“I’d never been one to give up on lost causes, maybe because I was one myself.”
― Abir Mukherjee, Smoke and Ashes

It’s official.

As of yesterday, I am the proud parent of two high school students. Middle school is officially in the rearview mirror.

I feel like I should wax poetic about the transition. After all, we spent five years, between two students, at the same middle school. However, all I’ve got is relief and gratitude as we draw a little closer to being done with Metro Nashville Public Schools.

Instead of inspiration, I’m left with some random thoughts.

As we navigate the kid’s school careers, I continuously find myself reflecting on words shared by a friend a few years ago. He was hyper-involved with his children’s school in their early years. After years of not seeing him, I ran into him at a local watering hole. After we’d exchanged pleasantries, I asked him if he was still as involved now that his children were older.

“Not so much”, he replied, “I just got tired. Tired of beating my head against the wall. I think that’s by design. They want you involved when the kids are young but then they just grind you down. Unless you can help raise money, they don’t really want you involved.”

I didn’t appreciate the veracity of his words at the time, but over the ensuing years, those words have continually resonated.

Middle school was a challenge for our boy. I wrote a little about it last week and was shocked by the number of respondents who voiced similar experiences.

As much as we talk about gender, we are not serving the vast majority of boys well. It seems as if we are altering the definition of masculinity instead of expanding it, but then that’s a common trap we fall into.

Middle school was a running battle from beginning to end, that often sunk into compliance being placed ahead of learning.

Throughout the years, much was framed in a make-or-break light.

“Better earn an A in this class or you won’t get into the right high school class.”

“They are not going to put up with this in high school.”

“If you don’t straighten up, you’re going to ruin your life.”

“You don’t want that grade on your transcript.”

Lost was the reality that life doesn’t travel on a direct linear path. Some years, everything is smooth, only to be followed by a year or more of turmoil. The reaction to the action is infinitely more important than the action itself. The idea that one action, positive or negative, is capable of defining your life is ludicrous but essential to producing data that justifies the role of adults.

An inordinate amount of focus is placed on grades and testing in the k-12 years. An emphasis that won’t follow students into their adult years.

Sure there will be tests for certifications and licenses, but nobody will be showing up annually to test how much growth you’ve made in the past year. Some of us quit growing the minute we graduated, and that’s our choice.

There will be no record compiling year-over-year growth, with arbitrary benchmarks you’ll be expected to hit. Nobody will be referring back to TCAP tests you took in 7th grade or your Junior year GPA.

Ultimately, like everything in life, it comes down to relationships. No amount of tweets or programs enacted by the district’s 6-figure DEI specialists can have as much impact on students as the relationships forged by teachers, but somehow the former is compensated at double the rate of the latter.

Math lessons will fade. Grammar instruction will recede. But that teacher who connected with a student will forever be a part of their life, and a voice inside their head.

Anecdotally, I’m looking at my social media feed and this year there seems to be an inordinate number of teachers transferring to new schools. It is just another sign of a profession in constant flux due to society’s inability to recognize its value.

I continue to be amazed at the amount of money we sink into social and emotional learning while failing to implement those meaningful practices into adult interactions.

As a family, we’ve been blessed, and we consider ourselves fortunate that throughout his middle school years, we found teachers who lifted him up instead of driving him down. For that, I am eternally grateful.

One of the true blessings this year was a local Church of Christ adjacent to the school. Through the efforts of the PTA president, they opened their doors early to students at no charge. Students who arrived before school were able to spend time in the church’s gym, at no cost, playing basketball and interacting with senior church members. Kids were allowed to burn excess energy and get themselves prepared for a day of schooling.

These church members became some of the students’ biggest supporters, often showing up at school events and athletic competitions. They were present during the school’s 8th grade transition ceremony, but as always you wouldn’t know it unless you knew them. They remained in the background, allowing children to be the focus.

Quietly they served as cheerleaders, confidants, and mentors for these young men and women. I am grateful.

Imagine my surprise, when I was told that once a week my son attended a bible class. We are a spiritual but not overtly religious family.

“You good with that?” I asked.

“Yeah.” he replied, “It’s not bad and they are so nice, They do a lot for us, so it doesn’t feel like a big deal.”

None of it was forced, and all of it was welcome.

On the last day of school, my son and I were talking. He’d failed a high school Integrated Math class. Not because he couldn’t do the work, but because he wouldn’t. Obviously I wasn’t happy, but struggled to keep it in perspective.

For whatever reason, he and the teacher found themselves in a year-long battle of wills, neither willing to capitulate. At times, it got very ugly.

During this week’s graduation ceremony, I noticed that the teacher sat next to him the entire time. I commented on it.

“She asked to sit there.”

“How was that?” I asked.

“Good. She talked to me the entire time.” He responded. “She’s a good person. She can’t teach me, but that doesn’t mean that she’s a bad person. She’s a good person.”

I thought about his words and smiled inwardly. In a world increasingly populated by people who can’t see past their own personal interests, his words were a welcome indication of real growth.

The ability to see past disagreements and make that kind of determination is a skill not measured by standardized testing but will serve him well as an adult.

This morning I dropped my son and six of his teammates off at the football field under the guise of getting ready for high school football which starts next week. I think the real reason was a desire for one last hurrah before leaving their middle school behind.

Those friendships and bonds are every bit as important as what they learned in the classroom.

– – –

Speaking of standardized testing, districts began receiving results this week that could determine if Tennessee’s third-graders advanced to fourth grade or must enroll in summer school to do so. But good luck finding out how many students are at risk for retention. The Tennessee Department of Education has embargoed numbers of those facing retention in third and fourth grade until June 24.

Students who don’t score proficient on TCAP, are eligible to retake the exam. The retake window opened on May 22nd, despite some schools just receiving their results.

Forth-grade students who received accommodations allowing them to advance last year are subject to retention if they don’t show adequate growth on this year’s TCAP. Their results won’t be available till mid-July.

School starts the first week in August. That means that for the entire summer, the threat of retention will be hanging over the heads of these students and their families. Nothing screams important like a failure to implement a reflective timeline.

Students who under-perform on the re-test must enroll in either tutoring or summer school to be promoted to fourth grade, Summer school, for most districts, starts in the next 2 weeks,

Here’s where that old adage, “Your failure to properly plan, should not constitute an emergency for me” comes into play.

The timeline is nothing short of a train wreck. one that fails to properly serve students, families, teachers, or schools.

Most of us have worked for companies that frequently employ a speak-it-into-existance policy. They regularly launch initiatives with little thought to the amount of work required to bring it to fruition, instead depending on staff to make it happen. That’s what is happening here.

Staffing numbers for instruction, nutrition, and transportation are generated using benchmark exams, instead of TCAP, as a means to make estimates. Key word being estimates.

“Those plans actually began to be formulated many weeks ago,” Andy True, assistant superintendent of Kingsport City Schools told WJHI. “We sit down with curriculum, transportation, nutrition directors, and school administrators. Summer school is run by associate principals and they’re working on that, really, as we go through the whole spring.”

Tennessee appears to be following a path laid by its neighbor to the west, Mississippi. One of the first states to implement a third-grade retention policy, Mississippi has pointed to the policy as a major contributor to increased literacy rates.

The evidence to support that claim remains inconclusive.

Mississippi state policy is similar to Tennessee’s where students are retained if they fail to achieve an adequate grade on the state standardized test. Like Tennessee, retakes and other “good cause exemptions” are offered to students at risk of being retained.

The number of students in Mississippi who fail the test and are retained has dropped in recent years, going from 9% of test takers in 2019 to 6.5% last school year. That translates to 2,078 kids.

That number may not be accurate though.

Grace Breazeale, a K-12 policy associate with Mississippi First, an education policy nonprofit, said that, while these numbers may be in the ballpark, she has concerns they are not completely accurate since a student could have failed the test, received a good cause exemption, and still been held back for another reason.

Tennessee, by not releasing data on the number of students at risk,  seems to be creating its own smoke screen around test results.

Oh well, they’ll let us know by mid-June when we are all at the beach and not paying attention.

– – –

Per the Tennessee Firefly, officials from the Tennessee Department of Education met with lawmakers in the state’s Joint Government Operations Committee Wednesday to review rule changes governing how the department determines funding for career and technical education (CTE) programs in the state, among other topics.

Former ExcelinEd lobbyist and current TNDOE Director of Policy Jack Powers announced that he department has proposed changing the criteria used to determine direct funding levels for CTE programs under the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement (TISA) Act. TISA is the recently passed school funding law.

“The goal is to make sure that programs our students are accessing are identified and tiered appropriately based on a number of different factors,” he said. “Tiering CTE programs based on high-wage, high-demand and high skill score determinations – that’s one of the main revisions we’re talking about here today.”

According to Powers, under the proposed formula, a program’s high-wage subscore, which determines what wages are earned from specific occupations, is weighted at 70 percent, while the high-demand subscore is weighted at 20 percent and the high-skill subscore is weighted at 10 percent to help determine a CTE program’s overall score to determine funding needs. A level one CTE program could be something like cosmetology or culinary arts, while a level two program could be business management or finance. Level three programs would be high-demand occupations that require more complex skill sets and pay more, such as engineering or health sciences, among others.

“These proposed revisions reflect input directly from CTE engagement groups that include members of the Tennessee General Assembly, the Tennessee Higher Education Commission, Tennessee Department of Labor, secondary CTE teachers, CTE directors, state board members and other external partners,” he said. “The idea is that, as you get higher in the levels, you’re talking about occupations that have a high demand, but also lead to a high wage and require high skill as well.”

The committee voted in favor of the proposed revision, while Representatives Gloria Johnson (D-Knoxville), and Justin Jones (D-Nashville) voted “no” against the motion.

“I just feel like we’re discounting some of these [professions] people want to be directed to, and that concerns me a little, that everything is based on what wage they think you’re going to earn, when it doesn’t necessarily turn out that way,” Johnson said before voting against the motion.

I’m betting that heating and air technician likely falls in the level three category.

A little concerned that we are overvaluing professions based on hypothetical earnings.

Based on the proposed formula, teachers, police, firemen, EMT techs, and ministers would likely fall in the level one category since demand only accounts for 20% and complex skills 10%.

– – –

While not education-related, I can’t help but comment on Nashville Metro Council’s recent rejection of a proposed sign for his new downtown bar.

Per the Nashville Scene, Councilmembers raised concerns about implicitly endorsing Wallen’s atrocious behavior by giving their stamp of approval to a sign bearing his name.

Ok, what exactly does he think is currently going on in downtown Nashville on a nightly basis?

Lost in the argument, is who built Nashville. We like to evoke the names Jones, Cash, Jennings, Tucker, and Kristofferson as if they were bastions of virtue. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Jones once fired a loaded gun into the roof of tour bus going down the road.

In 1952 when Hank Williams Sr was booked for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct in Alexander City, Alabama.  According to Chief Winfred Patterson, who was the man who arrested Hank, the singer was “more or less having DT’s (delirium tremens). He was running up and down the hall, yelling that someone was whipping old ladies and he was going to stop them.”

In 1985 Johnny Paycheck was sentenced to seven years in jail after being convicted of shooting a man at the North High Lounge in Hillsboro, Ohio. The country singer was said to have fired a .22 pistol at the man, with the bullet grazing just past the man’s head.

So Wallen is arguably just following a family tradition.

Sure, his actions are concerning and he’s fortunate that nobody was hurt as a result of his latest, but they are not unique to Nashville.

My favorite quote from the proceedings comes from Councilmember Bob Nash who was one of 30 “no” votes. Nash is a former commander for the Metro Nashville Police Department.

“My primary concern was, here we’ve got a young man throwing chairs off rooftop bars, endangering my former comrades and the public at large,” explains Nash, “and there should be consequences for that.”

He hopes the disapproval will “get Mr. Wallen to shape up a little bit” and that he thinks Jelly Roll should get a sign on Broadway instead. “That’s someone we could all support,” Nash quips.

The irony is not lost on me, Jelly Roll is following in another Nashville tradition, taking on the role of the huckster. Despite his primarily positive message, Mr. Roll still engages regularly in the activities that he warns against through his music. I’d be careful in erecting a sign that you could be forced to remove in the future.

Wallen, is much like former President Trump, the more he’s attacked, the more popular he becomes.

Wallen recently completed a three-night stand at Nissan Stadium, which resulted in millions of dollars for Nashville’s economy. It’s worth noting that Morgan Wallen is one of only a handful of artists capable of producing such a feat.

The city doesn’t have to embrace him, but they probably shouldn’t treat him like a pariah either.

– – –

Per usual, I need to rattle the cup a little bit before I head out the door.

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Categories: Education