This morning, I took the opportunity (as I often do when the Legislature is in session) to review a list of education-related bills under consideration by our General Assembly.  One in particular jumped out at me in a bad way, even though I know the sponsor to be a thoughtful and intelligent person.

SB3896/HB3826 (Burchett, McCord) would dictate that "For each five (5) times a student is tardy to school in a school year, the student shall be counted as having been absent one (1) day from school."  The implications of absences can be quite serious — affecting school funding, as well as consequences up to and including families’ referral to juvenile court.

I’ve discussed my concerns about the attendance policy (here, here and here, to start) at length, but this bill would intensify the problem.  Consider for a moment the following situation, which occurred just this week:  the mother of an 11-year old receives a referral to "campus court," administered by the juvenile court in Anderson County.

The crime?  Little Johnny was tardy 10 times over the last six months.  "Tardy," in this child’s classroom and many others, is defined as "not being in one’s seat when the bell rings."  He was delivered to school in plenty of time, ate breakfast, stopped by the library and his locker… but managed to get distracted along the way and wasn’t in his seat when the bell rang.

On those ten days over a six-month period, he missed — at most — ten minutes of homeroom.  No instructional time at all.  However, if this bill should pass, that would equate to two full days (roughly 14 hours’ worth) of absences for the purpose of school funding as well as little Johnny’s attendance record. 

Remember to e-mail your state senators and representatives about things that are important to you; it does make a difference.  I already have.

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And don’t worry about Little Johnny.  The safeguards we put into place last January (to ensure that families are not frivolously referred to court for attendance matters) worked, and the court referral was cancelled.  The letter never should have gone out to begin with, but with a little oversight, the problem was fixed in time.

Tennessee standards in K-12 education are on the rise, with new curriculum standards and new (harder) TCAP tests likely to be phasing in next year. The lower grades are driven in part by the significant gap between proficiency on our state tests, and the state’s proficiency on the NAEP.

Concurrent with those changes, we’re very likely to see higher standards for high school graduation as well, as a result of the Tennessee Diploma Project (view the whole report). In the near term, that will mean requiring four years of high school math (instead of the current three), requiring a half-year of "personal finance," and replacing the Gateway exams (passage of which is required for graduation) with more rigorous end-of-course exams (which will count for a higher percentage of the final grade than the Gateway’s 15%).

Current research shows that college-readiness and workforce-readiness are pretty much the same thing, so the old two-tiered system (college prep vs. vocational) is going away. That doesn’t mean that we’ll do away with courses like welding, manufacturing, networking, etc. — but it means that students in vocational courses will be expected to meet the same level of academic rigor as those headed for college.

Without question, higher standards will benefit our students and our state in the long run. Also without question, they will cause some pain. Some students may not graduate on time, bringing the risk of still more dings to the graduation rate (the calculation of which is, in my opinion, flawed), and unless we lengthen the school day, the additional course requirements will further squeeze an already limited schedule so that students have fewer options than before.

For example, a high school student may not be able to take three or four years of foreign language (two are required) AND four years of marching band (one year of fine arts credit is required). One way around that could be zero-hour courses — optional class offerings at 7 a.m. or 3 p.m., for example; another would be to allow additional high school course credits to be earned in middle school. Already, many students take Algebra I in middle school; if we could expand that to allow foreign language credits to be earned in middle school as well, that would ease the schedule somewhat.

New, higher standards are on the way. And, it’s a good thing — but there’s going to be some discomfort in the process. Schedule-wise, something will have to give.

The State has ruled that public schools "must waive fees for low-income students to participate in school-day fundraising celebrations." That means that the school has to pay any cost associated, which would sort of defeat the purpose of having a fundraiser at all if any significant portion of the student population falls in that category.

My first question is, why is any school having a fundraiser during the school day anyway (except for the traditional book fair, which is education-related)?

My next question is, just how far does this rule extend? Does it cover the book fair too, if students are allowed to purchase books during the school day?

The concept of buying a $25 ticket for a day of fun instead of a day of school beckons a recollection of the old practice of the catholic church selling indulgences, which led to Luther’s 95 Theses and the Protestant Reformation.

Yes, schools need more than the available funding will provide. But there has to be a better answer.

A letter in today’s News Sentinel is so senseless that it serves to illustrate one of the problems faced by those earnestly trying to improve education in Tennessee: the pure ignorance of some of our adults.

Later school start

better for Tennessee

At least 90 percent of the people in Tennessee are for a later school start.

State Sen. Jamie Woodson, chair of the Senate Education Committee, is against this.

She has never been for the benefits of school students. She wouldn’t allow a vote to lower the requirements for the Hope Scholarship to keep 70 percent of college students eligible.

Everyone sees the hardships created by starting school the first of August (Aug. 9). Schools need to start after Labor Day, which they do in most states.

This is part of the reason Tennessee ranks near last in education. The only way we can start to change this is to vote Woodson out.

Sam Doughty

Rockwood

90% favor a later start date? I doubt that; I serve on a local school board, and I’ve had exactly one person tell me — and that was in passing at a public place — that they want school to start after Labor Day. If there’s a survey to back up that assertion, please point me to it.

To say that Sen. Woodson "has never been for the benefits of school students" is simply dead wrong. Although she and I have disagreed from time to time (and I’m not one to keep my opinions to myself), everything that she does is, at least from her perspective, with the best interest of children as the foremost priority.

A prime example of that is her steadfast opposition to lowering standards, including the reasonable standard for achieving and keeping the Tennessee Education Lottery Scholarship. Lowering standards might help some parents, but it would be a gross disservice to the students. Face it, the GPA standard for scholarship eligibility is an incentive for students to do well. The standard to achieve the scholarship out of high school is exceedingly modest; students who cannot attain either a 3.0 GPA or a 21 on the ACT just aren’t going to make it in college. I think there’s only one four-year school in the state who will even accept students with less than a 21 on the ACT.

Lastly, the start date has nothing to do with the reason that Tennessee ranks near last in education; the reason, quite simply, is that we rank near last in funding education. That’s why Sen. Woodson worked so hard last year to pass the BEP 2.0, providing funding targeted specifically to academic improvement, and increasing accountability measures for the adults in charge of those funds.

Sam Doughty can’t vote against her, and I can’t vote for her. Let’s hope the folks in her district pay a little more attention to the facts.

The more restrictive teen driving laws enacted six years ago aren’t working.  Actually, the death toll has risen rather than being reduced.

From the News-Sentinel:

Studies show that strongly restricting teen driving privileges leads to a 25 percent drop in teen driving death rates because stringent laws protect teen drivers from their own deadly mistakes.

Tennessee uses a graduated driver’s license system, where teens gain more driving privileges with age and experience, but some experts say it may not be restrictive enough.

Among the recommendations by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration is to set the learner’s permit age at 16 rather than 15 as it is in Tennessee.

I’ve taught three children to drive now, and there have been no serious incidents.  We’ve had a couple of parking-lot paint scrapes, but nothing even remotely dangerous.  They’ve all learned on a standard transmission (stick shift), all driven at night, in the rain, and the older two have snow experience.  Gamma will too, after this winter, because there’s always snow at Grandma’s house between November and March.

I’m a firm believer that more practice (with a parent in the car) makes a better driver.  If it were up to me, I would allow a learner’s permit at 14 — two years of learning to drive before the license was granted.  I’d also drop the restriction on having more than one sibling in the car, for one simple reason: siblings overwhelmingly rat each other out.  They just do.

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There’s an odd thing, though; it seems like a lot of kids today don’t look forward to driving, and delay getting the learner’s permit, license, and the whole deal.  I don’t understand it, and haven’t seen it in my own kids… but I do know of several others who have little or no interest in learning to drive.

It’s a little scary to think of that many teens delaying the permit, shortening the learning period… and yet, you know that many will receive new or nearly new cars.  I don’t have any stats, but it’s been my observation that a new or expensive car in the hands of a 16 year-old is just asking for a serious accident, while something old and cheap is excellent insurance that any collisions will be of the insignificant, hardly-scratch-the-paint variety.

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I do wonder how many Tennessee school systems have dropped Driver Education over the past six years, due to budget constraints.  Oak Ridge did.  Knox County did.  Might the rise in teen driving deaths be due to less instruction and practice?