Be Wary of the Well-Intentioned Man

“Don't blame the boss. He has enough problems.”
― Donald Rumsfeld

Everybody talks about how tired parents are during the infant years of child-rearing. I'm here to tell you they are nothing compared to the teen years.

The amount of time I spend in the car carting kids from activity to activity, not to mention the hours spent picking up things, and dropping off things while retrieving other things, is far beyond what I ever expected. It never stops.

Don't look at this as an opening to throw in your favorite kids are over-scheduled argument. I got a thousand counters, and sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. For better or worse, childhood has changed, and parenting has had to change in response. Still, it is exhausting.

Sometimes I see an open 45-minute window 24 hours ahead, but just like weather predicted in advance by meteorologists, by the time it gets here, circumstances have changed, and the window shuts.

I'm not really complaining. Time in the car with a teen is time well spent. Something about being locked up in a confined space for an extended period leads them to open up. It's like Detective Benson hopped in the back seat, and suddenly, they are telling you all kinds of pertinent information. Even the most reticent teen becomes willing to open up in the car,

My buddy calls that truck time, and it is some of the best times,

When talking fatigue, it is more of a physical tiredness with toddlers, whereas, with teens, there is a large mental component. The power of speech leads to the voicing of opinions. Opinions that often vary from your own. Everybody is a fan of critical thinking until it becomes a daily thing, and the conclusions regularly differ from your own.

Then, it becomes exhausting, and you wish for peace.

All of this is a long way of saying that the aging of children has led to difficulty in hitting deadlines. Sometimes you fall behind and, despite your best efforts, you can't get up.

Last week, I had a lot to say, but just time to think and format. This week, wasn't any slower, but hopefully, these words have found their way to your eyes.

It's getting crazier out here in education policy land, with no signs of abatement. Oftentimes, it is hard to know where to begin with any of it, while other days feel like a continuous trip around the mulberry bush.

In my humble opinion, being involved is more important than ever.

Don't fall into the trap of looking at the education world through partisan glasses, there is enough bad policy floating around to indict everyone. It was barely over a decade ago when Democrats were supporting charter schools and other elements of education reform. They've since ripped up that plank of their platform, but I remain unconvinced that's a permanent condition.

I'm going to shut up now, so we can get on with the meat of the day, but just remember seldom does the truth appear at first blush, and it's only through extended conversations that it is exposed.

So, let's get to doing some exposing.

- - -

School safety is all the rage in Tennessee, with legislators tripping over themselves to introduce new legislation designed to keep kids safe. I'm not saying everybody is not well-meaning, but once again, we are forgetting that the kids in question are sentient beings.

At the top of the list is the growing threat of violence directed toward schools. As disturbing as such threats are, they are not unique. Forty-five years ago I attended a high school with 33 bomb threats in one month. The difference between then and now is discerning the real from the hoax. I'm pretty sure no bombs went off. in schools, unfortunately we can't say the same thing about school shootings. That tends to heighten the severity. 

Tennessee lawmakers have been working overtime to ensure that students who make threats against schools are dealt with severely. However, perhaps we've gone a little overboard.

Make a gun with your fingers and point it at a classmate, and a fifth grader could find themselves in handcuffs. Make a joke about bringing guns to school, and even if you are an "A" student and have never been in trouble, you could end up facing felony charges.

If you've ever spent even a minute with middle school kids, you'll know they find everything funny. You also need to remember that their brains are not fully formed, so they often fail to understand why something is funny, yet offensive to adults. How many times have I heard, "It's a joke. Why do y'all take everything so seriously?"

Let me throw out one more thing here. The 30 days I spent in rehab were the funniest days of my life but also the scariest. To cope with that fear, we made jokes - some of which were brutal. It was our coping mechanism. Laughing at our fears kept them at bay. I'd argue the same holds true for kids. 

What we have done is create an environment where kids suffer from heightened anxiety and fear, and now we are going to rob them of a primary coping mechanism. Nice. 

When questioned, lawmakers, and other adults, say things like, "It's never a joking matter" or "Maybe this will teach them how serious we are." Call me naive, but I'm not a big fan of using felony charges as a teachable moment for individuals who haven't reached full cognitive development yet.

I'm even less a fan when the "credible threat" is used as a qualitative term and we define it like we define pornography - I'll know it when I see it.

As a young man, I was given the sound advice to stay out of the system because once you are in the system, they can do with you as they please and will take your time and money at their will. Yet here we are throwing middle school teens and younger in the soup in a misguided effort to keep kids safe.

It's a policy that doesn't keep all children safe and sacrifices those who aren't quick enough to grasp the perceptions of adults.

To make it even worse, there is more waiting around the corner.

Tennessee Professional Educators CEO JC Bowman told The Tennessee Star on Thursday that he is crafting legislation to present to lawmakers that would give police the authority to immediately detain minors accused of threatening schools, giving officials a 72-hour window to determine whether their threats were credible while sending the bill to the parents of the accused.

Raise your hand if you think that's a good idea.

One plus about this proposed legislation is that it would define credible threats...kinda.

Bowman suggested the legislation could specify, “A credible threat is a threat that is intended to be carried out and has the ability to be carried out. It can be expressed in many ways, including orally, visually, in writing, or electronically. A credible threat would cause a reasonable person to fear for their safety or the safety of others.”

Huh, that definition includes five more terms that need defining and are subject to interpretation. 

Putting kids in juvenile detention will require putting them in handcuffs. i don't know how many of you have ever experienced being in cuffs, I have. 

It's an experience that never leaves you. Whether you were guilty or not has no bearing, you were a person who authorities deemed in need of restraint. I haven't broken the law in 25 years, I can't walk into a police station without increased anxiety. Maybe they were something I'd forgotten. Maybe they'll see the real me. 

Handcuffing someone is not something to be treated lightly. It doesn't end there though. 

I'm going to give you a little scenario that, unfortunately, happens way too often.

Oliver is 12. He lives in a household where his parents often engage in violent fights with each other. Money is always short and their tempers are even shorter. It may be 2024, but they still adhere to the old adage: spare the rod, spoil the child. Oliver is often on the other end of the rod.

At school, because he spends a lot of time at home and he's often tired - kept up by the fighting at night - Oliver is a little socially awkward. Some kids might think he's odd, so he's regularly picked on. He just wants some peace at home and at schoo, something that remains elusive.

One day is particularly bad, the teasing particularly harsh, and without thinking, he tells some of his tormentors, leave me alone, or I'm going to go home and get a gun.

There is no thought of how it might be interpreted by adults. He's driven solely by a desire to carve out some peace, and threatening his tormentors with hypothetical guns is the only path he sees to earn a little peace.

A teacher hears the threat and reports him. That reporting sets off a chain of events that will end up involving the police, His parents will be called out of work to address his actions, likely earning Oliver yet another beating over lost wages. 

Was the threat real?

Were Oliver's classmates in true danger?

Current Tennessee law would require the teacher, principal, and police to assume that he presented a credible threat. Whether it was or not, one young man has had his life irrevocably negatively altered. He now faces long-term consequences that aren't going away.

Next year it could be even worse. He could find himself spending three days in a juvenile detention center while officials sort things out. That's always good for the old mental health. With Tennessee's history with juvenile detention, do we really think it is a great idea to put the state in charge of more kids?

Then there is the cost. The new proposed law would shift the financial burden to the parents. When asked about the cost of detaining a minor during a 72-hour investigative process, Bowman suggested it would cost about $1,000 per incident. Not only will Oliver's parents lose pay, but now they'll get a bill for a grand. A bill they likely can't pay. Pretty sure Oliver will get a few more beatings over this one. For what?

Here's my favorite part, most of the threats called to schools in Tennessee are foreign in origin. Supposedly, this legislation would provide a process to help educators and SROs determine whether threats from overseas should be considered credible.

Help me here. While Oliver sits in detention, Edna, the Librarian, and John the soccer coach, along with help from Steve the SRO are going to determine just who in some foreign county is making these threats and how to proceed? What?!?

That's pretty much the job of the FBI, and do we need to detain a student while they do it?

I consider Bowman a dear friend, and nobody works harder for kids and teachers, but this is a god awful proposal.

We have to make sure that we are doing the right thing to keep kids safe, not just doing something. 

He does include a provision that would allow the law to be changed annually, and that is worth noting.

So what would I do?

My solution is the same as it has always been. Relationships between a teacher and a student should be at the core of every policy. If we are engaged in practices that serve as impediments to that relationship, we are hindering the education process. Period. 

With all the other initiatives that have been created over the last decade, we have left little room for the development of those relationships. 

The people who interact daily with children, if allowed to do their job, should serve to determine what is a credible threat and what is not. But first, you have to let them do their job. Lt them focus on what they know best - students - while leaving the investigation of foreign operatives to those who know that best. 

The rise in school shootings is horrific. They are senseless tragedies that we all should work to prevent, but not at the sacrifice of other kid's lives. 

If we are truly concerned about all kids, we need to recognize that kids don't just wake up and decide to issue a threat with no impetus. 

Lost in the rush to protect is any conversation about what made a child decide that life was so bad and their situation so untenable that they believed their sole option was to strike out at their school and classmates. 

It is easy to label school shooters as monsters, and their actions certainly warrant that but what created them? 

Stopping school threats doesn't translate to stopping school violence. Until we get serious about the why, all we are doing is treating symptoms. 

That may make us sleep better at night, but how does it serve ALL KIDS?

I may not know al the answers, but I certainly know the conversations we should be having. 

 - - -

Tennessee's Grow Your Own Center has long overpromised and under-delivered.

Last year, most of the state's schools that train teachers pulled out due to GYO's policies that made participation unfeasible. The short argument is that the state was expecting the providers to assume more of the cost while they assumed more of the credit. 

Earlier in the month, Tennessee Grow Your Own announced an "upcoming launch of BuildWithin, a centralized, cloud-based platform designed to enhance and track-on-the-job learning and streamline workforce development for apprenticeships."

“BuildWithin represents a significant step forward in continuing to address K-12 educator workforce challenges in Tennessee,” said Erin Crisp, executive director of the Tennessee Grow Your Own Center. “This platform will enable us to partner with education preparation providers (EPPs) and local education agencies (LEAs) to improve the quality of our teacher apprenticeship programs and effectively monitor data that will allow us to continuously enhance the apprenticeship experience.” 

Keep in mind that Crisp always had a flair for self-promotion that rivaled former state Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn. Both are pretty adept at growing the brand despite its flaws. 

What wasn't declared in the press release were details about BuildWithin. Remember former State Commissioner Kevin Huffman? Remember his ex-wife Michelle Rhee? What does that have to do with BuildWithin?

According to Anxios: The startup is co-founded by Michelle Rhee, one of the most polarizing figures in American education. It's her first for-profit company and says she hopes to apply some of her K-12 learnings to workforce training — at a time when there are still millions of unfilled tech jobs.

In case you are unaware, Rhee's current husband is Kevin Johnson (former NBA player and mayor of Sacramento). Johnson has been accused of assaulting a child from the school he ran before becoming mayor. The former mayor's school used to employ Penny Schwinn, and he was a leading funder of her successful campaign for the Sacramento school board. Some might argue, that he served as a mentor for the former commissioner. 

Sounds like a perfect partnership for Tennessee. That's sarcasm, in case you missed it. 

The good news is that the rumor mill is rife with words that Crisp's reign may be coming to an end and she will soon be choosing to pursue new options. 

One can only hope.

One could also hope that lawmakers take a good hard look at what's going on with The Grow Your Own Center.

 - - -

A new memo from The State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE) touts the benefits of Tennessee's reformed school funding formula. 

According to the memo, the historic passage of the TISA legislation in 2022 led to a recurring $1 billion additional investment in Tennessee’s K-12 public education system and a new student-based funding model to replace the state’s old K-12 funding formula known as the Basic Education Program (BEP), which had been in place for 30 years. The report added that the TISA formula is more transparent and aligned to student need, and increases overall funding for schools. The current funding formula is also less complex than the BEP funding formula, the memo said.

All of that is highly debatable, but one line from their memo got me thinking.

"The memo noted that under the current formula, schools can receive “outcome bonuses” that incentivize district performance, among other improvements. It said districts that achieve specific success targets can receive a 10 percent weighted bonus, as well as larger bonuses for districts that improve performance among English learners, economically disadvantaged students, and students with disabilities."

So, have these bonuses been awarded? If so, why have they not been touted by the TNDOE? 

Ah...always more to look at. 

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