Tag: Penny Schwinn

Documents Show Tennessee Department of Education Misrepresented Intended Scope of Child Well-Being Checks

Admin

While the Tennessee Department of Education has said temporarily withdrawn guidance on child well-being checks was not intended to apply to every child, internal documents and emails sent in development of the guidance show officials have misrepresented the intended scope of the initiative in response to public outrage.

A guidance toolkit outlining statewide Child Wellbeing Checks was developed by the COVID-19 Child Wellbeing Task Force and released Aug. 11. Within three days, the department had withdrawn the program after uproar over perceived big-brother style government overreach.

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Former Tennessee Department of Education Higher-Ups Criticize Commissioner Penny Schwinn

Chris Butler

Three former high-level Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) officials who left the department voluntarily criticized their former boss, Commissioner Penny Schwinn, in exclusive interviews with The Tennessee Star.

The former officials spoke with The Star on the condition of anonymity.

Their criticisms of Schwinn are withering, and include the following allegations.

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Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn’s Leadership Polarizing Many, According to Some Educators

Chris Butler

Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn may have lost the confidence of some influential people in Tennessee, at least according to a new editorial that the Professional Educators of Tennessee (PET) published this week.

The Nashville-based PET is a statewide professional association of educators, according to its website.

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Tennessee Group Says Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn Wants Too Great of a Role Nurturing Children

Chris Butler

Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) Commissioner Penny Schwinn is a leftist and a statist who wants the government to have too great of a role developing public school students, according to a video one organization released this week.

Gary Humble, speaking for Tennessee Stands, criticized Schwinn and the TDOE for proposing that state officials go to people’s homes to perform wellness checks on children.

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People Speak Out Against Big Brother Style Child Wellbeing Check Run by Tennessee Department of Education

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Maury County Mayor Andy Ogles says, “NO!!!” to Gov. Bill Lee’s Big Brother-style child wellbeing program that plans to send government officials to families’ homes to do welfare checks of children.

The Tennessee Department of Education says it released a toolkit on child wellbeing checks to ensure the needs of children are being met during and after extended periods away from school. It is promoted as protecting children.

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Left-Wing PBS to Instruct Tennessee Children During Coronavirus Outbreak

Chris Butler

The Tennessee Department of Education has secured a partnership with the state’s PBS stations to deliver daily educational content to public school students as the COVID-19 outbreak continues to keep them out of school.

Several organizations, including the Family Research Council, have, in the past, faulted PBS’s educational materials for what they call a left-leaning bias.

TDOE spokeswoman Victoria Robinson on Thursday said she could not describe the PBS content in detail or whether state officials are making sure it has no political biases.

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JC Bowman Commentary: Grow Your Own Teachers

JC Bowman

Tennessee is a unique state, not only because we have the greatest citizens, but because of our geography.  We border eight states.  That can be an advantage and a disadvantage at times.  When economic times are good, people want to relocate to our state.  When economic times are difficult, it allows residents to move to a neighboring state and pursue more money in their chosen occupation.  In education, we lose teachers to our border states on a regular basis.

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The Tennessee Star Report: Gill and Leahy Discuss WCS Video Series and the Forced Education of Global Citizenship

Julie Carr

On Monday’s Tennessee Star Report with Steve Gill and Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 am to 8:00 am – Gill and Leahy talked in depth about the Williamson County school districts “Cultural Competency” video training series that have been forced upon teachers and hence their students. Towards the end of the segment, the men asked the question of why nobody is speaking up about this. They begged the question of where are the parents, the administrators, the Governor who in his State of the State address promised that Tennessee schools would be teaching American Exceptionalism. The duo expressed concern for the lack of basic skills being taught and lack of Americanism and push of Globalism centered agenda. (Audio plays) Gill: How about the test of any school system being the ability to teach children to read, write, do arithmetic, to learn the basic skills so that they can for a lifetime pursue learning because they’re going to have those fundamental skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Leahy: Oh Steve. (Chuckles) Gill: How about if that is the fundamental schools and tests instead of this double speak educrat speak that…

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Governor Bill Lee Delivers Inspiring Inaugural Address Short on Specifics

Chris Butler

NASHVILLE, Tennessee — Republican Bill Lee took the oath as governor on Saturday and then delivered a broadly inspiring, almost pastoral, inaugural address in a 15-minute speech that did not provide much in the way of the specifics of his agenda. The inauguration was held indoors at War Memorial Auditorium due to rain. Lee began his address with a compelling historical note that traced his own family’s history in Tennessee. “In 1796 a man and his young family made their homestead on the banks of the Cumberland River just up the way from here. That was the year that the great state of Tennessee was founded. And 223 years later and 50 governors later, we stand here on the banks of the Cumberland River, celebrating our history and anticipating our future,” the new governor said. A few minutes later, Lee identified the man. “The man that I spoke of was Charles Blaxton Lee, and he was my seventh great-grandfather.” Lee said we in Tennessee “stand here today beneficiaries not of great governments of the past but of the lives of the great men and women who have come before us. Men and women who forged difficult lives on the frontier who formed…

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Bill Lee Names UC Berkeley Grad Penny Schwinn, Who Began Career at Teach for America, as Education Commissioner

Chris Butler

On Thursday Governor-Elect Bill Lee named 36-year-old Penny Schwinn, a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, who began her career in education working as a teacher for Teach for America, as Tennessee’s new Commissioner of Education. Kevin Huffman, who served as Commissioner of Education during the Haslam administration from 2011 to 2014, also began his career at Teach for America, a controversial non-profit organization that pays new college graduates to teach in urban schools as part of its mission to address “educational inequity” and “help children overcome obstacles like systemic racism and poverty.” Huffman’s tenure as Education Commissioner was widely considered to be unsuccessful. “Penny leads with students at the forefront and I believe her experience is exactly what we need to continue improving on the gains we have made in the past few years,” Lee said in the announcement of her appointment. “As a former teacher and seasoned administrator, she will help make Tennessee a leader in the nation on education,” Lee added. The announcement continued: Schwinn currently serves as the chief deputy commissioner of education at the Texas Education Agency. In this role, she pursued a series of reforms including the transformation of a failing state assessment program. She…

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