Chalkbeat Tennessee
Marta W. Aldrich is the senior statehouse correspondent at Chalkbeat Tennessee. A newswoman for The Associated Press for most of her career, Marta has covered state government, politics, business, education and other Tennessee news. She has served as news editor of United Methodist News Service and features editor of American Profile magazine. Marta is a graduate of Memphis City Schools and the University of Missouri School of Journalism.
There are 177 articles by Marta W. Aldrich :
The State Board of Education approved an emergency rule on Monday requiring districts and charter leaders to submit plans for how their school communities will teach students in 2020-21 while navigating the pandemic.
Groups began lining up both for and against testing after Superintendent Joris Ray, who leads the state’s largest district in Memphis, said he would petition the education commissioner to drop the annual assessment known as TNReady in 2020-21.
Tennessee’s charter schools sector has grown to 118 since a 2002 state law opened the door to the publicly funded, independently operated schools. Most are in Memphis. And its new overseeing body, the Tennessee Public Charter Schools Commission, is extending its search for an executive director.
The Tennessee Emergency Management Agency last week began delivering 298,000 masks to school districts for the state’s 66,000 public school teachers and other school staff.
The case pits school districts in Memphis and Nashville against the state over whether Tennessee allocates enough money for K-12 education, especially for its urban students.
Teachers in Tennessee and across the nation face hard choices. Should I return to my school building? Should I pursue a remote teaching option if my district offers one? Should I leave the profession altogether?
The state Board of Education will consider the first round of requests Friday. That vote will offer an early glimpse of how far Tennessee will go to help schools navigate COVID-19 at the expense of statewide policies aimed at improving the quality of public education.
Starting with small clusters of students, a Tennessee school became one of the nation’s first to reopen its campus to students during the pandemic. Within two days, a teacher with the sniffles tested positive for COVID-19.
Gov. Bill Lee expects the voucher rollout, which was halted when a Nashville judge overturned the 2019 law in May, will be resurrected in 2021. The Tennessee Court of Appeals is expected to rule this fall on the state’s appeal.
Shelby County Schools, for instance, is budgeted this academic year to receive $308 million in federal funds, more than a fifth of the district’s revenues.
The information will be published and updated weekly by the state education department — not the health department — and will rely on reports from the state’s 147 school districts.
Data released this week by the state education department showed about 89.6% of public high school seniors earned their diplomas within four years, down by just one-tenth of a percentage point. Still many observers were surprised by any decline.
Recent back-to-school test results from Tennessee students were not the basis for state projections that proficiency rates will drop by 50% or more for third-grade reading and math due to schooling disruptions during the pandemic.
The state is expected to get 133,000 of the new COVID tests — which deliver results in minutes, not days — in early October, and 2 million by the end of the year.
In one of the legislature’s most high-profile races, Jerri Green is considered a serious challenger to Republican Rep. Mark White, chairman of the House Education Committee. They are polar opposites on the issue of vouchers.
Most notably missing is student achievement and growth information, even from years when standardized testing occurred.
The Tennessee State Board of Education has given initial approval to proposed revisions that increase coursework in basic statistics, including understanding and using data.
Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn believes some families opted to home-school their children, and others enrolled their kids in private schools, especially in Memphis and Nashville. But the biggest decline was in kindergarten enrollment.
Gov. Bill Lee wants to maintain funding for public schools in Tennessee’s next budget, even as a statewide decline in student enrollment would normally result in a decrease of at least $320 million.
Tennessee Education Association President Beth Brown urged the governor this week to set firm guidance on when school buildings should close due to infection rates and ensure that all students and staff wear face coverings for those that remain open.
The legislature gave the state education department until Jan. 1 to come up with its blueprint for 27 schools and about 8,000 students to leave the Achievement School District and return to their local systems in Memphis and Nashville.
The dips, while small, keep Tennessee on a downward trajectory after six years of slow but steady growth on the college entrance exam.
Metro Nashville and Shelby County challenged the law because it applies only to their communities without giving their local governments or voters a say.
School and child care staff are slated to be part of the second — and largest — phase for immunizing Tennesseans in the state’s four-phase distribution plan.