“Poles had a dark joke in 1944, about a bird which falls out of the sky into a cowpat, to be rescued by a cat; its moral, they said, was that “Not everyone who gets you out of the shit is necessarily your friend.”
― Max Hastings, Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945

Things are heating up, as election day is looming closer. Tennessee’s primaries are scheduled for August 5th, with early voting already underway,

Several key State House members are facing primary challenges, with several in danger of losing their seats.

Down in Chattanooga, rumors keep swirling that Representative Patsy Hazlewood (R-Signal Mountain) is on the ropes. Hazlewood is being challenged by Michele Reneau. Ms. Reneau favors schools sticking to teaching academic subjects, not life skills and supports vocational education. The challenger accuses the incumbent of frequently voting with Democrats and has said it’s time for some “fresh eyes” in the General Assembly.

Hazlewood serves as Chair for the House Finance, Ways, and Means Committee. During her tenure in the General Assembly, she has often had her conservative credentials questioned.

In Cleveland, Tennessee, Representative Kevin Raper (R-Cleveland) is consistently coming under fire by his opponents. Despite opposing vouchers, critics argue that he was too late in making his views known, as such he’s being painted as a voucher proponent.

Remarkably, his opposition to a bill that passed allowing teachers permission to carry guns on campus is further fueling his opponents. It will come down to the wire in this south of Chattanooga district.

Closer to home, Representative Scott Cepicky (R-Culleoko) remains a favorite whipping boy for the local media. This week, reporters are leaping at reports of Cepicky calling Governor Lee’s voucher bill “terrible” at a local voter meeting. They are delivering the news as if it were breaking news and signified some kind of break with the Governor who has recently endorsed Cepicky’s re-election bid.

If you have been paying attention, then you probably know that Cepicky thought the bill was terrible from the beginning, There is a reason, that the House bill, which the Representative helped craft, was loaded with benefits for public schools, and included protections for private schools and homeschoolers.

“We put parameters in place to make sure this would not break the bank in Tennessee,” Cepicky told voters at the candidate forum. “The growth would be measured so we could get to year four and start to track the academic success of these kids. Homeschoolers were out, private schoolers had protections, and we put protections in the bill to protect your tax dollars from getting out of control like in Arizona.”

Cepicky’s opponent, Maury County Commissioner Ray Jeter, is trying to thread the elusive needle of being both pro-school choice and anti-voucher. His opposition to vouchers is not rooted in a pro-public schools stance, but rather a desire to protect those schools challenging the public system.

“It’s very important to me, very important to me, that government stays out of our private educations,” Jeter said. “Bottom line, whether that’s homeschooling or a private education. No offense, but what he just described to you sounds a whole lot like government regulation in private schools. I don’t want to see that.”

It’s worth noting that despite frequent criticisms from public school advocates, few legislators have worked harder for public education than Cepicky. Much of Tennessee’s touted recovery from the COVID years can be traced back to legislation he supported and helped write.

In 2020, he carried a bill to stabilize school funding despite a COVID-related drop in student enrollment. The bill ensured that districts would not lose essential funding.

Over the last four years, to gain a better understanding of public education policy, he’s regularly engaged stakeholders

Much has been made of his quote last Spring “We’re trying to just throw the whole freaking system in the trash at one time and just blow it all back up”. At face value, the quote is troublesome, but if you consider as a means to improve public education, it is worth considering, Unless of course, you consider the current system as close to perfect as possible,

According to The Tennessee Lookout, Cepicky’s challenger has stated he supports “school choice” but doesn’t want to see public schools “defunded,” claiming Cepicky’s bill would have shifted money.

That sounds good if you say it fast, but how exactly do you do one without the other. If you add more options – be it charter schools, private schools, homeschooling, or the growing options offered by micro-schools – enrollment in the public option is bound to drop. Tennessee’s school funding formula is based on student attendance, so any choice other than the public option would result in a loss of revenue for the local district.

As the opening quote implies, “Not everyone who gets you out of the shit is necessarily your friend.”

Now, if you are not a fan of outside PACs applying undo influence on Tennessee politics, the Cepicky race bears close watching. The Representative is one of a handful of candidates endorsed by the Americans For Prosperity PAC. Seeing that Cepicky was the face of the voucher push, they can ill afford him losing this race. That would kinda send a message that they are not as influential as they’d have you believe. A loss here, would make it difficult for the Governor to bring back voucher legislation next year.

Hard to twist arms, when you can’t protect your arm twisters.

August 5th, gets more interesting every day.

– – –

Speaking of voucher bills, Representative Cepicky’s bill must have put the fear of god in Tennessee’s State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE).

The education policy advocacy group founded by former Senator Bill Frist, has been a dominant force on state policy over the last decade. Over the last couple of years, they’ve elected to take a lower profile as legislator began to ask questions about their financing and agenda. Threats to state testing policy have reversed that trend this summer. The advocacy group has suddenly become ubiquitous in their efforts to defend student testing.

Both Cepicky and House Speaker Sexton, have expressed interest in reducing testing for Tennessee students. SCORE needs that testing to justify its existence to donors. Since the end of this year’s state General Session, they have been relentlessly pounding the drum on the need to maintain current state testing levels.

This week, CEO David Mansouri released an opinion piece through The Tennessean touting the importance of TCAP. If Mansouri is to be believed, testing and teacher evaluations play the largest role in improving outcomes for Tennessee students.

He uses a baseball analogy to establish the importance of data. Ironically, baseball’s over-reliance on data has recently come under fire by baseball purists, many see it as a contributor to a decline in the game.

Like teachers, a manager’s intuition gained through experience, is sacrificed in deference to collected data. As if complex people can be reduced to simple data points.

Baseball analyst Ken Reed addresses the fallacy of that belief:

“Analytics have turned baseball into a game of computers and robots. The art of the game, the gut feel of managers and the human element are all being eliminated by data scientists.

In fact, for some teams, the manager in the dugout isn’t even needed. According to the folks in the data den, a starting pitcher must be pulled at 100 pitches no matter how strong he looks, how great he feels or how effective he’s been at getting the other team out to that point.

Another new analytics ‘rule’ for managers is to take starters out before they face the opposing lineup for a third time. Because of that, we got the fiasco of Tampa Bay Rays manager Kevin Cash pulling starting pitcher Blake Snell out of a 2020 World Series game he was dominating against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Snell had a one-hitter going through five innings and had struck out nine. He got another quick out in the sixth and then allowed a single. Despite only having tossed 73 pitches, and with his team leading 1-0, he was pulled. His replacement struggled, and the Rays went on to lose.

Hmmm…sounds familiar, no?

Mansouri argues, “Over the last 20 years, Tennessee has quietly led the way in using data to inform teaching, learning, and policymaking.”

In his eyes that’s the awesome sauce that leads to greater student outcomes.

Our state measures and publicly reports out on student outcomes in K-12 education every year in most grades and subjects. K-12 teachers receive annual feedback on their performance, grounded in data on whether their students are learning, and we have a powerful measure for tracking learning gains (called TVAAS) that helps us understand whether teachers and schools are helping students meet — or exceed — expectations.

Sure we’ve made improvements, yet, a look at State Education System rankings shows the state is continually mired in the middle. Perhaps a shift in spending to instruction from assessment would prove more beneficial.

The problem for SCORE is that investing in instruction means sharing the credit. Increasing freedoms and compensation for teachers puts improvement in the hands of those actually doing the work, as opposed to those talking about the work. That runs counter to their needs.

The old adage used to be, “Those that can’t do, teach”.

In this case, it’s become, “those who can’t do analyze”.

– – –

SCORE is not the only one talking about test results this week,

At this week’s Metro Nashville Public School Board meeting, board members and Director Dr. Adrienne Battle were giddy over recently released student test scores.

Per data shared by district officials, there was good cause to be giddy over.

It’s important to note that while ELA scores have surpassed pre-pandemic levels, math is still not quite there.

The information delivered by district officials was met with back-slapping and self-congratulations, but what is actually being celebrated?

A deeper dive into the numbers raises some questions.

Achievement rates for students in ELA remain below one-third. More disturbing, is the fact that the achievement rates for Black, Hispanic, and economically disadvantaged students, is half of those for White and Asian students.

Furthermore, looking at growth rates, white students are growing at double and triple the rate of their counterparts. Thus ensuring an achievement gap that is only going to grow wider.

The same holds true for Math.

Here’s a little math for you, if current growth rates remain consistent, it’ll only be three years before more than 30% of Hispanic students score proficient in Math, and four years for Black students. By that time, over 60% of White and Asian students will have achieved proficiency.

This isn’t taking away anything from teachers. In fact, I would argue that they are succeeding despite MNPS leadership and not because of it.

Despite questions about the data, these numbers are likely to be cited as evidence to increase the usage of scripted lessons.

Under the current leadership team, principals and teachers have become increasingly micromanaged.

With the implementation of the ELA curriculum Wit and Wisdom, has come increased reliance on pacing guides. What that means, is every teacher in every grade needs to be on the same page for instruction with their peers.

Parents, in prepping your kids for school, it would probably behoove you to tell your kids to keep any questions that pop up during class at home. Nobody has time to stop and explore.

So tell me again what are we celebrating?

Don’t fret though, there will still be a parade and plenty more celebrations. Nobody is going to let facts get in the way of a good party.

– – –

Sonya Thomas is calling on MNPS to eliminate the district Charter School office position.

Thomas is the Executive Officer for Nashville Propoel, a parent advocacy group that focuses its efforts on underserved student populations. As Thomas has stated repeatedly, she serves students, not schools.

This week the MNPS board rejected 5 amended charter school applications. In Thomas’s eyes, this represents efforts to deny opportunities to students.

On Twitter she backs her case up by saying, “It doesn’t serve any purpose whatsoever when the school board has illegally decided to deny all Charter school applications since 2021. Put that $ into teachers’ salaries or something or restructure that office to do what it is supposed to do. Stop wasting taxpayer dollars.

She takes further umbrage with board member behavior, “I don’t understand how they sleep at night. Laughing at parents who speak during public comment who struggle to read. I think these parents are brave. Our school board is acting as a dictatorship.”

At this week’s hearing, Board chair Rachel Elrod warned charter proponents about comments, “The comments being made, can no longer be made.”

In listening to a recording of the meeting, I can’t hear, let alone decipher the comments that angered Ms. Elrod.  Whatever they were, Elrod didn’t waste time expelling proponents.

She punctuated the expulsions by saying, “So sorry we have to have order in governance.”

Ironically, Elrod has been very vocal in her criticism of State House Speaker Cameron Sexton on using similar tactics to instill order in House proceedings.

The charter schools in question now have the option to appeal with the State Charter School Commission.

– – –

Time to rattle the cup a little bit before I head out the door.

If you could help a brother out…and you think this blog has value, your support would be greatly appreciated. This time of year money gets real tight, while the blogging workload increases exponentially.

To those who’ve thrown some coins in the basket, I am eternally grateful for your generosity. It allows me to keep doing what I do and without you, I would have been forced to quit long ago. It is truly appreciated and keeps the bill collectors semi-happy. Now more than ever your continued support is vital.

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If you wish to join the rank of donors but are not interested in Substack, you can still head over to Patreon and help a brother out. Or you can hit up my Venmo account which is Thomas-Weber-10. I don’t need much – even $5 would help – but if you think what I do has value, a little help is always greatly appreciated. Not begging, just saying, Christmas is right around the corner.

If you’d like less opinion and more news, check out my writing for The Tennessee Star. It’s a bit drier but equally informative.

Categories: Education