Robin SmithLast week, Candice McQueen, Tennessee’s education commissioner, spoke to state legislators who serve on two education committees. Her presentation was not only remarkable, it was alarming, but finally, reassuring.
While addressing the state’s reform efforts in failing schools, McQueen said the school turnaround effort was “a little embarrassing,” referring to the first list of “priority” schools published in 2012. Only about 20 schools have moved off the list of 83 substandard schools since the original assessment.
“We can’t keep throwing $10 million, $11 million, $12 million, $15 million at solutions that are not solutions,” the commissioner told members of both House education committees.
Every three years a priority list is compiled and published by the state Department of Education. This list is scheduled to be released this summer by the state-run Achievement School District, or ASD, which will identify schools under consideration for state intervention, with potential charter conversions, in the 2018-19 school year.
Complying to a 2015 state law, a priority list was issued last spring that provided a warning to schools whose academic performance put them in the bottom 10 percent of Tennessee public schools. There were 16 Hamilton County schools on this list. Further, five of our public schools fell into the bottom five percent of 1,833 public schools in the state.