Archives for category: Tennessee
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Vouchers for Tennessee?

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2012 //
6

An article in a Nashville paper describes the discussions about vouchers in Tennessee and generally quotes voucher supporters.

Given that the Governor is a conservative Republican, given that the Legislature is Republican, given that the Legislature often passes ALEC legislation without changing a word, and given that the state has a TFA Commissioner of Education, it seems likely that Tennessee will endorse vouchers for low-income students. In time, as we saw in Wisconsin, the income limits will be lifted.

There is only one important fact missing from the discussion of vouchers in this article: Vouchers have no record of improving test scores wherever they have been tried. Not in Milwaukee, not in the District of Columbia, and not in Cleveland.

It is simply choice for the sake of choice, choice for the sake of privatization.

Categories ALEC, Privatization, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration, Tennessee, Vouchers

Do the Wealthy Need Segregated Charters?

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2012 //
3

I borrowed the provocative title from a post by Julian Vasquez Heilig of the University of Texas.

Heilig wrote a post recently about Great Hearts, the charter chain that has been trying to locate in an affluent neighborhood in Nashville, thus far without success. As readers of this blog may recall, the Metro Nashville school board has turned Great Hearts down four times. For exercising discretion, the district has been punished by TFA Commissioner Kevin Huffman, who has withheld $3.4 million in state aid from the district. Huffman, of course, believes he must be obeyed because he is the all-powerful commissioner and how dare they reject his order.

Now Great Hearts want to bring multiple charters to San Antonio, and you can guess where they want to locate. As Heilig says in his title, “Hey! The Wealthy Need Segregated Charters Too!?”

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Tennessee

Leader of Great Hearts Charter Urges Parents to Oppose New Funds for Public Schools

By dianeravitch
October 19, 2012 //
13

Readers of this blog learned about the Great Hearts charter chain in Arizona as a result of its efforts to open a branch in Nashville. The Metro Nashville school board has rejected Great Hearts four times and was punished by TFA Commissioner of Education for refusing to approve this charter. Huffman has withheld $3.4 million from the district to retaliate for its unwillingness to open a charter in an affluent part of the city.

Back in Arizona, where Great Hearts is based, the “headmaster” of a Great Hearts school sent out a blast email urging staff and parents to vote against a ballot measure intended to raise $1 billion for the state’s dramatically underfunded public schools. The measure is intended to raise additional funding for both public schools and charter schools. But apparently, the headmaster thinks it best to starve the public schools into submission. After all, his own school asks for a “voluntary” gift of $1200-1500 from parents, so he doesn’t need the new money from the state.

Categories Charter Schools, Tennessee

Read This to Understand TFA’s Outsize Influence in DC

By dianeravitch
October 16, 2012 //
11

Alexander Russo has written an interesting paper on how TFA has managed to have unusual influence inside the Beltway.

If you wonder why members of Congress seem determined to support unpopular and ineffective programs like No Child Left Behind and Race to the  Top, read this.

Interesting that the two TFA state commissioners (John White in Louisiana and Kevin Huffman of Tennessee) work for two of the nation’s most reactionary governors

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Teach for America TFA, Tennessee, US Education

Kevin Huffman Punishes Nashville Board for Disobeying His Orders

By dianeravitch
October 15, 2012 //
21

Tennessee’s TFA Commissioner of Education Kevin Huffman ordered the Metro Nashville school board to grant a charter to a school run by Arizona-based Great Hearts. The School board voted no. It voted no four times. It said the school wanted to locate in a neighborhood where it would draw mainly from well-to-do white families; the board wanted assurance that the school would serve a diverse enrollment. Great Hearts expects families to make a “voluntary” contribution of $1200-1500 upfront.

Huffman retaliated by cutting state funding to the Nashville schools by $3.4 million in the middle of the term. It’s his way or the highway. What a lesson for the children of Tennessee.

Here is the notice that the board released to all its employees today.


Today, the Tennessee Department of Education withheld nearly $3.4 million from our October BEP funding. We want employees to have accurate information on the matter and our statement is pasted below for your information.

Meredith Libbey
Special Communications Assistant to the Director
Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools
——————————————————————————

Metro Schools Statement on BEP Funds Withheld
October 15, 2012

We were disappointed to learn around noon today that the Tennessee Department of Education has refused to reconsider its decision to withhold nearly $3.4 million in taxpayer funding designated for the education of more than 81,000 students in Metro Nashville Public Schools. The funding is 10 percent of the state’s annual “non-instructional” funding for Nashville’s children.

The elected representatives of the people in the state legislature developed the Basic Education Program funding plan to ensure schools are adequately funded. BEP is a funding program, not a spending plan, and these funds are used for a number of services that directly affect students and classrooms.

We are concerned about the effect of this reduction and how we will address this shortfall in the middle of the school year. We intend to be good stewards of the public money and to make thoughtful, deliberate decisions in an effort to minimize the penalty’s effect on the children in our schools.

The $3.4 million reduction is significant and raises concerns about how the amount was determined and whether it is consistent with other penalties assessed by the state. Tennessee law does not address penalties in this situation.

The district continues its work on behalf of Nashville’s children and families and, contrary to some media reports, there is no hiring freeze. The district has the means to meet its current financial obligations and the Board of Education will determine where to make the budget reductions by the end of the fiscal year.
–MNPS–

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Tennessee

No Excuses? Read This.

By dianeravitch
October 5, 2012 //
12

When President Obama visited Memphis, he was introduced by a handsome, articulate teen, Chris Dean.

Read what Chris wrote about his life after the President left town. Read about the details that the “no excuses” reformers dismiss.

Categories Education Reform, Obama, Poverty, Students, Tennessee

Bill Moyers on ALEC

By dianeravitch
October 3, 2012 //
4

Because I was traveling in Texas over the weekend, I didn’t see Bill Moyers’ report on ALEC. I watched it last night, and I hope you will too.

If you want to understand how we are losing our democracy, watch this program.

If you want to know why so many states are passing copycat legislation to suppress voters’ rights, to eliminate collective bargaining, to encourage online schooling, to privatize public education, watch this program.

ALEC brings together lobbyists for major corporations and elected state officials in luxurious resorts. In its seminars, the legislators learn how to advance corporate-sponsored, free-market ideas in their state. Its model legislation is introduced in state after state, often with minimal or no changes in the wording.

Watch Moyers show how Tennessee adopted ALEC’s online school bill and how Arizona is almost a wholly owned ALEC state. Watch how Scott Walker followed the ALEC template.

Moyers could do an entire special on ALEC’s education bills. ALEC promotes the parent trigger, so that parents can be tricked into handing their public schools over to charter chains. ALEC promotes gubernatorial commissions with the power to over-ride the decisions of local school boards to open more charters. ALEC promotes vouchers. ALEC, as he noted, promotes virtual charter schools (Pearson’s Connections Academy and K12 wrote the ALEC model law). ALEC has model legislations for vouchers for students with special needs. ALEC has a model law to allow people to teach without credentials. ALEC has legislation to eliminate tenure protection. ALEC has model legislation for educator evaluation.

It is all so familiar, isn’t it?

ALEC wants nothing less than to privatize public education, to eliminate unions, and to dismantle the education profession.

Categories ALEC, Education Industry, For-Profit, K12 Inc., On-Line Education, Parent trigger, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Tenure, Tennessee, Testing, Unions, US Education

The Big Race: Tennessee vs. Louisiana

By dianeravitch
October 3, 2012 //
15

Kevin Huffman is state commissioner of education in Tennessee. John White is state commissioner of education in Louisiana. Both taught for two years in Teach for America. Both worked as TFA staff. When John White worked for the New York City Department of Education, he had no pedagogical assignment;his job was to decide where to locate charter schools in public school space.

What does it say about TFA that its two young state commissioners work for governors following the ALEC script to demolish public education?

This reader writes:

Tennessee and Louisiana appear to be locked in a contest to see which can field the most inexperienced Department of Education. Kevin Huffman, the State Commissioner of Ed, logged two years in a classroom teaching 1st grade in Houston for TFA in the early ’90s before taking an executive job with TFA. His chief of staff taught a couple years with TFA in the mid-2000s, and the assistant director of curriculum and instruction finished her TFA gig in 2004.

Categories ALEC, Louisiana, Teach for America TFA, Tennessee

Michelle Rhee’s Plan to Destroy Public Education

By dianeravitch
October 2, 2012 //
33

Michelle Rhee is is a one-person PAC. She is raising hundreds of millions of dollars from rightwing billionaires and foundations and corporations to subsidize her program.

What is her program? Destroy teachers’ unions; eliminate tenure and seniority; privatize public education. Having failed to transform the public schools of the District of Columbia, she now wants to privatize public education everywhere.

When I was in Chattanooga, Tennessee, I learned from a Democratic state senator that Rhee had poured $105,000 into a race between a liberal Democrat and a conservative Democrat. The difference between them? The conservative Democrat supports vouchers. My informant said, “Candidates here will jump through hoops for a contribution of $1,000. Getting $105,000 is unimaginable.” Rhee bought the election. The voucher-loving Democrat won. He added: Most of Rhee’s money goes to conservative Republicans.

She is trying to buy a seat in Connecticut now. A reader writes:

Rhee’s fraud of an organization has nothing to do with students, teaching or learning. It is a political lobbyist group that secretly slithers around the nation passing our billionaire donated cash to influence and bribe politicians. Her dirty donations push the privatization, anti-union, anti-public school, collective bargaining busting, teacher trashing dogma down their throats. Here she is a pariah and getting her money is the kiss of death here in CT:

http://jonathanpelto.com/2012/10/01/michelle-buy-yourself-an-election-rhee-returns-to-undermine-democracy-in-connecticut/

http://www.ctnewsjunkie.com/ctnj.php/archives/entry/is_michelle_rhee_trying_to_buy_a_seat_in_the_5th/#comments-31483

Categories Connecticut, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, For-Profit, Privatization, Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst, Tennessee, Unions, US Education, Vouchers

Why Is the South So Easily Fooled?

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2012 //
29

When I lectured in Chattanooga last week, I noticed a strange phenomenon. When I said things bluntly, people gasped. At one point, for example, I responded to a question by saying that the Legislature should not cut education to give tax breaks to corporations. The audience noticeably gasped. There were several moments like that. It occurred to me that the politicians in Tennessee are so eager to attract corporate investment, that it is a sacrilege to question the strategy of cutting education to fund corporate tax breaks.

A thoughtful comment by an educator in Tennessee:

Thanks for the visit. It sparked much needed conversation around these issues. The South seems so willing to sell out to invading corporate giants…perhaps b/c of our long history of poverty. Last to industrialize, means last to unionize, means furtile ground for the invaders. We are the third world the Romneys used to have to go abroad to find and exploit. But, as the Chicago strike indicates, we are not alone in the fight to protect our basic negotiation rights. Unfortunately, I fear that we in the south will be dependent upon the outrage of our northern counterparts who have historically had more practice protesting against those who would sell our souls to the company store. The Rhees of the world will have more traction here for all the reasons the now insulted 47% here still vote Republican: poverty, ignorance, and prejudice. However, nothing feuled the privatization of education in the south like desegregation. As a teacher here for the last twenty-five years, I can attest it is still the prime mover. I’m pretty sure this is true nationally. NCLB is just a clever way to come into this effort through the back door…undetected apparently even by our first black president.

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Poverty, Tennessee
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »