Live from Music Row, Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed education reporter TC Weber in studio to discuss problems with TCAP testing and gauging the academic proficiency of students.
Leahy: In studio, TC Weber, our education reporter. So you follow all of these legislative proceedings?
Weber: I do.
Leahy: So that we don’t have to. (Weber chuckles)
Weber: It’s like the greatest show on Earth some days.
Leahy: Some days it’s like watching paint dry. And other days there’s a lot of drama. This third-grade retention bill was passed and is in effect, but now there are some proposals to modify it.
Weber: It was interesting on a brief history, It’s been on the book since 2011, but it was left in the hands of the locals, and nobody got retained. Then in 2019, they tried to do it through a literacy bill that Mark White tried as hard as he could and could not get through legislation. And then they brought it back in a special session, and nobody really paid attention to third-grade retention until now.
And all of a sudden they’re realizing that there may be a bunch of kids retained or there may not be. Nobody really knows. But now everybody wants to talk about it, or they didn’t want to talk about it before the passage.
Leahy: Scott Cepicky, state rep. I’m looking at your story in The Tennessee Star published yesterday. He had a really interesting quote for you. “If we are waiting until third grade to intervene, we are waiting too long.’
Weber: That’s been Cepicky’s stance since the beginning of all of this. He’s got several pieces of legislation out there that will expand services to K through three. He’s argued that we should test kids before they go into first grade so that we get a sense of where they are and we’re not all spread out.
His focus has been on, how do we expand those services and get those kids, because if we’re waiting for third grade to suddenly step in like knights in armor coming to save the day, we’re too late. We’re not going to save the damsel in distress. We’ve got to do it before.
Leahy: I have to take you out to meet the folks at Thales Academy.
Weber: I know you like Thales Academy.
Leahy: But I’m going to take you out there.
Weber: I know you keep threatening.
Leahy: And we’re going to do it.
Weber: We’re going to do a field trip. (Chuckles)
Leahy: And you and I, we’ll take a Mike and TC adventure. We’ll go out to Thales Academy. And we’ll watch them use direct instruction, which is by far the most proven way, been out there for 60 years, to teach kids reading, writing, and arithmetic.
They’re way off the charts compared to anything else. I think this whole third-grade retention bit is a little bit about the system we’ve been using that doesn’t work. Let’s do more of it, and maybe that will work.
Weber: I think some of the conversations that have popped up around it have been very interesting because you start to get a sense of people that want to know what to do. I think for the first time in 10 years, I’m starting to see people openly question the value of the tests we’re taking.
One of the things that I try to approach people with, and we need to consider at some point, is, whether we are preparing kids for the future, for the world, they’re going to live in, or are we preparing them to live in the world that we live in?
And change is happening so rapidly, and technology, whether it be reading, writing, technology, or whether it be homeschooling, whether it be virtual education, there’s so much change happening so rapidly. I think that we sometimes run the danger of staking ourselves to a past that’s no longer viable.
Leahy: One of the people there who raised a concern was Jeanne Baker, she’s director of Lenoir City Schools. She made a presentation with a couple of other folks. They were concerned about the use of what they call One Data Post for remediation and the state’s timeline for implementation.
Jeanne went on to say that districts won’t receive TCAP results until after the school year ends, which would leave little time for retakes or parent appeals that could also impact family decisions about attending summer learning camps.
Now, our good friend, newly elected, one of the best attorneys in the country, by the way, Gino Bulso, Republican from Brentwood, I don’t know if you had a chance to talk to him.
Weber: I have not yet. He’s on my radar. Yes.
Leahy: Very, very sharp guy and a very good attorney. He asked Commissioner Schwinn to follow up on Baker’s concerns about that and she said she acknowledged it was a tight schedule, but concluded that it was possible.
Weber: Possible? We’ll see.
Leahy: You sound skeptical.
Weber: I’m skeptical of it all because the history of the department and the history particularly of Penny Schwinn, is not rooted in doing things in a timely fashion. I think there’s one caveat here, as she laid that out, that parents need to put this on their warning.
What they’re doing this year is they’re going to give a raw score. And for those who don’t know, a raw score is simply how many questions a kid got right. It means nothing until you take the conversion tables, which will tell you, based on field testing and other tests, how many right answers a kid needs to get to be considered on track.
So the parents will be able to do that and see if their kid is on track right around the middle of May. The dilemma there is that that’s just a predictor, and that’s a possibility. What happens is they have to run an analysis of the results and come up with the tables.
So the post equation may be different from the pre. Say Johnny got a 439, and that’s good enough, based on their predictions, to be on track. So he’s all right. After they do the post evaluation, you need a 441.
And now Johnny is no longer on track. He’s approaching, and now he needs summer school and everything else. So you have to be really careful in looking at those tables and making your own at-home conversion.
Leahy: Now this hearing was with the Education Administration Committee?
Weber: Yes. In the House. Yes.
Leahy: Mark White is a chair of that committee from Germantown.
Weber: Mark White.
Leahy: Now, what was interesting about that is there were members of the Metro National Public School Board there, but they were not invited to speak.
Weber: Now, they were not invited to speak, and they tried. And in talking to Abigail Taylor, she’s trying very hard.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “TC Weber” by Thomas “TC” Weber for MNPS District 2 School Board. Background Photo “Classroom” by Wokandapix.
Live from Music Row, Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Tennessee Star education reporter TC Weber in studio to discuss the lack of good candidates for Nashville’s upcoming mayoral election.
Leahy: Our great education reporter, TC Weber is in studio. TC, I’m going to throw you a curveball. Are you ready?
Weber: Sure.
Leahy: What we want to do here is chat a little bit about the mayor’s race. It’s not exactly an educational story, but it’s a local story. You’ve lived here since 1989?
Weber: I’ve been here since 1989. And over the last several years, I’ve been very involved in monitoring the mayor’s race. As you know, Nashville is set up very uniquely. The mayor does not have any power over the school board and over the schools other than writing a check.
Leahy: Right.
Weber: But he can’t tell them what it goes to. And various mayors have tried to put forward effort to take over the school district and try to exert their control. And there are those who feel they should have more control because they’re judged by schools as part of the record, but they have no influence.
I always pay attention, and I know many of the people involved in the mayor and the council and such. This is an interesting race. This is the one that makes you scratch your chin and go, hmmm.
Leahy: Who’s the least bad at the present? Historically, what the school board has done is they’ve given the one-finger salute to the mayor when they asked to control. Because it’s our budget. Just sign the check and you got nothing else to do.
We can get into that a little bit more. That’s got to change because we have some of the worst-performing K12 public schools in the state and in the country here. Okay, so let’s kind of shift gears. You’ve been writing for us for about a year now, and you’ve been doing your blog, Dad’s Gone Wild for a long time.
Weber: Almost 10 years.
Leahy: Is it true that you’ve got into fights with Twitter? Or fights or discussions with just about every major candidate for mayor?
Weber: Now that I sit here and talk about it, I think that I have had a scrap with just about every candidate except for Matt Wilshire. But Matt Wilshire hasn’t been anywhere near the radar relatively. I’ve got into a scrap with his ex-wife Lisa before about issues. But, yes, sad but true, I’ve had a scrap with just about every one of them.
Leahy: Can I give you my assessment right now and get your reaction to the announcement, of potential candidates for mayor?
Weber: Sure.
Leahy: From the ones we know about. Sharon Hurt, Freddie O’Connell, Matt Wilshire, and Jim ‘Carpet Bagger’ Gingrich.
Weber: I don’t know who he is.
Leahy: Well, nobody knows who he is except in his mind, he’s a legend already. And he’s lived here for what, three years?
Weber: Yeah, I think three. I think. And during the pandemic, let’s say. He didn’t get out and meet a lot of folks.
Leahy: Bob Freeman, who’s been in here, this studio a week ago today, he was here in this studio. And then I heard the name and briefly spoke with her on Saturday, Alice Roli, who’s kind of a Lamar person. She’s kind of gone through a series of jobs.
Weber: Well, she was with Music Makes US, and they’ve done good work there, but I’m not sure how you make the jump from that. I’m baffled by that one. And I like her. I like her family a lot, but I’m baffled.
Leahy: Yes. I don’t think any of them, any of them are going to be good candidates. Would you agree with me on that?
Weber: I would agree 100 percent. And I think this is one of those elections where we have to really think about because it’s going to set the direction of where Nashville goes.
We may actually be at a breaking part from the past and move into the future, or we’ve got to figure out how much of old Nashville we’re going to keep and how much new Nashville is going to embrace. And it’s a hard decision, and I hope people are paying attention and I hope they’re getting out and voting.
Leahy: Our listeners represent about the 25 percent of Nashville that is conservative, and that’s our base. And for our listeners, folks, we’re going to find a candidate that you can back that has a chance to win. I don’t know who that person is yet.
Weber: I don’t know. It sounds to me like you might be out looking for the Loch Ness Monster.
Leahy: (Laughs) Boom. That’s funny, TC. (Laughter)
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “TC Weber” by Thomas “TC” Weber for MNPS District 2 School Board. Background Photo “Tennessee State Capitol” by Ken Lund. CC BY-SA 2.0.
Live from Music Row, Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Tennessee Star education reporter TC Weber in studio to further explain the details of Tennessee’s third-grade retention law.
Leahy: We’re having too much fun.
Weber: We are having a good time this bright and early morning.
Leahy: TC Weber, the man who knows everything about K12 public school education in studio.
Weber: Just ask me.
Leahy: (Laughs) Just ask him! In metro Nashville, the big story has been this third-grade retention bill. And describe, if you would, TC, what the bill that was passed into law last year does.
Weber: It was brought across as part of the special session. And people need to remember that Mark White carried this bill in regular session in 2019. It was part of a bill that he couldn’t get across the finish line, and he tried very hard. And then they had to come back to a special session where nobody wanted to offend Bill Lee at that time.
Leahy: What year?
Weber: 2020 I believe it was. And as part of that was a law called the third-grade retention law, which was already on the bills. It’s been on the bill since 2013, but the decision was left to the locals.
Leahy: Now Mark White.
Weber: The amicable. Mark White.
Leahy: The amicable Mark White.
Weber: Yes.
Leahy: The amicable Mark, the Southern gentleman who’s from Memphis. He is from Memphis and has been a teacher for a long time.
Weber: Yes.
Leahy: Been a guest on this program many time. Not in studio yet, I don’t think. But he’s been on the newsmaker line and we have some mutual friends, and he’s now the chairman of the Education Administration Committee. And I think he also works at Lipscomb in some capacity.
Weber: Yes. And he also sits, which a lot of people don’t know is he sits on the board for that national testing group that everybody says, tells us how bad things are going or how good things are going. He sits on that board, too.
Leahy: So tell us what this law which went into effect this cycle.
Weber: It will go into effect this cycle. And basically, if a child does not test as proficient in literacy, they’ll be retained and will repeat third grade.
Leahy: Retained means you’ve got to repeat the third grade or go to summer school.
Weber: Here’s the caveat that the Republicans, especially in the Senate, are kind of taking offense at, because the law has been misportrayed in their eyes. They have created a number of off-ramps. You can go to summer school, you can get a tutor, or your parents can appeal. There are a lot of ways that a student or their family could have their student avoid being retained.
There’s also a test. You could retake the test, which of course, by Penny Schwinn’s led TDOE, nobody knows what that test looks like or who’s going to create it, or when you would take it.
Leahy: Penny Schwinn is our Commissioner of Education. She’s been seen occasionally in the state over the past couple of years.
Weber: Let’s just say that if you live in another state, your odds are more likely of seeing Penny Schwinn than if you live in Tennessee.
Leahy: I heard her for the first time when she was interviewed at the governor’s address governor’s state of the state address by another radio host from another radio program. Very good reporter. I listened to her and I said, oh my goodness, this is boilerplate baloney rapidly delivered.
Weber: That’s a nicer word than I would use. She’s one of those people and she’s updated her resume as she gets ready to head to the Southwest to talk about all the great things happening in Tennessee. We like to talk about data points except when we’re touting the things that we’ve done and then we celebrate things that we have no data points for. (Leahy laughs)
For example, the literacy work, the high-quality materials, and the teacher pipeline. These are all things that we just put in place today or this year. And she’s touting those as success. Except when test results come out and show that they haven’t been as effective. And then she says, well, we just implemented those. We got to give them time to work.
Leahy: Yes, I mean very frustrating trying to.
Weber: But back to that third-grade retention. A lot of people are expecting changes because all of a sudden people realize that little Johnny or little Susie may not go on to fourth grade. They’re getting all upset and all worked up. In the House, they’re listening, and they’re going to give a bunch of, I think there are 13 different amendments filed from everything.
They’re giving it back to locals, which ain’t going to happen, to using alternate means, to adding means to decide who gets passed and who doesn’t. Which perhaps could happen. They’re going to listen and they’re going to craft some kind of bill. But I think the changes are not going to be what people expect.
I think they’re going to make it more expansive. In talking to Representative Scott Cepicki, he says that they went to third grade maybe too late. So we need to take a look at what we’re doing support-wise and everything else at K through three.
I think when it gets over to the Senate, and House again, I look for the right word. I don’t know if offended is the right word, but they feel those on the Education Committee and a lot of Republican state senators that the bill has been misrepresented and that there’s a lot of hyperbole around it. And they feel like they’ve crafted a thoughtful bill that needs a chance to be implemented and gone through before you start making issues.
Leahy: You and I have talked about this. I think you have said that there are some issues with the test itself.
Weber: Yes, the test itself is, and to his credit Education Committee Chair Jon Lundberg took the test.
Leahy: Yeah, I saw that.
Weber: And he has more sense of what it’s about.
Leahy: I think he concluded it was a fair test.
Weber: He thought it was a fair test. And a lot of people have gotten, I don’t know, up in arms and critical because they said, yeah, he took the test. Surely he’s going to score better than a third-grader.
Leahy: I’m reminded of the Jeff Foxworthy game, Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?
Weber: But we keep looking at the test as if the test is a simple yes or no answer. Like we went, you got seven out of 10. You scored a 70. That’s not how these standardized tests work. You take the test and then there are questions on there that are field test questions so they don’t count.
There are questions that are weighted a little bit more. There are questions to ask. So it goes to this equivocation. And then it’s nationally normed. So who are you going to compare the national norm with a state senator?
Leahy: My question on all this, TC, is there may be quibbles on the test. Is it measuring literacy? Is it measuring the ability to read? But the bottom line is K12 public schools across the country, in Nashville, in Tennessee, are failing to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. That’s the problem to me.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “TC Weber” by Thomas “TC” Weber for MNPS District 2 School Board.
