A reader writes:
“Yes, a lawyer is the acting interim Superintendent, Joe. His name is Dorsey Hopson. Before coming to Memphis, he was general counsel for the Atlanta Public School system (during the same time as the cheating scandal).”
Will he be called to testify about the organized cheating and the inflated s ores and the unwarranted bonuses that occurred when he was general counsel to the Atlanta Public Schools.
Accountability begins at the top, as it should.
The Tennessee legislation to cut welfare benefits for families if kids don’t raise their test scores was passed by the committee and now goes to the House Government Operations Committee. It is scheduled for a vote in the State Senate on April 4.
If adopted, Tennessee will let the starving begin.
Will President Obama denounce this dreadful legislation? Will Secretary Duncan? Will DFER? Will Bill Gates?
Where are the reformers who put students first?
LG, a longtime reader, wrote a letter to Senator Stacey Campfield (R) in Tennessee, who sponsored the legislation to cut the welfare benefits of poor families by as much as 30% if their children don’t raise their test scores. The legislation is inherently discriminatory, she writes, because it singles out poor families for punishment.
This raises interesting questions. How about increasing taxes on wealthy families whose children don’t raise their test scores? Senator Campfield would get way more letters from them! And people would begin asking who made the tests so important. And whether they should be used to mete out punishments and rewards. That would be a boon for the anti-testing movement.
LG writes:
Dear Senator Campfield,
Thank you for your reply.
This is a radical solution for a very important issue. How can anyone reconcile this same targeting strategy for middle and higher income families whose children are in the same academic position?
What is proposed in this bill is discriminatory in that it does not solve academic performance issues by making some rules for some of the people to follow while leaving the others to continually fail in schools. Where is the incentive for middle or upper level income families?
A large concern is for the children at lower income levels who have not yet been identified as having learning disabilities. As you said, no system is 100% perfect, including child study services. Some children may not be identified as learning disabled for years–should their families be punished by this?
I would think a better bill would target the inequality in our economic infrastructure. Apply more oversight to the assistance programs to help people get out of situations of poverty. Provide opportunities for employment, and offer health care for families who struggle. Stop discriminating against the poor and provide solutions to aid in their upward mobility.
If this is about holding parents accountable, why hasn’t this bill been piggy-backed with parental accountability for all income levels? To make any solution about money on all levels is also flawed because people with access to money may try to “buy” results or intimidate those reporting grades. The poor do not have the luxury of “buying” their way out of anything. What your bill proposes is segregating the population into haves and have-nots and then creating different rules for the have-nots. This solves nothing in the way of making positive changes in academic progress.
Instead, hold parents accountable for communicating with schools or attending parent sessions by other means. If a parent is abusive toward a child, there are laws protecting the child. It is difficult to prove if a parent is uninterested in the academic well-being of a child, but perhaps there could be requirements for ALL parents of academically-struggling children by law that do not involve financial burdens.
This bill is anti-American, and should not be pursued. As a public servant, it is your responsibility to find another way to reach these students. Singling out low income families is discrimination, no matter how good the intentions behind the act.
Tennessee grows closer to allowing unlimited expansion of charters in its two biggest cities by negating the power of local school boards to grant charters. This, remember, is the ALEC plan for privatization of public resources.
In Nashville, the Metro Nashville school board is worried about whether the growth of charters will bankrupt the district. Charter advocates, unsurprisingly, say don’t worry.
But pay attention to Inglewood, California. Only a decade ago, conservatives said tat Inglewood was a miracle district and hailed the success of its public schools in producing high test scores despite high poverty. Then the charters began opening and 6,000 students enrolled in charters. That was 1/3 of the district’s students. The district laid off teachers, cut programs, increased clas sizes, an finally collapsed into bankruptcy.
Last December,the state took over the no-longer-miraculous Inglewood district.
That is how public education dies. While vultures fly in from other states to fleece taxpayers and turn a profit.
As we are learning, Tennessee legislators and education “leaders” operate in an alternate universe.
They want to cut the welfare benefits of families if their children get low test scores.
They want to attract for-profit corporations to drain taxpayer dollars out of the public schools, and never hold them accountable for bad results (see, Tennessee Virtual Academy).
They do whatever ALEC tells them because it is hard to think up new laws to help corporations all by yourself.
They are rushing to pass voucher legislation so that every family has the choice to take public dollars to a religious school, but a big thought just occurred: will Tennessee taxpayers be paying to send kids to Muslim schools?
Yes, there are Muslim religious schools in Memphis and Nashville, where most of the vouchers will go.
No law will stand up in any federal court that excludes them.
Gosh, what will those big thinkers do now?
Kevin Huffman, Tennessee’s State Commissioner of Education, taught for two years as a member of Teach for America. Then he was the TFA “communications director.” That is, the PR guy.
Somehow he got picked to be head of education in a whole despite his minimal experience and his lack of any administrative experience.
He certainly lacks any political skills. He treats the duly elected Metro Nashville school board as if they are peons and he is their master. He refuses to meet with them. Where did he get these arrogance.
The state is about to adopt radical ALEC legislation to snuff out local control so the big charter corporations can set up shop without the trouble of asking for permission from a local school board. They can just go to Huffman and all his buddies will get their charters and make big bucks.
Here’s more about the Tennessee proposal to cut the welfare benefits of families if their children don’t make progress on state tests.
155,000 families will be affected if the bill passes.
Is this value-added right-to-eat?
The main sponsor of the bill has no children.
I knew it was Ebenezer Scrooge.
Here are the names and contact number for the committee in the Tennessee legislature that will decide whether to cut the welfare benefits of families whose children get low test scores.
Please contact them, in the name of decency.
Just when you think that things couldn’t get any worse, some legislator comes up with the meanest, cruelest, dumbest idea yet.
Tennessee is considering legislation to cut the welfare benefits to families if their children get low test scores.
Some exceptions are carved out, but the basic idea is that the kids need a carrot and stick approach. Or more likely, a whip. The kids need to be afraid that their family won’t eat.
That’ll fix education.
Who are these people?
Do they have an ounce of charity in their hearts?
Do they have any religion? Any sense of humanity?
Will they sleep well at night knowing that someone went to bed hungry because of a law they passed?
Michelle Rhee keeps raising interesting questions. It is hard to ignore her, because she is the face of the corporate reform movement, the one who goes on television to complain about the huge numbers of “bad” teachers and the importance of weakening or eliminating collective bargaining and the great value of privatizing public schools. Apparently, despite her four years in D.C., plus the additional years of her deputy Kaya Henderson, the District of Columbia still has way too many “bad” teachers because it continues to be at the bottom of NAEP rankings. When will we see D.C. rise to the top as Rhee predicted?
Is she a public school parent? Yes, one daughter attends a public magnet school, and the other attends an elite private school. Both in Tennessee.
Where does she live? In interviews in Tennessee, she says she lives in Tennessee, but she is also the wife of the mayor of Sacramento and lives in California. Does she vote in Tennessee or California?
Is she a Republican or a Democrat? She says she is a Democrat, but most of the candidates supported by StudentsFirst were Republicans. Of 105 candidates her group funded, 90 were Republicans. Sort of strange for a Democrat. She poured almost a million dollars into Tennessee to guarantee that the Republicans gained a super-majority. In one Democratic primary, she gave $100,000 to a voucher-loving conservative Democrat to beat a liberal pro-public school Democrat.
And the few Democrats she supported were in favor of vouchers and other Republican ideas. She has also given millions to defeat collective bargaining, which Democrats tend to support. Or used to.
She is a woman of mystery.
