The series must include, at a minimum, an in-depth explanation of the TISA and the TISA guide, instruction on how to budget to increase student achievement, instruction on how to connect student achievement with investments in education, instruction on how to hold decision-makers accountable for funding decisions, and a training assessment that each participant must take and pass at the end of the series.

This passage is farcical. What research supports which individual investments lead to wholesale improvement? What evidence does the TNDOE offer that demonstrates their ability tio recognize what investments lead to greater student outcomes?

Hopefully, Schwinn and her DOE will be taking the class because to date they’ve shown no indication that they know how to budget to increase student achievement. I can’t wait to see how they connect funding to student achievement considering that Schwinn and posee have slung so much at the wall in an effort to see what sticks, that it’s virtually impossible to attach student success to any one element. Though look for tutoring to be portrayed as playing a significant role in student outcomes, at the expense of actual teachers.

This professional development requirement also presents yet another prime opportunity for a friend of Schwinn to receive a financial windfall. Think how much it’ll cost for the state to fund the initial training, and then remember we are talking about positions that turn over on a pretty regular basis, so there will perpetually be a new class requiring training. Somebody is getting a yacht and maybe a vacation home in Tahoe out of this provision.

While much of the press has centered on the overall financial numbers increasing for districts, Per Chalkbeat,

Gov. Bill Lee has unveiled his proposal for overhauling K-12 funding in Tennessee, including a base of $6.6 billion to provide per-pupil funding to educate nearly 1 million public school students and $1.8 billion in extra support for students needing the most help.

It remains unclear how much of the advertised billion-dollar investment is new dollars, and how much of it is existing funding just rolled into the new formula.

While the general public received little information on what individual student funding might look like, legislators were presented a different slide show, one that provided some examples,

Sam Stockard does a good job of laying this out in the Tennessee Lookout,

Under Lee’s proposal, dubbed Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement, the more problems a student faces, the higher the funding. Students also could gain funding for showing success such as learning to read on grade level by the third grade and performing well on the ACT or industry tests in high school.

The money targeted to each student through more than 140 districts covers a range of situations.

For example, a student from an economically disadvantaged family living in a sparsely populated area and attending a small school district and with “unique” learning needs could have a funding total of $15,592. In contrast, a student who learns to read well by second grade and grapples only with a learning problem such as dyslexia could be targeted to receive a total of $8,732.

Funds would go through their school systems, and those projected totals were to be released Thursday.

But to be clear, while students earn weights for “unique learning needs” from 20% to 150%, we don’t know what needs qualify for what weights. A gifted child could qulaify for 40% while an English learner could qualify for 20, or the other way around, I would argue that a child diagnosed with dyslexia should qualify for at least a level 7 weight, but should just “showing characteristics of”also earn that level? I don’t know, but the potential here is to encourage misdiagnoses in order to secure more funding, and I would caution against that.

I would also caution Stockard against using qualifiers like “only” when addressing learning problems. It should also be pointed out that if either of the above-mentioned children attends a charter school, they’ll receive an extra 4%, or $274 dollars, There is a tendency to think that just because a child attends a small school district they won’t have the opportunity to attend a charter school. Based on recent actions, and proposed legislation, that is likely to be proven as a false premise over the next 5 years.

I may be the only one, but assigning a dollar figure to individual students makes me very uneasy. It reeks of trying to use numbers to define individuals, an extension of what we already do with testing. Many school districts already engage in student-based funding for individual schools – an example would be MNPS – but I would argue that the jury is still out on the benefits of the practice. In the case of MNPS, it has not resulted in an overarching increase in student outcomes.

In their presentations to both legislators and the public, Lee and Schwinn chose to focus on what LEAs would be receiving, the actual legislation is much more focused on what Tennessee’s Boris and Natasha would be receiving – power and control.

For example, per the bill,