Vouching Delusion

Last week, Governor Haslam gave his annual State of the State Address and, for a fleeting moment, it appeared that he was truly supporting public education. I certainly give him credit for saying all the right things and checking every box. Gov. Haslam supported fully-funding the Basic Education Program (BEP) Formula and giving public school teachers another raise--two things that all teachers staunchly support. He also unveiled a new initiative--the Reconnect Act--that will afford adults the same opportunity as high school students to attend a community college for free and earn a degree. All of these proposals, if successfully implemented, will be profoundly wonderful things for public education and business in this state.

Much like the Powerful Wizard of Oz, who turned out to not have any special powers at all, I skeptically wondered what was lurking behind that curtain. I didn’t have to wait long; the very next day, Rep. Bill Dunn (R-Knoxville) announced his plan to re-introduce nearly identical voucher legislation to what he sponsored last year, which Governor Haslam said he would sign if it passed through the Legislature. It’s dizzying trying to understand how a governor can simultaneously support Tennessee becoming “the fastest improving state in teacher pay” in the country and school voucher legislation that unscrupulously robs money from public schools and puts that money into the hands of businesses in the form of charter and private schools.

Last year’s voucher bill had unusually strong momentum, but it was stopped in its tracks by classroom teachers across the state, like myself. I called and e-mailed all of the members of the state house and senate education committees. A very small number--maybe three or four--actually called me back and wanted to learn more about why I oppose vouchers. While I’m proud to have played a role in defeating last year’s voucher bill, I resent having to play this political game every single year. A coalition lead by the Tennessee Education Association (TEA), the Tennessee School Board Association (TSBA), and the Tennessee Organization of School Superintendents (TOSS) made it clear that Tennessee’s educators are unified in their view that vouchers will destroy our surging education system.

It’s noteworthy that Rep. Dunn doesn’t refer to them as vouchers in House Bill 336; he calls them “opportunity scholarships.” In so doing, he is putting a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Don’t be fooled. According to an EdNext 2016 survey, the 37% of the general public supports vouchers, whereas almost 50% support opportunity scholarships. Both of these percentages have dropped 15% in the last ten years. Public support for this program continues to wane because people have had the opportunity to see for themselves the harmful effects of voucher legislation that has passed in many states around the country.

This begs the question: Why are Rep. Dunn and Gov. Haslam advocating a voucher bill that the general public doesn’t support and that educators obviously oppose? I argue it’s the same reason why so many Republican U.S. Senators (including Tennessee’s two senators) stubbornly support Betsy DeVos for Education Secretary, despite a bipartisan union of concerned citizens flooding their phone lines and writing hundreds of thousands of letters in opposition. That reason is money. The DeVos family has donated $8.3 million to Republican U.S. Senators’ campaigns over the last two years. Likewise, powerful pro-voucher and pro-charter lobbying groups (like Devos’ group American Federation for Children) are extremely active on the state level and work hard to get legislation introduced and passed.

If Dunn and Haslam truly want to help Tennessee’s children, they would work with TDOE to destroy the silos of information, self-contained within each district, of what works for students and what doesn’t. If they wanted to help children succeed, they would eliminate the ridiculous A-F grading system that measures how well schools prepare their students for TNReady. This grading system has failed in Texas and needs to be rescinded in Tennessee before it is implemented. There’s already plenty of information out there on how well schools perform. Simplifying that into a single “grade” in nonsensical. If they wanted to help children succeed, then stick to Gov. Haslam’s original proposal of giving teachers raises and fully-funding the BEP, and then get out of the way and let us concentrate on what we do best--educating future generations.

2016: A Year in Review

2016 has been an amazing year, and it has served as another reminder to take the bad with the good. I would like to reflect on the top five educational stories, both personally and as a public school teacher in Tennessee.

At the top of my list is having the privilege of attending the national teacher of the year ceremony at The White House. I traveled to The White House because I was recognized as one of America’s most distinguished educators, and I participated in honoring Ms. Jahana Hayes as the national teacher of the year. The ceremony itself only lasted 30 minutes, beginning with a short speech from Ms. Hayes, who is a history teacher at John F. Kennedy High School in Waterbury, Connecticut. Her passion-filled opening remarks set a powerful tone and her enthusiasm for the teaching profession was palpable.

On the way back to Nashville, I had time to reflect on attending this absolutely sublime White House event. Continuing the spirit of this ceremony the best way I know how, I am committed to help my fellow educators elevate and express their voices and tell their stories. Teachers matter. No one knows how to improve the educational landscape better than us. We are the experts, and when we speak in unison, educators have a remarkably strong voice. It begins with educators telling their own stories and having honest conversations with stakeholders about what’s working in our profession and what’s not.

Next on my list is the complete meltdown of TNReady. Though not completely their fault, the Tennessee Department of Education took a black eye on this one. The failure of TNReady sent shock waves throughout the state’s public education system. Elementary and middle school students didn’t even get to take the exam, while high school students across the state went through the motions of taking the test and didn’t take it seriously. A state law was passed holding teachers harmless on their evaluations from these test scores, but this law doesn’t apply to schools and school districts. Meanwhile, TDOE changed testing vendors from Measurement Inc. to Questar and has some significant rebuilding to do in terms of its efficacy.

Number three on my list is something that happened within the last few days, when TDOE released its plan for public review of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). In case you haven’t been following, ESSA is the federal law that replaced No Child Left Behind, and it requires each state to develop its own plan on how it will meet the needs of its own students. Along with three other teachers from the high school, I recently attended a town hall meeting in Nashville where Commissioner McQueen and some of her TDOE cohorts explained the overview of their plan. I believe that TDOE’s ESSA plan needs some revision, but, overall, it sends a clear message that “all means all”--that TDOE is committed to educating all of Tennessee’s students, regardless of whether they are rich or poor, receiving special education services, or English Language Learners who just moved here from another country.

Number four on my list is the revelation from TDOE that the state’s science scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) are “above the national average for the first time ever, doubled the national average for student growth, eliminated the performance gap between male and female students, narrowed the performance gap between white and black students in both grades, and narrowed the performance gap between white and Latino students in fourth grade.” Tennessee had previously scored above the national average in English Language Arts and math. This announcement is further proof that the public education system in Tennessee is on the right track. Historically, Tennessee has ranked at or near the bottom in public education.

Rounding out my top five education stories of 2016 is Mr. Trump’s appointment of Betsy DeVos as the future U.S. Secretary of Education. Putting a pro-charter and pro-voucher champion at the head of the nation’s public schools will certainly have “yuge” ramifications. One only needs to look at the education systems in Michigan and Louisiana (both are below the national average and dropping) to understand the devastating effects of diverting money from public schools in the name of school choice.

The Future, with Betsy DeVos

I heard a commercial on my car radio from an over-eager pitch man on the way back from working out on a mild summer morning in early June: “Parents! Don’t delay! Enroll your student at Freedom Preparatory Academy by July 1st, and you’ll receive a $50 Visa gift card and be entered into a drawing to win a FREE Chromebook. You have many choices where you send your child to school. Experience the freedom of Freedom Preparatory Academy.” I quickly snapped off the radio. These charter school advertisements are so abundant that you’d think there was another presidential election going on. Instead, after two years of Betsy DeVos running a U.S. Department of Education that greatly incentivized states to create more charter schools, and with a Republican supermajority in our state legislature, charter schools have been popping up everywhere.

President Trump sold it well. I have to give him credit for that, at least. He fed the country false information about how we should have more choices of where to send our children to school, and that the competition created by charter schools will improve the education system for everyone. “It’s like a business,” he said. “It’s good for the consumer when businesses compete with each other, and it’s good for students when schools do the same.”

On the surface this sounds like a logical argument. Teachers tried to be the voice of reason and educate the public about why this didn’t make sense and why the expansion of charter schools is harmful to students. Well, many of us tried, anyway. Unfortunately, even on this crucial issue, teachers did not present a united voice. Too many voted against our students’ interests and voted for political candidates with an “R” next to their names. It was clear what would happen to the country’s public education system under Republican control. They’ve been busting teachers’ unions and pushing “school choice” initiatives for decades.

Those of us who tried to raise awareness about the dangers of “school choice” expansion pointed out that these initiatives steal money from an already underfunded public school system. We attempted to explain that schools can’t be run like businesses because, quite simply, they’re NOT businesses; they’re a bureaucracy. A business has the ability to choose from the finest of materials to make their products. Public schools take everyone. Competition among businesses drives down prices and benefits the consumer. Competition among schools lessens the quality of education because schools fight for the same raw materials--students and teachers. The good teachers and the good students become spread out across several schools. With a lower enrollment at each school, the schools themselves are more costly to operate. It used to be that charter schools were regulated, but now, under the new Trump administration, businesses are allowed to run publicly-funded schools with no expectation that they actually perform on the same level as other schools across the state.

This is exactly what happened in Michigan before Betsy DeVos took responsibility of the nation’s public school system. The warning signs for the downfall of the American education system were there. The New York Times ran several stories about this, like “A Sea of Charter Schools in Detroit Leaves Students Amiss” and “The Risk with Betsy DeVos,” but people blew them off as being from a biased liberal media.

So here I am, living in the new normal in 2018: where schools are so desperate for students that they’re offering gift cards to get parents to enroll their children there, where states accepted federal money to pass anti-union legislation and made teachers’ unions a relic of the past, and where “school choice” has led to an uneven playing field that clearly benefits the wealthy. If only teachers across the country had inspired their local communities to contact their U.S. senators and implored them to vote against Betsy DeVos’s appointment as Secretary of Education. A website was even created for this: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-your-senator-to-vote-no-for-betsy-devos. Oh well. It’s time for me to put on my Freedom Prep Academy polo, and go to work.

Big Money

In a prior lifetime, I worked under a principal in Metro-Nashville Public Schools whose motto was “We’re about the business of school.” He loved the motto so much that he had it printed on the back of t-shirts, with the school’s logo on the opposite side, and faculty members wore the shirts every Friday.

I frequently hear the comparisons between operating a school, or school system, and a operating a business. Indeed, there are many similarities, such as pushing conformity upon its employees who are all working toward a common purpose, having a payroll, offering insurance, and even their very structure--with a main person in charge and subordinate bosses below them. With that said, the one fundamental difference between these two entities is their purpose. Businesses ultimately exist to make money. Schools are a public service and are there to help improve the fabric of our society by building a strong electorate and a skilled workforce. Therefore, it’s reasonable to conclude that schools are not businesses, nor should they be treated as such. This very concept is reflected in the tax code. Businesses pay taxes, while schools do not.

There’s been a national trend to transform schools into businesses by turning them into charter schools. By definition, a charter school is a publicly funded school that is run by another entity and is not subject to the same rules as other public schools in the school system or even in the state. These “other entities” that operate charter schools are frequently businesses who are trying to increase their bottom lines. The relative autonomy of charter schools results in varying degrees of success.

Arguably the most scary component of charter schools is that they are publicly funded. Taxpayers still foot the bill for someone else to run the school. Turning the operation of schools over to businesses--while occasionally successful--is not something that needs to become a habit; yet, they are very rapidly expanding across the state. Charter schools need to be kept in check. Nashville’s school board recently took this very stance, wanting to slow down charter school expansion, and they have been met with opposition from both the Tennessee State Board of Education and charter school groups.

It’s understandable, then, why pro-charter school group Stand for Children is pumping more than a half million dollars into the school board races in Nashville. Organizations like Stand for Children, which is based in Portland, Oregon and is funded in part by the Walton family (owners of Wal-Mart) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, are legally allowed to do this because of the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision. $500,000 is an extreme amount of money for an outside organization to invest in a local school board election. Obviously, Stand for Children is hoping that Nashvillians will elect school board members who will allow their organization into the city to create more charter schools.

It would be naive to think that Nashville is the only city where this is happening, and Stand for Children is certainly not the only organization trying to buy elections. For example, the Koch brothers frequently intervene in national and local elections. Hopefully, Citizens United will be overturned either by a future Supreme Court with nine justices or by a constitutional amendment. The 2010 Supreme Court decision not only negatively impacts politics by legally allowing untold sums of money to be spent on political candidates who, upon being elected, are required by their respective political parties to fundraise for the organizations that helped them. Citizens United is detrimentally influencing the quality of education in this state, and around the country, by allowing big money to influence school board elections and education policy to support things like charter schools. It adversely impacts everyone who expects schools to do a quality job graduating productive citizens.