2010 February 22

Main Street Journal: Opinion Editorial: The Washington Agenda for Shelby County Schools

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The following article is taken from the February 2010 issue of the Main Street Journal. Click “Subscribe Online” above to start your subscription.

The Washington Agenda for Shelby County Schools
By: David Pickler, Shelby County School Board Chairman

“The public school is the symbol of our democracy and the most pervasive means of promoting our common destiny.” Public education has traditionally been a local responsibility, reflecting the values and priorities of the communities served by such schools. This legacy of local control has been challenged by decades of increasing intrusions by federal mandate and judicial rulings. These encroachments have attempted to position our schools as laboratories for societal experimentation and political agenda, often at the expense of traditional values and taxpayer pocketbooks.

While underfunded and unfunded federal and judicial mandates have become more pervasive over the past thirty years, President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan have escalated federal efforts to assume control over local schools. This dramatic incursion into state and local control is illustrated in the stimulus provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). A major provision of this Act was an emphasis on expanding charter schools throughout America despite a lack of data establishing any clear benefits of such schools over public schools. When the Tennessee General Assembly defeated a bill last spring expanding charter schools, Secretary Duncan directly communicated that Tennessee’s eligibility for federal stimulus dollars if they did not reverse course and pass charter school legislation.

As states struggled with revenue shortfalls and huge budget gaps, a plan to provide a potential funding solution appeared in the form of a federal grant entitled “Race to the Top”. Each state had a deadline of January 19, 2010 to submit an application to compete for hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. Governor Bredesen called the General Assembly into an extraordinary session for the purpose of passing laws designed to make Tennessee’s application more appealing to grant decision makers. By embracing Barack Obama and Arne Duncan’s federal standards for public education in exchange for the possibility of stimulus dollars, local control was forsaken in order to build the 1,111 pages of Tennessee’s RTTT application.

The goals of the Race to the Top are laudable as the program is centered around four key areas:

1. Adopting standard and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and in the workplace and to compete in a global economy;
2. Building data systems that measure student growth and success, and inform teachers and principals about how they can improve instruction;
3. Recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers and principals, especially where they are needed most, and;
4. Turning around the lowest-achieving schools.

Unfortunately, the initiatives passed in the extraordinary session embrace federal standards for education policy, increased state bureaucracy, additional burdens on teachers and school administrators and promote state takeovers of local schools and school districts. The Tennessee First to the Top Act of 2010 will mandate sweeping change to educational policy throughout our state.

Establishment of an Achievement School District (ASD): This provision would create a statewide school district controlled by the appointed Commissioner of Education and the appointed State Board of Education for all schools and districts failing to meet the standards for student progress established under No Child Left Behind. This bill would permit the Commissioner to enter into a contract with any person, governmental entity, or nonprofit entity to manage such school or district’s day-to-day operations. Such operation would have the ability to request waivers from many laws and regulations governing local school boards. Taxpayers and voters served by these schools or school districts would effectively be disenfranchised as their elected school board would lose all control over the operations of these schools.

Teacher Evaluations: One of the most controversial elements of this bill is the creation of a mandate to annually evaluate every teacher and principal in each school in Tennessee. It also empowers the Governor and General Assembly to appoint a 15-member committee to formulate the evaluation document and process. Prior to this Act, teachers were required to be evaluated twice every ten years. The new law requires that 50% of these evaluations to be based upon student assessment data. 35% of each evaluation will be based upon student growth as measured by Tennessee’s Value Added Assessment System. The remaining 15% would be based upon criteria established by the state-appointed advisory committee. The implementation of this annual evaluation process will represent a significant challenge as schools and districts struggle under the weight of increased regulation, mandated paperwork and reporting, and testing. Time and resources necessary to fulfill these federally-imposed mandates may have a negative impact on actual instruction time available.

Restructuring Schools: This element of the Act adopts the federal definition of “persistently low-achieving schools.” Schools and districts identified as failing under the newly adopted federal definition would be removed from local control.

Teacher Dismissal and Discipline: Under prior Tennessee law, the elected school board provided teachers facing supervision or dismissal an opportunity to receive a hearing where the Board could hear the facts of a particular case and render an impartial decision. This new Act removes this right of each teacher to such proceeding and replaces it with a Superintendent-appointed Hearing Officer. Boards of Education act only upon approval and only may act based upon appeal with a scope limited to facts introduced at the hearing.

Salary Schedules: Finally, the Act removes the ability of local Boards of Education to establish salary schedules. The Commissioner of Education will establish a salary schedule for all licensed personnel. Local Board must request approval from the Commission if they desire to implement an alternative schedule.

These elements replacing local control with state bureaucracies and federal standards were passed by the Tennessee General Assembly in hopes of being selected as one of 10 state recipients of the Race to the Top grant money. Shelby County Schools could receive up to 14 million dollars over a four year period, an amount representing less than 1% of the District’s annual operating budget. Memphis City Schools stand to receive over 187 million dollars over the same term. The price for these federal tax dollars is a dramatic reduction in local control and a significant increase in federal encroachment and oversight of our community’s public school.

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