Amy Frogge is a member of the elected school board in Metro Nashville. She is a parent activist and a lawyer. She is also one of the heroes of my new book SLAYING GOLIATH: THE PASSIONATE RESISTANCE TO PRIVATIZATION AND THE FIGHT TO SAVE AMERICA’S PUBLIC SCHOOLS (Knopf), which will be published January 21.
When Amy ran for the school board, the Disruption movement funded her opponents. Groups like Democrats for Education Reform and Stand for Children poured money into the race to beat her, and she won. They outspent her, but she had troops, volunteers, parents as passionate as she was.
Amy recently spoke to the Nashville Chamber of Commerce about public education in Nashville.
This is what she told them:
Good morning. I would like to start out this morning with a confession, speaking only on my own behalf: Since I was first elected, I’ve bristled at the very idea of the business community grading the school system with a yearly report card. If I, as a school board member, decided to “grade” the Nashville Chamber for the dismal state of Metro’s finances and offered suggestions as to how you might better conduct your business dealings to avoid such poor outcomes, I’d wager that you would take offense. You would likely respond that I’m not qualified to make such an assessment, since I have no background in business, and you’d be right.
This is how our educators feel. Our teachers and public schools are continually scapegoated for the societal ills that impact student learning. Our schools and teachers are often labeled as “failing,” which destroys morale and is an entirely inaccurate statement. They are faced with a constant barrage of new policies, procedures, assessments, and ratings tools crafted by those with no real expertise in education- by politicians, by lawyers (like me), and by business leaders. The metrics used to assess our teachers and students are often deeply flawed and ever-changing. We must begin to respect our teachers, grant them the autonomy they need to succeed, and pay them handsomely. They are our true experts. Our school staff members best understand how to reach students and how to help them grow academically. They often give of their own limited resources to ensure that our children have what they need- food, clothing, shoes, supplies, etc., and even the love and care many do not receive at home.
That said, I want to commend you today for the general focus of this year’s Report Card: investment, equity and support. These are the true keys to success in public education. It’s become painfully obvious that Nashville schools and teachers are underfunded and that there exist vast inequities within our school system. As a city and larger community, we must ensure that every child in Nashville has access to an excellent, well-rounded education. ALL children- not just those in private schools or wealthy neighborhoods- should have access to the arts, to physical activity (recess, PE, athletics), to proper nutrition, to time in nature, to books and school libraries, to learning through play when they are young, to enrichment activities that spark their creativity and interests as they grow, and to healthy, evidence-based educational practices. So many of Nashville’s students come to school having experienced trauma and adverse childhood experiences, which impact their ability to focus on learning. That’s why the Chamber’s emphasis on social emotional learning has been so very important. We must also maintain focus on whole child education. We need more school counselors, social workers, and nurses. MNPS needs greater support and increased partnerships from our larger community.
But our current national fixation on ridiculous amounts of flawed standardized testing, which ultimately measures little, has impeded progress toward these goals. The number one factor impacting a child’s test scores is the socioeconomic status of the child’s family. This does not mean, of course, that children who come from impoverished backgrounds cannot succeed; it simply means that we as a community must provide the extra support to help these children thrive. School privatization efforts also impede progress toward these goals. Conversations about vouchers and charter schools are ultimately about equity- whether we want to fund the few at the expense of the many and whether we can continue to support a parallel, competing set of school systems when we cannot afford to support our existing schools. These conversations are also about accountability, the need for public regulation and transparency, the misuse of tax dollars intended for children, and school segregation- again issues of equity and fairness. Ultimately, though, these issues are a distraction from the hard work at hand- a band-aid on a much larger problem. It is a sad day when we all rally around the idea of “Adopting a Teacher” in a city as rich and thriving as Nashville. It’s embarrassing that we have come to this point.
I’ll close today by adding to this Report Card a few ways that you, sitting here in this room, can help MNPS succeed:
First, I invite each of you to tour your zoned schools before deciding where to enroll your own child. My husband and I opted to send our children to our zoned schools, and it has been an excellent choice for our family. We have utilized schools that our neighbors once warned us against, those with poor ratings on sites like greatschools.org- and yet, my children are both thriving, academically and otherwise. Their test scores are just as high as those of their friends who have attended elite private schools, and my children have benefitted from diverse learning environments. It saddens me that we in Nashville have somehow come to view our public schools as charities meant to serve only those without means. Children in our public schools shouldn’t be viewed as future worker bees for businesses, and our city’s schools are not just for other people’s children. Public schools are the very hearts of our community, and if everyone in Nashville actually utilized our public schools, we would have very different outcomes. Socioeconomic diversity, as well as racial diversity, in schools are proven drivers of success.
And when we all get involved in public schools, small miracles happen. When I was PTO President at our local, Title I elementary school, I helped bring in community partnerships and local support for the school. As a result, test scores went up, the school’s culture improved, and a waiting list developed at that school. This could happen throughout the whole city with your support.
On a related note, please do not recruit businesses to Nashville with the promise that they can live in surrounding counties and send their children to school in places like Williamson County. This increases the divide between the haves and the have-nots and paints a misleading picture of our city.
Second, in addition to the suggestions you’ve made in this year’s Report Card, I hope that you will consider a greater investment in MNPS’s Community School programs, which provide wrap-around services to children and families in need. Businesses could partner with local schools to meet student needs and provide community volunteers. This would absolutely change a school’s outcomes.
Third, please help us advocate at the state level for our needs- increased funding, greater teacher pay and autonomy, and local control of schools so that Nashville can make the best decisions for our community.
Finally, I hope that you, as leaders in our business community, will put effort into advocating for larger changes in our city that will have the greatest impact on our schools and children. We need more affordable housing. Last year, over 3,400 of the children in our school system qualified as homeless. And as you are aware, our teachers and support staff desperately need better pay. Many can no longer afford to live in the New Nashville. We must stop investing in shiny things at the expense of infrastructure and community needs. When our city becomes more equitable, this will be reflected in our schools.
Thank you for your time this morning and for your commitment to public education. I know that a lot of hard, thoughtful work goes into your Report Card each year. I will leave you with the encouragement that Dr. Battle, Mayor Cooper, and the board are already working on the issues that your Report Card Committee has identified. It’s a new day for Nashville, and I hope we can all work together in partnership to make a difference for Nashville’s children.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Second, in addition to the suggestions you’ve made in this year’s Report Card, I hope that you will consider a greater investment in MNPS’s Community School programs, which provide wrap-around services to children and families in need. Businesses could partner with local schools to meet student needs and provide community volunteers. This would absolutely change a school’s outcomes.”
That’s great. It wouldn’t involve taking over a school so maybe they’re not interested, but they could actually do a lot that would be welcomed in public schools and they don’t even have to do it during school hours. They could add something instead of replacing something. They could make whatever they want to offer an extracurricular that is voluntary for students, just like wealthier kids get. No one mandates wealthier kids get piano or dance lessons, but tens of millions of them do and they do those things outside school. In addition.
Amy Frogge may want to schedule a visit to the Tennessee Catholic Public Policy Commission. “We present with one voice, the Church’s position on public policy affecting the common good of all Tennessee citizens to all branches of state government…We give witness to Gospel values in public affairs and government”. Someone should inform the “one Catholic voice” , with the Bishops- touted “unique identity” that 66% of Americans want separation of church and state and in light of that, their site’s rhetoric about democracy is hypocritical.
A journalist should identify who is paying for all of the Catholic political activity in the states.
Catholic “crucial legislation” in 5 areas includes “education” (Tennessee Catholic Advocacy Network) – “This bill allows parents to use THEIR education tax dollars to customize their children’s education”. The bill refers to the Education Savings Account and, it exposes the two-faced Catholic message i.e. using talking points of selfishness to undermine common goods. Is it a tactic from a Republican dirty playbook?
Amy Frogge is a terrific warrior for better public education. Her speech shows deep understanding of the issues facing schools. She understands that so-called choice provides an uneven opportunity for many students when equity should be our shared goal to create excellent schools for all.
Websites like “Great Schools” often provide parents with misleading perceptions about schools and school districts. There are many fine schools that have lower rankings than the top schools that generally serve affluent populations. Many of these lower ranked schools serve diverse students that are well prepared to attend highly regarded colleges and universities. Plus, the graduates of these lower ranked diverse districts learn how to function in the real world with a variety of different people and cultures.
Pushing assessments and rating tools onto teachers who have no solid program to teach from is unreasonable and programmed to fail. On another hand, simply giving teachers money and autonomy is not a solution — even if teacher A chooses a decent program and sticks to it, there is no guarantee whatsoever that teacher B in the next grade will use the same program and will be able to continue from where teacher A left. Because of self-designed self-contained lessons, well-designed lesson plans that span several grades and link to other subjects practically do not exist. Basically, each class is like a documentary program: it starts on the assumption that the viewer has no clue about the matter of the documentary, so the first half of the program explains banalities. A teacher in grade X must be able to rely on assumption that a teacher in grade X-1 taught the prerequisites necessary to continue in grade X. This means a complete control of teaching a particular subject by one course provider.
Only after being trained in such a strict program and ensuring that they stick to it, teachers and students can be assessed.
This answer makes me wonder if you have any idea what you are writing about.
🙂
Is your first name Raj?
Yet, QuelleProf, the American work force, mostly taught in public schools, manages to create productivity gains to cover the 2% Wall Street drag on GDP.
Your message would be better directed at the elite’s private schools, where they turn out heir leeches, destroyers of Main Street and, people who exploit the middle class and poor.
“In the closing years of the century it was obvious that the quality of schooling had not kept pace with its quantity. Students were staying in school longer than ever, but were they learning more than ever? Few thought so, nor did available evidence suggest that they were.”
Diane Ravitch wrote the above in Left Back, before Common Core, accountability, charter schools, and privatization movement. It is not clear to me that simply “granting teachers the autonomy they need to succeed, and paying them handsomely” should improve the status quo.
Knowledge grows exponentially- tough to measure and compare its teaching, longitudinally.
Amy Frogge for Congress!