Five Republican representatives from Knox County have signed on as co-sponsors of White’s bill: Michele Carringer, Elaine Davis, Jason Zachary, Justin Lafferty, and Dave Wright.

On Thursday, Davis, Zachary, and Lafferty told Chalkbeat that they support White’s amendment but declined to comment on why.

Johnson, one of two Knoxville Democrats in the legislature, said voucher support from a few Republican legislators is not an accurate gauge of what most Knox County voters want.

“They are answering to special interests, not the majority of their constituents,” she said.

A second GOP-sponsored voucher bill advancing through the legislature also would expand eligibility for education savings accounts, although not to the same extent as the Hamilton-Knox legislation.

Sen. Jon Lundberg, of Bristol, and Rep. Chris Todd, of Jackson, are seeking to expand eligibility to students in Memphis and Nashville who attended private or home schools during the last three school years. The current law says a student must move directly from a public to private school to be eligible for the program.

Their bill cleared the Senate in February and is scheduled for a vote on the House floor on March 30.

Tennessee’s voucher law refers to education savings accounts as a “pilot program” and directs the state comptroller to report on the program’s efficacy after its third year of enrolling students. But because ongoing litigation delayed the program’s launch, the first report isn’t due until Jan. 1, 2026.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee bill to loosen class size limits dies in House committee

2023-03-22T00:58:28+00:00

A legislative proposal that could have led to larger class sizes in Tennessee died Tuesday in its first vote in the House.

The bill, which easily passed out of the full Senate earlier this month, would have eliminated the state’s average class size mandates and had appeared to have sufficient support for passage in the House’s K-12 subcommittee.

But Chairman Kirk Haston, a Lobelville Republican who works for Perry County Schools, declared the measure had failed on a close voice vote following spirited debate.

Rep. Kirk Haston chairs the House K-12 subcommittee.

The bill’s abrupt ending means Tennessee will retain required classroom average sizes that essentially set the state’s goal for districts and charter schools to follow: 20 students per classroom for kindergarten through third grade, 25 for grades 4-6, and 30 for grades 7-12.

The state also mandates class size maximums at 25 students in kindergarten through third grade, 30 students in grades 4-6, and 35 students in grades 7-12.

Sponsors sought more staffing flexibility at local level

The bill was sponsored by Sen. Jon Lundberg of Bristol and Rep. Debra Moody of Covington, who argued the change would give school leaders more flexibility when staffing their classrooms. Both Republicans chair education committees in their chambers, giving extra weight to their proposal.

Their original bill would have ditched maximum class size requirements. But after lawmakers received angry feedback from a significant number of constituents about that idea, the sponsors softened the measure to eliminate only average class size mandates.

Critics argued, however, that both mandates are valuable to keep the state’s class sizes in check.

“Our concern is, once we eliminate the average, that it will be an evitable drift toward larger class sizes,” said Jim Wrye, representing teachers with the Tennessee Education Association. “We’ve been supporters of keeping the averages as a good benchmark.”

Tennessee is one of the few states with requirements in place both for classroom maximums and classroom averages. And some school districts already receive waivers from the state for those mandates.

Lundberg had argued that, while his goal wasn’t to create larger classes, school leaders need more leeway in certain cases, such as when teachers have aides to help them manage their classrooms. And Moody framed the proposal as a “local control” issue.

Several House Republicans agreed.

“I trust our (districts) and our principals to make the decisions on how large a class size they put with their teachers,” said Rep. Chris Hurt, a Republican from Halls. “I trust them that they’re not going to overload teachers.”

But the bill also got bipartisan pushback.

Rep. Sam McKenzie, a Knoxville Democrat, predicted that maximum class sizes would quickly become the norm under the legislation. And Rep. Bryan Richey, a Republican from Maryville, said the change seems counterproductive at a time when Tennessee is working to improve its third-grade literacy rate, as well as to recruit and retain effective teachers.

“I love local control,” Richey said, “but I think there are some things where we need a ceiling in place so we’re not going to have bad actors or bad decisions being made that negatively affect our students.”

Research is mixed on impact of smaller classes

Smaller class sizes are very popular with teachers, who maintain they can significantly boost learning with fewer students in their classrooms. However, keeping classes small also means that schools have to keep pace by hiring more teachers and building more classrooms.

Does class size matter for students’ academic performance? Research is mixed.

Chalkbeat’s 2022 analysis of numerous national studies showed that students often do better in smaller classes. But there’s no consensus on exactly how much better, and it’s an open question whether it’s the best use of funding to have fewer students per classroom.

The most famous and rigorous study of class size reduction took place in Tennessee beginning in 1985, when some kindergarten students were randomly assigned to unusually small classes through third grade. Test scores in the classes of 13 to 17 students quickly surpassed scores in the larger classes of 22 to 25. Those gains persisted for years, and the students also were more likely to attend and graduate from college.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee bill would widen who can complain about teaching of banned concepts

2023-03-17T21:17:43+00:00

Few complaints have been filed — and no penalties levied — since 2021 when Tennessee enacted a controversial law that seeks to regulate discussions on race and gender in K-12 classrooms.

But that could change under new GOP legislation that state lawmakers are scheduled to take up next week.

The bill, filed by Rep. John Ragan of Oak Ridge and Sen. Joey Hensley of Hohenwald, would allow any resident within a public school zone to file a complaint under Tennessee’s so-called prohibited concepts law, which restricts teachers from discussing 14 concepts that the legislature has deemed divisive.

Currently, only students, parents, or employees within a district or charter school can file complaints involving their school, which can lead to disciplinary action. If the state determines that educators have violated the law, teachers can even be stripped of their licenses and school districts can lose state funding.

The proposed change, which observers have dubbed “Prohibited Concepts 2.0,” could open the door to conservative groups like Moms for Liberty to flood their local school boards with complaints about instruction, books, or materials they believe violate the law, even if they do not have direct contact with the teacher or school in question. The organization, with chapters in seven Tennessee counties, has channeled the frustrations of conservative mothers to target issues like mask mandates and curricula that touch on LGBTQ rights, race, and discrimination.

Ragan says investigations should weed out unfounded claims and that he’s more concerned about “taxation without representation.”

“These people are taxpayers who are footing the bill for schools,” he said, “so they should have the right to file a complaint.”

However, the law’s detractors say the change would make a dangerous policy even more dangerous.

“This will place an even greater burden on district personnel to have to chase down complaints,” said Gini Pupo-Walker, state director for the Education Trust in Tennessee. “And it’s going to have another chilling effect on what teachers can teach and how they teach it.”

The legislation is the latest effort by Tennessee conservatives to tamp down on classroom discussions that veer into ideas like systemic racism, sexism, and gender identity, even as the law has generated few formal complaints thus far.

Critics say it’s another attempt to weaponize public education in the current political climate by using charged words such as “indoctrination” to stoke parents’ fears and inflame disagreements about which classroom discussions are appropriate and which ones cross the line.

Few appeals filed, no penalties levied so far

Tennessee was among the first states to enact a prohibited concepts law amid national fury from conservatives about critical race theory, an academic framework that’s sometimes studied in higher education to examine how policies and laws may perpetuate systemic racism.

After reviewing more than 900 public comments about the new law, the state education department developed enforcement rules for everything from how to file and investigate a complaint to how to appeal a decision and what penalties that teachers and districts could face if found in violation of the law. Those rules also set who is eligible to file a complaint.

Since the rules went into effect in late 2021, the department has received two appeals of local decisions, according to spokesman Brian Blackley.

One was filed by a Blount County parent over the book “Dragonwings,” a novel told from the perspective of a Chinese immigrant boy in the early 20th century. The state denied the appeal based on the results of its investigation, Blackley said.

The second was from the parent of a student enrolled in a private school in Davidson County. Because the law does not apply to private schools, the department found that the parent did not have standing to file an appeal under the law.

Blackley said the department was only authorized to investigate claims beginning with the 2021-22 school year and encouraged Steenman to work with Williamson County Schools to resolve her concerns.

State rules were set after lengthy public comment process

Steenman was also among hundreds of Tennesseans who wrote the department in 2021 about its pending rules. She asked the state to widen eligibility to file a complaint under the new law.

“Under this rule, our current complaint gets tossed out again (because) I’m not a parent of a currently enrolled student,” she wrote. “Never mind that I am speaking on behalf of hundreds of parents of currently enrolled students! And what about grandparents? How many grandparents are in this group in the defense of their grandchildren?”

Others urged the state to limit eligibility to those who interact directly with the educators they might complain about — criteria that the department went with in its enforcement rules.

But Ragan, the House bill’s sponsor, contends the department missed the mark on complaint eligibility.

“I wrote the original bill. I established the legislative intent. They ignored it,” he told Chalkbeat. “This newest bill would carry out what I originally intended.”

To address concerns of unfounded complaints, the bill says a resident who files a complaint must have “actual or constructive knowledge of the violation.”

Asked whether he’s concerned that time-consuming investigations could distract district personnel from their core duties, Ragan was unapologetic.

“Our system of government is not constrained by how long it takes or how tough it is on employees to do their job,” he said. “That’s what we hire them for.”

His legislation also would require districts and the state to publish on their websites the outcomes of their investigations, as well as “the department’s rationale for upholding or overturning” an appeal.

A chilling effect

The bigger goal, Ragan says, is to encourage teachers and school leaders to review and adjust their instructional practices before a complaint is filed.

While he has called for “facts-based teaching based on the state’s academic standards,” The Education Trust views Ragan’s bigger goal as essentially censorship.

“As a former history teacher, I can say that this law has teachers thinking very carefully about a whole list of topics in their classroom going forward,” said Pupo-Walker. “Portraying slavery in a neutral fashion or the Holocaust in a neutral fashion seems completely absurd, but that is the expectation of lawmakers who support this kind of legislation.”

For instance, after investigating the parent’s complaint in Blount County, the Knoxville-area district announced last August that excerpts from the novel “Dragonwings” would be optional for sixth grade teachers to include in instruction this school year.

In Williamson County, where local complaints about “Wit & Wisdom” led to a months-long review of English language arts curriculum in the its elementary schools, the district removed one fourth grade book, the Newbery Award-winning “Walk Two Moons,” and made “instructional adjustments” to seven other texts.

“Ultimately, this process is tearing at the fabric of connections between schools and communities and their families. It implies that you can’t trust teachers with your children,” said Pupo-Walker.

“Parents know implicitly that’s just not the case with the teachers in their children’s schools,” she added. “But this onslaught of bills is undermining people’s confidence in the intention and the integrity of our educators. It’s destructive.”

You can track the bill on the General Assembly’s website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Promising Futures child care scholarship bill advances in Tennessee Senate

2023-03-15T23:25:09+00:00

A bill to create a scholarship program to help Tennessee’s low- and middle-income families pay for high-quality early child care cleared its first legislative hurdle Wednesday — even as some lawmakers questioned whether funding child care should be the state’s responsibility.

The Senate Education Committee voted 7-2 to advance the legislation, which could tap up to $40 million annually in tax revenue from the state’s newly legalized sports betting industry.

Dubbed Promising Futures, the program would take a cue from Tennessee Promise, the state’s groundbreaking 2014 initiative offering high school graduates a chance at two years of tuition-free community or technical college.

If Promising Futures launches, Tennessee would again become a national leader in using lottery- or sports betting-funded scholarships to address a major workforce challenge, according to Max Altman, director of research and policy for the Southern Education Foundation.

“There’s a wide open space, especially in the South, for states to step in and take on the mantle of leadership to increase child care access,” Altman told Chalkbeat.

An early child care “crisis” is costing Tennessee parents, businesses, and taxpayers an estimated $2.6 billion annually in lost earnings and revenues, according to a 2022 study. And business groups from across the state have signed a letter urging lawmakers to create the new government scholarship program.

High-quality child care programs emphasizing early literacy also would help children become proficient readers by the third grade — a major focus of Tennessee’s education improvement strategy, said Sen. Becky Massey, a Knoxville Republican who is co-sponsoring the legislation with Rep. Mark White of Memphis.

“This bill will have a double bottom line, because it will strengthen our workforce of today and the workforce of tomorrow simultaneously,” Massey told the committee.

But several legislators who voted against the bill noted that, while Tennessee’s constitution guarantees “a system of free public schools,” it does not identify child care as a state obligation.

“I worry that this isn’t our role,” said Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg, a Republican from Bristol.

He suggested that one reason child care is hard to afford is that the state added regulations in recent years that prompted many small, home-based child care businesses to close.

“Now we come back and say we have a huge problem,” Lundberg said, “and we’ve got to put in $40 million to solve this problem that we created.”

Leaders with Tennesseans for Quality Early Education, which is spearheading the Promising Futures initiative, said a review of regulations is appropriate — but so is a new investment to help children, parents, and employers.

Blair Taylor, the advocacy group’s CEO, noted that a 2022 survey of Tennessee parents with children under age 6 found that 80% reported employment disruptions due to inadequate child care, and nearly a fifth ended up leaving the workforce due to those challenges.

Tennessee legalized sports wagering in 2019 and collects 20% of the gaming industry’s adjusted gross revenues as taxes. Of that, 80% currently goes to the lottery fund used for higher education scholarships, 15% to the state to distribute to local governments, and 5% toward mental health programs.

The Promising Futures bill proposes starting the scholarship program with 60% of sports wagering tax revenues next year, increasing to 70% the following year, and 80% for each year thereafter.

But Lou Hanemann, chief of staff for the Tennessee Higher Education Commission, testified that diverting lottery money would be “devastating” to financial aid programs such as the HOPE scholarship, Tennessee Promise, and Tennessee Reconnect, which helps adults go back to school to gain new skills.

“I would strongly encourage caution in pulling away revenue streams that are coming in and being used directly for scholarship programs currently,” Hanemann told the panel. “This is not a reserve account where money is just kind of hanging out. The earnings off of these dollars directly fund scholarships every term for students.”

Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Democrat from Memphis, pointed out, though, that sports betting is a relatively new revenue stream, beyond the Tennessee lottery created in 1974. She voted for the bill and has signed on as a co-sponsor.

At a legislative hearing in January, Mary Beth Thomas, executive director of Tennessee’s Sports Wagering Advisory Council, reported the state collected more than $68 million in sports betting privilege taxes in 2022, compared with $40.6 million a year earlier.

You can track the bill’s progress on the state legislature’s website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Bill to ease Tennessee’s third-grade reading and retention law clears first legislative hurdle

2023-03-15T10:00:00+00:00

State lawmakers advanced legislation Tuesday that would put fewer third graders at risk of being held back this year under Tennessee’s 2021 reading law.

The law, which pins retention decisions on how well a student scores in English language arts on the annual Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program test, would be revised to consider results from a second state-approved test, too — but only for third graders who score just under the state’s proficiency threshold on their TCAP.

The legislation also would direct the state Board of Education to develop rules for appealing any retention decision for students who scored as approaching proficiency.

And it would require that any public school student held back in kindergarten, first grade, or second grade undergo tutoring during their following school year.

The House K-12 subcommittee advanced the measure — which was similar to legislation filed last week by House Education Committee Chairman Mark White — after studying a flurry of other bills to revise the law. Parents, educators, and school boards have flooded lawmakers’ offices with complaints about the state’s stricter retention policy, which takes effect with this year’s class of third graders.

Committee members ultimately rallied around the compromise bill that passed on a voice vote. The measure widens reading test criteria for retention but keeps the state, not local educators, in control of those decisions.

The legislation still faces multiple votes in the House and Senate and could put lawmakers at odds with Gov. Bill Lee. The Republican governor pressed for the law and is urging the legislature to stay the course on the state’s literacy strategy.

His strategy draws a clear line in the sand to prevent “social promotions” and includes free tutoring and summer learning camps to help struggling students catch up on learning, as well as options for retesting third-graders who are at risk of being retained.

“Contrary to what critics will say, Tennessee’s reading success plan is about moving kids forward, not holding them back,” Lee wrote in a recent editorial published by The Tennessean.

A spokeswoman for the governor offered no further comment Tuesday night when asked about the bill’s advancement.

But the leader of the state’s largest teacher organization called it a “positive step.”

“Multiple measures are important when understanding student achievement for young children,” said Tanya Coats, president of the Tennessee Education Association. “A year-end test that runs for 180 minutes for 8- and 9-year-olds should not be the only way we understand where students are in English language arts.”

Only a third of Tennessee students read on grade level, according to state testing data. The existing law puts tens of thousands of third graders — and more than 2,700 students in Memphis-Shelby County Schools, the state’s largest district — at risk of being held back this year if they do not take advantage of summer learning opportunities and tutoring.

“We don’t always get it perfect the first time,” said Rep. Sam McKenzie, a Knoxville Democrat, calling the proposed changes an improvement.

Asked by McKenzie what percentage of third graders would be at risk of retention under the proposed changes, the bill’s sponsors could not give an accurate estimate but said there would be an impact.

“There would be more retained if we didn’t pass this bill,” said Rep. Scott Cepicky, a Culleoka Republican, who is carrying the bill in the House for White.

Third grade is considered a critical marker for reading, which is considered foundational to all subsequent learning. But while the law is intended to set children up for success in school, critics say the retention policy could have significant unintended negative consequences by shaming students who are already struggling. And they note that children from low-income families are more likely to be retained in the early grades because they have limited access to high-quality early childhood education and support at home.

Most research suggests that retention has, on average, null or negative effects on students, and that it’s also linked strongly to dropping out of high school.

You can track the bill on the General Assembly’s website. To learn more about Tennessee’s current retention policy, visit the state education department’s answers to frequently asked questions.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee House speaker proposes task force to look into rejecting federal education funds

2023-03-13T21:18:16+00:00

House Speaker Cameron Sexton wants to create a task force to study the feasibility of Tennessee rejecting U.S. education dollars to free its schools from federal rules and regulations.

The Crossville Republican filed legislation Monday that would create an 11-member exploratory panel, chaired by Tennessee’s education commissioner, who is currently Penny Schwinn. If the bill is approved by the state’s GOP-controlled legislature, the group would begin meeting monthly by Aug. 1 and would be charged with delivering a strategic plan to lawmakers and Gov. Bill Lee by Dec. 1.

The task force also would include six legislators, two school superintendents, and two teachers — all appointed by Sexton and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally.

The proposal provides the first details of how Sexton would pursue the idea he floated last month at a Tennessee Farm Bureau reception in Nashville.

Declaring his desire to “do things the Tennessee way,” Sexton said the state should stop accepting nearly $1.8 billion in federal education dollars — most of which supports low-income students, English learners, and students with disabilities — and make up the difference with the state’s own funding. He told Chalkbeat that Tennessee would still provide programs that the federal government supports, but that he believes the state could do it better.

The legislation says, “the task force shall develop a strategic action plan to guide the administration and general assembly on whether it is feasible for this state and the political subdivisions of this state to reject federal funding for educational programs or purposes.”

Sexton also is asking the panel to identify processes for rejecting federal funding, as well as for eliminating restrictions tied to receipt of U.S. education dollars.

Asked if Sexton would accept the panel’s findings if it recommended against a funding pullout, his spokesman, Doug Kufner, responded that “those questions can be answered after the task force finishes its work.”

State lawmakers could consider creation of a task force as early as this week. The legislation, which is co-sponsored by Sen. Bill Powers of Clarksville, is scheduled to be taken up Tuesday by the House’s K-12 subcommittee and on Wednesday by the Senate Education Committee.

No state has ever rejected federal funding for its students and schools, because states generally need the money. U.S. dollars typically make up about a tenth of a state’s budget for K-12 education.

But leaders in Republican-leaning states such as Oklahoma and South Carolina have talked about the idea. And Tennessee’s governor and the Senate speaker are open to exploring the possibility, according to their spokespeople.

Tennessee Democrats oppose the change, and many Republican lawmakers have questions about what a funding pivot would mean for Tennessee students.

The lion’s share of federal education funding goes to schools that serve disadvantaged students. And there are other programs and grants funded through the U.S. Department of Education that target certain needs ranging from rural education and English language learners to technology and charter schools. There’s also a variety of federal school grants that go through the U.S. Department of Agriculture to provide free meals to qualifying students.

“This funding lifts up underserved students and rural schools and ensures every kid gets warm meals during the school year,” Senate Minority Leader Raumesh Akbari, of Memphis, said in a statement. “No matter how many studies they do, there will never be a scenario where it’s a good idea to reject billions worth of federal funding for our students and teachers.”

Sexton has identified federally required tests as his main complaint about accepting federal education dollars, but he hasn’t listed others.

Critics suspect that his bigger objections are related to current “culture war” issues about curriculum and whether transgender students should be allowed to use school bathrooms or play sports consistent with their gender identity, which may not correspond with the sex that’s listed on their birth certificates.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee governor’s safety bill threatens penalties for schools if they don’t lock entrances

2023-03-08T22:42:41+00:00

Gov. Bill Lee is proposing sweeping changes to enhance school safety across Tennessee, requiring all K-12 public schools to keep their exterior doors locked, or risk losing escalating amounts of state funding with each violation.

Legislation from the Republican governor, introduced this week in several legislative committees, also mandates several new safety-related drills when students aren’t present; tweaks training requirements for armed and unarmed campus officers; and requires new security features for school buildings constructed or remodeled after this July 1.

In addition, Lee wants more top law enforcement officials on the state’s school safety team and proposes to transfer its oversight from the Department of Education to the Department of Safety, the agency responsible for homeland security and state troopers.

The governor’s proposal comes after the state fire marshal’s office identified 527 unlocked exterior doors during inspections of about 1,500 Tennessee public schools this school year, according to state officials.

Last June, Lee signed an executive order directing Tennessee school leaders and law enforcement to work together to double down on existing school safety protocols after a deadly shooting in Texas, where a gunman entered an elementary school through an unlocked door and killed 19 children and two teachers.

Lee also promised Tennesseans that state troopers and local police would conduct more unannounced security inspections of schools to make sure entrances are locked to prevent unauthorized access. More than 20,000 doors have been checked so far, state officials said.

Lee plans no new limits on firearms

Lee’s plan would continue Tennessee’s emphasis on fortifying its school campuses rather than reducing its number of firearms.

Despite having one of the nation’s highest rates of gun deaths, the state has enacted numerous laws under Lee’s leadership to loosen requirements for gun ownership. In 2021, he signed a law allowing most Tennesseans 21 and older to carry handguns without first clearing a background check, obtaining a permit, or getting trained on firearms safety.

This year, however, the governor’s administration is opposing several new bills from Republican lawmakers who want to loosen those regulations even further.

The new safety legislation fulfills a promise Lee made at his state address last month. “We’ve done a lot to make schools safer,” he said, “but I don’t want to look up months from now and think we should’ve done more.”

His proposal, outlined in a 14-page amendment, would require schools to keep all external doors locked when students are present and to limit access through one secure, primary entrance.

The legislation authorizes state and local law enforcement officers to inspect doors — and requires immediate actions to address any infractions. Written notifications describing violations must be sent within 24 hours to the school’s administrators, district leaders, the parent-teacher organization, and state officials in the departments of education and safety.

Tennessee schools are required to limit access to one secure, primary entrance.

If a campus does not have a law enforcement officer on site and violates the locked door requirements two or more times in a school year, local school officials would have to post a full-time officer there within 30 days of receiving notice and undertake a corrective action plan. If they do not comply, the legislation directs Tennessee’s education commissioner to withhold 2% of its annual state funds, escalating by 2% for each subsequent violation, up to 10%.

A campus that has a full-time officer faces similar financial penalties for its district or charter organization if it violates the locked door requirements.

“To be clear, the purpose of this proposal is to help schools resolve any security flaws and ensure students and teachers are safe,” said Jade Byers, the governor’s press secretary, in a statement to Chalkbeat on Wednesday. “School funding will only be temporarily withheld while the (district) takes corrective action to resolve the issue.”

School officials want a less punitive approach

Tennessee school leaders have lauded the governor’s prioritization of school safety and, in recent years, taken advantage of millions of dollars in state grants to upgrade building security and hire law enforcement for their campuses. For instance, a grant program championed by the governor in 2019 placed more than 200 SROs in schools.

But they say that more money is needed to hire more officers — and that the governor’s proposal doesn’t address their staffing challenges.

According to the state’s most recent school safety report, for the 2021-22 school year, fewer than 1,300 of the state’s 1,800-plus schools had a trained school resource officer, or SRO, on site.

“The attention and focus on keeping our schools safe is appreciated, but financial penalties will not help add the security measures needed,” said Dale Lynch, executive director of the state superintendents organization, which has lobbied for enough funding so every Tennessee school has an SRO.

Money isn’t the only challenge that districts face, according to Mike Winstead, director of Maryville City Schools, near Knoxville.

“One of the punishments under this bill is that you might have to hire an SRO within 30 days, but that’s easier said than done,” he said. “Many districts across our state have tried to secure SROs from their local police departments, but there’s a shortage of personnel. Police are losing a lot of officers to the federal government, where they can triple their salary.”

Lee also proposes to add annual drills — without students present — for emergency bus safety, and also to prepare school staff and law enforcement agencies on what to expect in an emergency situation at a school.

State law already requires schools to conduct periodic fire drills and annual armed-intruder drills, plus three additional annual drills to prepare for potential emergencies such as an earthquake or tornado.

Altogether, the legislation serves as “an additional meaningful step to secure schools and further enhance school safety,” said Byers, the governor’s spokeswoman.

But striking the right balance between school safety and educational climate is also a concern, says Winstead, a 2018 finalist for national superintendent of the year.

“We want our schools to be friendly and welcoming to students and their families,” said Winstead, “and we don’t want to make our kids feel like they’re going to school in a prison.”

He says collaborative working relationships between school officials and law enforcement are more productive than punitive ones. He’d also like to see more state investments to support student mental health beyond the governor’s $250 million student mental health trust fund, established in 2021 as an endowment to pay for future services.

“Drills are important, SROs are important,” said Winstead, “but the most important thing we can do is foster strong relationships between students and adults.”

You can track the bill’s progress on the legislature’s website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tenn. legislative leader wants to widen reading test criteria for determining third-grade retention

2023-03-07T11:00:00+00:00

A leading House Republican has filed legislation in Tennessee to widen criteria for determining which third graders are at risk of being held back if they aren’t deemed proficient readers.

A 2021 law pins the entire decision on scores from the state’s annual TCAP test given each spring for English language arts. But a proposal filed Monday by Rep. Mark White would consider results from a second state-approved test, too.

Under White’s legislation, third graders who don’t score as proficient on their TCAP could still avoid retention and related learning interventions if they score in at least the 50th percentile on their most recent reading benchmark test. Districts give those assessments periodically throughout the school year to measure students’ reading skills, fluency, and comprehension.

White is seeking to satisfy educators and parents who are unhappy that the state’s new retention policy hinges on scores from a single state test that could impact tens of thousands of third graders this year. However, his proposal would not give authority back to local educators to make the final decision, as called for by numerous school boards, the state superintendents association, and several teacher groups.

At the outset of this year’s General Assembly, legislative leaders said revisiting the controversial reading and retention law was their No. 1 education priority. Lawmakers have filed a flurry of bills with various ideas.

White’s legislation includes components from several of those bills but carries particular sway, because the Memphis Republican chairs the House Education Administration Committee and also sits on a K-12 subcommittee that is deciding which proposal moves forward. The Senate, where Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg is co-sponsoring White’s bill, is letting the House take the lead on vetting any proposed revisions.

After holding a legislative hearing last month on Tennessee’s reading problem, White huddled in recent days with other House GOP leaders to try to reach a consensus on how to address local concerns about the controversial law, which Republican Gov. Bill Lee pushed for as a key part of Tennessee’s pandemic learning recovery plan.

The law also created summer learning camps and tutoring programs to support students who are struggling in reading and math and to provide avenues to avoid retention if they don’t test as proficient readers in the third grade, which is considered a critical marker for learning in subsequent grades.

The K-12 subcommittee, chaired by Republican Rep. Kirk Haston, from Lobelville, is scheduled to discuss the various bills on March 14.

In addition to adding benchmark test results to the retention equation, White’s legislation seeks to make clear that a parent or guardian can appeal a retention decision under certain circumstances, or give written permission for their child’s teacher, guidance counselor, or school administrator to file an appeal.

White also proposes a new requirement that any public school student held back in kindergarten, first grade, or second grade be assigned a tutor and undergo tutoring for the entire next school year.

You can read White’s amendment below.

Bill to clarify Tennessee school library law would exempt classroom book collections from scrutiny

2023-03-01T00:34:44+00:00

When Tennessee enacted a 2022 law requiring each public school to publish a list of its library books online for parents to see, many educators were surprised later when state officials said the law applies to teachers’ classroom book collections, too.

Now two Democratic lawmakers have proposed legislation to clarify that Gov. Bill Lee’s Age-Appropriate Materials Act was intended to scrutinize books in traditional school libraries, not collections that teachers keep in their classrooms to encourage reading.

The goal of the proposal, says Sen. Jeff Yarbro, is to shield teachers from having to spend their personal time cataloging their classroom collections, which often include hundreds of books. It’s a task that Yarbro views as burdensome and unnecessary — and which he worries could backfire if exasperated teachers opt to box up their books and take them home to avoid the hassle.

“I am hopeful we can work with folks on both sides of the aisle to remove this absurd burden from our teachers,” said the Nashville lawmaker, who is scheduled to bring his bill before the Senate Education Committee on March 8.

Teachers who are trained to teach children to read should be trusted to provide high-quality, age-appropriate books in their classrooms, Yarbro said.

That’s the way that Alice Irvin sees it, too. A second-grade teacher in Franklin, south of Nashville, she’s taught for 30 years, holds a master’s degree in early childhood education, participates in continuing education, and gets evaluated annually by her district.

“As a highly trained teacher, I find this law insulting,” said Irvin, who has 1,300 titles in her classroom collection. “My library center is the heart of my classroom. Over the years, I’ve purchased hundreds of high-quality children’s books for it.”

Governor called for greater transparency in school libraries

When Tennessee’s Republican governor proposed a review of school library books for age-appropriateness during his 2022 state address, he said the purpose was to “ensure parents know what materials are available to students in their libraries.”

But after the GOP-controlled legislature approved Lee’s proposal, a subsequent memo from the state education department’s attorney said a school library also includes “materials maintained in a teacher’s classroom.”

The law’s expanded scope, announced as the new school year was starting, surprised even lawmakers who had debated the measure just months earlier.

“I serve on several House education committees and don’t recall classroom book collections ever being brought up during our discussions about this bill,” said Rep. Sam McKenzie, a Democrat from Knoxville.

Yarbro said he hopes the department’s decision to interpret the law broadly was not “politically tainted” by recent Tennessee laws that aim to restrict what teachers can teach and students can read, especially related to race and gender.

Sen. Jeff Yarbro is co-sponsoring a bill that would exempt classroom book collections from Tennessee’s 2022 school library law.

Through his bill, co-sponsored by Rep. Darren Jernigan of Old Hickory, he also wants to preempt the challenges of complying with and enforcing the law as it relates to classroom book collections.

“Our early childhood teachers have a hard enough job without the state legislature putting up a bunch of hoops for them to jump through,” Yarbro said. “We’re seeking a common sense solution so that teachers aren’t put in the position of potentially running into legal or compliance issues every time they bring a new book to their classroom.”

“That would just be dumb,” he added.

School leaders have been working on compliance

Last fall, Hamilton County Schools and Murfreesboro City Schools were among several districts that directed teachers to begin cataloging their book collections right away so that schools could publish those lists early in the school year. But most districts spent several months studying the issue and exploring digital tools to help teachers create their inventories.

Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools sent guidance over winter break directing teachers to use an online platform called Libib to catalog and publish their lists of classroom library materials by the end of the school year.

“We have not asked any teachers to remove or prohibit access to classroom materials while the cataloging process is ongoing,” said district spokesman Sean Braisted.

Knox County Schools sought feedback from its educators before developing a cataloging app and a process to streamline publication of book lists, with some help from the district’s educational assistants, said spokeswoman Carly Harrington. “We expect cataloging will be completed by March 10, prior to leaving for spring break,” she added.

Other districts, like Irvin’s in Franklin, purchased a scanning app for iPads and used classroom aides to scan books for teachers beginning in January.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools did not respond to multiple requests from Chalkbeat for information about its compliance plan for classroom book collections.

Many teachers and parents haven’t been happy with the process.

“I spent half of my day scanning my library and sorting the books and a good chunk are gone due to them not scanning, being older, etc.,” wrote Natalie Vadas, a special education English teacher at Nashville’s Murrell School, in a Feb. 20 tweet. “How sad that THIS is how we have to spend our time.”

Leslie Wallace said her 8-year-old son came home upset in January when his Knox County teacher announced that students might have to start bringing their own reading books to school because of a new law.

“He loves to read and he said, ‘Mom, if they want us to learn how to read, why are they taking our books away?’” Wallace recounted to Chalkbeat.

“It was a good question,” she said.

To track the legislation, visit the General Assembly’s website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Private school voucher and charter-friendly bills sail through Tennessee Senate

2023-02-28T01:34:39+00:00

The Tennessee Senate on Monday approved two Republican-sponsored bills that would expand and clarify eligibility for students to receive private school vouchers or enroll in charter schools.

Both measures passed 27-5 along partisan lines and now await action in House committees.

Sen. Jon Lundsberg, of Bristol, sponsored the bill to expand eligibility for Gov. Bill Lee’s education savings account program to students who attended private or home schools during the last three school years. The current law says a student must move directly from a public to private school to be eligible for the program, which launched last fall in Memphis and Nashville.

A second bill, sponsored by Sen. Todd Gardenhire of Chattanooga and Rep. Charlie Baum of Murfreesboro, would cap enrollment at charter schools — which are publicly funded but independently operated — at 25% for students who live outside the school district that authorized the charter. The House is scheduled to take up that bill on Tuesday in its K-12 subcommittee.

Meanwhile, House Speaker Cameron Sexton filed legislation that would let the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission approve charter schools to serve home school students, as well as residential boarding schools that are charters. Those charter applicants could apply directly to the state-appointed commission for authorization, without having to go through local school boards.

All measures seek to continue the Republican governor’s push to expand education choices for families. But critics say vouchers and charter schools are vehicles to privatize education at the expense of traditional public schools, which operate under stricter regulations, provide more transparency through their locally elected school boards, and serve the bulk of students who are disadvantaged or have special needs.

Under the education savings account bill, co-sponsored by Rep. Chris Todd of Madison County, voucher eligibility would be extended to students who did not complete a full year in public school after 2019, when the legislature approved the voucher law.

“The reason we’re doing this is because that legislation was locked up in the courts for a couple of years,” Lundberg said about ongoing litigation that halted the voucher program’s planned 2020 launch before a 2022 Tennessee Supreme Court ruling upheld the law.

Last week, Lundberg told the Senate Education Committee the change would open eligibility to many students who have applied to receive education savings accounts but were denied because they weren’t moving directly from public to private schools. So far, the state has approved 643 out of 1,273 applications, he said.

The voucher program, which provides taxpayer money for families to use toward private school tuition, is open to students in Memphis and Nashville but could be expanded to Chattanooga-based Hamilton County Schools under legislation approved by the Senate last week. That bill is scheduled for its first vote in a House subcommittee on Tuesday.

The charter school bill approved on Monday is backed by the Tennessee Charter School Center, an advocacy organization funded by pro-charter groups.

Currently in Tennessee, it’s generally up to the local school district that authorizes a charter school, as well as the governing body that oversees that charter school, to determine how many out-of-district students can enroll.

Gardenhire said his bill seeks to address confusion around those policies with a state law that would cap out-of-district enrollment at 25%, and give priority to students from within the school district.

Sen. Jeff Yarbro, who voted against Gardenhire’s bill, said local school districts should be able to control enrollment policies for the charter schools that they authorize.

“If they’re making that decision for the public schools in their district, that same policy ought to apply to the charter schools in the district,” said the Nashville Democrat. “I think that ought to be a uniform policy.”

Elizabeth Fiveash, chief policy officer for the Tennessee Charter School Center, testified last week that out-of-district student enrollment in charter schools isn’t an issue in the four cities that have charter schools. However, it could be in the future as the state’s charter sector expands.

She told members of the Senate Education Committee that charter schools statewide have a waiting list of over 10,000 students, most of whom come from within the authorizing district.

“This is not an issue that’s currently happening,” Fiveash said, “but we’re trying to make sure it’s clear going forward.”

Sexton’s legislation, which is co-sponsored by Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, would mark a significant expansion of Tennessee charter school law.

Under the proposal, the state could authorize charter schools to enroll homeschooled students from within any school district in Tennessee. Those schools would be required to provide classroom instruction at least three days per week, while parents providing instruction the other two days could use remote instruction provided by the charter school.

Lundberg and Rep. Mark White of Memphis, who chair education committees for their respective chambers, have signed on as co-sponsors.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with information about Sexton’s charter school legislation.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee looks to ‘Mississippi miracle’ as it grapples with stagnant reading scores

2023-03-01T17:29:52+00:00

Tennessee, which once counted on Mississippi’s worst-in-the-nation reading scores to elevate its own national ranking for literacy, is now looking to its neighbor to the south as a role model for how to improve.

In a turnaround dubbed the “Mississippi miracle,” the state saw its fourth-grade reading scores on a national test rise dramatically between 2013 and 2019, even for historically marginalized groups like Black and Hispanic students. Mississippi also maintained its reading gains in 2022, while scores in most other states declined after the pandemic caused unprecedented disruptions to schooling.

Now under several 2021 laws, Tennessee is employing many of the same tactics that Mississippi did under its 2013 law. Among them: prioritizing reading improvements and investments in grades K-3, training teachers on the “science of reading,” including an emphasis on phonics, and — most controversial of all — requiring third graders to pass a state reading test to get promoted to the fourth grade.

Carey Wright, Mississippi’s education chief from 2013 to 2022, praised Tennessee during testimony Wednesday before state lawmakers in Nashville who are considering whether to make changes to Tennessee’s policies for holding third graders back.

“You are really to be commended for the comprehensive nature in which you’ve approached this topic,” she said, noting that Tennessee has even required its teacher training programs to change how they teach reading instruction, which Mississippi did not.

Wright cited a recent Boston University study finding that Mississippi third-graders who were retained under that state’s law went on to achieve substantially higher scores in English language arts by the sixth grade. The study also found that retention had no impact on other outcomes such as attendance or identification for special education.

But national research about retention is mixed. Critics argue that there are more risks than benefits — from negative social and emotional effects to a disproportionate impact on student groups who are already marginalized, such as those who come from low-income families, are of color, or have disabilities.

Why Tennessee zeroed in on third grade

Literacy is foundational to all subsequent learning, and third grade is considered a critical marker. As the old saying goes: You learn to read up until the third grade, and after that, you read to learn.

But for years, reading scores have been mostly stagnant in Tennessee, with only about a third of the state’s third graders showing proficiency based on state tests.

In 2011, lawmakers passed a retention law to try to address the problem, but the statute was largely unenforced, with few third graders being held back by local school leaders.

“So here we are 12 years later having the same discussion,” said Rep. Mark White, who chairs the House Education Administration Committee and helped pass the state’s new reading and retention policies.

“I personally am grateful that we passed a retention law … because now we have everybody’s attention,” the Memphis Republican said to kick off Wednesday’s hearing.

House leaders have compiled a list of 14 bills that aim to revise or tweak the law. They range from gutting the retention provision altogether to giving local districts more authority to determine which students should be held back. Gov. Bill Lee pressed for the 2021 law and wants to stay the course.

To avoid retention, the law says third graders whose scores on state tests show they are “approaching” proficiency must attend a summer camp and demonstrate “adequate growth” on a test administered at the camp’s end, or they must participate in a tutoring program in the fourth grade. Students who score “below” proficiency must participate in both intervention programs.

Third graders are exempt from retention if they were held back in a previous grade; have or may have a disability that affects reading; are English language learners with less than two years of English instruction; or retest as proficient before the beginning of fourth grade.

Parents also can appeal a retention decision if their child performed at the 40th percentile on a different test that allows for comparisons with national benchmarks, or if the child experienced an event that reasonably impacted the child’s performance on the TCAP test. The appeal can be based on other criteria such as results from locally administered screening tests required by the state.

Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn has shepherded Gov. Bill Lee’s reading improvement plan including Reading 360, an array of programs to train teachers on reading instruction, provide more resources and mentoring networks to school districts, and support families to help their children read better.

Pushback against retention is widespread

While Tennessee’s tutoring and summer learning programs are popular, many parents and educators dislike the part of the law that makes results of the state’s standardized TCAP test for English language arts the only criterion to determine whether third-graders can progress to the fourth grade. Numerous school boards also have passed resolutions urging the legislature to revisit the new retention policy.

On Wednesday, several district superintendents echoed that call.

“I respectfully ask that you allow districts to use multiple data points when making the monumental decision to retain a student, which can have serious long-term consequences,” said Gary Lilly, director of Collierville Schools in Shelby County.

Beyond the state’s test, school districts generally give students multiple assessments that are specifically designed to gauge reading progress. All of those results could be considered, Lilly said, along with other factors such as a student’s overall achievement, attendance record, and emotional and social maturity.

Lilly noted that Tennessee also has among the nation’s highest thresholds for measuring proficiency. The state began working to raise them when a 2007 U.S. Chamber of Commerce report gave Tennessee an “F” for truth in advertising, because its standards were so low that most students were deemed proficient.

But Lilly suggested that Tennessee may want to rethink those high thresholds.

“I am not advocating to decrease the rigor of our standards,” he said. “What I am saying is that the TCAP test should not be viewed as the definitive authority to target students for retention.”

Another concern is the state’s one-year timeline for implementing the new retention policy at scale, affecting third graders who score either “approaching” proficiency or “below basic.” Some district leaders have argued that starting just with the students who score “below basic,” which is Tennessee’s lowest-performing category, would be a more targeted and logistically feasible approach.

Jeanne Barker, director of Lenoir City Schools, said her district won’t receive TCAP results until after the school year ends, leaving little time for students to take the test over or for families to decide about attending summer learning camps or appealing retention decisions to the state education department.

Penny Schwinn, Tennessee’s education commissioner, acknowledged the “tight timeline” but testified that no parent should be surprised by the end of the school year if their child is identified as having a reading deficiency.

“Parents should be receiving notification that their child may be at risk for needing additional supports two times before we even get into testing season,” said Schwinn, adding that preliminary TCAP results will become available the week of May 19.

Advocates look beyond third grade

Policy conversations that began with third grade reading continue to gravitate toward earlier grades.

Wright said Mississippi’s playbook emphasized the importance of literacy instruction and interventions for struggling readers as early as possible.

“My goal was that, by the time third grade came around, there shouldn’t even be an issue around third grade,” she said. “We should have captured those kids a long time ago and made sure that they were getting the interventions and the help that they needed.”

Tennessee education advocates shared similar sentiments.

Nancy Dishner, president and CEO of the Niswonger Foundation supporting students and educators in East Tennessee, said her biggest concern about Tennessee’s current initiative is that “we’re not doing it early enough.”

“We have to move back,” Dishner said. “Birth is when we need to start helping our kids, not when they enter elementary school.”

Amy Doren, a 35-year educator and former coordinator of early childhood programs at Kingsport City Schools, agreed.

“Children’s brains develop 90% to capacity by age 5. So why would we not seek to make an impact in those early years?” Doren asked. “That’s where we want our children to learn to be problem-solvers and critical thinkers, so that when they get to the third grade, they’ll be ready to handle it.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated on March 1, 2023, to add that parents can appeal a retention decision based on the results of locally administered, state-required screening tests; and to clarify that the one-year timeline for implementing the third-grade retention policy “at scale” refers to potentially holding back students in two scoring categories, versus starting just with the lowest-performing category.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee is talking about rejecting federal education funding. What would that mean for kids?

2023-02-16T11:00:00+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Subscribe to our free Tennessee newsletter to keep up with the Shelby County public school system and state education policy.

When House Speaker Cameron Sexton recently floated the idea of Tennessee rejecting U.S. education dollars to free its schools from federal rules and restrictions, he made the pivot sound as simple as making up the difference with $1.8 billion in state funds.

“I don’t think the legislation would be too hard to do,” he said last week after publicly declaring his desire to “do things the Tennessee way” at a Tennessee Farm Bureau reception on Feb. 7.

But the way federal funding works is pretty complex. Some districts and schools are more dependent than others on that money, which is directed to schools that serve disadvantaged students and programs that target certain needs ranging from rural education and English language learners to technology and charter schools. A related web of state and federal laws and policies created in response to the federal grants also likely would have to be unwound.

Sexton told Chalkbeat he’s working on legislation to “start a conversation” about the possibilities. And once filed, his written proposal might answer some of the many questions that Tennesseans are asking about what such a change would mean for kids and schools.

But for now, here are a few answers, along with more questions to ponder:

Is the proposal in Tennessee serious?

While a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Education dismissed Sexton’s comments as “political posturing,” the House speaker said he’s dead serious.

“I absolutely think we should do it,” Sexton told Chalkbeat.

Sexton noted that, based on the latest budget information, Tennessee could tap into $3.2 billion in new recurring revenues, which would more than cover any lost federal funds for education.

“Now is the time to look at it,” said Sexton, who as House speaker is one of the state’s most influential Republicans. “It doesn’t mean that you do it this year or you have to do it in the next six months, but it starts with the idea.”

Spokespeople for Republican Gov. Bill Lee and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally expressed openness to Sexton’s proposal, while several education leaders in Tennessee’s GOP-controlled legislature expressed outright enthusiasm.

“I would do everything in my power to pass that bill,” said Rep. Scott Cepicky, of Culleoka, who chairs a House education subcommittee and said he “wants Tennessee to have more autonomy when it comes to educating our kids.”

“It’s intriguing,” added Rep. Debra Moody, of Covington, chair of the House Education Instruction Committee. “I think my constituents at home would love it.”

Others were more reserved in their comments.

“It’s a thought-provoking idea, but I’d like to see details,” said Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg, of Bristol. “I have questions about what federal strings would be removed and, more importantly, do those strings need removing? Right now, I don’t know.”

Can Tennessee say ‘no’ to federal money?

Probably. No state has rejected the funding so far, mainly because states typically need the money, which on average makes up about a tenth of their budgets for K-12 education.

But Republican leaders in other states have talked about the idea before, and Oklahoma lawmakers are currently considering legislation to phase out federal funding over 10 years for pre-K through 12th grade. A smattering of small school systems across the nation already have passed on federal money because of the cost of compliance.

“States do not have to accept federal funding at first glance,” said Matthew Patrick Shaw, assistant professor of law, public policy and education at Vanderbilt University. “These are carrot-stick programs in which the federal government has policy objectives and, in order to encourage states to go along with them, offers money that they believe states need to operate these programs.”

Would the change disrupt finances for students and schools across Tennessee?

Possibly, but a lot would depend on how it’s done.

Through a program known as Title I, the federal government distributes hundreds of millions of federal dollars to Tennessee schools that serve large concentrations of students from low-income homes to help improve achievement. If Tennessee replaced Title I funding with state money, would it still use the federal formula for distributing that money? Sexton hasn’t said.

The same question applies to federal funds that go to Title III programs to support English language learners, or for Title V programs to support rural education.

Sexton says Tennessee would still cover the costs of all of those programs, as well as free meals funded through assorted grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

But in Memphis-Shelby County Schools, where all but eight of the system’s 155 district-run schools have Title I designations, some officials aren’t convinced about the stability of state funding.

“If Tennessee decided to do it our way, what does ‘our way’ look like?” asked school board member Amber Huett-Garcia, whose district expects to receive more than $892 million in federal funding next year.

“Would it achieve equity? Would Memphis continue to receive the share that it currently gets?” she continued.

What federal strings does Sexton want to cut?

Testing is the main problem, according to Sexton.

“I don’t think the TCAP test measures much of anything, and I think teachers would tell you that you’re teaching to a test,” said Sexton about the state’s annual test under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program.

States that take federal money must give annual assessments in reading and math in grades 3-8 and once in high school. They also are required to administer a science test one time each in elementary, middle and high school grades. Thus, each state must give 17 tests annually, though no individual student takes more than three of those tests in a given school year.

Sexton said Tennessee could scrap TCAP — which Tennessee developed through its testing companies to align with the state’s academic standards — and create a better test with the help of its educators.

But several education advocates note that states already have more flexibility than ever to develop their testing, evaluation, and accountability systems under a 2015 federal law crafted with the leadership of former U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee.

“When shepherding the Every Student Succeeds Act, Sen. Alexander was laser-focused on Tennessee and what Tennessee would need to be successful,” said Sasha Pudelski, national advocacy director for the School Superintendents Association.

States receiving Title I funds also must participate in national tests of fourth- and eighth-grade students in reading and math every two years. Known as the nation’s report card, the National Assessment of Educational Progress allows comparisons across states and is an important marker for showing how students are doing over time.

Lundberg, a key education leader in the Senate, said such testing data is important for Tennessee.

“I want to make certain that we’re able to continue comparing Tennessee to Montana or California or Michigan,” he said. “If we really want to be No. 1 in the nation in education, we need to be able to measure apples to apples across states.”

Incidentally, the TCAP exam that Sexton wants to scrap is the same standardized test that a 2021 Republican-backed reading law uses as the only criterion to determine whether third-graders can progress to the fourth grade. Lawmakers have filed numerous bills this year to address concerns about the retention policy, which kicks in with this year’s class of third graders.

What other federal mandates are considered burdensome?

Few would dispute that accepting federal funding comes with a lot of red tape. Mounds of paperwork and numerous audits of how money is spent are all part of a huge bureaucratic infrastructure that comes with administering billions of dollars of federal funding.

But Sexton, who said there are “a gazillion restrictions” he doesn’t like, did not enumerate other burdens beyond testing, despite Chalkbeat’s multiple requests to his office for a list.

Marguerite Roza, a Georgetown University professor who researches education finance policy, said she suspects the bigger objections are related to current “culture wars” about curriculum and whether transgender students should be allowed to use school bathrooms or play sports consistent with their gender identity, which may not correspond with their sex assigned at birth.

“Those strings come from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights,” Roza said.

Civil rights enforcement is the mission of that office based on the passage of federal laws such as Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of education amendments passed in 1972, and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which prohibit discrimination based on race, sex, and disability.

And Tennessee has been at the forefront of culture war legislation. It passed more laws in 2021 aimed at limiting the rights of transgender people than any other state in the nation, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.

The state also has passed laws in recent years to prohibit the teaching of certain concepts related to race and sex in classrooms and to allow an appointed state panel to ban certain school library books statewide if members deem them inappropriate for the ages of students who can access them.

If Tennessee rejects federal funds, would the state still have to ensure students’ civil rights protections under federal laws, including for students with disabilities?

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, is a federal funding statute that says schools must identify students with disabilities and provide them with a free and appropriate public education tailored to their needs. But generally speaking, legal experts say, those requirements apply only to states that accept IDEA funds.

“If I were a parent of a child with a disability, this would be a major concern,” said Gini Pupo-Walker, state director for The Education Trust in Tennessee. “Would my child’s rights and needs be protected without the federal funding and oversight?”

Sexton says the state would still fund services that are currently part of IDEA and would come up with a similar program that he believes could be better.

But the Tennessee Disability Coalition says there’s no assurance that a Tennessee version would give families the same or better protections than under IDEA or other federal laws designed to protect students with disabilities.

“It’s hard for the disability community to trust Tennessee when our state’s track record hasn’t been so great,” said Jeff Strand, the coalition’s government affairs coordinator. “Our state institutions for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities have a long history of abuses, and we continue to see a troubling pattern of actions such as our state’s choice not to accept federal funding to expand Medicaid services.”

Gov. Bill Lee speaks to advocates for people with disabilities gathered at the Tennessee State Capitol on Feb. 4, 2020.

Another concern is where families could appeal when the system isn’t working for their students. Under IDEA, they can call for a meeting at school to speak with teachers, administrators, and case managers. If they’re not satisfied, they can appeal all the way up to the Office of Civil Rights. Dozens of disability-related cases in Tennessee schools are currently being investigated by that federal office, which has the power to take away funding from states or schools that don’t follow the law.

“It’s already tough to live with a disability in Tennessee,” said Strand. “A change like this would cloud a specific longstanding avenue that ensures that the rights of students with disabilities are being protected. And it clouds it for no good reason.”

Beyond IDEA, federal civil rights laws are hard to unpack because some are also linked to receipt of federal funds, so it may depend on how state laws are structured.

The Office of Civil Rights also enforces Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, a civil rights statute which prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities, as well as Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, which extends this prohibition against discrimination to government services such as public schools, regardless of whether they receive any federal financial assistance.

Several legal experts believe many Tennessee families likely would turn to the courts over alleged violations of those laws based on the state constitution, which guarantees equal access to a system of free public education, or the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees equal protection under the law and due process of law.

“If you want to know how this change would affect children,” said Vanderbilt’s Shaw about the possibility of rejecting federal funds and restrictions, “there’s just a lot of uncertainty.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee private school voucher expansion bill clears first legislative hurdle

2023-02-09T00:49:59+00:00

A proposal that would expand eligibility for private school vouchers to students in a third large Tennessee school district passed easily out of its first legislative committee on Wednesday.

The Senate Education Committee voted 6-2 to advance a bill to bring the state’s education savings account program to Hamilton County Schools.

If the legislation becomes law, eligible families in the Chattanooga-based district, which has 44,000 students, could apply to receive taxpayer money to pay toward private school tuition next school year.

The program, pushed by Republican Gov. Bill Lee, launched this school year in Memphis and Nashville after the Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the 2019 voucher law last spring. Metro Nashville and Shelby County governments continue to challenge the law’s constitutionality and have appealed their case to the Tennessee Court of Appeals.

The expansion bill passed out of committee with little discussion.

Sen. Todd Gardenhire, a Chattanooga Republican sponsoring the measure, said his proposal “just adds Hamilton County to the ESA pilot program” and wouldn’t affect other counties or school districts.

But Senate Minority Leader Raumesh Akbari said it’s too soon to broaden a new state program that’s intended as a pilot to see if education savings accounts are effective.

“I don’t think there’s been enough time to even see if it will be successful,” said Akbari, a Memphis Democrat who voted “no” with Republican Sen. Joey Hensley of Hohenwald.

“I was opposed to it being piloted in Shelby County and in Davidson County as well,” Akbari added.

Sen. Rusty Crowe, a Republican from Johnson City, declined to vote.

The law directs the state comptroller to report on the program’s efficacy after its third year of enrolling students, which would be by Jan. 1, 2026.

As of Monday, the state education department had approved 643 applications to use vouchers, three-fifths of which are from families wanting to leave Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

You can track the bill on the state legislature’s website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Gov. Lee aims to raise minimum salary for Tennessee teachers to $50,000 by 2027

2023-02-07T11:00:00+00:00

Gov. Bill Lee announced Monday that he’ll propose legislation to increase the minimum salary for Tennessee teachers from $41,000 to $50,000 over the next four years.

If the proposal passes, the new base salary in the fall of 2027 would be up 42% from 2019, Lee’s first year in office, when the state’s minimum teacher pay was $35,000.

The Republican governor has sought to raise teacher compensation annually and said he wants $125 million more toward pay increases next school year.

He didn’t give details about his long-term pay proposal during his state address Monday night before a joint session of the Tennessee legislature. But his brief comments about teacher compensation prompted two standing ovations from lawmakers in a state that ranks toward the bottom in K-12 funding and where many teachers have to work 10 to 15 years to reach a salary of $50,000.

Lee’s education chief, Penny Schwinn, told Chalkbeat that a large jump in base pay would transform efforts to recruit educators to the profession — and retain them in subsequent years.

“This is a game changer in terms of how we talk about the profession, how we compensate the profession,” Schwinn said. “This is that retention component that is going to be critical.”

Raising base pay would have a “domino effect” on how more experienced teachers are paid, too, she said.

“You raise the minimum, which raises the midpoint, which raises the end-point salary. That’s what we see every year that we’ve raised the base salary by about a thousand dollars. You see a domino effect for all of the salary schedules statewide,” Schwinn said.

In conjunction with his address, Lee’s administration released his $55.6 billion proposed budget for next fiscal year, recommending that the state’s largest new investment — $3.3 billion worth — go to repair and build roads and bridges to address Tennessee’s decaying transportation infrastructure.

For education, he proposed adding $350 million to the $750 million in recurring funds already approved to launch the state’s new education funding formula, known as the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement, or TISA, which takes effect July 1. Signed into law last year, TISA will replace the state’s 30-year-old funding system and sets a base funding rate of $6,860 per pupil, then distributes additional money to support students who need the most help.

The governor asked the legislature to approve one-time funding of $20 million for school safety grants and nearly $30 million for a related school safety initiative to hire at least one Homeland Security special agent in each of the state’s 95 counties to work with local schools and law enforcement.

“We’ve done a lot to make schools safer, but I don’t want to look up months from now and think ‘we should’ve done more,’” said Lee, promising to prioritize school safety every year he’s in office.

He’s also asking for recurring new funding of nearly $61 million to extend summer learning camps across Tennessee and to expand eligibility from grades 4-8 currently to kindergarten through the ninth grade, plus $10 million to provide bus transportation to and from those camps.

Lee seeks more funds for charter commission

Lee used his annual address to tout both public schools and voucher programs that give parents taxpayer money to send their children to private schools. He introduced Vincent Hunter, principal at Whitehaven High School in Memphis, which has expanded dual enrollment, advanced placement, and foreign language course opportunities and boasts a graduation rate above 90%. He also introduced Nashville fourth-grader Natalia Serrano, who enrolled in Holy Rosary Academy through Tennessee’s education savings account program, which kicked off this school year.

“I have always believed that we should strive to have the best public school system in the country — and provide choices for parents,” Lee said.

But Lee made no mention of charter schools in this year’s address, after using the platform a year ago to endorse a “partnership” with Michigan’s Hillsdale College to open classical charter schools in Tennessee that align with his conservative ideology. That effort initially failed (although Hillsdale’s American Classical Education charter group is trying again and recently submitted applications to open schools with five Tennessee districts).

Lee’s spending plan, however, includes more than $1 million more in recurring funding to support the state’s new Charter School Commission and its growing portfolio of state-authorized charter schools.

In his speech and budget blueprint, the governor called for more support for new mothers, foster care, and crisis pregnancy centers. He proposed investing $193.5 million to bolster the state’s embattled children’s services agency, which has been under scrutiny for sweeping failures in overseeing Tennessee’s most vulnerable children.

“DCS caseworkers have an incredibly difficult job, and they deserve our support,” Lee said. “Last year, we provided two pay raises for caseworkers, and I intend to boost their pay again in this budget.”

Critics say Lee’s policy plans fall short

The governor’s teacher pay proposals drew cautious comments from the Tennessee Education Association, the state’s largest teachers organization, which noted that Alabama’s minimum starting salary for a teacher this year is $43,358.

“Tennessee has a long way to go to reach Gov. Lee’s goal of a starting salary of $50,000, but the state is well positioned to make this a reality sooner rather than later as we continue to record significant surpluses,” the group said in a statement.

For instance, Tennessee tax collections for the current fiscal year have been beating forecasts by hundreds of millions of dollars. And for the new fiscal year that begins in July, Lee proposes adding another $250 million to the state’s “rainy day” reserve fund, which is already at a record high.

Meanwhile, “teachers, like other Tennesseans, have been affected by inflation and rising costs in the family budget,” said TEA President Tanya Coats. “More can be done to improve the economics of being a professional teacher in our state.”

Outside the Tennessee Capitol earlier Monday, a small group of Nashville-area pastors called on the governor to pursue policies that benefit everyone, not just a select few people or special interest groups.

“There is nothing more beneficial to the common good than fully funded, high-quality public education,” said the Rev. Kevin Riggs, pastor of Franklin Community Church in Franklin.

Nashville-area pastors and faith leaders speak outside the Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville on Feb. 6, prior to Gov. Bill Lee’s 2023 state address.

Riggs criticized new state laws aimed at banning books in classrooms and school libraries, holding back third graders if they don’t test as proficient in reading, and targeting LGBTQ students.

“These policies are failing our families,” he said. “We need to listen to teachers and principals and support the work of our public schools, making them stronger and our communities healthier.”

Over the weekend, House Minority Leader Karen Camper urged the governor to halt any policies that drain money from public schools, such as vouchers.

“Let’s invest in pre-K, smaller classroom sizes, and professional teachers who are preparing our children, not just for this decade, but for those beyond our lifetimes,” said the Memphis Democrat, in her party’s “prebuttal speech.”

“We must guard against the expansion of policies that result in the re-segregation of schools,” Camper continued. “If we ignore our past, we insult the struggles of so many heroes like Ruby Bridges, the Memphis 13, and Clinton 12, who passed down progress and inclusion in every generation since.

Tennessee lawmakers will begin reviewing the governor’s budget this week in their finance committees. The legislature must approve a final budget before recessing for the year this spring.

You can read the governor’s full address here

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Concern over Tennessee’s third grade reading and retention law prompts flurry of bills

2023-02-03T19:23:09+00:00

Lawmakers have filed at least 18 proposals to try to address concerns about a new Tennessee reading law that could force tens of thousands of third-graders to attend summer school this year to avoid being held back.

Several bills would gut the retention provision altogether, while others would keep the law mostly intact but extend related state-funded summer and after-school programs beyond this year.

Some measures would give authority back to local school districts instead of the state to determine which students should be retained. Others would add measures beyond Tennessee’s annual test for making such a decision. And one proposal would establish a new reading and retention checkpoint even earlier than third grade — making students who are finishing kindergarten take a reading test to determine whether they are ready for the first grade.

All are in response to a controversial law that passed in 2021 during a weeklong special legislative session called by Gov. Bill Lee to address learning disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The same law created summer learning recovery camps that began that year and tutoring programs that started in 2022.

The interventions have proven popular to help students catch up from the pandemic, but the law’s retention provision — which kicks in with this year’s class of third-graders — has sparked pushback and even outrage.

“It’s upsetting, because it feels like they’re punishing our children,” said Leslie Wallace, whose 8-year-old son is in third grade in Knox County Schools. “At this age, a child is going to be extremely discouraged if they’re held back, especially if they started kindergarten during the pandemic.”

The Republican governor pushed for and has stuck by the law, including the aggressive retention policy, which could hold back third graders who aren’t deemed proficient readers based on state TCAP tests administered each spring.

“If you really care about a child’s future, the last thing you should do is push them past the third grade if they can’t read,” Lee told Chalkbeat last fall before easily winning a second term in office.

But now many lawmakers in the GOP-controlled legislature want to take a closer look at the law’s far-reaching implications for third graders, their families, and schools.

“I’m not saying you should never retain a child,” said Rep. Gloria Johnson, a Knoxville Democrat and retired teacher who voted against the law. “But the decision should be made student by student, by their teachers and parents — not because of sweeping legislation that’s based on a single test score.”

Legislators drew a line in the sand

Third grade is considered a critical year for reading because literacy is foundational to all subsequent learning. But reading scores have been mostly stagnant in Tennessee, with only about a third of the state’s third graders meeting the law’s high threshold for proficiency based on state tests.

In 2011, lawmakers passed a retention law to try to address the problem, but the statute was largely unenforced, with few third graders being held back by local school leaders. That set the stage for the 2021 retention provision that, starting this school year, requires third graders to get extra help if they don’t show proficiency on their TCAP test for English language arts.

Backers of the new policy say the law might not be perfect, but they also worry that many Tennesseans don’t fully understand it.

“This was never about ‘fail one test and you’re automatically retained,’” said Rep. Kirk Haston, a Republican who is a teacher, coach, and health education administrator in Perry County. “It’s more about reading identification and providing a lot of supports for students who need help.”

The law says students whose scores on state tests show they are “approaching” proficiency must attend a summer camp and demonstrate “adequate growth” on a test administered at the camp’s end, or they must participate in a tutoring program in the fourth grade. Students who score “below” proficiency must participate in both intervention programs.

Third graders are exempt from retention if they were retained in a previous grade; have or may have a disability that affects reading; are English language learners with less than two years of English instruction; or retest as proficient before the beginning of fourth grade.

Numerous school boards across Tennessee have passed resolutions calling for revisions, though. Among other things, they’ve urged the legislature to let local educators make retention decisions, without giving final authority to the state. And they’ve noted that TCAP is not a reading diagnostic test and, therefore, isn’t the best measure of a student’s reading ability.

But should the line be drawn earlier?

It’s little wonder that the retention rule is controversial — because research is mixed, and holding students back is a controversial policy decision in education.

Supporters say having students repeat a grade can spur additional supports that struggling readers desperately need, and that those academic interventions matter, especially in the early grades.

Critics worry that retention falls disproportionately on student groups who are already marginalized, such as those who have disabilities, are economically disadvantaged, or are of color.

Most research suggests that retention has, on average, null or negative effects on students, and that it’s also linked strongly to dropping out of high school.

The best time to intervene in a student’s progression in school is also under discussion in Tennessee. Increasingly, lawmakers and education advocates are recognizing the importance of also providing interventions for struggling students in kindergarten, first, and second grades — instead of zeroing in on third grade.

That’s where discussion veered this week in a House education subcommittee chaired by Rep. Scott Cepicky, a Republican from Maury County, during an exchange with Reginald Nash, a former Memphis kindergarten teacher who now works for The Education Trust in Tennessee to advocate for education equity.

“The General Assembly should consider revising the law to permit students at risk of retention who opt into reading and tutoring at the beginning of third grade, as opposed to after it, and as early as kindergarten, to be promoted,” Nash told lawmakers. “This approach could possibly be easier to implement, requires less bureaucracy to track, and proactively gets more students into reading tutoring before and during third grade.”

Cepicky, who is co-sponsoring a bill that could delay kindergarten entry for many children and add another retention gate before kindergarten, clearly liked the idea of programs and policies directed toward students before they fall too far behind.

“We have to do something in early education to change the dynamic that we have right now,” he said. “We can’t keep going with the status quo.”

Legislators must sort through revision bills

Before the 113th General Assembly convened last month, revisiting third-grade retention topped most lawmakers’ list of education priorities this year based on feedback from constituents.

The large number of proposals filed by this week’s bill-filing deadlines bore that out as Republican leaders shared their plans for sorting through the barrage of legislation.

Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg said Thursday he’ll let the House take the lead in vetting the proposals, with hopes of eventually bringing a consolidated bill before his panel.

In the House, the first focused look is set for Feb. 14, when all of the bills are laid out before an education subcommittee chaired by Haston.

“We’re just trying to get organized,” said Haston, who added that he doesn’t expect votes for several weeks. “We want to get everything on one calendar to see the lay of the land.”

As part of the process, Rep. Mark White, who chairs the full House Education Administration Committee, has scheduled a Feb. 22 hearing to discuss early childhood literacy. Nine legislators are new to his 19-member committee, and White said he wants them to understand the big picture before voting on any potential revisions to the 2021 Learning Loss Remediation and Student Acceleration Act.

Among those testifying at the hearing, he said, will be a range of literacy experts, from third-grade teachers and school superintendents to Tennessee’s education chief, Penny Schwinn, and education officials in Mississippi, where students improved the most on national reading tests in 2019.

In the meantime, Tennessee schools have been sending out information and hosting meetings with parents of third grade students to inform them about what the law means for their child.

But many parents like Wallace, in Knoxville, are afraid.

“I appreciate the interventions being put in place, but I don’t appreciate the threat that my child could get held back if he doesn’t score high enough on a test,” she said. “I don’t feel like it’s a conducive environment for learning.”

The Education Trust has compiled a list that summarizes and analyzes each retention-related bill.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee lawmakers propose scholarship program to address child care ‘crisis’

2023-01-30T22:52:13+00:00

With the cost of quality child care often exceeding in-state tuition bills at Tennessee colleges, two lawmakers filed legislation Monday to create a state government program to offer child care scholarships to low- and middle-income families.

Dubbed Promising Futures, the program would use tax revenue from the state’s growing sports betting industry, most of which currently goes into a lottery education fund that supports the popular HOPE and Tennessee Promise college scholarships.

The bill comes after a 2022 study found that Tennessee businesses and taxpayers are losing $2.6 billion annually in earnings and revenue because parents have problems accessing child care.

Those numbers amount to a crisis, say state Sen. Becky Massey and Rep. Mark White, who are sponsoring the legislation.

“Working parents of young children struggle with child care affordability, quality, and access, which affect their ability to work,” said Massey, a Knoxville Republican. “In turn, many businesses are struggling to find employees.”

White believes that Promising Futures can do for early child care access what Tennessee Promise has done for higher education access. Under that groundbreaking initiative created in 2014 under former Gov. Bill Haslam’s administration, Tennessee became the first state to offer its high school graduates a chance at two years of tuition-free community or technical college.

Rep. Mark White, of Memphis, is co-sponsoring the Promising Futures bill with Sen. Becky Massey, of Knoxville.

“Promising Futures is just as important,” said White, a Memphis Republican who chairs a House education committee. “We can help our young families, support early childhood growth, and position our state on the front end to improve our literacy rate.”

Their bill would launch the program in mid-2024, for children through age 5 whose parents’ household income does not exceed the state’s median income (currently $67,708 for a two-person household, $79,719 for a family of three, and $88,095 for a family of four). Also eligible would be children who reside with a foster parent or legal guardian. The state education department would oversee the scholarships and pay funds directly to the program in which a child is enrolled.

The program would capitalize on rapid growth in tax revenue from the sports betting industry.

Tennessee legalized sports wagering in 2019 and collects 20% of the gaming industry’s adjusted gross revenues as a privilege tax. Of that, 80% currently goes to the lottery fund deployed primarily for higher education scholarships, 15% to the state to distribute to local governments, and 5% toward mental health programs.

The Promising Futures bill proposes starting the scholarship program in mid-2024 with 60% of the privilege tax revenue from sports wagering, increasing to 80% by mid-2025. Such a change might also require changes to how the remaining 20% gets allocated.

Other lawmakers have been eyeing that growing pot of money, too. Last year, Rep. David Hawk, of Greeneville, sponsored a bill that would have directed some sports betting tax revenues to local governments to help them deal with the skyrocking cost of school construction. But his measure stalled in committee.

Massey thinks now is a good time to redirect sports betting money toward child care and early education needs.

“The lottery fund has a good reserve, so it’s not going to jeopardize the money needed to (keep) Tennessee Promise a viable program,” she said.

At a legislative hearing earlier this month, Mary Beth Thomas, the executive director of Tennessee’s Sports Wagering Advisory Council, reported the state collected more than $68 million in sports betting privilege taxes in 2022, compared with $40.6 million a year earlier.

Promising Futures is backed by Tennesseans for Quality Early Education, or TQEE, which formed in 2016 to advocate for a strong education foundation from birth to third grade. The group, which has more than 30,000 members across Tennessee, launched a website and petition Monday seeking public support for the bill.

“Child care is crucial to early health and brain development. It’s really in all of our best interests to ensure those child care settings are high quality,” president and CEO Blair Taylor told Chalkbeat.

“With Promising Futures, we’ll not only be helping the workforce of today; we’ll be preparing the workforce of tomorrow,” she said.

TQEE conducted last year’s child care study with support from Zogby Analytics and economist Cleve Belfield. The survey of nearly 1,300 working parents with children under 6 found 80% reported employment disruptions due to inadequate child care. Of those, 26% quit or were fired, 32% turned down a job offer or promotion, and 30% reduced their work hours from full time to part time or were prevented from increasing their hours to full time. About 20% stopped seeking employment altogether.

You can track the bill’s progress on the state legislature’s website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.