Poor Government Practice

As the citizenry of Shelby County, we have a right to be timely notified of government meetings and pending government actions.  In Tennessee, the so-called "sunshine laws" require that public notice of meetings be given 48 hours in advance of meetings.

It is unclear whether the Shelby County School Board 3.0 gave 48 hours notice of tonight's meeting, which will begin at 5:30.  And who knows whether they are actually required to publish their actual agenda before the meeting.  But somebody knows something.

Jason Miles, an Action News 5 reporter, knows something and tweets:

#SCS board member wants to take the "interim" out of Supt. Dorsey Hopson's title. I'll preview 2night's meeting on @actionnews5 at 5:00

 

Here's the link to the agenda.  I challenge you to understand what on earth "Item 1" listed as "Superintendent" means.  If you open the link, it's basically the top of a form with the word "superintendent" on it.  What does it all mean?

It means that without some insight from intrepid reporter Jason Miles, the public has no way of understanding what this meeting is really about, what proposal might be considered, and whether or not a vote will take place.  You see, this is what the Board calls a "Special Call" meeting - where the regular rules are suspended, and where a vote can take place without any public input (or public knowledge prior to the meeting of what the meeting is about) whatsoever.

The Board commissioners understand that we are no longer in an emergency, or operating under the fog of merger madness.  There is just no need for any substantive matters to be undertaken at a meeting of this kind - certainly not without fully advising the public of any proposals that may be considered, or seeking public input on those proposals.

I call Shenanigans.  The reality is that the Board has not been treating Interim Supt. Dorsey Hopson as an interim superintendent.  They've already deemed him worth only $5,000 less than former (academically-credentialed, career educator) Supt. Kriner Cash.  They seem not to mind being scolded by him in public.  But abandon a national search with all of its input-seeking meetings from the community and various high-powered stakeholders with privatizing interests?  They might give all that up?  Odd.

They've already got him committed for the school year.  And yes, they should be ramping up their national search in short order - unlike last year when they waited until the last possible second to start the search after the start of the new calendar year, against the advice of their high-priced headhunters and well, everyone else.  It took them much longer, earlier this year, to abandon their national search.  It seems awfully early in this version of the national search to end it.

But to present him as The Superintendent with no public discussion, as a fait accompli?

SCS Board Chair Billy Orgel and his Board colleagues, should take the initiative to engage in government best practices, just as they expect their administators, teachers, and other employees to.  When they schedule meetings, they should make sure that people have plenty of notice about meeting dates and times.  Can't we agree that publishing a meeting scheduled to take place just after a long holiday weekend should take place sometime before the last business day before the holiday?  The School Board should also make sure that proposals and recommendations are publicly disclosed prior to the meeting, and certainly in advance of any Special Call meetings and meetings where votes may occur.  As it currently stands, not only do we not really know what the meeting is about, but we don't know if we should show up, what the issues are so that we can comment on them, or if there will be a vote.

Maybe this is how the SCS Board v. 1.0 or how the SCS Board v. 2.0 did business, but it's not how the current School Board should do business going forward.  Let the sun shine in, and let the public be engaged with its elected officials and with its school system.  We should expect better, and they should know better.

State Board to Revoke Licenses of Effective Teachers

Tomorrow, the State Board of Ed will consider changes to the state's teacher licensing process.  This comes on the heels of their unfortunate decision to lower the already-low floor of this state's teacher salaries.

So what is this about?  The state wants us to believe that this is about increasing the qualifications of teachers entering the profession, but it still provides the same license to people who have graduated with an education degree as those with five weeks of training after a bachelor's degree in a field unrelated to what they will be teaching.  The PRAXIS scores required in Tennessee are already higher than those in Arkansas and Mississippi which, at least in our corner of the state, means that our teachers are often better-qualified - according to the almighty test - than those in surrounding districts.  Of course, the PRAXIS is not required for the teachers that helicopter in from Teach for America and some other "alternative pipelines", so while teachers from the education schools still have to meet minimum requirements, there is no such threshold for favored "stakeholders".

If we want to "raise the threshold" by "increasing the minimum score", we know how to do that - believe me, the state education department is particularly good at that particular trick.  But Commissioner Huffman is not willing to submit a proposal that raises the threshold for all teacher candidates, only the teacher candidates without lobbyists.

The real debate in this latest round of the Haslam administration's efforts to put teachers in their place is over whether a teacher's license should be linked to their students' performance.

Let's start with how other state-licensed professions govern themselves.  Turns out whether we're talking about doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, or nail technicians, the license issued by the state has to do with whether the candidate has met Tennessee's academic and practical requirements, and maintenance of the license has to do with obtaining continuing education credits.  Revocation of the license has to do only with disciplinary issues, not generally with everyday performance.  Doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, and nail techs don't have to show acceptable levels of performance, no one checks in on them, they mainly have to hope that none of their customers complains to their respective Boards.  Based on my quick review, most of the common reasons for discipline have to do with substance abuse or criminal convictions.

Certainly, I think that our children deserve better than the general public deserves from their doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, and nail techs.  Our responsibility to them, vis a vis their education, should be much greater.  But let's be honest about how we treat the most well-respected professions - we give them a high level of autonomy in how they provide their services, we generally allow the professions to govern themselves, and once they meet the entry requirements, as long as they get their continuing ed credits, we pretty much leave them alone.  That's how we treat professionals.

So let's just dispense with casting this proposal as elevating the classroom education profession to the level of "real" professions.

This is about a very particular kind of micro-management by the state's Department of Education, and it actually does not have anything to do with teachers, or really even the kids.  It has to do with principals and school districts.  The Haslam administration does not actually believe that principals and school districts will hire the "right" people.  As much as Commissioner Huffman and the TNTPers tout the concept of "mutual consent", they don't actually believe in it.

Cast in the most favorable light, here's the scenario that the state wants to prevent:  a teacher realizes that their overall evaluation score will come in at a "2" or below, and resigns before they are terminated.  They then seek another job in another district and manage to get hired, because their license is valid anywhere in Tennessee, where they continue to teach at an under-performing level.  ADDITION:  the proposal requires that teachers achieve a 2 in two of the last three years in both evaluation and the value-added measure, prior to the year where the license is up for renewal.

Look, no one's arguing that ineffective teachers should manage to effectively stumble their way to their more and more Datsun-like retirement benefits on the backs of under-educated children. 

But beyond arguing that Tennessee school districts don't have the ability to correctly evaluate job candidates that apply for jobs - that they could be tricked, Tricked I tell you, by a smooth-talking classroom teacher - or that they don't have the ability to ask the teacher about his or her performance and/or challenges, or verify it by talking to the teacher's former principal or district officials, Commissioner Huffman must believe that principals and school districts are protecting their own ability to continue to employ ineffective teachers.  In order to protect them from their bad decisions, Commissioner Huffman's proposal is to prevent these incompetent?  untrustworthy?  bumpkin?  bribed?  related?  principals and school districts from being able to continue to employ teachers by preventing those teachers from even being eligible to teach.

So why am I so concerned about these teachers?  Let's review the teacher evaluation system.  Test scores (well, TVAAS) make up 35% of a teacher's overall score, with another 15% made up of another test metric (chosen from several options) - this was true in both legacy districts (MCS using its own system, SCS using the state system), and is true in the merged district.  Back when BCG was comparing these things for the Transition Planning Commission, the average MCS overall score was 2.7, and the average SCS overall score was 2.9.  Review BCG's analysis here. 

So the average overall score in both legacy districts was in the 2.0 to 2.9 range.  Below 3.  Not the same as a median, but notable, primarily because of the outsize number of Level 1 teachers (more than any other Level) in each legacy.

So let's quickly review teacher evaluation.  Let me just repeat to you what I have heard at least a dozen district-level administrators explain:  a Level 3 teacher is a rock solid teacher, who is doing exactly what they need to do to get one year of growth from their classroom.  In order to obtain a Level 4 or 5, the teacher must be getting more than one year's worth of growth.  This is most important for students who are not proficient in a subject, who must make more than one year's worth of growth to have any hope of ever catching up to where they are supposed to be.

So why would any teacher worth their salt (or our taxpayer dollars) possibly obtain less than a Level 2?  Well, they might, for instance, be one of the 60% (SIXTY PERCENT) of teachers in this state who don't teach a tested grade or subject.  If a non-tested teacher teaches at a school that is under-performing, then they get the school's under-performing score.  Let's say a teacher only gets a Level 4 for their evaluation (remembering that Level 3 is rock-solid, meeting expectations, doing what they are supposed to do), and their school is a Level 1 school - that teacher ends up below the required Level 3 to maintain their license.  Here's a more accurate scenario lifted from Andy Spears over at Tennessee Education Report:  "Math Teacher has overall performance evaluation scores of a 3 in all three of the years before his license is up for renewal.  However, his value-added scores are a 1-2-1.  So, he’s license is not renewed, he goes under review and could potentially lose his license.
     Band Teacher has performance evaluation scores of 2-2-1 in the three years leading up to renewal.  Band Teacher has no value-added data. Band teacher is automatically renewed under the streamlined licensure scheme.
     So, Math Teacher, whose overall scores were higher than Band Teacher’s, is in danger of dismissal.  Band Teacher is renewed.  Math Teacher (and other teachers similarly situated) complain and/or sue."
Let's say that teacher is only a rock-solid teacher who is exactly meeting pedagogical evaluation expectations and gets a rock-solid Level 3 - they better be teaching at a Level 2 school or better.  Why would they ever teach at a school doing worse than that if they had any choice in the matter?  You know, if they want to maintain their license?

Under this rubric, a Level 1 teacher terminated for ineffectiveness may not lose their license, but a Level 4 or Level 5 teacher per the evaluation could lose their license and their ability to teach in the state of Tennessee because of the school at which they teach.

This is the part where the Haslam administration will explain to you that they are trying to minimize the number of teachers who teach in untested subjects and grades by promoting the standardized testing of students in kindergarten, first, and second grades.  The test promoted by the state is the SAT-10.  How do you test students who can't read?  Why, you read the test to them.  Because you don't have enough teachers to individually read the tests to each student, you seek volunteers - volunteers who you hope won't let the inflection of their voice suggest answers.  After all, it worked for the ASD's schools, right?  When they had to recruit volunteers, in some instances from some of their philanthropic-funding organizations to "proctor" the exams to students who couldn't yet read?  Totally reliable - testing children who don't yet know how to fill in bubbles with recruited volunteer proctors with no education training.  Should be fine.

It is, of course, in the Haslam administration's interest to reduce the number of teachers whose scores rely on kids not currently in their classrooms.  A similar scheme in Florida - where teachers at K-2 schools were evaluated based on the scores of the 3-5 schools that their kids fed into - was invalidated when the state legislature passed a law that teachers could not be evaluated based on the scores of students that they didn't teach.

Why else should we be concerned about these teachers with low scores?  The Gates folks want us to believe that a great teacher will be great anywhere.  What the research shows is that for teachers who stay in the same school, "teachers who were ranked the highest on average produced the highest student achievement the following year".  This makes sense within a school - where kids are more or less from the same kind of neighborhoods year-over-year.  The researchers did not attempt to move teachers to different schools.  We know, intuitively, that's that a different question entirely.

It will take at least another post, maybe a book, to explain why I just don't buy that student test scores are an accurate measure of teacher effectiveness.  My conclusion is that student test scores are fundamentally unreliable indicators both of how well a teacher taught the material, or of how well a student learned the material - there are just too many other variables.  Those variables keep a teacher's overall evaluation scores, likewise, too variable.  Read here about a teacher's whose scores have fluctuated from a Level 5 to a Level 1and back.  While the state reassuringly tells us that the test scores are a snapshot, one measure of student achievement, I'm yelling plaintively "the test scores are only a snapshot, only one measure of student achievement!"

I'm also convinced that there are shenanigans in the teacher evaluation process, but that's also another post I haven't had time to write.  While the state is concerned about principals inaccurately judging their teachers too high, I'm concerned about principals using the evaluations to undermine teachers they don't like.  Ask many of the excessed teachers Level 3, 4, and 5 teachers of Shelby County whether they were fairly treated by their principals during that process, or whether less-good teachers were kept because the principals liked them better.  By trying to convince us that teaching can be accurately measured by purely objective methods ("objective methods" administered by humans observing other humans and making judgments about those humans), and trying to take subjectivity out of the equation, the state has created a situation where principals are incentivized to manipulate the objective measures to take their sometimes-very-valid, sometimes-much-less-valid subjective concerns into consideration.

These proposed changes are yet another solution without a problem.  I don't believe that there's a historical problem with poor teachers manipulating their way past hapless hiring officials and principals, hopscotching their ineffectiveness across the state by lying about their abilities. A teacher's performance is easily verified by previous employers.  Linking student performance to licensure will reduce the number of effective teachers eligible to teach (Level 3 and Level 4 teachers in untested subjects at Level 1 schools, for instance), particularly in under-performing schools, where the new policy will also contribute to the instability of more constant turnover, as teachers are incentivized to get out of those under-performing schools just as quickly as they can.

Another solution without a problem creating more problems.  Hard to say whether Commissioner Huffman likes the solutions to those problems - increasing non-traditional teacher pipelines - even more than this disingenuous solution which will absolutely have the effect of reducing the number of traditionally-trained effective, rock-solid, experienced teachers in hard-to-staff classrooms.

If you'd like to know more about the Tennessee Board of Ed, here's the link.  Our representative from Memphis (the 9th Congressional district, anyway) is Teresa Sloyan, the Executive Director of the Hyde Family Foundations. 

If you'd like to email them your views, you can just cut and paste this list:

frolston@ecu.org, medwards@knoxvillechamber.com, lroberts@trh.com, cpearre@comcast.net,  jarogersod@bellsouth.net, ayers.janet@gmail.com, wrightmelvindds@bellsouth.net,  teresa.sloyan@gmail.com, richard.rhoda@tn.gov

The Third District representative does not have an email address listed, and there is no information about the student member of the Board.

[Author's note:  I've updated this article as of the evening of August 16 to better reflect the details of Commissioner Huffman's proposal.  I appreciate your patience.]

Thirty Cents Away from a Quarter

It's hard to know where to begin on this budget mess.  So many culpable parties, so little real discussion of how to - at the very least - maintain the good that is taking place in schools across Shelby County.

Add some fundamentally destabilizing forces - Memphis withholding $55 million, a Shelby County School Board intent on special district status - followed by the toxicity of prolonged, incredibly expensive federal litigation, the dysfunction of a too large school board, and a County Commission trying to pay as little as possible for the current level of what passes for education in Shelby County and that doesn't understand what it would take to provide a world-class education, and this is where we land.  Oh - and don't forget a new property assessment which is expected to reduce property values and the County revenue available to provide any services, much less education services.  And the County's overall rejection of a half-cent increase in the sales tax, meaning that the only way to increase revenue is to increase property taxes.

So should we start with the biggest problem?  The oldest problem?  The most pressing problem?  The newest problem?  The various sources of the various problems?  On top of what we know in the public domain, it's hard to get a view into the shadows.  If you're not angry, you're not paying attention.  In no particular order, let's dive in.

1.  The City of Memphis should be ashamed of itself.  Pay the $55 million.  Pay the $55 million.  Pay the $55 million.  Don't talk to us about PreK.  Don't talk to us about how you've decided to spend the $68 million per year that you no longer have to pay in maintenance of effort, and why you've decided that taxes shouldn't correspondingly go down.  Pay the $55 million. Pay the $55 million. Pay the $55 million.  Since you don't have $68 million due for 2013-14, use that $68 million to pay off the overdue, interest accruing debt that you owe to the schools, and that you owe to all of us.  Pay the $55 million. Pay the $55 million. Pay the $55 million.  Don't negotiate, Superintendent Hopson.  Don't cut a deal.  Get us the $55 million and the interest and the penalties.  And future merged school district:  if Memphis fails to make good on its shameful debt, it's time to force payment and enforce the judgment, as your attorneys have no doubt already explained to you how to do.  And get your attorney fees, too.  Pay the $55 million. Pay the $55 million. Pay the $55 million.  Please don't make me resort to petty name-calling and unfortunate invective, we're all grown ups here, and trying to have a rational conversation.  You know it's the right thing to do, Mayor Wharton and City Council.  Why waste more public money on the collection of this shameful debt?  Pay the $55 million. Pay the $55 million. Pay the $55 million.  Pay the $55 million. Pay the $55 million. Pay the $55 million.  Pay the $55 million. Pay the $55 million. Pay the $55 million.  Pay the $55 million. Pay the $55 million. Pay the $55 million. 

2.  The County Commission and Mayor Luttrell have forced the current crisis by asking for the budget 4 months early.  Yes, there is much financial planning to do by our esteemed LEA, and some advance notice of the hoped-for budget is not just useful, but essential.  And yes, the usual process used by district staff would result in a preliminary budget by the end of January.  And yes, the School Board has unnecessarily delayed the process by failing to consider the recommendations before it.  But asking for a balanced budget four months early has created false urgency, a reason for the School Board to do a rush job, and a reason for the School Board to punt.  Even an April deadline would have resulted in better, actual numbers.

3.  The Shelby County School Board is not the only entity to take advantage of the false urgency and the need for a rush job.  In one of the early TSC reports, we see that the Transition Steering Committee was in talks with The Boston Consulting Group and Parthenon, two management consultant companies, and asked both for further information.  About what, who knows.  BCG was the consultant used by the Transition Planning Commission, and Parthenon has been used at the behest of the Gates Foundation on many of the staffing issues.  By November 5, 2012, the TSC claimed to have gotten Board approval to use "consulting support for project management and technical assistance to facilitate specific issues associated with the merger . . ."  Payment for the consultants "will be funded by community partners."  No mention of which consultants were picked, or for how much, or exactly who was paying for what, but that probably took place at the Board meeting, right?  Not exactly.  Flip to pages four and five of the Board minutes from October 30, 2012.  There's a resolution with very similar language:  "given the daily demands of running two large districts, the Board approves consulting support . . ." to be paid for by community partners.  Neither the minutes nor the agenda from that meeting provide any explanation of what consultants were actually selected, what specific tasks they will perform, at what cost, or who is paying that cost - only the basic timeline.  But the resolution was rejected - and eventually withdrawn.  Take another look at the minutes from October 30 - bottom of page five and top of six.  The resolution was withdrawn, and the Board approved the timeline only.  Is that a basis to hire a management consultant?  Guess so.

Well, if there's been any question about whether BCG is back in town, it is firmly answered in the affirmative by only a cursory look at any of the documents presented by the TSC in the last couple of weeks.  Remove the SCS and MCS insignias, maybe change the font, and you've got basically the same financial documents put together for the TPC.  Just as an exemplar, take a look at Slide 8 from the last meeting of the TPC's Finance Committee meeting.  This slide was the source of much consternation for the TPC, nicknamed "the waterfall".  Just a quick look at the minutes show that much discussion was needed to explain the waterfall.  Well, the BCG waterfall is a zombie and continues to stalk the staffs at MCS and SCS.  These are the very same staffs that objected to the numbers and assumptions in the TPC work, and that now basically present BCG's work as their own.

How much money is BCG making off of this recycled work?  BCG would tell us that this isn't recycled work, that it's just a recycled method.  But let's talk about BCG's method.  Here's a TSC update from December.  Want to know why we're having so much gnashing of teeth from parents and teachers (I refuse to call them stakeholders)?  From the TSC, the major assumption underlying the entire budget is a pretty major assumption:  "your merged department's budget for FY2014 should be no larger than the MCS FY2013 budgeted amount."  Talk about doing more with less.

BCG didn't even need the actual budget submissions from any department in order to do their "work".  This is A Way to do a budget.  But this is not The Way that budgets usually work.  Usually, budgets are "bottom-up" - the departments submit budgets based on what it will cost to do their work.  As the budgets from the departments are submitted up the chain, district staff leaders revise, negotiate, and generally work the numbers up and down the chain.  But there's a clear understanding up and down the chain of how much particular line items cost, what is being sacrificed for savings, and what the expectations are for the various departments.  BCG's Way is decidedly "top-down" - this is how much we're spending, so you, departments, figure out how to do your work with that amount.  A certain amount of that happens even in the traditional model of how to form budgets as you get closer to the end, and money is tight.  But this is not how budgets are built.  On top of that, based on who is being presented to answer questions from the Board, we should be suspicious of the method.  Dr. Tim Setterlund and Hitesh Haria are no dummies.  They're honest, hard workers.  And while they both have some (even considerable) budget experience, at budget time, the superintendents usually defer to their Chief Financial Officers.  Neither CFO is being made available in public to answer questions from the Board.  Neither is BCG - they're, in fact, so well hidden that if you didn't get up to your elbows in minutes and TSC reports, you might have missed their role altogether.

Another way we know consultants are involved?  From this TSC update at the end of January, School Board commissioners had one-on-one meetings with staff (probably with BCG present as well).  This allows district staff to respond directly to questions and concerns without pesky reporters and public meetings.  Not only does this remove critical discussions from the public eye, but it allows staff and consultants to tailor their responses.  Not everyone will get the exact same answer to any question even if the exact same question is asked.  This method is designed not only to remove this discussion from the public (voters, stakeholders, whateveryouwantotocallit), but the method is designed to divide and conquer the Commissioners themselves.  It isolates Commissioners so that they don't hear each other's questions, and can't build on the answers they are given, and can't follow-up on each other's questions.  No big deal, nothing to see here.  We'll "summarize" the input for you, and it will "save time" at the Budget Retreat so that everyone doesn't ask the same question.  And we have to get this done yesterday.  And don't worry about how much our work costs because other people are paying for it.  And don't ask about what those other people want policy-wise, and how that gets incorporated into our advice.  Nothing to see here.

4.  If you don't like what you have seen in this high-level preliminary budget, wait until you get to see the actual line item budget.  From the various presentations and TSC updates, we know about the ridiculous assumption that the old MCS FY2013 budget will be the merged district FY2014 budget, and we also know some of the trade-off's that the TSC and BCG have built into the budget:  staffing levels, outsourcing, etc.  But since this is a high-level preliminary "budget", we don't know exactly how the departments have made the numbers work.  This will be critical for parents and teachers to understand what next year's classrooms will look like.  Imagine Mayor Luttrell's surprise when he finds out that despite his stated hope to get line-item-level approval for the school budget for at least the next three years, There Is No Line Item Budget.  For all of the work that Superintendent Aitken keeps telling us has been put into what has been presented to the public and the School Board, what we don't have is the work that we've come to expect to be completed by people who work in the respective finance departments in the time frame that they usually complete it.  We needed the consultants so that the regular work could continue to get done, right?  But who gave the instruction that the regular budget work didn't have to be done this year?  We should, at this point, have preliminary line item budgets complete.  And if it/they is/are done, how come these are not the line item entries that everyone is working from as they decide what and how to cut?  Time to get closer to ground level, folks.

5.  Given all of these things, it should have been no surprise to anyone, least of all the staff, that the budget as it was presented to Commissioners was dead on arrival.  It is unclear whose advice was being followed, but despite the very negative reception from the Board, the public presentation of the "preliminary budget" to the public moved forward.  If the hope from BCG or staff was that public support behind the budget would solidify and pressure the Board to approve it, then it was a miserable failure.  This process, instead, allowed all the political cover in the world for the 15-5 vote to increase the amount of money to be asked of the County Commission.  There have still been no binding votes on any of the hard issues, and everything is still very much up in the air.  What is our baseline?  Is it "current state" or is it "world class"?  And what if neither is possible?  Oh, and the County Commission is cranky because the gap is just too big.

6.  The gap was always going to be big, and we're still not really talking about why.  There was always going to be the loss of the maintenance effort from Memphis - about $68 million per year.  But with all of those efficiencies that the TPC found, that should have been taken care of, right?  Except for that the real problem is the abrupt anticipated decline in enrollment.  Jim Horn explains it here - but the basics are that due to charter school and ASD enrollment upticks, the merged district is expected to lose $212 million in annual funding over the next few years.  That's the budget gap.  And that doesn't include the possibility of municipal school districts or the addition of vouchers into the budgetary mix.  It's a budget gap that the district cannot control, and will have such an uneven impact that planning is made even more difficult - charters pull from multiple schools, 2 first graders from here, 3 from there, so it is unlikely that any school could "scale down" an entire classroom in even one grade due to the loss of enrollment.  And the ASD keeps changing its model and the definition of "takeover". The other increases in expenses, for instance, those required by Norris-Todd related to the non-reduction of teacher salaries, are marginal compared to these other gaps.

7.  It turns out that even with a lower per-pupil expenditure, the SCS staffing model is more expensive - and maybe, too prohibitively expensive to adopt across the merged district.  It will take another post to explain how that could be possible, but the numbers bear out that bringing MCS classroom size to the current SCS classroom size will cost millions of dollars.  Some folks in the county have lambasted the city for its lower performance levels.  But perhaps, just, perhaps, as these folks in the county talk about what they will and won't put up for their children, they are starting to understand that some of the financial decisions impact the classroom.  And it starts to get pretty hard to say that "my children deserve this" but "yours don't" when you're talking about kids all in the same district.  With different districts, it's easier to pick out who deserves what.  In the same district, we really should be concerned about equity.  Not that the former MCS didn't make some unfortunate decisions about which schools deserved what resources - but it's time to clear the slate one way or the other and to be honest about how we're doing it.

8.  Budget cuts were coming anyway.  Property assessments will likely be reduced across the board.  Both the city and county are in financial trouble, and that's before the looming sequestration.  Even without the merger, the conversation about whether we can afford what we want, and whether we can even afford the minimum of what we were already providing - the conversation was coming.  Taxes will be going up, and they need to go up to provide the same level of services we are already receiving because our revenues are going down and our costs are rising.  What a mess.  The merger gets some blame here, but it's not just the merger.  The County Commission (and Mayor Luttrell) are attempting to use the merger to reduce the maintenance of effort in ways that would not have been possible but for the merger.  In the situation we are in, preventing an increase has the effect of a decrease where certain increases are mandated by state law.

9.  And what is Parthenon doing?  Probably staffing stuff - and that is likely the next disaster.  Anybody remember how the Gates project was partly about restructuring teacher compensation so that teacher pay would be based on student achievement?  Or how Norris-Todd prevents decreases teacher pay due to the merger?  Good luck in working out those conflicting goals in this treacherous financial situation, Parthenon.

10. People should just do their jobs.  Stop withholding payment on shameful years-old debts.  Stop creating false deadlines.  Stop gambling that undefined funding requests won't alienate people that you need to work with in good faith.  Stop trying to reduce funding to the schools.  Stop trying to make sure your kids get theirs even if it means lowering the floor of acceptable education for other kids.  Stop lobbying for the hiring of expensive consultants.  Stop parroting what the consultants have presented as the God's honest truth when you know that the data has not been validated.  Allow administrative staff to do their jobs.  Validate the numbers and the data in a meaningful way. 

These are some preliminary, big picture budget thoughts.  No one has clean hands, and most, if not all, of our public officials bear some of the burden for contributing to a more difficult situation than was necessary.  It was always going to be hard, but it didn't have to be this hard.

Gordon Elementary Got Its Pardon

Back in early December, I wrote about Dr. Cash's proposal to close Gordon Elementary School.  This is part of the MCS response to the TPC's recommendation to close at least 20 schools.  Since Gordon is not in the bottom 5% of schools statewide, it seemed strange that The Boston Consulting Group knew about Gordon's closure back in June 2012, and its planned conversion to an ASD school.

In early December, I speculated that BCG had not come up with this particular idea on their own, and that either someone at MCS or someone at the ASD had to have told them about these plans in order for BCG to include Gordon on their list.  BCG is nothing if not thorough.

At the Special Call Meeting back in December, parents and teachers at Gordon were irate about their inclusion on a closure list, and the plan to give over the school to its co-occupant, Gestalt Community Schools, which operates the Gordon Science and Arts Academy as part of the ASD.  GSAA currently is only made up of 6th graders, but is expected to expand to 7th grade next year and 8th grade the following year.  Thank goodness for Bill Dries at The Daily News, who has closely followed the GSAA and Gordon goings on.

I'm especially grateful for his reporting since if you miss a School Board meeting, and then wait almost a month for the School Board to post its approved minutes, then you might miss critical information - critical information like Dr. Cash's withdrawal of Gordon from the closure list.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Mr. Dries asked the ASD about it and got this:  "'Gordon is not on our list,' said Achievement School District spokesman [and possible internet commenter] Jeremy Jones. 'MCS is fully in the driver’s seat when it comes to decisions about Gordon.'"  In another article on the same day came this gem:  "Memphis City Schools superintendent Kriner Cash acknowledged that neither Gestalt Community Schools nor leaders of the Achievement School District are interested in taking over the entire school."

Well, I guess we know what my bias is.  When there are shenanigans anywhere close to the ASD, I assume that the ASD is involved.  But perhaps this little piece of work - volunteering an elementary school not in the bottom 5% to be closed so that an ASD middle school can use the building - was cooked up exclusively by Dr. Cash and MCS?

So the closure list is reduced by 1, likely to the great relief of the MCS administrators that have to plan the required community meetings (hearings) for each school.

Hard to say exactly what is going on here.  Perhaps the close working relationship between the ASD and MCS is not quite as close as we've been led to believe, and we'll continue to see this kind of public inconsistency in "party line" flare up from time to time.  Or perhaps the working relationship is so close, that Dr. Cash has agreed to take the fall.  Either way, it sure looks like Gordon should not have been on the list from the outset.

Harwell Shenanigans Confirmed in Tennessee House

Last night, I posted on the possibility of shenanigans in how Tennessee Speaker of the House Beth Harwell managed the most recent set of committee appointments for the current legislative session.

I questioned whether it was possible that House Democratic Leader Craig Fitzhugh (District 82 - Ripley) was removed from his Education Committee seat because of his strident opposition to vouchers.

I don't make it a practice to try to break news, but this had me just fired up enough to reach out to Representative Fitzhugh to see if he was willing to comment on this to a little ole blogger that nobody's ever heard of.  I received a quick response.

A senior staff member to Rep. Fitzhugh has confirmed that Fitzhugh was removed from the House Education Committee, despite numerous requests to remain on.  The staffer confirms that the new composition of the Committee will place minimum barriers to a statewide voucher plan.

Nothing like stacking the deck.  With a supermajority, there is little question that voucher legislation is going to pass.  It will probably be unconstitutional, just like in Louisiana, but that is of little concern to our esteemed state legislature - home of legislators gnawing their names into their desks and relitigating the Scopes trial.  But this kind of maneuvering - perfectly legal, of course - shows that the supermajority is simply not interested in brooking any honest discussion of these very important issues.  It's not enough to vote in favor of vouchers - they don't even want to hear the debate over it.

Jan. 17, 3:15 p.m. update:  Who is on the Education Committee?  KnoxNews posted a few days ago:  "Rep. John DeBerry, D-Memphis. StudentsFirst spent more than $100,000 to help him defeat a Democratic primary opponent -- the most the group spent on any campaign. DeBerry was appointed last week to the committee that will first act on the legislation StudentsFirst is pushing by House Speaker Beth Harwell, whose PAC received $5,000 from StudentsFirst. Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey's PAC also got $5,000 from StudentsFirst." 

TN State Rep. Fitzhugh Forced Off Education Committee?

Diane Ravitch posted a story today on Mississippi State Representative Linda Whittington.  Democratic Representative Whittington represents District 34, and is based out of Schlater, Mississippi, in the northwestern quadrant of the state, south of Clarksdale.

Representative Whittington states:  "As a member of the Mississppi House of Representatives, I agree and am doing what I can to stop the charters from coming into our state. So much so that the Speaker of the House removed me from the House Education Committee where I had served since 2007. No sitting member had ever been removed without consenting to the move. The Speaker acknowledged that I was removed because of my votes against charter schools."

No biggie.  The charter school agenda rolls forward.

If you read down into the comments, you'll find a comment that states that something similar happened to Tennessee State Representative Craig Fitzhugh.  Rep. Fitzhugh, based out of Ripley and representing District 82, had some redistricting issues - he lost Dyer County and gained Haywood County.  In this session, he's the Democratic Leader.

Here's an opinion piece from Rep. Fitzhugh from the December 12, 2012 Tennessean.  In relevant part, Rep. Fitzhugh states
"Let’s focus on education. The term education reform has been thrown around so often that no one really knows what it means. This year, it seems that reform will focus on a new school voucher program or — to use a more accurate description — sending your tax dollars to fund private schools.
Here are the facts. Tennessee has made tremendous strides in education over the last four years and Gov. Haslam deserves credit for continuing the Bredesen reforms from Race to the Top. These changes have barely had time to show progress, so now is not the time to talk about a radical change in education policy. In Louisiana, a voucher program similar to the one being considered in Tennessee was recently ruled unconstitutional, but not before costing taxpayers more than $25 million a year. We are constitutionally required to fund public education. If we start ripping tens of millions of dollars from public schools with an unconstitutional voucher program, we will most certainly do away with all the progress made under both governors."

Sounds like a guy I could support.  And while he previously served on the Education Committee (according to his March 19, 2012 press release about his re-election campaign), it does appear (according to his official House website) that he has not been reappointed to the Education Committee.  Odd.

I've looked, and haven't seen any reporting on this.  Lots of big work for the Education Committees in both houses this year - have the shenanigans already started?

10:13 1/17/12 Update:  Shenanigans Confirmed!