Charter Industry Demands Access to TN Student Data: Parents Say No

Under the misdirection of Commissioner Candice McQueen, the TN state legislature recently passed a sweeping new charter law that is aimed to expand the footprint and to give more public money to the charter industry's corporate welfare reform schools. And money is not the only thing that Dr. McQueen is offering charter corporations like Green Dot and KIPP.

With the passage of the new state law this summer, predatory charter chains may now demand student directory information on each public school child. This information may then be used to decide which children's homes that charter operators  will flood with slick school marketing brochures that conceal the dehumanizing environments of these "no excuses" institutions for cultural sterilization.

Parents, however, can say no to such requests by contacting their public schools and requesting that their children be excluded from these data sweeps by the charter industry:

Shelby County Schools is required to send a notice to parents at the beginning of each school year about how student information is used. Parents have the option to leave their contact information out of the student directory, or other such lists.

Or, you can write a letter requesting that your student’s directory information remain private. Write to either of the addresses below:

Shelby County Schools
Student Records Department
160 S. Hollywood St.
Memphis, TN 38112

Shelby County Schools
Department of Attendance and Discipline
Shelby County Schools
2800 Grays Creek, Arlington, TN 38002

Meanwhile, the leaders of these dehumanizing and exploitative hell schools pay themselves very well, even though these child centers for paternalistic brainwashing are advertised as "non-profit." Oligarchs like Eli Broad amass huge tax savings for donations to these racist outfits, while leaders amass personal fortunes for exploiting the poor:

The Dubious Claims by the TN Dept. of Education

Tennessee politicians enjoy a long, sordid history of underfunding public schools, crying about poor education quality, making outrageous demands of students and teachers, and complaining about federal interference while begging for federal grant stashes to keep state school doors open. 

One of those big stashes of federal cash is about to run out in 2019 unless state politicians can gin up a good reason for extending the Gear Up TN, a 7-year grant awarded in 2012 "that aims to expand the college-going culture in Tennessee and empower students to succeed."  

This program, which focuses largely on counseling high school students into college and career fields that fit the needs of corporations receiving huge public incentives to locate in Tennessee, is worth $29,590,281 to state politicians, who, by the way, are unwilling to ask TN's wealthy elites or said corporations to pay a fair share to educate Tennessee children.

And so recently the TN Department of Education (TDOE) manufactured a report that claimed that 30 percent of TN's high school graduates had skirted high school requirements, as established in 2010 by Business Roundtable honchos with the U. S. Diploma Project.  Could this be the reason why so many kids drop out of college, the State asks.  How could this happen! 

According to TDOE, it would seem that quite overnight the State realized that Tennessee school counselor corps falling down on the job, along with administrators and teachers who should act as counselors when counselors can't keep up.  And thank goodness, too, for Gear Up TN.  Where would the state be without it!! 

Obviously, TDOE never guessed that someone might challenge their phony claims that were published in this glossy report.  And as you might guess, TDOE never asked local school boards or superintendents to help verify the shocking statistic that 30 percent of graduates were not taking required courses to graduate.

Well, a local superintendent did challenge the fake numbers and came up with quite a different set of numbers.  The news spread, and now the TDOE phony data has been exposed:

While state officials continue to check districts’ data, it appears that more than 70 percent of what looked like missing requirements were in fact data errors. Thirty percent of the time, students had actually been allowed to graduate without taking required courses — meaning that only about 12 percent of graduates overall had not met requirements.

TN Ed Commish, Candace McQueen, added this bit spin that somehow does not restore confidence:

McQueen said the state is taking several steps. At the top of the list, she said, is working with the companies that manage student information to improve data entry.

Does anyone know which companies she is talking about?  Are these the same companies that produced the Report?  How reliable or secure is this student data?

How embarrassing for Haslam's coterie of dissemblers at TDOE.  How will they now justify another $30 million of Gear Up TN federal welfare grants to fund what fiscal conservatives won't pay, themselves?  Surely, one of the State's contracted data mercenaries can come up with something.

New Test to Solve Tennessee's "true ethical and moral dilemma"?

Candice McQueen has replaced Tennessee's toxic former Commissioner of Education, Kevin (Rhee) Huffman.  In doing so, McQueen has inherited one of the most aggressive corporate education agendas in the nation. 

At the same time, she has taken the reins of a state system that has been underfunded for at least the past 35 years, as governors and legislators have jumped from reform one bandwagon to another to collect any free federal cash being handed out, even as the percentage of the state's budget committed to education has continued to dry up (see Part II of The Mismeasure of Education).

If these challenges were not enough, Dr. McQueen faces a literacy meltdown as measured by state test scores, even with the infusion of $501,000,000 from Race to the Top federal funds--most of which never reached the classrooms or the severely underfunded school library programs that remain on life support. 

At the same time, poverty continues to grow across the state, with more than one in four children now living in poverty, and one in three black or brown children.  The state ranks 43rd in the nation in child poverty and 48th in Hunger and Food Insecurity.  As poverty and hunger spread, literacy scores continue to tank, especially since math prep has been the major focus of year-round test prep.

For Dr. McQueen, however, it is not the hunger, poverty, and oppression that represent the "true ethical and moral dilemma; it is, rather, the low reading test scores.

As these developments unfold, the billionaire governor, Bill Haslam, continues to hand out to his cronies as much of the public resources as he can, including the shuttering of public schools in favor of the corporate welfare charter reform schools.  And the chief federal architect of the racist new states rights education policy based on the proliferation of charter schools, Lamar Alexander, is at Haslam's side, ready to berate any school board that has the audacity to support its public schools as its first priority.  See story here.

The corporate foundation solution that has been prepared for Dr. McQueen's "true ethical and moral dilemma," however, is as old as the corporate efficiency movement that began over a hundred years ago: it is another standardized testing scheme that promises to produce even more failures, more inequality, more racist and classist results, and more inequity than the TCAP that is now headed for the dustbin of failed fixes.

The "new" antiquarian reform is called TNReady, and it is another test based on the infamous Common Core standards.  Like the old test, the new test will be used to label, sort, and further segregate the poorest and neediest children of the state in test prep hell schools, where they will be dehumanized and roboticized and made ready for a Walmart or Amazon future, or one without any job at all. 

Tennessee ranks 41st among states in the number of 18 to 24 year olds unemployed or not enrolled in higher education.

McQueen and Haslam's morally-bankrupt dehumanization school plan has the support of the corporate union affiliate in the state, the TEA, even though the majority of teachers in the state must surely know that this effort will end as poorly as the last one.  TEA President, Barbara Gray, is bullish on TNReady, ready or not:

The new test will also be given online, which officials believe will further help prepare students for life in the real world [irony alert].

However, Barbara Gray, president of the Tennessee Education Association, the state's largest teachers' union, told The Associated Press in an email later Thursday that teachers are concerned about a "lack of appropriate technology for students to complete the assessment online."

"Many school districts across the state, especially in our rural areas, have poor Internet connections and too few computers to efficiently administer the assessment," she said.

Aside from that, Gray said the new assessment overall should be beneficial.