Tennessee State Senate Minority Leader Raumesh Akbari (D-Memphis) claimed the new letter grades assigned to every Tennessee school are “flawed.” Akbari represents Memphis, where more than 40 percent of schools did not receive passing grades.
Akbari (pictured above) released a statement on Thursday declaring the “flawed letter grades will never define a school, their students and families, or their teachers and staff.” She asserted the grades instead reflect what she claimed is inadequate state funding for education.
The letter grades were released for the first time on December 21, with years-long delays preventing Tennessee from complying with a 2016 law mandating the grades be assigned each year.
About 90 schools in the Memphis Shelby County Schools (MSCS) received failing grades, about 43 percent out of a total of 222. About 37 percent received a C, 16 percent received a B, and just nine schools, or 4.5 percent of all Memphis schools graded, received an A.
In her statement, Akbari urged Tennessee state lawmakers to “come together around policies that will nourish every child’s learning potential” rather than “weaponizing these grades.”
When the data was released, MSCS released its own statement citing “the real world struggles affecting students learning,” and noting that about 60 percent “of students in the District come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.” The district also claimed about half of five-year-olds “are not kindergarten-ready when they enter MSCS classrooms.”
The district also cited the city’s “17-year high in violent crime,” asserting that “such communitywide trauma has a devastating effect on academic achievement.”
A total of 242 Tennessee schools received either a D or F grade, meaning they could face corrective action from the Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) to increase student academic achievement. About 74 percent of schools in Tennessee received passing grades.
Akbari, who has served in the Tennessee General Assembly since 2013, previously supported restoring voting rights for some felons and was an early endorser of President Joe Biden in 2019.
Still, when Governor Bill Lee ordered a special session to pass gun control legislation, Akbari celebrated, declaring, “It really is starting to feel like we’re on the same team.” She complimented Lee for breaking “from his caucus, from his party,” to push for gun control legislation. No such legislation passed the special session.
In November, Lee unveiled his “Education Freedom Scholarship” bill that will eventually enable all Tennessee parents and families to select which schools their student will attend using education savings accounts (ESAs).
Education expert Corey DeAngelis recently told The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy that similar programs are wildly successful in Arizona and Florida, where thousands of students are now enrolled in alternative to normal public schools.
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Georgia Star News, The Virginia Star, and the Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Democrats are failures and beyond incompetent but will never admit they are basically useless.
Senator Akbari, When are you going to wake up and finally realize that the democratic party IS NOT your friend? Please stop listening to the lies and propaganda being broadcast at the direction of the federal government by the main stream media.
What, exactly, is “kindergarten ready”? My guess is that the children have not been in day-care and don’t interact as well as some others. Holy cow, K used to be the beginning of school indoctrination, now they need it earlier? When a child spends more waking time at these, or any, schools than they do with their families, it is no wonder there are so many issues in society.
“…..inadequate state funding for education”. What exactly does Akbari think additional money should be spent on? What resources should be moved and where? Failed academic policy is only part of the problem in Memphis. Useless allocation of resources within the academic administration. The overabundant funding of the destruction of the nuclear family structure. Rampant criminal enterprise and a rampant lucrative drug trade incentivized by elected officials hell bent on “funding” anything and everything will simply hasten the inevitable. If this woman was able to get elected to public office as a state senator what hope do we have.
That is it, just blame anything but the real cause for public school failures not just in Shelby County but all over the state. My county, Sumner, has tried to buy its way out of its failure by increasing teacher pay but outrageous amount – at the expense of the taxpayers – but the results are not there.
She also deserves an F. Fire them all and start over. Ten years and she hasn’t improved anything. The schools are worse than when she was originally elected. She should be first to go.
the whole memphis area is an F
dem run for generations = failure
In other words, just ignore the mess the Democrat government of Shelby County has made!
Another Democrat Communist!