In school performance, is the glass half empty or half full? But perhaps a more important question is what have our teachers most recently been tasked with doing?
Hint: It wasn't teaching.
In July we learned this head twister: Nearly 36% of Hamilton County students in grades three to 12 performed at or above grade-level expectations in English language arts and 44% in social studies for 2022.
But that seemingly low performance was the district's best performance in five years, according to school officials and data.
What's more, state data shows we are on par with state scores -- even outperforming the state in some areas.
Take a breath.
Meanwhile, though just over a third of Hamilton's and Tennessee's students are at or above grade level expectations in reading and English language arts, what has the state insisted our teachers do?
Answer: Scan the bar codes of their school's library or classroom books lest errant "damns" or "hells" or -- Heaven forbid -- a naked mouse drawing, might go unnoticed by far-right parents like Mom's for Freedom (who are anything but "for freedom" in our view).
Some volunteers like retired teacher Debra Weiss are helping because she understands, even if the Tennessee lawmakers who created this foolishness don't, that teachers are stretched too thin even to teach, let alone do Tennessee General Assembly busy work.
"(Teachers) are incredulous. They don't understand how they can possibly do this on their own," Weiss told The Times Free Press last week.
But Tennessee law -- specifically the Age-Appropriate Materials Act of 2022, now requires all public schools to maintain and post a list of materials in the school's library, as well as all classroom libraries, on the school's website. And that task falls to teachers.
Meanwhile, two thirds of our youngsters are not reading at their grade level. The third grade reading scores are extra important because that's when students must read at grade level in order to continue learning. You know the saying: We learn to read, then read to learn.
Our lawmakers -- who themselves may not be able to read at pay-grade level -- passed this so-called age-appropriate materials law along partisan lines during a state book banning spree that cropped up just in time to be red meat for this year's spring and fall elections.
It's a head-twister, all right. Our view is that if a stray curse word or naked animal body helps our kids learn to read better and sooner, bring them on. Let teachers teach, not provide fodder for political culture wars.
But that seems lost on our partisan lawmakers who are busy making headlines and creating busy work, not fixing problems.
Our colleague to the right pointed out last Sunday on the Free Press editorial page:
"If a measure in the Tennessee Learning Loss Remediation and Student Acceleration Act that passed during a special legislative session on education in 2021 had been active for the last school year, at least half of all third-grade students at 31 Hamilton County elementary schools would have been in danger of not being promoted to the fourth grade."
But then -- the very next year -- these same lawmakers passed the teacher busy-work "Age-Appropriate Materials Act of 2022." What are they thinking?
Come Sept. 1, Hamilton County will have 11 instead of nine school board members with new members Jill Black, Ben Connor, Larry Grohn, Gary Kuehn and Faye Robinson joining continuing members Joe Smith, Karitsa Mosley Jones, Rhonda Thurman, Marco Perez, Tiffanie Robinson and Joe Wingate.
Make no mistake: These 11 face a world of school problems. And not the least of the problems may well be what the General Assembly next decides to throw their way.
Especially when someone points out to the slow ones in Nashville that they may need to cover their tracks.
Imagine the fallout when the end of the 2022-23 school year rolls around and only 35% of Tennessee's third-graders -- the number now found actually to be reading on grade level -- can move on up to the fourth grade.