Why TN Parents think it is important that you Proctor:

Desperate for higher scores, some schools are offering bribes for students to do well on the TCAP...  The top scoring students can win bicycles, DVD players, ipods, ice cream, and fast food lunches.  At least one school in TN is giving away $200 cash to the top score in the school.  A  charter school in the state even shames students by making them wear different colored shirts based on their test scores.

This is sad.  This is wrong.  Please, stop this testing insanity!

"I resent that these men are tearing down their community’s public schools. They claim they want to “save poor kids from failing schools,” but the schools aren’t failing: the politicians are failing the schools. Poor kids can’t learn when they don’t have access to decent medical care, when they don’t have enough to eat, when they are deprived of necessities that advantaged families take for granted. Poor kids will learn better if they have smaller class sizes, experienced teachers, and a full curriculum instead of incessant testing. By cutting funding and sending it to religious schools, the Texas legislators will guarantee larger classes and a stripped-down curriculum.Furthermore, while they won’t pay for what kids need, they have set aside millions for the inexperienced temps called Teach for America, most of whom will disappear after two years." 

"I am proud to be a native Texan, but I am not proud of the men who are destroying the public schools that educated me and my family and made it possible for me to go to a good college."

"If I were in Austin, I would say to State Senator Larry Taylor and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick that vouchers and tax credits (backdoor vouchers) hurt the great majority of children who attend public schools. I would say to them that they should take a trip to Milwaukee, which has had vouchers for 25 years, and is one of the lowest scoring cities on the NAEP federal tests. I would tell them that poor black children in Milwaukee are doing worse in voucher schools than they were in public schools. I would tell them they are cheating the children of Texas, to placate their ideology and their pals in the corporate world."
 - the wise words of Dr. Diane Ravitch [emphasis added] 

Last week, an important study by the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability was released regarding vouchers.  After researching the data from the voucher systems in Indiana, Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Washington D.C., the researchers concluded that there was NO statistical evidence that students who use vouchers perform better than their public school peers. 

The report concludes, "All three core components of the Indiana Choice Legislation are designed to funnel taxpayer money to private schools, with little evidence that demonstrates improved academic achievement for students who are most at-risk. The metric in question should be and must be student achievement... It follows then that Indianashould invest its scarce public education dollars in those schools where taxpayers can expect to receive the best educational bang for their buck—that is schools that have been proven, when compared to other types of schools, to educate the most children to the highest levels. Those schools are, unequivocally, K-12 public schools."

Tennessee should learn from other states' mistakes.

The University of Memphis has plans to "experiment" and profit from poor kids, too.  Rich white philanthropists like Pitt Hyde gave a whole lot of money to start the RELAY program at the University of Memphis.  This will create a supply of fast-tracked, temporary teachers for the ASD and charter schools in the poorest areas of Memphis.  They claim it is to fill the teacher shortage, but the truth is there is no teacher shortage.  In fact, hundreds of excellent teachers last year were "excessed" in that district.  (Excessed means "not rehired.")  

The leaders and philanthropists naively think that these young, fast-tracked RELAY teachers will increase test scores of students.  In truth, these temps will lower costs of labor and replace experienced, lifelong educators like Meghan Vaziri, who was a level 5 teacher in a school that the ASD took over. (Level 5 is the top score you can get as a teacher in Tennessee). According to the former Memphis City Schools, level 5 is considered an "irreplaceable" teacher, yet Vaziri has been replaced by a temporary Teach For America teacher who only had 5 weeks of training over the summer.  Meghan Vaziri is now self-employed as a freelance artist and web developer, but she would love to teach in public schools again.  Since witnessing firsthand the ASD's failure with the students and the school she once worked in, she has been an advocate fighting against the ASD's future takeover of public schools.  She attends every public meeting she can, and she bravely speaks up.  She knows that the ASD is not working, that the average test scores of the ASD after 2 years are still not as high as they were when the schools were public schools.  About losing her job, she says she is okay, that "really the only people who were truly hurt were the children who already have too much chaos in their lives to have lost their long time teachers."  

When asked for proof that this new RELAY program would work, President Rudd of the University of Memphis could give no proof and honestly admitted in a public meeting this RELAY program is "an experiment."  The faculty at University of Memphis is outraged that this Relay program arrangement was brought to their public University in secret, and is proceeding despite their arguments and logic, despite the fact that the University of Memphis already has an outstanding teacher training college that this RELAY program will undoubtedly harm, and despite the fact that President Rudd keeps cancelling public meetings and rescheduling them at inconvenient times for people to attend.  President Rudd has now formed a "task force," to "study" the issue, but we've heard his wife has been appointed to serve on it.  Everyone knows what the "task force" is intended to do.  They are not dumb.  

Why don't these leaders and philanthropists "experiment" on their own children in private schools?  African American leaders and parents should be outraged, especially the pastors in their communities who one would think would be fighting for justice and equality for the children in their neighborhoods... but, oddly, many are not.  Why is this?  African American pastors are targeted by reformers and hailed as "visionaries" to promote vouchers for the children in their communities.  Don't be surprised when branches of private schools suddenly find building space in those African American pastor's churches and provide a lucrative rent income to their struggling congregations with your public tax dollars.  Money speaks. Like charter schools, the private schools are not equipped to handle students with special needs, disabilities, or handicaps.  They are not prepared to handle the needs of high-poverty students.  Schools will be segregated even more with vouchers.  This has happened in other states, and Tennessee will be no exception.