(C) Tennessee Lookout
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Tennessee charter school commission takes marching orders from Lee in privatizing schools – Tennessee Lookout [1]
['More From Author', 'October', 'Gabe Hart']
Date: 2023-10-12
On Oct. 6, the Tennessee Public Charter Schools Commission ( appointed by Gov. Bill Lee) reversed the decision of the Jackson-Madison County School Board to deny the application of an American Classical Education (ACE) school, opening the door for the Hillsdale College-affiliated school to begin siphoning students and funding from the local school system.
While the unanimous decision to reverse the denial was unsurprising, the exhaustive list of reasons for ACE not to be granted a school in Madison County did warrant some shock on my part. The list kept growing and growing, and as it did, it brought to mind the title of a book I read a few years ago: “Apeirogon.”
An apeirogon is a geometrical polygon with an infinite number of sides, and the definition of the word fits with what I had been hearing from local school district leadership as well as many citizens in Madison County regarding the ruling by the charter commission. There were seemingly an infinite number of reasons why this reversal was the wrong decision:
Clear government overreach by an appointed governmental body reversing the decision of a locally elected governing body. Note: The Jackson-Madison County school board rejected ACE’s application twice, using the state-provided rubric each time. The classical education curriculum used by Hillsdale-affiliated schools like ACE tends to whitewash history and minimize the effects of slavery and the Civil Rights movement. Jackson-Madison County Schools are nearly 70% minority students. Speaking of curriculum, the ACE school in Madison County has yet to finalize its curriculum, secure a building, or even find a location for its school — all things essential for educating students. The first application ACE submitted only met 22% of the sub-standards on the state rubric for approval. The second application was slightly better; it met 28% of the sub-standards. Both applications contained a litany of errors, including mistaking Madison County for Montgomery County; ACE didn’t even correctly name the county in which they were applying. ACE has no personal or financial investment in Madison County or the students in Madison County. Only one board member for the charter school is based in Madison County, and they have no background in public or private education.
While those reasons would technically constitute a pentagon rather than an apeirogon, they should have at least been enough for the TCC to uphold the denial by the Jackson-Madison Schools.
And, even as I struggled for the angle at which to attack this decision to overturn, none of the five above made the list. The most crucial reason that Madison County doesn’t need this particular charter school is that the county itself has undergone a form of resegregation over the last 25 years.
I live in the same town where I grew up and I teach at my high school alma mater. When I graduated from Jackson Central-Merry (JCM) High School in 1997, the demographic makeup was roughly a 48/47/5% split along racial lines: Caucasian, African-American, Hispanic/Indian/Asian/Other.
The other schools in the system posted similar breakdowns.
No member of the Tennessee Public Charter Schools Commission has been in a Jackson-Madison County school; none has any personal investment in our students. Yet, all the members are voted to overturn the decision of our elected local school board.
Twenty-six years later, our demographics are drastically different. Around 87% of the students in my school are African-American, 6% are Hispanic, and the rest are made up of Caucasian, Indian, or Middle Eastern students. The school system itself doesn’t quite reflect the imbalance of JCM, but it also isn’t in line with the overall racial demographics of Madison County.
Currently, nearly 60% of students in Jackson-Madison County schools are African-American, while only 28% are Caucasian. In Madison County, however, those numbers are reversed — 58% of residents are white, while 38% are Black. The ratio disparity is complex and nuanced but clearly correlates with the rise of private school options in the area and the development of housing subdivisions in neighboring counties. It’s the prototypical practice of “white flight” but played out on a smaller stage in rural West Tennessee.
As this filtering of sub-groups has evolved over the last quarter-century, resources — financial, parental, and political—have been pilfered from the public school system, too. What public school integration tried so hard to accomplish has been undone by the resegregation of resources and families in Madison County.
As a veteran teacher, I’m well aware of the funding that will be taken from our district and shunted to this particular ACE charter school. I’m even more concerned about that aspect now as Tennessee mulls whether or not to reject billions of federal dollars earmarked for public education. Still, the financial impact of ACE isn’t my biggest concern.
I’ve witnessed how much our parental involvement resources have been stretched in our school system. Nearly half (45%) of the families in Jackson-Madison County schools are classified as “economically disadvantaged,” meaning that most parents of students work one or two jobs just to make ends meet. Any spare moments will be spent caring for their children or their residence or working, leaving minimal time to be involved in the life of the school. At best, parents will give a cursory glance over homework or ask a question or two about the school day. Forget about having time to serve on a school’s Title I Team or be part of the Parent-Teacher Organization. What was once an integral part of a school’s success has now been made nearly impossible because of the financial constraints in which many families find themselves.
A selling point of ACE in Madison County was the school’s investment in East Jackson, a historically Black neighborhood in Madison County. However, ACE’s track record hasn’t proven that to be the case in schools they’ve opened thus far.
Phillip Schwenk, vice-president of ACE schools, proposed that the demographics for the ACE school in Madison County be reflective of the district’s demographics.
Yet, every other charter school ACE has started nationwide hasn’t matched Schwenk’s proposal. In fact, of the 10 schools under the ACE umbrella with demographic information available, nine have enrollments of 70% or more white students, with five of the nine having 80% or higher white students.
Historically, most charter schools have failed to show any growth on the year-end standardized tests when compared with other schools in the local district. Charter schools have also traditionally been an off-ramp for middle-class white families who want to use public tax dollars for a quasi-private education, further segregating local education institutions within a community.
The overreach of the Lee-appointed charter commission wasn’t surprising; it was the next obvious step in the litany of attacks by Lee on public education in Tennessee. From the ghosts of CRT to the introduction of vouchers to the present-day authoritarian usurping of local elected officials’ decision-making, Lee is continuing to chip away at the foundation of public education, which was already eroding due to the false accountability of standardized testing.
As the nine members of the state charter commission belittled my school district for low standardized test scores, I couldn’t help but think how none have ever set foot in a school in Madison County; I couldn’t help but think how no one on that commission who was about to overrule elected school board representatives in my county had any personal investment in the students we serve daily. The charter commission reduced all our students to data points while ignoring the application’s multiple deficiencies.
In reality, this topic could’ve been a metaphorical apeirogon with infinite reasons to support the decisions of a locally elected school board. Instead, the long arm of an increasingly tyrannical government reached into West Tennessee, invalidated the elected school board’s twice-ruled denial, and simply followed the marching orders of a governor whose singular focus seems to be privatizing every aspect of public education. Democracy be damned.
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https://tennesseelookout.com/2023/10/12/tennessee-charter-school-commission-takes-marching-orders-from-lee-in-privatizing-schools/
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