(C) Tennessee Lookout
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Changing the education conversation to fit a preordained plan – Tennessee Lookout [1]
['More From Author', 'December', 'Gabe Hart']
Date: 2023-12-20
One of my favorite television shows was Matthew Weiner’s “Mad Men,” which premiered on AMC in 2007 and featured the anti-hero, the magnetic yet flawed ad man Don Draper. On more than one occasion throughout the series, Draper referenced “changing the conversation” when his agency was attempting to pitch a strategy to a client. Draper summed up the full context of this phrase when he told a client, “If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation.”
Changing the conversation is a hell of an ad pitch, and during the last few weeks, I’ve often wondered if Gov. Bill Lee was also a Mad Men superfan like me because he sure as hell knows how to change the conversation.
Lee was sworn into office in January 2019 and a few months later, he unveiled his plan for implementing school vouchers without using the word ‘vouchers,’ opting instead for the less controversial term, “educational savings accounts” (ESAs).
Vouchers had already been met with resistance in other states due to the concern that they would deliver public tax-payer money into the hands of religious groups operating private schools. ESAs were created as a workaround term for states with The Blaine Amendment — a measure prohibiting direct government aid to schools affiliated with religious organizations — in their constitutions.
Lee was already playing with words to change the conversation.
Gov. Bill Lee has proven himself as adept a pitchman for school vouchers as the fictional ad man Don Draper of the TV show “Mad Men,” who said, “If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation.”
But he was met with resistance and could only get a semblance of his ESA legislation passed thanks to last-minute, back-door deals. By the time the dust had settled, ESAs were only available in Nashville and Memphis schools.
For Lee to drum up support for ESAs statewide, the narrative about public education needed to change. Luckily for him, some structures were already in place in the Tennessee Department of Education to manipulate the conversation.
In 2010, before House Speaker Cameron Sexton believed federal dollars for education were tainted, Tennessee was one of two states to receive $500 million from the feds as part of the Race to the Top Grant. To receive those funds, however, Tennessee had to meet a few requirements — most notably increasing rigor for state educational standards and increasing accountability on standardized tests.
By increasing the educational standards taught in classrooms across the state, the questions to assess learning in those classrooms became more difficult by default. In fact, according to The National Report Card, Tennessee was found to have the most demanding fourth-grade reading standards in the nation.
Naturally, the results of those tests — year by year — became lower and lower.
In conjunction with the increased rigor of the standards, new accountability measures were implemented to publicly hold local education agencies, individual schools, and teachers accountable to community stakeholders.
With these policies organized and in place, Lee and the supermajority in the state legislature leaned into them. If Lee was met with resistance in 2019 to a universal voucher program, it was time to change the conversation about public education.
In 2022, Tennessee lawmakers passed a bill to prevent third-grade students from advancing to fourth grade should they not meet or exceed standards on the year-end reading portion of the TCAP standardized test. In April, 60% of third graders in Tennessee failed to meet or exceed those standards on the test; parents were livid, children were stressed, and fingers were pointed at the public education system in general and teachers specifically.
Along with the third-grade retention law, Commissioner Lizette Gonzalez Reynolds of the Tennessee Department of Education changed the format of the accountability formula by placing a heavier weight on student achievement rather than year-to-year educational growth for the student. And there’s only one-way achievement can be measured in Tennessee: the year-end standardized test.
In conjunction with shifting the weights in the accountability formula, Gonzelez-Reynolds also changed the conversation in the reporting of that formula when she changed the numeric grading system of schools to a letter grading system. Rather than seeing a Level 1 or 2, the public will now see a “D” or an “F” next to or school. While that shift might be subtle, the weight it carries isn’t.
With the new accountability metrics in place — along with peripheral social issues in schools such as the rumored teaching of critical race theory and ‘liberal indoctrination” called into question — the rebranded narrative was now in place. Don Draper couldn’t have done it any better himself.
Lee performed his most impressive linguistic feat to date when he reintroduced vouchers to the public conversation recently by unveiling the “Education Freedom Scholarship Act.”
The word “freedom” is the ringing of Pavlov’s bell for self-proclaimed constitutionalists across the state, and “scholarship” is something that is earned, not given. Unfortunately, neither of those words in Lee’s new plan mean what he says they mean.
Students don’t gain academic scholarships through the program; money is taken from taxpayers and given to applicants across the state. Yes, that money will be earmarked for families meeting specific financial requirements during the first year. However, after the first year, money will be available to all Tennessee families, decreasing the funding in public schools across the state. And “choice” is simply a nicer way to further resegregate public schools.
Nothing in the political world happens in a vacuum. With the slight shifting of the vernacular, the seismic shifting of legislation, and Lee’s ability to simultaneously say nothing of consequence while also intricately placing particular language at the forefront of his unilateral desires, he has become a manipulative magician of words.
Despite Lee’s massive push for vouchers, there still must be a vote to pass it. And, as good as Lee has been at subtly arranging the pieces on this chess board, I can still hold out hope that enough Tennesseans and public school advocates can see through this charade of words and start to change the conversation — a conversation that needs to be rooted in truth.
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