Objects in the Mirror May Be Closer Then They Appear
“Someone can decide it’s in their best interests to agree to something, but a choice is only really a choice if there’s a genuine alternative. Otherwise, it’s manipulation and it’s taking advantage.”
― Jane Harper, The Lost Man
And, just like that, Labor Day is upon us. Another summer goes in the books. it's been a relatively quiet summer, but early indications are that it was just the quiet before the storm.
Back in June, Tennessee lost its erstwhile Commissioner of Education Penny Schwinn. Ms. Schwinn had reached the end of her usefulness, therefore it was time to switch to phase two - or maybe phase 10.
I've lost count since Chief's for Change and its sister organization, ExcelinEd, sunk their ugly tenacles into Tennessee.
You may not realize it, but the former Florida governor's non-profits have been playing a major role in Tennessee policy for the better part of a decade. We'll hit on their latest shenanigans throughout today's issue.
So back to Mrs. Schwinn. In May, she quits her job just months after buying a $1.8 million dollar home in South Nashville. Despite spending the better part of the year beating the bushes for another gig, she fails to secure a position before her tenure as commissioner ends.
In a bit of irony, her very own sugar daddy Chiefs for Change passes her up as head bottle washer. Instead, they hired Robert Runcie as CEO.
In case you forgot, Runcie was the former Parkland Superintendent who was indicted over questions of his management of a $1 billion bond issue that passed four years before the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High massacre. Runcie had promised that the primary focus would be to improve school safety. Members of the grand jury in their final report accused the future CEO and the school board of “uninformed or even misinformed decisions, incompetent management and lack of meaningful oversight" in the bond's implementation.
That indictment was lifted because he only lied in one county, state law only gives the grand jury jurisdiction over crimes that occurred in multiple counties. Now Runcie is the HMFIC of Chiefs for Change.
No one should be surprised, because remember three-quarters of the founding class of Chiefs for Change was either terminated or indicted. Runcie will fit right in with Bush's Hall of Shame. But I digress.
So over the summer news surfaced that Mrs. Schwinn had a new gig as a fellow with FutureEd and the Walton Family Foundation. FutureEd's web posting indicated that she was also serving as a senior leader for a university. Strangely that university wasn't named.
This week, it was revealed that Schwinn is now working at the University of Florida. She started on June 15th. Her official title is Vice President of PK-12 and Pre-Bachelors Programs. A fancy title, but in reality, she serves as a senior advisor to the President of the University. A funny thing is that the UF org chart shows a plethora of presidents but no Vice President of PK-12 and pre-bachelor programs.
Here's something for you to chew on. Alan Levine, head of Ballad Health, sits on the board that governs Florida's State University system, of which the University of Florida is one. If you've been paying attention you'll recognize Levine as he serves on Tennessee's Charter School Commission. A graduate of the University of Florida, he is recognized as a member of the University of Florida Hall of Fame.
It is worth noting that a glance at the University of Florida's new president, Bob Sasse, shows a relationship with the Bush family going back decades.
I'll let you draw your own conclusions, but here are some more fun facts.
It's no secret that during her tenure as Tennessee's Commissioner of Education Schwinn's husband Paul had several jobs. First, he worked for the Nashville charter school STEM Prep. Then it was TNTP, right around the time they were awarded a $8 million state contract to train teachers. When the bloom came off of that rose, he took a position with ANet right around the time they secured the contract with the state to design the test Tennessee teachers must pass to get their literacy seal.
Some of you might remember the Commissioner double dipping while she was a state DOE employee in both Delaware and Texas. She purportedly put that habit to bed when she got to Tennessee. On a whim, I took a look at her California Charter School's tax records for 2022.
While they are no longer paying anything to their founder, they do have a couple new contracts. The first, to Cross Country Education, for $106,897. CCE appears to be an educational employment service.
The second is with the Achievement Network or ANet, for $101,500. imagine that.
Yea..I think former Education Commissioner Schwinn is going to be just fine state post-employment.
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It always sucks when Twitter - yes, I'm still calling it Twitter - beats you to your job announcements. On Wednesday a Tweet from a DC colleague indicated that Tennessee was getting a new State Superintendent of Turnaround Schools. Today the department made it official, DCPS's Brin Elliot is coming home to Tennessee as the state's turnaround superintendent.
The Tennessee State University Graduate previously served under Pedro Garcia in Metro Nashville Public Schools, as both a teacher and an administrator. In 2020 she applied to be the director of schools for MNPS. A job that instead went to Dr. Battle.
Elliot's hire as state superintendent was the result of a three-year job search conducted by the TDOE. As quoted by Chalkbeat, "Victoria Robinson, the department’s spokeswoman, said making the hire was a priority for new education commissioner Lizzette Reynolds."
The former Nashville turnaround specialist will be responsible for all of the state's turnaround efforts, including the should-be-defunct state Achievement School District. Reynolds hasn't indicated her plans for the failed experiment, but now that she's named a superintendent, I'm sure she'll provide plenty of work for her.
Oh...I almost forgot to mention, Elliot is a member of Chiefs for Change.
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One sure sign they don't really want your opinion is when they start holding town halls under the guise of wanting to co-create something. For example a new "A-F" school grading system.
As the TDOE's town hall train pulls into its final stops, some things are becoming glaringly apparent, and Commissioner Reynolds is becoming more reluctant to hide her cards. They ain't pretty cards either, and in case you didn't know, unless you possess an employee badge from ExcelinEd, she and her cadre, don't give a damn how you think schools should be evaluated.
She also doesn't care whether you think it's unfair to change the rules midstream, and then use last year's data to issue grades.
Over the last several weeks, there has been a fair amount of scuttlebutt about how she thinks she can change Tennessee's accountability model without input from the State Board of Education or lawmakers. Apparently, there is always a workaround.
As I've previously mentioned, back in 2017, when the TDOE was working on crafting the rules for the A-F grading system, they asked state superintendents if they wanted the system to be separate from the federal system. Supes said, "Let's go with one". So the DOE tied our state accountability model to the federal system.
For their part, the Feds don't care about A-F grades, they just want to make sure you are identifying the C, D, and F schools. So if you uncouple the two, they are fine with it, as long as you still give them what they need.
Uncoupling apparently doesn't need approval from anybody but the commissioner, and if you are just changing the state system, you don't need any of that pesky oversight from the aforementioned either.
Normally undertaking a project of this magnitude would require a fully staffed department, but when you have access to the resources of ExcelinEd, that no longer becomes a necessity. Reports are that phone calls are burning up the wires between ExcelinEd, Reynolds's former employer, and Reynolds's small staff on a daily basis.
So what are they talking about? As was discovered with TISA, when you use a private entity to implement policy, you don't have to adhere to any of those pesky open records laws. You just go about business, and the public discovers your plan when you are good and ready to share it. There's only one cog in that machine - everybody has two friends. So details start to slip out.
Tennessee's current accountability model incorporates achievement, growth, English language learners, special education, and chronic attendance in its calculations. High Schools have the added categories of graduation rates and graduation ready.
In order to give a little more weight to achievement, we use annual measurable objectives (AMO). Every year schools are given a goal of how much they are expected to grow students. Reach that growth projection and you get points added to your score. Even though it's classified under the growth category, it's an achievement measurement. Achieve the number, achieve the bonus.
Under Reynolds, the inclusion of the AMO feature would end. Achievement would also be weighted more heavily.
On more than one occasion, she has publicly stated that she rejects the idea that a school with 23% proficiency could be considered an "A" school. She has insinuated that rewarding a school with a low proficiency score is akin to lying to parents. Which quite frankly is just as asinine as anything that ever came out of Schwinn's mouth.
It's 2022, and at this point, the research has pretty clearly revealed the link between social status and proficiency rates. There are unfortunately a whole lot of outside factors involved in hitting high proficiency rates. In 2017, Morgan Polikoff pointed out the fallacies of proficiency measurement:
Some argued that proficiency rates essentially measure who is enrolled in a school, rather than how well the school is doing at educating them. Because such status measures merely capture the current performance levels of students, proficiency rates are highly correlated with student socioeconomic status and other demographics. Growth-based measures, on the other hand, can show students’ year-to-year changes and better demonstrate the school’s effectiveness or contribution to student learning.
Others pointed out that even among status measures of performance, proficiency is an especially poor one. It creates an incentive to focus efforts primarily on students very near the threshold, as very low and very high achievers are unlikely to change from proficient to not (or vice versa). It is of course based heavily on where the state decides to set proficiency, and states have varied tremendously in that decision.
To me, a good school is one that is taking students where they are and growing them. We can argue about how much growth is required, but not its importance.
Reynolds also reportedly wants to move away from measuring sub-groups. Now that data will still be required by the Feds, but for the state report card, the preference will be to measure all students as one.
It sounds good if you say it fast and with the proper facial expression, but the reality is, that we designate a great deal of resources to serve kids in these sub-groups. How do you know what's working without separate measurements?
My biggest question on all of this is, who's driving this initiative?
It's certainly not the 30 people showing up at the scheduled town halls wondering what the hell they are doing there. None of them have voiced support for a change, rather just the opposite. Finish the original assignment before moving to the modification. In case you didn't know, despite being a law since 2017, A-F grades have never been released by the Tennessee Department of Education.
Are you sitting around barbecues with other Tennessee parents clamoring for a new way to judge your kid's school? Most parents already have a clear picture of their kid's school, including the parts that are not measured by collected data.
Much like TISA, this is a school-choice vehicle. TISA gives them the bag - as the kids say - while the "A-F" school grading system serves as a state-provided Consumer Reports. As Sherlock Holmes used to say, eliminate all other options and the one left is the answer.
I'm going to leave you with a little bit of my experience with school choice before we wrap this section up.
My daughter attends a choice school. There were numerous factors that went into that decision, and that decision has worked so far. I drive 30 minutes 4 times a day in order to get her to and from that school. that equates to about $120 a week in gas, Luckily I can afford it, barely. But can every family that would benefit from that school? Where in TISA is transportation listed? Choice costs a whole lot more than recognized.
The base question through all of this remains, Who gets to write Tennessee education policy? Is it outside interests that don't even live in the state, or should it be the people who live, play, and work in the great state of Tennessee?
For me, it's a no-brainer. But unfortunately, the educational tourist from Texas and her employers think differently.
And the evidence continues to mount that their vision is superseding that of Tennesseans.
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The Tennessee Department of Education released data on Wednesday for third-grade students who participated in state-sponsored summer learning camps and completed the required post-test. it's not encouraging.
Beginning this summer, third-grade students scoring “approaching” or “below” on the ELA portion of the spring TCAP assessment faced retention unless they participated in the state-provided pathways to fourth-grade promotion. These include the TCAP retake opportunity, free summer camp, and tutoring in the upcoming school year. Third-grade students who choose to participate in summer school must show adequate growth – defined by the State Board of Education(SBE) as 4 percent – to be eligible for promotion. Participants must also meet a 90 percent attendance measure.
A total of 24,907 third graders were eligible for the summer camp attendance and adequate growth option for promotion to fourth grade. Eight thousand five hundred ninety-two students took the post-test administered at the end of the summer learning programs. Of those students, 2,055 demonstrated adequate growth. That equates to roughly 24 percent, less than 1 out of 4. Ouch.
Even though those students who showed adequate growth are now eligible for promotion to fourth grade, they still face possible retention at the end of their fourth-grade year.
State law requires that a student who uses the offered interventions to avoid third-grade retention, show adequate growth in fourth grade or risk being retained. Unlike those students in third grade deemed at risk, there are no exemptions or alternative pathways to fifth-grade promotion for those students who fail to show adequate growth.
The kicker is that the SBE has yet to define “adequate” growth. They are not expected to take up the subject until their November meeting.
The TDOE does not yet know the number of fourth-grade students potentially impacted by the law. Local districts are currently compiling that data and filling out their spread sheets. The deadline for that reporting is September 1.
The number of third-graders retained this year is less than initially projected.
One local superintendent told The Star, off the record, “I’ve always said this wasn’t a third-grade retention law. It’s a third-grade promotion law and a fourth-grade retention law.”
You can expect bills proposing a similar policy for math when the General Assembly returns in January.
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A couple quick observations on the just completed Special Session.
Speaker Sexton continues to remind me of that quarterback who always delivers high passes across the middle to his receivers. Eventually, those receivers start protecting their ribs, instead of making an effort to catch the ball. Just saying.
For Democrats, what's the long-term plan? is it to just hold existing seats for 20 years while disrupting sessions and holding signs? Walking out of session makes great theater, but does it actually serve to recruit voters in order to flip seats? Keep in mind that the only voters in Tennessee who matter are not just those in the gallery or forming lines outside the capitol. Not everybody was disappointed that nothing got done at this month's conclave. Your job is to convince them they should be, without insulting them or shaming them. Otherwise, you might as well laminate those signs because you are going to need them for a long time.
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Time to rattle the cup a little bit before I head out the door.
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