A Little Good, A Little Bad, A Little Ugly - You Decide Which is Which.
“But you must live your own life eventually. You have one chance only.”
― Sebastian Faulks, Birdsong
Going to kick the morning off with a little good news. Actually, a little great news.
I know. I know. It's not the normal modus operandi around here, but when it's good - it is good.
This week, Vanderbilt University and Metro Nashville Public Schools announced a new partnership that will offer full-ride scholarships to MMNPS students who fall under certain financial restrictions, and meet the required academic standards. The scholarships will be available starting with those applying for the 2025 fall semester.
The scholarship program, Nashville Vanderbilt Scholars, will cover direct costs at the University, including tuition, fees, housing, and meals. Also included is a one-time $6,000 summer stipend following a student's second or third year at the university to help offset the costs of doing a summer internship.
The scholarships are not part of a completion, nor are they directed at a specific demographic. They are available to every student who qualifies.
To qualify, a student must do two things.
Gain admission to Vanderbilt through its Early Decision I or II plans
Qualify for a Federal Pell Grant or have a parent income of $100,000 or less.
Now, granted the first isn't easy. Only MNPS's highest achievers will be able to meet the rigorous requirements, but for those who do, this is a game changer. It ensures they will have an opportunity to reach their full potential.
Hats off to all involved.
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As previously mentioned, despite the passage of the bill, urban school districts are still protesting the law that would allow select teachers to carry guns while on campus. Knoxville's School Board is the latest to take up proposed resolutions to publicly announce their opposition.
The law came about out of recognition that many of Tennessee's smaller rural school districts struggle to employ security resource officers. Most of us would be surprised at the number of school districts in Tennessee that serve less than 2000 kids. Many of these districts employ teachers who are both ex-military and ex-law enforcement. The law was seen as an imperfect way to provide a measure of security to students in districts that can't find SROs.
It gets lost in the conversation that in rural districts many kids start hunting at an early age, so exposure to firearms is the norm and not the exception, unlike in an urban environment. Rural children are often taught at home to respect guns while enjoying them as a tool. Guns, for good or bad, are seeped into the culture. Urban dwellers have a hard time understanding just how prevalent they are.
I grew up in a rural school district and entered the woods with a gun in my early teens. I know it was many years ago, and a different time, but it was not uncommon to see a pick-up truck parked in the school parking lot with a rifle in the gun rack. To my recall, not a single student ever got shot at school.
While this is not a bill I support, I can understand why some may consider it an option. Furthermore, I trust people in their communities to protect and serve each other.
At next week's meeting, the KCS Board will consider two resolutions - one from a Democrat and one from a Republican - that will signify the board's belief that the police officers in every Knoxville school are a better option than armed teachers.
The two resolutions reflect a different philosophical mindset about the primary reason to entrust security at Knox County Schools to police, not civilians.
One from Kristi Kristy, a Republican who represents South Knoxville, reiterates that school security officers are the best deterrent.
One from Katherine Bike, a Democrat who represents the neighborhoods west of downtown Knoxville, explicitly says the board "commits to not arm teachers and staff."
I agree, and luckily the Knoxville district can hire SROs. Not everybody can follow suit.
Twitter, or X if you prefer, is filled with critics of the law demanding a list of districts declining the opportunity to arm select teachers. To what an end.
None of the public statements are binding. There is nothing to prevent a district from issuing a public statement in opposition, while quietly approving a select number of applications.
Again, it is important to remember, not every law is for everyone. Some laws are designed to provide opportunities for select people while allowing others to do what they believe is best.
I applaud the districts that are privately choosing not to approve applications for teachers to carry. But I don't condemn those that choose otherwise.
It is possible to hold two ideas simultaneously.
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If you reflect on last Summer when the Tennessee Department was holding its state-wide listening tour on changes to school A-F grades, you'll remember that Chief of Staff Chelsea Crawford led the meetings. It was puzzling because Crawford had no experience in education, and Tennessee had a new Commissioner of Education, Lizzy Reynolds.
Well, that puzzle has been cleared up a little bit, as it's been announced that Crawford is heading out the door to become Executive Director of TennesseeCan.
The press release accompanying the announcement of Crawford's appointment refers to her as "The Energizer" and touts her more than four years as chief of staff at the Tennessee Department of Education, where she led the commissioner’s office under two commissioners and through the COVID-19 pandemic. Her role spanned overseeing the communications, stakeholder engagement, policy and legislative affairs, and performance and evaluation teams. Her leadership contributed to the passage and implementation of several key administration bills, including early literacy, learning loss interventions, tutoring, and funding reform policies that are positively changing the trajectory for Tennessee’s students.
Ironically, the press release inadvertently lays out Crawford's qualifications for leading education policy discussions, "Before joining the department in 2020, Chelsea spent 10 years in the private sector, including serving as vice president for a public affairs firm that supported corporate, government, political, and non-profit clients."
Crawford will be replacing former Executive Director Andi Shaw. Shaw was proceeded by Blake Easley who led the organization from 2016 -2018 before becoming a member of Governor Lee's cabinet.
Easley has recently hung out his shingle as a consultant and is currently advising candidates across the state running for office.
TennesseeCan has long been a proponent of expanded school choice and vouchers as a means to that goal.
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Been a while since we heard from our Tennessee California transplant who's been working in Florida while living in the Volunteer State. Fear not, she unleashed a new round of her patented disruption.
This week Penny Schwinn turned her affections towards the University of Florida's PK Yonge Developmental Research School. The school serves students in kindergarten through 12th grade with a mission to "design, test, and disseminate innovations in education through serving a diverse K-12 community."
The school currently has a total of 1,350 students, 520 in high school, 450 in middle school, and 380 in elementary school. Of all students, 42% are white, 24% are Black, 23% are Hispanic, 6% are multiracial, 4% are Asian or Pacific islander, and 1% are American Indian/Alaskan Native. It also has multiple types of learners such as gifted students and those with individualized education programs.
That student population is representative of Florida's racial and income demographics — something it prides itself on as a research and innovation school for Florida. But change may be afoot after Schwinn's proposal for a selective admission system at the high school.
PK Yonge's high school is currently #38 in Florida, Schwinn voiced a goal to bump them into the top 10. In making her argument, she pointed out that 35 of the 37 schools ranked above PK Yonge have selective admission (minus two traditional public schools in high-income areas.
"If we are thinking about PK Yonge being a top 10 high school in the state of Florida, it would require selective admissions," Schwinn said. "There really isn't a pathway at this point to have the admissions process that we've had to date without moving into a selective model, because every school essentially above us has a selective model."
That would require admissions limitations at PK Yonge. The school currently operates as all public schools do and admits students as they come, regardless of grade level.
"If you are bringing in a student at fourth grade, and that student is two grade levels behind, that is a different type of work than if you have a selective admissions process where you are saying you have to hit certain benchmarks in order to be admitted into the school," Schwinn said.
The former state commissioner presented three options to consider to pave the path to a top 10: dual programs, reflective K-8 and exclusive high school or to maintain structure and improve. With the current model, she said, maintaining and improving is not realistic because PK Yonge doesn't have selective admissions like the schools ranked above it.
Danaya Wright, a UF trustee, voiced concerns about PK Yonge becoming a selective high school because "if we really want to save public schools, we have to save it for everybody at the top and the bottom."
University President Ben Sasse seems to be on point with Schwann's initiative. He clarified that talks are around future students and not those currently enrolled.
"We're not talking about any change for anybody who's already in 9 to 12," Sasse said. "The debate we're having is, do folks who are not on a UF track learn that news between senior year in high school and freshman year in college, or might they learn that news between 8th and 9th grade? We're not making any decisions today, but the question before us will be about whether or not that selectivity moment moves four years earlier, but this isn't going to affect anybody who's today in grades 9 to 12."
We'll see how this turns out.
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Unlike Nancy E. Baily and other education policy advocates, I don't believe that teacher shortages are due to manipulation or simply a ploy. They are real and are the natural outcome of a decade of bad policy that focuses on recruitment over retention. This week she writes,
"School districts around the country are describing hundreds of classrooms they can’t seem to fill with qualified teachers. This has been a manipulated ploy to get rid of veteran teachers and employ alternative, revolving door unqualified teachers who will settle for smaller salaries."
There is only problem with that hypothesis, those inexperienced teachers are quitting at an even faster rate. Once it was considered unprofessional to quit in the middle of the school year, now it's tough to even get a two-week notice.
Baily and others put forth the argument that there is a wealth of qualified teachers sitting on the sideline waiting for the salaries to become lucrative enough to warrant re-entry into the workforce. I disagree. Those people have moved on and started new careers, maybe not the ones they envisioned, but ones that'll allow them to support their families and retain their sanity. The latter being the key component.
The writer has compiled a list of root causes for the crisis in teacher staffing. While I may disagree with parts of the diagnosis, she's done an expemplary job of collecting symptoms:
Lack of control. Teachers are told what and how to teach without being given input. Many schools have signed on to draconian reforms in structured teaching that ignores the needs of the developing student.
High-Stakes Testing. Teachers understand that high-stakes testing is bad for children. They don’t want to be a part of it. They also don’t want their teaching judged by it.
A Limited Curriculum. The curriculum is too narrow. Many teachers (e.g. art and music) have not been hired for years.
Large class sizes. The research is clear that lowering class size especially in k-3rd grade helps students. So why aren’t they working harder to do this?
Non-supportive school administrators. This could be the school principal or school district administrators who look down on teachers and do as they are told by the outside corporate school reformers. Many of these individuals aren’t even educators!
The loss of a good library. Many schools no longer have libraries, and if they do, they are often inadequate. Yet, we know that good school libraries improve test scores and help children thrive.
The loss of support staff. Many school counselors are now relegated to mundane tasks having to do with testing and data collection instead of helping troubled students. A good school relies on a variety of support staff—school psychologists, librarians/media specialists, nurses, school counselors and more.
Data Collection. Teachers who care about teaching find micromanaging useless school data on a child maddening.
Common Core State Standards (CCSS). These un-scientific standards were foisted on all teachers and students removing a teacher’s decision-making power. Many teachers distrust CCSS. The Common Core State Standards are such a volatile issue, it was reported yesterday, that WikiLeaks caught the DNC warning they should not be mentioned in the campaign–calling CCSS a “political third rail.” (A third rail is the electrified rail on a subway). HERE. Donald Trump also seems to be dropping the discussion of Common Core.
Standards in general. The high emphasis on standards started with No Child Left Behind, even earlier, and has done nothing to improve schools.
Lousy school conditions and poor teaching resources.
Lacking respect. All of the above lead to a pervasive disrespect of teachers that lacks professionalism.
Disregard for poverty and a child’s difficulties outside of school. Teachers are caring individuals. They recognize problematic outside circumstances that affect how students learn.
Lacking special education and ELL support for general education teachers.
Professional development that is uninspiring.
An Overemphasis on digital instruction. Teachers are slowly being replaced by competency-based, personalized, individualized–online instruction.
It's hard to disagree with any of them, and most are correctable.
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Last night kicked off three nights at Nashville's Nissan Stadium for Morgan Wallen. This morning,
This morning, The Tennessean published a review of the first show by writer Marcus K. Dowling. Even a perfunctory read, reveals that Dowling ain't comfortable with Mr. Wallen.
The opening paragraphs read:
Morgan Wallen's first of three scheduled nights headlining at Nashville's Nissan Stadium felt like another in a series of inflection points in country music's ongoing pop-culture evolution.
The Billboard chart-topping artist walked out to the strains of his 2022 Lil Durk collaboration "Broadway Girls," and played COVID-19 quarantine era breakout anthems "Heartless" and "Wasted on You." Among the evening's final trio of songs, he performed his 2023-released mega-anthem "Last Night." However, the evening marked an even more symbolic occurrence for Music City's audience.
I'm not even sure what that means and is likeliest described as a word salad. But I'd argue it's a little more.
Dowling writes:
Five minutes into assuming the stage, it was an easy-to-determine fact that the best pure performance of his set is still when he covers Jason Isbell's "Cover Me Up."
It's almost as if his boom arrived via soul songs and trap bangers while, as a person, he was falling in love with the idea that, when they connect, looking people in the eyes and telling tales as songs about your childhood and family has been — for many who have interacted with the art of making music during country music's century-long existence — actually the most fun thing in the world.
Wallen looking as though he's curiously poking at a piano while playing "Sand In My Boots" or physically leaning into his guitar to convey the authentic strength of the work of female songwriters via "Thought You Should Know" — a Nicolle Galyon, Miranda Lambert and Wallen co-written homage to honest, down-home conversations swaddled in a mother's knowing glare and caring love — or Jessie Jo Dillon's "Lies, Lies, Lies" (an ode to lying to one's self about a breakup's emotional impact) humanizes him beyond notoriety in a way that for many, if not yet all, in the crowd, yet, are more than endeared to.
In a night when country's mainstream expansion was caught in an awkward evolutionary moment, snapshots into Wallen's soul like these deserve a deeper, earnest revisiting via marketing dollars and radio-ready appeal once the Beyoncé, Lana Del Ray, Post Malone, and Kacey Musgraves fervor dies down.
In other words, Dowling is arguing that Wallen should be following the lead of other more palpable artists instead of the desires of his fans who allow him to sell out three consecutive nights at a football something. A feat that, outside of Beyonce, none of the aforementioned artists are even hypothetically capable of.
Dowling's statements and his article shed light on why there is a divisive debate over whether Beyonce's new album is country or not. I'm betting that the majority of those in attendance enjoy Beyonce's new recording, what they balk at is people telling them what they should listen to. That's the root of the whole debate.
The message delivered via The Tennessean is "You can listen to country music, but instead of the Wallens. Aldeans, and Zimmermans of the world, you should turn to Beyonce and Isbell." That's what gets rejected,
Rightfully so, imagine if I told Dowling that Rap was cool but the best of the genre was the Beastie Boys and Yelawolf. Bet I'd get some push back.
Personally, I'm a Wallen fan. As Dowling does note, "Calling any pop hit that Wallen's had in roughly the past decade anything less than a hyper-magnetic earworm is a slap in the face to any musician, producer, songwriter, or studio engineer who has touched his work."
Interestingly, he fails to credit the artist in that equation.
In closing, The Tennessean writer offers:
In that regard, lining up, knocking back, and filling up whiskey glasses to hide the truth feels less like a lyric and more like the law of the land.
We're potentially blinder than ever before, but we're simultaneously stumbling forth, daunted, but dared by our resolve to achieve a best, if perhaps not yet unified, vision of reality.
That might be one of the most discriminating things I've ever read, and Dowling's dislike of Wallen clearly extends to his fans.
Shame, because last night I met some of the nicest people outside the show. They were kind, and considerate, and seemed to have a firm grasp on reality.
Marcus K. Dowling, on the other hand, probably needs to get out a little more.
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Per usual, I need to rattle the cup a little bit before I head out the door.
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