“He is aware of neglecting his son, of not even talking to him much, too preoccupied with his own stuff. His own plans. This is his life, these things that are happening.”
― All That Man Is
Round here, when the state starts talking about “accountability,” it usually means one thing: a room full of adults asking questions they already think they know the answers to—and getting responses that don’t quite match what they asked.
That was on full display this week as Metro Nashville Public Schools appeared before a newly created state accountability panel. The hearing stems from recent changes in Tennessee’s school funding laws, which created a process to examine districts with chronically underperforming schools.
On paper, it sounds collaborative. In practice, it feels a little more like a performance.
The Setup
MNPS was called in because six schools—representing 4,692 students in the 2024–25 school year—either received an “F” for two consecutive years or dropped from a “D” to an “F.”
Those schools are:
- Antioch Middle
- Cane Ridge High School
- Chadwell Elementary
- Donelson Middle
- Glenview Elementary
- Paragon Mills Elementary
The panel itself consisted of three members of the Tennessee State Board of Education: Vice Chair Darrell Cobbins, Chair Robert Eby, and Dr. Ina Maxwell.
As required by law, MNPS showed up with the full delegation—Director of Schools Dr. Adrienne Battle, Board Chair Frida Player, Chief Academic Officer Renita Perry, and CFO Jorge Robles.
And then there was the gallery.
Roughly 30 MNPS administrators and principals sat in attendance. Middle of the school day. Seventy-five minute hearing.
I’ll be honest—I don’t get it.
We’re constantly told that every minute matters in education. Instructional time is sacred. Leadership presence in buildings is critical. And yet here we are, pulling dozens of high-level district staff out of schools so they can sit quietly in a hearing room as a show of support.
Every minute counts—until it doesn’t.
“This Is Not About Us”
To his credit, Darrell Cobbins tried to set the tone early.
“I want to make sure that LEAs, district leaders, staff and others understand as well as we do that this is not about us. This is not about you… This is about one million students across the state of Tennessee whose futures have been entrusted to us.
And so we will have to ask some hard-pointed questions. That’s not personal.”
That’s the right framing.
But what followed made it clear pretty quickly that both sides walked into that room prepared to have two very different conversations.
Two Conversations, One Room
The panel wanted to talk about six schools.
MNPS wanted to talk about 150.
Over and over again, panel members tried to zero in—What are the root causes at these schools? What targeted resources are being deployed? What specific leadership interventions are in place?
And over and over again, the district zoomed out—district-wide strategies, system-wide improvements, broad frameworks.
If you’ve listened to Dr. Battle before, none of this was surprising.
The presentation hit all the familiar notes on the education jargon bingo card:
- fidelity
- sense of urgency
- direct instruction
- core strategy
- high-quality instructional materials
- high-dosage tutoring
All of it sounds good.
All of it should sound good.
But unless you can see how those things are actually being implemented—classroom by classroom, school by school—they’re just words.
And that’s part of the problem with these hearings.
The panel can ask questions, but at the end of the day, they’re largely taking the district’s word for it. There’s no real mechanism to verify what “fidelity” looks like inside a third-grade classroom at Glenview or how “high-dosage tutoring” is actually playing out at Cane Ridge.
People often know the questions to ask.
It’s the follow-ups where things get shaky.
Where Are the Teachers?
For most of the 75-minute hearing, teachers were almost an afterthought.
Which is strange, considering how often “direct instruction” and “classroom rigor” were emphasized.
At one point, the conversation leaned heavily into the idea that teacher effectiveness is driven by real-time coaching—frequent walkthroughs, ongoing feedback, constant observation.
That might sound reasonable on paper.
But on the ground?
This year, MNPS teachers have been pretty vocal about what that feels like:
They’re under a microscope.
Frequent walkthroughs. Pop-ins. Observations that disrupt the flow of instruction and leave teachers feeling like they’re performing rather than teaching.
And apparently, that’s not a bug—it’s a feature.
Here’s the thing: education is a relationship-driven profession.
Students learn better from teachers they trust.
Teachers perform better under leaders they trust.
Real-time coaching without a strong relational foundation doesn’t feel like support—it feels like surveillance.
And when that happens, the outcomes aren’t always better instruction.
Sometimes they’re just resentment.
A Fair Question Nobody Wants to Ask
If every teacher needs constant, real-time coaching to be effective, then what exactly are we doing with all the front-end requirements?
Why require degrees?
Why require student teaching?
Why require licensure exams?
Why not just hire anyone and coach them into competency?
It’s an uncomfortable question—but it’s a fair one.
Leadership—or Something Else?
Board Chair Frida Player made a point during the hearing to describe the school board as one that holds Dr. Battle accountable and publicly challenges her when necessary.
That hasn’t exactly been my observation.
But let’s set that aside.
What stood out more was the contrast—almost the irony—between her comments about the board not micromanaging the director and the district’s apparent embrace of micromanagement at the school level.
We don’t micromanage leadership.
We just micromanage everyone else.
Player also talked about “nerding out” on data.
And that’s where things get a little uncomfortable.
Because those data points?
They’re not just numbers.
They’re kids.
And somewhere along the way, that distinction gets lost.
The Principal Pipeline Question
All six schools under discussion have relatively new principals.
Naturally, the panel wanted to know what specific supports those leaders were receiving.
The answer?
Another zoom-out.
District-wide principal supports. Leadership pipelines. Coaching structures. Playbooks.
Again, all of it sounds good.
But where’s the evidence?
Where’s the proof that these systems are producing better outcomes—not just better presentations?
Leadership matters. I don’t think anyone would argue otherwise.
But definitions matter too.
I’ve always believed in a servant leadership model—leaders as facilitators, not enforcers. People who support the work rather than dictate it.
Because at the end of the day, leadership is a choice made by the people being led.
If the people in your building don’t trust you, don’t believe in you, don’t follow you—you may still have the title.
But you’re not leading anybody.
And right now, MNPS seems to favor a model that leans more directive than collaborative.
That’s a tough model to make work in schools.
Finally—Teachers
It wasn’t until the very end of the hearing that teachers really entered the conversation.
When panel members offered recommendations, the first thing on the list was teacher retention.
That matters.
A lot.
Because you don’t improve schools by cycling through staff—you improve them by building stability, consistency, and trust.
The panel also emphasized the need to focus on root causes at the six schools in question.
Which, ironically, is exactly what they’d been trying to talk about the entire time.
The Bigger Picture MNPS Didn’t Want to Talk About
As a result of the hearing, MNPS is now required to develop an action plan for those six schools and present it to the State Board of Education.
And to be fair, I think that was the point all along—to force the district to focus.
Because at one point, the panel openly acknowledged they didn’t even know how many “C” and “D” schools existed in MNPS.
Here’s the answer:
A lot.
According to the state’s latest report card, roughly 96 schools in MNPS fall into the “C” or “D” categories—the bulk of the district sitting squarely in the middle.
And that’s where things get interesting.
Because that distribution?
It’s not random.
It’s the system working exactly as designed.
Most schools cluster in the middle. A few rise. A few fall. And we spend all our time arguing about the margins while ignoring the center.
I’m willing to give the district a little grace here, because what those grades don’t show matters just as much as what they do.
A “D” school making real gains looks the same as one standing still.
A “C” school could represent quiet progress—or quiet stagnation.
So what you’re really looking at isn’t just a grading system.
It’s a fog.
A district where most schools are somewhere between getting better and not getting there fast enough—and nobody seems entirely sure which is which.
The Part Nobody Wants to Say Out Loud
Only six schools were discussed in the hearing.
But there are four more MNPS schools that received an “F” on the most recent report card.
They just weren’t repeat offenders.
That’s the line.
That’s the threshold.
That’s the difference between a hearing and no hearing.
And if that feels a little arbitrary—it’s because it is.
Timing Is Everything—Or Nothing
Here’s the part that’s hard to ignore:
State testing begins in two weeks.
Nothing that happened in that hearing will change outcomes for those six schools this year.
Nothing in the upcoming action plan will affect the tests about to be administered.
By the time MNPS develops and presents its strategy, those schools could already be something different—better, worse, or exactly the same.
Which makes the whole exercise feel a little like… theater.
Kabuki theater, if we’re being honest.
Everyone knows their role.
Everyone delivers their lines.
And at the end, we all pretend something meaningful just happened.
Meanwhile, At the Legislature…
Because no week in Tennessee education policy is complete without a little side show, lawmakers also spent time advancing what’s being called the “Charlie Kirk Act.”
The bill, sponsored by Representative Gino Bulso, would require colleges and universities to:
- Adopt a free speech policy modeled after the University of Chicago
- Align political and social action policies with the Kalven Report
- Prohibit disinviting speakers based on viewpoint
What followed wasn’t really a policy discussion.
It was a debate over Charlie Kirk himself—a national political figure with no real ties to Tennessee.
Representative Sam McKenzie pushed back hard, arguing the bill legitimizes Kirk’s views, including criticisms of the Civil Rights Act and controversial rhetoric about Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Bulso countered:
“The gentleman who appointed her, President Joe Biden, before he ever selected her, said he was going to select a black woman… and I think all of us here can agree it’s inappropriate… to limit the pool… based on race and gender, is itself a racist act.”
McKenzie didn’t mince words in response:
“You look at the resume of every Supreme Court Justice, hers stands out… I don’t care what Joe Biden, Donald Trump, or anybody else said… that is ridiculous.”
And at some point you just sit back and wonder:
What are we doing here?
A state House committee floor probably isn’t the place to relitigate federal judicial appointments.
And this bill?
Feels a lot like a solution in search of a problem.
Bizarro world.
And Then There’s Screen Time
Another bill moving through the General Assembly would limit screen time for K–5 students, including use of educational devices.
Originally, it went even further—proposing to ban devices like Chromebooks almost entirely, except in special circumstances.
Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed.
Because school districts across Tennessee have spent years—and millions—investing in educational technology.
Pulling the plug on that overnight would have been… something.
Still, the bill raises a bigger question:
What exactly are we trying to accomplish?
Technology isn’t going away.
If anything, it’s becoming more central to how we live and work.
So why are we trying to push kids toward an analog experience in a digital world?
And where do parents fit into this?
If I want my child to have access to technology, is that my decision—or the state’s?
We hear a lot about parental rights.
Just not always in consistent ways.
The Common Thread
If there’s a theme running through all of this—from accountability hearings to legislative debates—it’s this:
Adults talking past each other.
State vs. district.
Lawmakers vs. reality.
Policy vs. practice.
Everyone’s trying to control the narrative.
And in the process, the actual work—the hard, messy, relational work of improving schools—gets pushed to the side.
Final Thought
This isn’t corporate media.
There’s no team.
No budget.
No handlers.
It’s just me—trying to keep up, trying to make sense of it, and trying to say the things others won’t.
If you’ve made it this far, you probably get why that matters.
And if you think it does…
Venmo: @Thomas-Weber-10
Cash App: $PeterAveryWeber
Tips: Norinrad10@yahoo.com
Categories: Education, Uncategorized
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