Tag: education

Education Policy Director From La Raza Affiliate Conexion Americas Running for Nashville School Board

Chris Alto

Gini Pupo-Walker, senior director of education policy and strategic growth for Conexion Americas, an affiliate of UnidosUS (formerly known as the National Council of La Raza), is on the August 4th ballot to represent District 8 on the Nashville School Board. Pupo-Walker’s campaign biography emphasizes her commitment to Latino and immigrant families and students, including starting the Metro Nashville school district’s first Spanish Heritage classes while she was teaching Spanish at John Overton High School. When Metro Nashville Public Schools announced that Arabic was being added as a foreign language in several schools, it was explained that foreign language heritage classes are “for native speakers to deepen their knowledge of the language and learn to read and write in” their native language. Pupo-Walker’s former school now employs translators and interpreters as part of its staff, and a student enrollment estimated to be 66% minority enrollment 29% of which are listed as Hispanic. Forty-nine percent of the student body tested either below basic or basic in English proficiency. Before joining the staff at Conexion Americas, Pupo-Walker served on the organization’s board whose founder and director Renata Soto, has a long-standing relationship with UnidosUS. Not only is Soto’s Nashville organization a named affiliate of…

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JC Bowman Commentary: Special Education Teachers Are Also Special

JC Bowman

It is becoming tough to keep special education teachers in the field beyond two or three years.  We already have a shortage and it is likely to get worse in the future.  Teaching is demanding enough, but special education teachers must cope with even more challenges.  Professional learning is rarely aligned to special education teachers’ needs. Special education teachers face more parental interaction, longer hours, potential lawsuits, additional paperwork, while their students need more attention.  The slogan “work more, same pay” is not exactly a great selling point in teacher recruitment.  The federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, requires that every student have what’s known as an IEP — Individualized Education Program.  The IEP involves hours and hours of filling out forms and writing reports documenting each student’s progress.  Recently the Tennessee State Board of Education, in the name of greater transparency, has proposed a rule that may actually create more problems for Special Education Teachers.  The Proposed Rule: The LEA must notify the parents of a child with a disability at least ten (10) days before an IEP meeting to ensure that a parent will have an opportunity to attend. A meeting conducted pursuant to 34 C.F.R.…

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New National Test Scores Show Betsy DeVos Was Right About Public Schools

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by Mary Clare Amselem   Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ recent interview with Lesley Stahl on “60 Minutes” caused quite a bit of backlash from critics. As my colleague Jonathan Butcher has written, “60 Minutes” ignored many of the facts about the state of education in America. Response to the interview drew quite a bit of criticism of DeVos and her policy solutions. Perhaps one of the most pivotal moments came when she suggested that the United States’ heavy federal investment in education has not yielded any results. Stahl hit back, asserting that school performance has been on the rise. But the latest government data show otherwise. According to the recently released 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the nation’s “report card,” we now have more evidence that DeVos was correct. Transform “Tax Day” into “Freedom Day.” Support the campaign to make Trump’s tax cuts permanent >> In fact, recent scores show virtually no improvement over 2015 scores. Eighth-grade reading saw a single point improvement over 2015 scores (10 points is considered equivalent to a grade level), while all other categories saw no improvement. These lackluster results come on the heels of declines on the 2015 assessment, suggesting the beginning of…

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Diane Black to TNReady System Administrators: ‘I Am Disappointed the State Continues to Waste Their Time’

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On the heels of a disastrous first day of failures across the state of students’ series of troubles accessing the TNReady system Monday; on Tuesday, the system failed again. Gubernatorial candidate Diane Black released a statement excoriating the the state’s inability to administer the program: For years the state has chosen to force sweeping education reform and more standardized tests into our classrooms and time and time again, the state has failed to keep up their end of the bargain. This week’s delays are not the fault of the educators or the students, but they are the ones who suffer from the missed class time as they sit and wait for the state to get its act together. Tennessee teachers are some of the hardest working in the nation, and I am disappointed the state continues to waste their time. As The Tennessee Star previously reported: After months of preparing for the annual year-end assessments, many Tennessee students struggled to log on to the TNReady testing platform Monday morning. The Department of Education says the problem was quickly fixed by the vendor, and over 20,000 students took the test after the problems were resolved. “We share the frustration that some…

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Commentary: Politically Correct Leaders to Blame for the Dumbing-Down of Our Culture

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by Jeffrey A. Rendall   It’s safe to say almost everyone looks back fondly on their college years (and if you didn’t go to college, maybe high school was your thing). The relatively uninhibited freedom of the old days — the late nights, the stimulating conversations, the camaraderie of the campus… College was great, wasn’t it? No one could tell you what to do; heck you didn’t even need to go to class if you didn’t feel like it. Ask to borrow a friend’s lecture notes and you’re off scot-free for whatever time you missed. University living is the transition period between primary and secondary education when everything’s decided for you and the drudgery of the adult workplace where…everything’s decided for you again. Only these days it appears more and more members of the “snowflake” generation are seeking to extend their college experiences — not by taking longer to finish their undergraduate work or going to grad school but instead by bringing their “safe spaces” and sensitivity obsessions to the workplace. Employers are discovering these young employees have rather unusual demands. It’s getting to be problematic, at least where newsrooms are concerned. The Editors of the Washington Examiner wrote, “Students have been calling…

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Michelle Malkin Commentary: The Student Data-Mining Scandal Under Our Noses

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by Michelle Malkin   While congresscritters expressed outrage at Facebook’s intrusive data grabs during Capitol Hill hearings with Mark Zuckerberg this week, not a peep was heard about the Silicon Valley-Beltway theft ring purloining the personal information and browsing habits of millions of American schoolchildren. It doesn’t take undercover investigative journalists to unmask the massive privacy invasion enabled by educational technology and federal mandates. The kiddie data heist is happening out in the open—with Washington politicians and bureaucrats as brazen co-conspirators. Facebook is just one of the tech giants partnering with the Department of Education and schools nationwide in pursuit of student data for meddling and profit. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Pearson, Knewton, and many more are cashing in on the Big Data boondoggle. State and federal educational databases provide countless opportunities for private companies exploiting public schoolchildren subjected to annual assessments, which exploded after adoption of the tech industry-supported Common Core “standards,” tests, and aligned texts and curricula. Americans need an alternative to the mainstream media. But this can’t be done alone  Find out more >> The recently passed Every Student Succeeds Act further enshrined government collection of personally identifiable information—including data collected on attitudes, values, beliefs, and dispositions—and allows…

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A Teacher’s Very Biased Middle School Assignment

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In seventh grade, middle school students in the Peach Tree State are required to learn about Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, as mandated by Georgia’s Department of Education. “Seventh grade is the second year of a two-year World Area Studies course. Seventh grade students study Africa and Asia. The goal of this two-year course is to acquaint middle school students with the world in which they live,” reads a section highlighting the state of Georgia’s academic standards.

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Diane Black Releases a Comprehensive Economic Plan to ‘Make Sure Every Tennessean Has the Opportunity to Live Their Version of the American Dream’

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Gubernatorial candidate Diane Black released what she says is a “comprehensive plan to lift up rural communities in Tennessee and make sure every Tennessean has the opportunity to live their version of the American Dream.” “Tennessee’s economy is on the move, but not every part of our state is experiencing the economic boom,” Black said in a statement, adding: Our rural communities, which make up 60% of our state, are the lifeblood of our state, but aren’t seeing the same success as areas like Nashville. We need policies coming out of Nashville that help lift up those rural communities, rather than further their economic decline. I will fight from day one to make sure that we leave no town behind and every person in our state has the opportunity to live their version of the American Dream. Diane Black’s plan – an outline of which was provided by the campaign and is published in full below – is aimed at strengthening Tennessee’s economy and to “Leave No Town Behind” Promote Rural Infrastructure and Educational Opportunity:  I will prioritize the infrastructure needs of rural communities.  But it’s not a one-size-fits-all problem. Where the need is broadband, I will support solutions that allow…

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Further Testing Issues Show Implementation Problems at Tennessee’s Department of Education

Bob Goodwin
McQueen

After three years and little success, the Tennessee Department of Education remains riddled with problems implementing statewide online testing platforms, TNReady. According to an email blast from Chief Information Officer for the Tennessee Department of Education Cliff Lloyd on March 6, the state’s online testing platform experienced more technical difficulties this week. “The problem was related to a rogue process that was running in the data center where NextEra is hosted,” Lloyd said. “The problem was identified relatively quickly and the process was shut down, but unfortunately it did negatively impact about fifteen districts.” The email blast was sent to educators across the state as they tried to log into their state-mandated testing platform, but it wasn’t these teachers’ first report of problems from the department; in fact, it wasn’t even their first update this week. “Yesterday I wrote to you and explained the diagnosis and remediation of a problem in the NextEra testing platform that made logging on to the system difficult,” Lloyd wrote earlier in the email. “While that problem is now solved, unfortunately we encountered another problem today.” From the original vendor failing to create a functioning testing platform to thousands of tests being incorrectly scored to…

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Tennessee Celebrates School Choice With Events

Jason M. Reynolds

School choice is at the heart of a nationwide event taking place Jan. 21-27. Held every January, National School Choice Week (NSCW) brings the idea of education options to the forefront. Schools, homeschool groups and other organizations plan tens of thousands of events during the annual event, according to the movement’s website. Plans include rallies, receptions, coffeehouse meet-ups, festivals, school fairs, and other activities. Tennesseans have planned 640 events around the state that week, the group said in a press release. Gov. Bill Haslam proclaimed Jan. 21-27 as Tennessee School Choice Week, while Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke proclaimed the same on behalf of his city. Andrew Campanella, president of NSCW, said, “Parents in Chattanooga, like parents everywhere, simply want the best for their kids. We’re grateful to Mayor Berke for issuing this proclamation, raising parents’ awareness of the educational options available for their children. Every kid is unique, and parents know their kids better than anyone else. We hope to empower parents in Chattanooga and across the country to find the school or educational option that they know is best for their own kids.” NSCW recognizes all K-12 options, including traditional public schools, public charter schools, public magnet schools, private…

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Comptroller Finds Tennessee Education System Puts Students at Risk for Sexual Abuse

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Tennessee Comptroller Justin Wilson’s Office of Research and Education Accountability (OREA) released a series of reports Wednesday, including an examination of sexual misconduct involving students and educators that found taxpayer-funded public schools are rife with opportunities for bad actors to infiltrate the system and exploit children. A .pdf copy of the report’s 12-page Executive Summary is embedded at the end of this article. The genesis of the policy-and-procedures review seems to stem from the spate of reports over the course of the last several months of no less that four separate cases of sexual abuse by school personnel with students, including the notorious case of one teacher kidnapping a Maury County student that made national headlines for weeks. The report specifically mentions the USA Today grading Tennessee a dismal ‘F‘ after the news organization said they looked into “each state’s efforts to reduce the chances that an employee with a history of sexual misconduct could move from one school to another without repercussions.” The Comptroller’s investigation focused on five key areas: Hiring practices for school personnel in Tennessee, including information about other states’ practices The state’s records concerning teacher licenses and the actions taken against them for incidents of misconduct A provision within the…

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Education Issues May Dominate 2018 Legislative Session of the Tennessee General Assembly

Tennessee Star Staff
Tennessee Star

Several contentious education issues may highlight the legislative session of the Tennessee General Assembly that convened on Tuesday. And if a recent Tennessee Star Poll of likely GOP Primary voters is any indication, Republican legislators need to be sure they are on the right side of the issues if they want to return to the Legislature next year. IN-STATE TUITION FOR ILLEGALS. Another effort by State Senator Todd Gardenhire (R- Chattanooga) to resurrect a plan to allow illegal immigrants to qualify for in-state tuition at Tennessee colleges and universities is under consideration. A Tennessee Star Poll conducted in December 2017 that focused on GOP Primary voters underlines how support for using taxpayer funds to subsidize tuition for illegal aliens may be for Republican candidates facing primary opposition. Those polled were asked: In 2018, the Tennessee state legislature is expected to reconsider a bill to make tax-payer subsidized in-state college tuition available to illegal immigrant students. Do you support or oppose providing taxpayer subsidized in-state college tuition to illegal immigrant students? The question resulted in an astronomically high level of opposition, with 88.3% opposing in-state tuition for illegals while 6.4% were supportive and only 5.3% were undecided. The poll results are…

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Conexion Americas Led Coalition, With Randy Boyd’s Non-Profit as a ‘State Partner,’ Says Students Here Illegally Deserve ‘Educational Equity’

Chris Alto

  Conexion Americas, the convener and leading member of the Tennessee Educational Equity Coalition (TEEC), has issued a letter to Sens. Alexander and Corker asking them to continue Obama’s administrative bypass of Congress that unilaterally created the questionable DACA program. Gubernatorial candidate Randy Boyd’s education non-profit Complete Tennessee, on which Conexion Americas’ founder and executive director Renata Soto serves as a board member, is listed as a State Partner on the TEEC website. TEEC was established in March 2016. Complete Tennessee was established in September 2016, about the same time that Randy Boyd and his wife Jenny Boyd donated $250,000 to Conexion Americas. TEEC says that students who arrived in Tennessee in violation of U.S. immigration law deserve “educational equity:” As members of the Tennessee Educational Equity Coalition, we write you to express our support for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. The Tennessee Educational Equity Coalition is a diverse group of civil rights and education advocacy organizations whose goal is to build a shared advocacy agenda to address achievement and opportunity gaps for students across the state. We write you to respectfully request that you support the DACA program and that you urge President Trump to keep the DACA program intact until…

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Commentary: Is Culture Still Relevant?

JC Bowman

The United States is a diverse country, racially and ethnically, as well as in how people choose to organize themselves socially and politically. It can be argued that our public schools are integrally situated to communicate society’s values, such as individual responsibility, patriotism, integrity, objectivity, justice, respect for others, being on time, doing a good job, working well with others, being a good citizen, and exercising democracy in government and other interactions. Americans have thus far kept our republic, and created it to be resilient and strong. However, the United States will remain free only with relentless vigilance and public engagement, which must be transmitted in our culture.

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Education Scholar: 3 Most Frequently Assigned College Common Readings Are About Racism

Tennessee Star Staff

The three most frequently assigned common readings for incoming freshmen at American colleges are all “about African Americans suffering from American racism,” according to a study discussed Thursday by an education scholar. David Randall, Director of Communications for the National Association for Scholars, gave a lecture entitled “Beach Books: How universities are using summer reading lists…

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Education Bill Passed By House, But Rolled to 2018 In Senate

Laura Baigert

  While House Minority Leader Craig Fitzhugh (D-Ripley) relentlessly pursued his education funding bill, HB 841, through passage in the House, the Senate sponsor, Jeff Yarbro (D-Nashville) wasn’t as successful with SB 831, and requested of the Senate Finance Ways & Means Committee that the bill be rolled to 2018. The bill, originating in the House and rumored to be in exchange for Democratic votes in favor of the IMPROVE Act, used excess state revenues over-collected in fiscal years 2015-16 and 2016-17 in the amount of $250 million to be used for K-12 block grants that would be distributed by the Department of Education. After passing through the House Finance, Ways & Means Subcommittee and Committee, Fitzhugh started by introducing Amendment 1 on the House floor May 9, which rewrote the bill to enact the Education Investment Act. The Act creates the K-12 block grant program via a revocable trust to be administered by the state treasurer, with a board of trustees that would also include the comptroller of the treasurer, the secretary of state, the commissioner of education and the commissioner of finance and administration. Amendment 1 passed by voice vote. Rep. Sabi “Doc” Kumar (R-Springfield) sponsor of Amendment 2,…

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Letter to the Editor: Mandatory Union Dues Fund Leftist Causes at the Expense of Conservative Union Members

Admin
Tennessee Star

  Dear Tennessee Star, It really is simple the more members who pay union dues affords greater political clout for that union and feed the union bureaucracy. Most people still have a lot to learn about unions, especially in education. Many have likened unions to being an ATM to left-wing politicians and causes. Too many people vaguely equate the union with that classroom teacher whom they know and respect, not with the hard-as-nails political entity that dictates bad school policy. It makes little sense for teachers to contribute their hard-earned dollars to political and ideological causes they oppose. For example, a teacher union’s goal, of course, is political power, not education. This means of course they funnel union money to politicians who support their agenda. So how do the government unions, whose leaders run to the left of the average worker, get away with spending dues dollars on candidates and causes that so many of its members revile? The answer very simply is because its members let them. In fact, in all elections since 1989, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has given $76,446,797 to Democrats and liberals and just $363,000 to Republicans and conservatives. In other words, less than…

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Illegal Immigrant Students Scheduled to Lobby for In-State College Tuition

Chris Alto

Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRCC) is organizing another effort for illegal immigrant students and allied educators to lobby state legislators for in-state college tuition benefits for these students. “Tuition Opportunity Dreamers and Educators Day on the Hill” is scheduled for March 22, 2017, and TIRRC wants all “undocumented youth and educators” to join them at the capitol: “Over the years, we’ve built a broad support for undocumented youth to have the opportunity to pay in-state tuition at Tennessee’s public colleges and universities. On March 22, 2017, we’ll be bringing undocumented youth, educators, and allies from across the state to demonstrate to our representatives at the state legislature that every student deserves a fair chance to obtain a college education, regardless of their immigration status. SAVE THE DATE!!! …We will meet at the Nashville Public Library in Downtown on 615 Church St, Nashville, TN 37219. An agenda and logistics will be announced soon!” This year’s legislative session is the third time that TIRRC, illegal immigrant students and their allies will have lobbied for the in-state college tuition benefit. TIRRC’s Nashville offices are housed in the building owned by Conexion Americas whose founder and director, Renata Soto who was elected chairman…

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Commentary: CALLED OUT: Jim Wrye, Lobbyist for State Affiliate of the National Education Assocation, ‘Dropped a Whopper of a Lie’

Polly Baker

  We all remember learning the Presidents’ Day lessons in school: the virtuous stories, the inspiring anecdotes, and the values of character. These are the traits all our elected officials should exemplify. But the sad truth is, such virtue is a high standard for any elected official to keep. So much so that nowadays, we celebrate the rare instance when a politician takes an unpopular position because he believes it to be right. Far too many seek power before they seek what’s right. So what happens when a particular position you hold is both wrong AND unpopular. Well, if you’re Jim Wrye, lobbyist for the state affiliate of the National Education Association, the answer is easy: Just lie about it being unpopular. Last month, in an effort to take advantage of desperation of politicians, Jim Wrye dropped a whopper of a lie. In a press release befitting a world of “fake news,” Jim publicly declared that he had polled 6,510 Tennesseans and that 59.5 percent of them agreed that children should be given no option other than their government-assigned school. . . That is not a typo. He said SIX THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED AND TEN. You can read his exact words here: Tennesseans…

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EXCLUSIVE:  Rep. Sheila Butt:  Bill Focuses On The Success of Our Students

Laura Baigert

Rep. Sheila Butt (R-Columbia) told The Tennessee Star in an exclusive interview on Capitol Hill that HB 617, a bill she has sponsored in the current session of the Tennessee General Assembly, will improve options for high school testing in math and English language arts. “HB 617 is a bill which would allow local school districts to have the option of using the ACT or the SAT suite of testing in lieu of the end of course test, the TNReady test and the TCAP test, in the State of Tennessee,” Butt told The Star’s Laura Baigert. “This is a bill that focuses on the success of our students and this is a tried and true measurement of college readiness and college success.  And all of our districts should have the option of being able to use these tests for their students,” she added. “Local Education Agencies – As introduced, authorizes LEAs to use the ACT, ACT Aspire, or SAT suites of standardized assessments instead of the TCAP, TNReady, and end-of-course exams to test the subjects of math and English language arts for grades nine through 12,” the Tennessee General Assembly website says of HB 617 (introduced in the Senate as SB…

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