This week, a legislative working group was formed to recommend whether Tennessee should reject federal education funding. Federal dollars feed children, pay for thousands of teachers, and provide the care and support of special needs students. One-in-eight dollars going to Tennessee schools – more than $1 billion annually – comes from federal coffers. Many systems, including most small rural systems, couldn’t keep classroom doors open without it. All the while Tennessee is still near the bottom in overall funding per student. TEA asks: what is there to recommend? Our students and schools need every dollar of investment we can get.
The report from this working group is due in January. If the group works with honesty and integrity, the report should confirm what the Tennessee Education Association has been saying for years.
The state has not done what it can or should for education investment. If the working group finds Tennessee is in a financial position to supplant federal dollars with state funds, it will be admitting education investments the state can afford have not been made.
The state uses the threat of federal requirements to protect bad policies. When legislation is filed to shutter the failed state-run Achievement School District, reduce high stakes testing or change punitive teacher and school evaluations, the administration uses the fiscal hammer of lost federal funds to squash them. But there is far more federal flexibility than state officials admit.
Federal education law has had success. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act has brought children that in previous generations would have been isolated into regular classrooms, benefiting all students by their inclusion. If we reject federal IDEA funding, schools will still be required by law to provide services and the least restricted education environment to all special needs students, it’s the state that will pay.
The federal government has its share of bad education policy, but we have complicity too. You don’t have to look hard to see where Tennessee’s treadmill of high stakes tests and negative results begin. The federal test known as NAEP, “the nations report card,” is a black box of an exam that generates state rankings politicians love to cite, but it is a test designed for few students to pass. Tennessee’s pursuit of higher rankings led us to mimic NAEP in our own state tests, why so many of our third graders can’t pass the English Language Arts TCAP.
The working group was founded with a basic premise that local control is an inherent good – something we all believe in. If they do their job right, these legislators will report that federal funds come with no strings attached in important areas like curriculum, and that we unnecessarily tie ourselves up in more testing and sanctions than what the feds required.
If they do their job right, the group will document our acute education funding needs and the state’s ability to do more. Count on TEA to make sure this working group does their job right.
