I spoke in Ed. Committee about holding high stakes evaluations for students and teachers in the most difficult school year in modern history. Members have no idea the unbearable stress that conducting the evaluations will bring to students, parents, teachers, and principals.
Why test when there is no plan to use the scores? Why test when we have nothing to compare from the previous year? Teachers conduct testing and benchmarks throughout the year, they know where the students are and record this--this is not the year for high stakes tests.
Teachers are doing the job of social workers, custodians, nurses, and tech experts. When teachers are out and there are not enough substitutes, other teachers have to cover extra classes and in many cases principals are covering those classes along with their endless duties.
At any given moment, a school could close for multiple days due to transmission increases--how in the world are principals and lead teachers supposed to take care of the daily crises and evaluate every teacher multiple times.
Teachers and principals have triple the workload and these evaluations seem like cruel and unusual punishment at this time when our students need so much extra care, not extra stress.
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I ended up having an education day today. We met with the school board and listened to their concerns and needs. It was surprising how many bills we have that will affect them that most folks are unaware of.
One that is particularly concerning is about Charter schools getting first dibs on decommissioned school properties. wapp.capitol.tn.gov/apps/BillInfo/…
It’s concerning for many reasons, mostly because tax payer dollars and the LEA will be used to bring these buildings up to standard. Another Rep from Knoxville said I was wrong, but here is the bill language.
“there is a strong relationship between wage levels and criminal behavior, which explains why, over the past 20 years, crime rates for young men have increased while their wages have decreased.” nber.org/digest/nov97/h…
Studies show raising the wage lowers crime. The TN supermajority refuses to raise the wage.
Speaker Sexton is gaslighting you. He thinks you are stupid. He thinks he can lie to you about their intent to defund public education. A voucher is private school being funded by your public tax dollars. It doesn’t matter which pile of public tax dollars it comes out of.
It doesn’t matter if you call it an ESA, it’s a voucher. Public tax 💵 going to private schools with no transparency. Schools that can refuse any child, don’t have to hire certified teachers, no free lunch, no buses, and don’t have accountability measures for teachers or kids.
Private schools don’t have to use the same tests or curriculum the supermajority has been saying for 12 years is crucially important. Why is it no longer important? Why are they throwing money at schools with none of the requirements they swear are improving our schools?
Let’s talk about the interesting timing of the new school A-F “grading system” news dump on the Friday before Christmas weekend, shall we? Let’s talk about the coincidence of this “system” coming out the year the Governor wants to shove his voucher scam down TN family’s throats.
Let’s talk about this new Education Commissioner who never spent a day as a teacher or principal. How she came in and threw out the grading plan ideas created with the department and educators who worked on it. Then she instituted her own rigged grading system.
So if this Education Commissioner hasn’t been an educator, where did she come from? Why, Jeb Bush’s school privatization organization of course. This is all part of Lee’s voucher scam, more tricks to make public schools look bad so folks will think his voucher scam is an answer.
We say this over and over, the research clearly shows vouchers don’t work, yet still the GOP pushes forward with a 95 county voucher plan that has FAILED in every state that passed one. GOP need to STOP defunding public schools for their dark money donors! time.com/6272666/school…
You will hear Rep Mark White say “we have to do something for these failing schools.” Those schools aren’t failing, the TN GOP are failing our schools. They are trying to make our schools look bad so they can bring in their privatizing donors.
They are sacrificing our kids education for their power and greed. We can stop this voucher scheme that is destined to fail, but we all have to show up and lift our voices. And understand, it’s the rural counties who will suffer the most as they see their funding dry up.