“Those we love don’t go away, they sit beside us every day.”
— Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies

Forgive us if we are a little sad here in Tennessee.

We lost a shining light this week when Dolly Parton departed this mortal coil, a loss felt from the hollers of East Tennessee to stages and living rooms across the world.

President Donald Trump ordered flags lowered to half-staff for roughly a week. That is a rare honor for a civilian, and Parton was the very epitome of a civilian—not because her life was ordinary, because clearly it was anything but, but because she never seemed to believe that fame placed her above the people who loved her.

Throughout her illustrious career, she largely avoided partisan politics. She understood that announcing every belief was not the same thing as living by one. Her politics, to the extent she publicly practiced them, were kindness, dignity, humor, and a stubborn insistence that people deserved the opportunity to become something more than the circumstances into which they were born.

That is a pretty good platform.

Much has been written this week about the kindness and grace Parton displayed throughout her life. I had the pleasure of interacting with her and observing her interactions with others. She was nothing if not consistent. Dignitaries and common folk received the same treatment. There was always a whiff of mischief lurking behind the glitter and bright smile, as if she knew the joke and was deciding whether the rest of us had earned the privilege of hearing it.

I love a story told by legendary bass player Leland Sklar, who once found himself on a flight with Ms. Parton. She was seated across the aisle and a row back. He noticed that she appeared to be reading Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. Sklar complimented her on the depth of her literary choice.

She smiled and, with a wink, revealed the copy of Harry Potter hiding behind the Hawking book cover.

That was Parton in a nutshell.

Up front, she was a serious performer dedicated to her craft—a consummate businesswoman, songwriter, and philanthropist. Behind the scenes was where the fun lived, and she was generous about giving us a peek.

The breadth of Parton’s charitable work is seemingly endless, spanning health care, disaster relief, scholarships, conservation, and medical research. But literacy always remained a cornerstone.

Millions of children received free books through her Imagination Library. Millions got their first taste of reading through a program built on the radical idea that a child should have books of their own before anybody starts measuring whether that child is “proficient.”

That includes my two children.

Those books came through the mail like clockwork, month after month. They were always greeted with anticipation and excitement. The package was addressed to the child, not the parent. That mattered. In a world where so many decisions about children are made in conference rooms they will never enter, Dolly Parton sent something directly to them.

A book. Their book.

There was no assessment attached. No login credentials. No data dashboard. Nobody demanded proof that the child had achieved three months of growth before the next book could be released.

It simply arrived.

Open it. Read it. Love it. Another one will be there next month.

That simple act established a relationship with reading long before school could make reading feel like work. The books became part of the landscape of childhood.

We talk endlessly in education about interventions, strategies, benchmarks, and outcomes. Dolly mailed children books.

Sometimes the most transformative ideas are the ones adults have not yet buried beneath professional vocabulary.

Tennessean writer Andrea Williams wrote this week about Parton’s life and her impact on others. Williams cautioned against elevating her to sainthood, and she did so using Parton’s own words from an interview with People magazine:

“…I don’t want to be worshiped, because there’s a scripture in my Bible that talks about idol worship. And I see that happening all the time with movie stars and these celebrities. People literally worship them more than they worship God. And I just—I cringe at it sometimes.

“…But if I can set an example, then that’s great.”

Williams then offered an important warning:

That’s the other thing about this overzealous exaltation: It draws a line of righteousness between us and her, and we are forever on the wrong side. Parton stands alone as the divine while we stare in awe and reverence. We marvel at her accomplishments, the way she touched so many lives and made it look so easy.

But we don’t join the work. We don’t believe that we are equally worthy. We don’t see that we, too, are more than able to meet the needs of hurting people all around.

And that’s not what she would’ve wanted at all.

I agree with Williams. Turning Parton into a saint lets the rest of us off the hook. Saints do impossible things while ordinary people stand below and admire them.

Dolly’s work was not stained glass. It was cardboard packaging, postage, organization, fundraising, and the unglamorous labor required to put a book into a child’s hands every month.

Admiration is easy. Imitation is harder.

Still, I would add one thing: Parton’s life is proof that this world has not lost its ability to produce something truly beautiful.

Sometimes we all need that reminder before we get back to work.

This week, The Tennessean reported that the principal of Nashville’s Warner Arts Magnet Elementary School had been arrested in Sumner County and charged with aggravated domestic assault.

The headline, crafted to draw the most eyeballs, painted a horrific picture. Only after diving into the story did it become clear that the actual situation was more complex than the headline could hold. The accusation involves an alleged incident between a mother and her 13-year-old son. The charge is serious. So is the fact that, at this stage, it remains an accusation to be tested through a legal process.

What is needed here is more grace than accusation.

As a father of a 16-year-old and a 17-year-old, I am here to testify that parenting is really hard.

When it comes to home repairs, the hardest part is locating the right tool. No matter how hard I try to put everything in its place, I can never find what I need when I need it. Every job involves multiple trips to the store and at least one muttered obscenity.

Parenting is a lot like that.

You often know what the tool looks like, but not exactly where it is or how to use it in the moment. Patience works beautifully right up until yours is gone. Every situation arrives without instructions, and every child responds differently to the same tool.

Not too long ago, I sat at a picnic table in a local park trying to convince a pissed-off 13-year-old that they needed to come home and that leaving home was not a realistic option.

It took every ounce of patience I had to resolve it.

As a child, my mother would have grabbed me by the ear and walked me home while every neighbor watched. Those days are long gone. Some of that is progress. Some of it leaves parents navigating without much of a map.

None of that excuses violence. It does remind us how little of a family’s hardest moment can be understood from an arrest affidavit or newspaper story.

I am hoping everybody involved gets the grace, help, accountability, and compassion these difficult situations require—especially the child.

The principal is currently on paid administrative leave pending an investigation. MNPS says that leave is standard practice and does not itself indicate corrective or disciplinary action.

That distinction matters.

We can take an allegation seriously without declaring that we possess the whole truth. We can protect a child without treating public humiliation as justice.

As we move toward fall, thoughts turn to what might be on the minds of state legislators when they reconvene in January.

Word on the street is that Metro Nashville Public Schools may be getting a financial audit.

House Speaker Cameron Sexton confirmed to FOX 17 News that Tennessee lawmakers are discussing the possibility of a forensic audit of MNPS. That review would be separate from the performance audit recently ordered by Metro Government.

The proposed state audit would resemble the one recently completed on Memphis-Shelby County Schools, at a final cost of just under $8 million.

The Comptroller’s Office released its final report in July. Auditors identified approximately $54.2 million in transactions they said were consistent with evidence of potential fraud, waste, or abuse. They identified another $65.1 million in transactions where evidence suggested violations of district policies and procedures.

Even as state lawmakers discuss a possible forensic audit, Metro Government is already moving forward with a comprehensive performance audit of MNPS. Metro Council included approximately $800,000 for the audit in its FY2027 budget, with half expected to come from the district’s budget.

Council members have publicly called for a deeper examination of how MNPS operates and spends taxpayer dollars.

Councilwoman Jennifer Frensley Webb wrote in June that she supported putting money in the budget for an MNPS audit, arguing that the district needs a “deep dive into everything.”

Councilman Russ Bradford also backed the performance audit, calling it “long overdue” and raising concerns about central-office spending and contracting.

It is important to note that an audit does not automatically mean wrongdoing has occurred. A flagged transaction is not a conviction, and a policy violation is not necessarily fraud. A forensic audit and a performance audit are also different tools.

It is the old “trust but verify” meme.

MNPS manages a massive public budget. Asking the district to show how that money moves is neither an act of war nor proof of corruption. But two overlapping audits can become political theater if the goal is to manufacture a headline. Nashville should welcome a legitimate review while remaining clear-eyed about who orders it and how the findings are presented.

Trust, but verify the verifiers as well.

Tennessee lawmakers are a funny bunch. Even with a conservative supermajority, they embrace ideas that run counter to conservative principles—especially caution about inserting government into family decisions.

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti spoke to The Tennessee Star after announcing Tennessee’s nearly $752 million share of a historic $17.1 billion multistate settlement with Meta Platforms over allegations that Instagram and Facebook harmed children.

“We had sued Meta because Instagram was designed to be addictive, and kids’ brains were particularly affected,” Skrmetti said. “It was having really serious mental health problems across a generation, and they were misleading parents about the risks, so parents couldn’t make informed choices.”

He continued:

“The whole point in suing them was not to shake down a big company. It was to fix the problem and protect kids online, and help parents do a better job of keeping track of what their kids are doing and make meaningful choices.”

It all sounds pretty noble, but look at the settlement terms.

In addition to the money, the agreement includes a default two-hour daily limit for young users, mandatory breaks during extended use, restrictions on overnight access and school-hour notifications, stronger parental controls and age verification, and additional safeguards involving bullying, eating disorders, suicide, and self-harm content.

Some parents may welcome every provision. I understand why. Social media companies designed products to hold attention, and teenagers arrived with developing brains and pocket-sized computers. Meta deserves scrutiny for what it knew, built, and told parents.

Still, the settlement feels like a little bit of an overreach.

People on the other side are awfully quiet on this one. Banning ideas housed in books is bad. Restricting access to ideas housed on the internet is good. Go figure.

The comparison is not perfect, but the tension is real. The same political movement that talks constantly about parental rights has negotiated a structure determining how long young people may use private platforms, when they receive notifications, and how their ages are verified.

Maybe those are wise protections. But let us call them what they are: government-directed limits on speech and technology, adopted through litigation rather than legislation.

I cannot shake the feeling that part of this is a big-government shakedown.

Meta Platforms is valued at around $1.5 trillion. Tossing governments $17.1 billion over ten years to avoid courtrooms, executive testimony, and a potentially larger judgment may simply feel like a better use of company resources.

That does not prove the allegations were false. It also does not prove that every term of the settlement is wise.

I cannot remember the tobacco or opioid settlements including instructions for how plaintiffs could continue safely using the product. If it is harmful, it is harmful. If it can be beneficial with supervision and limits, perhaps parents should remain central to setting them.

It is worth noting that the overwhelming majority of Tennessee’s expected $752 million payment is headed to the newly created Children’s Digital Protection Fund.

Does anyone remember Governor Lee’s Child Mental Health Fund?

Yeah.

Government funds are born with stirring names and solemn promises. Then the cameras leave, the money moves, and citizens are expected to trust that “protection” remains the organizing principle.

Trust but verify.

There is that phrase again.

Maybe that is the thread running through all of this.

We admire Dolly Parton because she earned trust and placed books in children’s hands. We should resist deciding a family’s story from a headline. We should audit public institutions because trust without accountability becomes entitlement. And we should question settlements that promise protection while transferring money and power into government hands.

Dolly never needed to demand that people recognize her goodness. She just kept doing the work.

That may be the best tribute available to us now.

Not worship. Not sainthood. Not another glittering monument.

Find the need. Find the right tool. Do the work. And when possible, mail a child a book.

Dad Gone Wild: Nobody reads it, everybody quotes it.

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“The problem is that progress stopped making sense. More and more of us looked up one day and realized that the emperor had no clothes.”
― Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins

Tonight marks the beginning of yet another season of high school football.

With it comes the excitement, the pageantry and the civic pride. Stadium lights will flicker on across Tennessee. Bands will tune up. Cheerleaders will give it everything they have from the sidelines. Parents will search for familiar faces in the stands while pretending they are not nervous. Players will take the field carrying the expectations of teammates, coaches, families and communities.

Like most things in America, high school football has morphed into something different than it was in the not-so-distant past. Transfer rules, recruiting, social media and technology have all reshaped a fall tradition in ways few of us could have predicted.

It is no longer unusual for a teenager’s highlight reel to travel farther than his family ever has. A good performance can be clipped, posted and evaluated before the players have showered. Parents debate exposure and recruiting strategy. Players move schools in search of opportunity or playing time.

Still, at its core, high school football remains the same.

It is about communities taking pride in their school. It is about the band rocking the bleachers while cheerleaders work as hard on the sideline as the players do on the field. It is about rekindling relationships with old friends and forging new ones.

The focus is on the players and the field, but the experience encompasses so much more. Friday night lights remain a fixture in American culture because they offer something increasingly rare: a reason for a community to occupy the same space at the same time and care about the same thing.

Tonight, I’ll be in the stands cheering on my junior as he begins his third year of varsity play.

There is no place I’d rather be.

I’m sure the same holds true for many of you across the state of Tennessee.

And if we are lucky, for a few hours the only argument will be whether the official missed the holding call.

When You Can’t Answer the Message, Attack the Messenger

Last week, we spoke a bit about the award-winning teacher who chose to deliver some inconvenient truths to the Metro Nashville Board of Education.

Truths its members were not particularly interested in hearing.

Samira Hardcastle’s words nevertheless sparked enough interest to send clips of her speech viral. Over the past week, the story has continued to gain traction because what she described sounded familiar to people who work in schools and to families who have tried to navigate them.

Her words ring true, and the public recognizes that truth.

In response, MNPS has done what it so often does: undermine the messenger instead of discussing the message. Every attempt has been made to portray Hardcastle as a disgruntled former employee of questionable character.

An article in The Tennessean made sure readers knew she had left teaching before. You know, she was a server down on Broadway until she returned to the classroom six years ago.

As if that has anything to do with the accuracy of her observations.

I’m particularly fond of MNPS’s response to Hardcastle’s accusation that district leaders forced her to change a grade.

Per The Tennessean, MNPS spokesperson Sean Braisted said administrators decided the student should be allowed to complete the art assignment since “there was no written schoolwide policy at the time that prohibited the student from being given an opportunity to complete the work.” Braisted said that after it was submitted, the school’s principal—not Hardcastle—reviewed the assignment and gave it a grade.

“The principal did not select a score for the purpose of producing a particular final course grade,” Braisted said. “The resulting course grade was the mathematical result of the score assigned to the completed work. Based on the information available to us, it therefore would not be accurate to characterize this as the district simply changing a student’s grade at a parent’s request.”

This is one of those, Do you think I’m stupid? responses.

First, it speaks to an issue I have been pursuing for the last couple of years. In a district that constantly speaks about equity, why is there no districtwide policy on late work and retakes?

In a district where central office micromanages nearly everything and teachers are expected to follow pacing guides like gospel, why are individual schools left to create their own policies on something that can directly affect grades, promotion and graduation?

If two students at two MNPS schools fail to submit the same assignment, should their opportunities depend on which principal happens to run the building? If equity means anything, surely it means students and teachers know the rules before a parent plants themselves in the front office.

Second, why was the principal doing the grading?

In a district where the drumbeat is always to produce better data—data, not necessarily better results—surely the interest shown by district leaders communicated the desired outcome to the principal. Once again, leadership placed a principal between a rock and a hard place, then described the result as if it had been produced by an unplugged calculator sitting alone in a room.

If this was truly a “mathematical result,” why couldn’t the teacher do the math?

The Discipline Secret Everybody Already Knows

Hardcastle also addressed another inconvenient truth when she spoke about tragedy. She placed a fair share of responsibility at the feet of district leaders, and she has a fair point.

She referenced the January 2025 Antioch High School shooting, when a 17-year-old student shot and killed classmate Josselin Corea Escalante before turning the gun on himself. Hardcastle wrote that teachers had complained about the shooter, who previously attended John F. Kennedy Middle School, but nothing was done.

It is doubtful that the shooter suddenly became a threat overnight, yet there were apparently no effective steps put in place to protect either him or his eventual victim.

That is not proof that any single intervention would have prevented the shooting. It is, however, more than enough reason to ask what warnings existed, who received them and what actions followed.

It is one of the worst-kept secrets in MNPS that the district does not want to suspend students. Every teacher with any experience has a story about a serious discipline issue that went unresolved, was sent back to the classroom or somehow disappeared from the official narrative.

Still, Braisted clings to the canard that this allegation has not been substantiated at Hardcastle’s former school or districtwide.

“We encourage our schools to provide positive supports that address the root causes of behavioral challenges while also holding students accountable for their actions,” Braisted said.

If it weren’t so sad, I’d laugh.

Positive supports, addressing root causes and holding students accountable are all good. Reciting them in one sentence does not prove they are happening.

A friend called me the other day.

“You seen this teacher speaking out about MNPS to the board?”

“I have.”

“If you look at her social media, she looks a little crazy. You know Metro suspended her before she resigned?” he replied.

“What difference does that make? They also recognized her as an exemplary teacher before they suspended her. Are you telling me that MNPS is handing out awards to less-than-exemplary teachers? That it’s giving Blue Ribbon status to kooks?”

“Noooo...”

When you honor someone’s work, you elevate their expertise in the field. We assume a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright knows more about playwriting than, say, the guy writing scripts for Saved by the Bell. We assume a Nobel Prize-winning scientist knows more about science than a local medical technician.

Unless, of course, the award exists primarily for appearances.

Maybe a Blue Ribbon Teacher knows no more than any other teacher. I’m not saying that argument is entirely without merit. I’m saying that if it is true, let’s stop with the bullshit awards and tell the truth.

But if the award has merit, perhaps we ought to listen when the recipient tells us something is wrong.

There is little Hardcastle is saying that hasn’t already been discussed in teachers’ lounges and homes throughout the district. Refusing to acknowledge her accusations isn’t fooling anyone.

It reminds me of when I was a functioning alcoholic and believed I was keeping all my secrets secret. It was only after I got sober that I realized everybody already knew, and nobody was buying my game.

MNPS isn’t protecting a secret. It is performing secrecy for an audience that already knows the ending.

The hidden agenda doesn’t stop at the boardroom. Hardcastle questioned Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s loyalty to MNPS Superintendent Adrienne Battle. She wonders why he hasn’t spoken publicly about the district’s obvious problems or demanded greater accountability from its leadership. Referring to Battle’s relationship with O’Connell—and to the superintendent’s “friends” working in roles across the district—Hardcastle said it seems really “cliquey.”

It seems that way because it is.

As he heads toward reelection mode, Mayor O’Connell probably needs to follow the same advice as MNPS. A prime example would be his claims of “fixing” school start times. Don’t think for one minute the public doesn’t recognize that maneuver for what it is: a political solution designed to sound larger than the actual change.

If you ain’t going to tell the truth, you better do a better job polishing the mirrors and tending the smoke.

Bell to Bell, Slogan to Slogan

Republican gubernatorial candidate Marsha Blackburn has a new campaign ad, and it is as misguided as her fortune-cookie ad from the primary season.

“My plan, bell-to-bell, no cell. No excuses, no exceptions. No more posting, no scrolling. Here in Tennessee schools, we’re going to learn,” said U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn in her new ad campaign.

She should have thrown in a “dammit,” just for effect.

Tennessee already prohibits students from using wireless devices during instructional time, with specified exceptions. The law took effect for the 2025–26 school year and requires local school boards and charter governing bodies to adopt policies that meet that baseline. Districts retain discretion to go further.

That used to be called local control—something that used to matter to Republicans.

According to Blackburn and her supporters, the existing policy isn’t solving distracted minds, cyberbullying and social media addiction. Those are legitimate concerns. Teachers should not have to compete with TikTok, group chats and whatever outrage the algorithm served up during second period.

But Republican leadership continually sends mixed messages to parents. We are supposedly smart enough to navigate school choice, compare academic programs and decide where thousands of public education dollars should follow our children—but we cannot teach those same children appropriate cell phone use without the state taking the decision away from families and local schools.

Make it make sense.

For the record, I’m a growing supporter of school choice, but I oppose a statewide bell-to-bell cell phone ban.

Marsha also seems to ignore the subtle fact that writing laws is easier than enforcing them. Perhaps she plans to send monitors into every school in Tennessee to ensure that nary a phone emerges between the opening and closing bells.

Enforcement costs money. Who buys locking pouches? Who collects phones and tracks confiscated property? Who handles the angry parent whose child says a phone was damaged—or hundreds of students who simply refuse?

Where is that expense supposed to come from?

Then there are the polling numbers.

An NEA member survey reportedly found that 83 percent of teachers supported all-day phone bans with appropriate exceptions. A 2025 Pew Research Center poll found that 74 percent of U.S. adults supported bans during middle and high school classes.

Notice the difference: during class is not the same as all day.

In Pew’s 2026 survey, 77 percent supported prohibiting phones during class, but only 48 percent supported a bell-to-bell ban. Forty-three percent opposed the all-day version.

Maybe all those numbers are accurate. I’d still be more interested in a poll showing where this issue ranks among parents’ actual concerns.

Probably somewhere around Chinese interests buying property in Tennessee: recognized as a challenge, but also understood as something state lawmakers have already addressed.

Parents I know are worried about whether their children can read, whether schools are safe, whether teachers remain in classrooms, whether buses arrive and whether a diploma still means what adults claim it means.

Cell phones matter. They are not nothing. But “bell-to-bell, no cell” sounds suspiciously like a campaign consultant discovered a rhyme and worked backward to find a crisis.

Maybe Marsha isn’t a lock for governor.

Maybe her age and time spent away from Tennessee have resulted in a lack of understanding of Tennesseans’ concerns.

I’m still doubtful.

But I’m a little less doubtful than I was last week.

Tonight, though, the phones will be out beneath the Friday night lights. Parents will take pictures. Students will record the band. Players will share highlights. Grandparents who couldn’t attend will watch from home. Communities will tell their own stories in real time.

The technology has changed the tradition, but it hasn’t erased it.

And perhaps that is the larger lesson running through all of this. Institutions can control policies, press statements and campaign slogans. They can attack a messenger, redefine a grade change or declare a problem solved.

But they cannot completely control what people see with their own eyes.

Under the lights, the truth has a way of showing up.

Nobody reads it, everybody quotes it.

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“But I don’t want to be Godly. I just want to be good.”
― Caradog Prichard, One Moonlit Night

I’ve got a couple of pet peeves, which probably won’t surprise anybody who has been reading me for more than five minutes.

One is when somebody tells me to “just follow the science.”

The other is an overreliance on data—as if gathering enough numbers can eliminate uncertainty, explain every human being, and relieve the people in charge of having to exercise judgment.

Whenever I hear either phrase, I get suspicious.

That doesn’t mean I am anti-science. It doesn’t mean I don’t believe in data. It means I understand both well enough to know that neither was designed to end a conversation.

Science is supposed to begin one.

In some ways, science has morphed into a new religion. People sign up for the rhetoric, memorize a few approved proclamations, and then treat any question as heresy. “Follow the science” becomes less an invitation to examine evidence than a command to accept the speaker’s preferred conclusion.

But science, at its root, is about questioning. It is never static. It is a continuing process of observation, testing, revision, and occasionally discovering that something everybody knew with absolute certainty was not quite true.

When you refuse to acknowledge any possible variance in currently accepted conclusions, you are not defending science. You are denying its basic premise.

I’ve also been alive long enough to realize that not everything can be fully explained by science. Despite our best efforts, magic still lives in the world. That might be an unpopular belief, but if we ever sat down for lunch, I would defend it robustly. I mean those parts of being human that resist measurement: a song transporting you to another decade, the connection between parent and child, or a teacher sensing something is wrong before any spreadsheet confirms it.

For me, I don’t want to live in a world where all the magic has been eradicated.

Fortunately, we are nowhere close.

The Most Complicated Thing We Know

Take a look at the human brain.

Science has a strong map of the brain’s parts, a growing understanding of its circuits, and only a preliminary theory of how those circuits become a person. We know enough to accomplish remarkable things, but not enough to reliably read thoughts, erase trauma, cure most degenerative diseases, or explain consciousness.

But we still cannot fully explain how billions of neurons become a mother, a musician, a bully, a poet, a quarterback, or a seventh-grader determined to test every adult in the building. Still a lot to figure out. That uncertainty is not evidence science has failed. It is why science matters.

Data carries the same problem. It can illuminate part of a picture, but an overreliance on it often keeps us from seeing the whole thing.

Madden Is Not the Game

The other day, I was listening to a couple of young sports-talk radio hosts discuss how they learned about the football players of their generation.

They learned through the Madden video game.

Madden lists players and their skill sets. It assigns an overall rating, then breaks a player down into categories like speed, strength, awareness, agility, throwing power, and tackling. Those ratings are useful for playing the game, and they can be a good starting point for learning about players.

The fallacy comes when you decide the statistics truly define the player. Some players are better than their Madden ratings. Others seem unable to earn theirs when the real game is on the line. A player can possess every measurable tool and still fail to recognize what is happening in front of him.

My son, a high school quarterback, often talks about the difference between straight-line speed and football speed. The two are very different. Plenty of people can run a great 40-yard dash but somehow look slow on the field. They hesitate, take a poor angle, or need too much time to process what they see.

Football coaches quickly recognize the difference.

They understand that a number without context is only a number.

The same holds true when looking at student data. Test scores, attendance rates, discipline reports, grades, and growth measures can all provide insight. None should be treated as the be-all and end-all.

Like those coaches, teachers are best positioned to interpret what the data means. If you spend all day with a child, you develop context. You know whether a score reflects ability, anxiety, hunger, exhaustion, growth, boredom, or a rough morning at home.

That knowledge is not a rejection of data. It is what makes data useful.

Unfortunately, both science and data are routinely manipulated to serve unrelated goals—goals that do not necessarily benefit children.

The TCAP Sausage Factory

This week, I watched the Metro Nashville Public Schools board meeting, an endeavor I would not recommend to anyone without access to strong coffee and a high tolerance for self-congratulation.

At this particular meeting, the board and Director of Schools Adrienne Battle reviewed TCAP data while practically breaking their elbows patting themselves on the back.

According to the presentation, the results were incredible—testimony that district leaders and Central Office employees were clearly the smartest people in any room. Sure, they tossed a few bones toward teachers and students, but the unmistakable message was that success flowed from district leadership: high-quality instructional materials, accountability, teacher coaching, and centrally designed strategies.

Apparently, all those teachers with 15 or 20 years in the classroom just didn’t know how to teach before Battle and company arrived.

After a fair amount of this glaze, board member TK Fayne asked which district programs and strategies were producing the tremendous growth numbers. Board member Zach Young also attempted to dig deeper into the trends.

Executive Officer of Teaching and Learning David Williams came to the podium and offered insight into how the TCAP sausage gets made. It was one of the most refreshing answers I have heard on the board floor in a long time.

I’m paraphrasing Williams here, and you can watch the tape for yourself, but his explanation was basically this: While the tests are always based on state standards, they do not measure every standard, nor do they necessarily assign the same weight to a measured standard every year. One year may emphasize a particular group of standards, while the next test may emphasize others.

Teachers from across the state participate in a process that helps determine which standards should be measured and the value assigned to them. The standards, number of questions, and point values can all change. That is a fair number of variables.

Many parents assume state standardized testing mirrors the tests they remember from school: a set number of questions, each worth the same amount. Get nine out of ten correct, earn an A.

That is not quite how this works.

And the people most affected rarely get to examine the test meaningfully. Teachers and students do not receive a normal marked-up test showing what was missed and where understanding could improve. Yet its results label children, teachers, schools, and communities.

We are expected to trust the process, applaud the numbers, and keep moving.

That is not transparency. It is a canard with massive consequences.

MNPS has a budget exceeding a billion dollars. How is that budget justified?

Dr. Battle earns roughly $400,000 a year, while members of her cabinet receive salaries well into six figures. How are those salaries justified?

Increasingly, the answer is data. Leaders choose the programs, interpret the results, and cite those results as proof that their leadership deserves continued investment. Nobody mentions the variables behind the number on the slide.

Twenty Minutes of Science

At the same meeting, board members continued risking repetitive-motion injuries from back-patting over their decision to “follow the science” and move school start times later—by 20 minutes.

The science may show that later start times can benefit adolescents. I do not recall seeing research establishing that a 20-minute change delivers the promised academic, physical, and emotional benefits. For elementary students, the shift is only 10 minutes.

Ten minutes is barely enough time for a kid to find his other shoe.

You know who clearly benefits from the later start time?

Mayor Freddie O’Connell, who is running for reelection.

Later school start times were a campaign promise. MNPS has now given the mayor the ability to mark it as a success. Box checked.

Listen to the mayor on the campaign trail and you will hear repeated references to “following the science” and doing what is best for children. He will mention the change in school start times, but he seldom emphasizes that the change amounted to only 20 minutes.

How many students went to bed earlier because they knew they had an extra 20 minutes the next morning?

How many will jump from C students to A students because of the delayed start?

Don’t worry about that second question, Mayor. I’m confident MNPS will eventually produce data showing a correlation.

Whether 20 minutes genuinely improves students’ lives is a scientific question. Whether it satisfies a campaign promise is a political one. Those are not the same question.

If You Don’t Record It, It Didn’t Happen

The board also discussed a dramatic decrease in “exclusionary discipline.”

The district defines exclusionary discipline as a response that removes a child from the classroom. Data compiled by MNPS shows those incidents declined 55 percent when comparing the 2025–26 school year with 2022–23. During the same period, MNPS reports that the number of individual students receiving exclusionary discipline decreased 46 percent.

Those are impressive numbers.

They may even be accurate descriptions of what the district recorded.

That does not necessarily make them an accurate description of what happened inside schools.

Some people have questioned those figures, myself included. District leaders may deny manipulating discipline data, but principals receive repeated messages urging them to reduce suspensions, especially the disproportionate suspension of students of color.

Addressing racial disparities is necessary. But if the pressure becomes “make the number go down,” people learn how to lower it whether student behavior improves or not. The directive need not say, “Do not suspend students.” A principal who wants to remain in charge understands what is being communicated.

Fox 17 News asked Professional Educators of Tennessee Executive Director JC Bowman about the practice encouraged under Battle’s leadership. He said the concern is widespread.

“We hear it everywhere in Tennessee, yes, and we specifically hear it from Metro Nashville Public Schools,” Bowman said.

Bowman said MNPS educators have told him they feel discouraged from repeatedly referring disruptive students to administrators.

“It’s good teachers who love working in Metro school system, and they’re coming up saying, ‘Man, I can send a kid to the office five times, I’m being told quit sending them,’” Bowman said.

If a student is sent to the office five times and the teacher is told to stop sending him, the data may show fewer office referrals.

The classroom does not necessarily become safer, calmer, or more conducive to learning.

Again, overreliance on data produces an inaccurate picture. The number becomes the goal rather than a measure of progress toward the goal.

The Data and the Child

The irony was difficult to miss.

Even as Dr. Battle and the board applauded the discipline data and praised the decrease in exclusionary discipline, a student and her father appeared during public comment to plead for the reversal of her expulsion.

Antioch High School freshman Lilith Pipkin was removed in January after reporting a threatening bathroom note involving a gun. MNPS maintains that she wrote the note. Her family says independent handwriting and forensic analysis supports their claim that she did not.

Forensic handwriting analysis is not infallible and should not be treated like DNA. But contrary expert analysis should not be brushed aside when the punishment is this severe.

This case continues to baffle me.

At some point, the board must ask how much refusing to reverse the expulsion protects the community—and how much is driven by an inability to admit the district might be wrong.

Every time this student and her father return to defend her, my conclusion shifts further toward the latter.

Not a good look.

Data is supposed to help adults make better decisions about children. It should never become armor that protects adults from reconsidering a decision about a child.

Science requires the possibility of revision. Justice should too.

Believe the Teacher—or Stop Giving Out Awards

The best moment of the meeting came when an award-winning teacher appeared during public comment and called bull shit on distict leadership.

Samira Hardcastle taught art at John F. Kennedy Middle School in Antioch. During the past school year, she was named Teacher of the Year at her school and was also recognized as a Blue Ribbon Teacher of the Year by the district.

Hardcastle recently resigned, citing discipline problems and a lack of district support.

You can choose whether to believe her. But if the district is going to keep handing out awards, then those awards ought to mean something.

If MNPS declares that a teacher represents excellence, leaders cannot suddenly treat her observations as uninformed when they become uncomfortable.

You cannot hold teachers up as experts when they validate your narrative and dismiss them as disgruntled employees when they challenge it.

Hardcastle spent her days inside the school. She saw the students, the behavior, the consequences, and the effect of policy on the classroom. Her account contains something no district dashboard can provide: context.

I believe her.

That does not mean every anecdote overrides every dataset. It means the people closest to the work must help interpret the numbers. Teachers can tell us whether the data reflects reality.

Follow the Questions

I am not arguing that MNPS should abandon testing, ignore discipline disparities, reverse every expulsion, or set school schedules based on my personal preference.

I am arguing for humility.

Science is powerful because it leaves room for the next question. Data is valuable because it gives us a place to begin investigating. Neither is a sacred text, and neither should be used as a substitute for experience, judgment, transparency, or basic common sense.

Madden ratings are not football players.

TCAP scores are not children.

Discipline totals are not school climate.

A 20-minute schedule change is not proof that a city transformed adolescent health.

And a slide deck filled with upward-pointing arrows is not proof that the people presenting it are responsible for everything that went right.

There is still a lot we do not know—about the brain, about learning, about human behavior, and about the individual child sitting in the third row trying to make it through the day.

That uncertainty should make us curious. It should make us listen more carefully to teachers, students, and families. It should make powerful people more willing to reconsider their conclusions.

Instead, “follow the science” and “look at the data” too often mean, “Stop asking questions. We have already decided what this means.”

No thanks.

I’ll follow the evidence. I’ll examine the data. I’ll listen to the experts. I’ll also reserve the right to ask who selected the measurements, who interpreted the results, who benefits from the conclusion, and what important pieces never made it onto the spreadsheet.

That is not rejecting science.

That is following it.

And I’ll leave a little room for magic too.

Nobody reads it, everybody quotes it.

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“What is truth?” Sometimes people ask this question because they wish to do nothing. Generic cynicism makes us feel hip and alternative even as we slip along with our fellow citizens into a morass of indifference. It is your ability to discern facts that makes you an individual, and our collective trust in common knowledge that makes us a society.”
― Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

The week before school starts marks the beginning of silly season for school districts on social media.

Teachers are back in their buildings doing the hard, mostly invisible work required to prepare for a new school year—arranging rooms, studying rosters, sitting through required trainings, and rewriting lessons.

District leadership, meanwhile, feels compelled to prove that all of this is happening.

So we get pictures.

Pictures of teachers staring at screens. Pictures of grown adults playing icebreakers with the forced enthusiasm of hostages holding today’s newspaper. Everybody is smiling because apparently nobody is allowed to prepare for school while looking tired or mildly concerned about the year ahead.

What are these pictures supposed to do?

Assuage my nerves about the upcoming school year?

Paint school buildings as amusement parks—good for you and good tasting?

Offer proof that even when children are not in the building, teachers are earning their keep? Because, you know, teachers are a lazy bunch, and without photographic evidence, how are we supposed to know they aren’t eating donuts and hanging around the teachers’ lounge?

I suspect that last one is a driving factor, along with district administrators’ need to justify their own existence.

When my lawyer prepares for trial, he never sends me photographs of the legal team rigorously preparing with giant smiles. My mechanic never posts pictures of everybody in the garage playing an icebreaker in anticipation of my car’s arrival.

They just do the work.

That used to be enough.

Everybody on the Bus

This week, I was treated to the most galling set of graphics yet. A local high school loaded roughly 40 teachers onto a school bus and invaded nearby apartment complexes. Naturally, the entire exercise was digitally captured and shared.

At my house, I don’t need you knocking on my door unannounced. I’ve got shit to do.

I may be catching up on housework, getting ready for work, or trying to grab five minutes of peace. I work from home. The last thing I need is my train of thought interrupted so I can star in somebody else’s vanity project.

There is also the question of who these visits are intended to reach.

I have a household with two teenagers. They aren’t home much. If they are home, they are likely sleeping or eating. Between jobs, sports, and social activities with friends, they are not sitting around the house waiting for teachers to show up and joyously announce the coming school year.

Trust me, they have already been counting down the days—and it ain’t in anticipation.

This isn’t an argument against relationships or purposeful, invited home visits connected to a student’s actual needs.

If three or four teachers want to quietly go into the community and reach out to chronically absent students, I applaud them. It is certainly not their job, and it should not become another administration-organized expectation piled onto their plates, but I understand the instinct. Sometimes a personal connection makes a difference.

But for God’s sake, don’t turn it into content.

Just do it.

Relationships lose something when the camera arrives before trust does. Teachers lose something when their goodwill is drafted into a marketing campaign they did not design. Every hour spent touring apartment complexes is an hour not spent preparing classrooms or completing one of the thousand tasks already waiting.

School districts routinely tell us teachers do not have enough time. Then they fill the little time teachers have with staged activities designed to show the public how productively that time is being used.

That is not community engagement. That is theater with a diesel engine.

What Are Kids Giving Up?

As summer comes to a close, I’ve been thinking about the nature of schools and what children—especially older students—give up when they return.

Over the years, my son and I have had many conversations about school and the way it often rewards conformity more reliably than learning or achievement.

This will probably piss some of you off, but the students with the best grades are not necessarily the smartest or the hardest working. Often, they are the ones who have learned most effectively to follow the rules, satisfy the rubric, and accept the agenda.

That may be a useful skill, but it is not the same thing as curiosity, intelligence, creativity, persistence, or wisdom.

We do not always allow children to identify and develop their passions. We dictate what they should be passionate about, establish the approved way for them to demonstrate that passion, and then grade the result.

Schools say they want students to find their voices. Too often, what they really want is for students to find an approved voice, at the approved volume, using the approved vocabulary.

Marching in Greatness

Metro Nashville Public Schools has recently gotten into the music business. This week marked the release of its second album, Marching in Greatness: Voices of Tomorrow.

I wonder which student came up with that title.

The record was created through the MNPS Songwriting Summit. The seven-track album features original music written and recorded by MNPS students and educators alongside Grammy Award-winning artists and Nashville music-industry professionals.

That sounds impressive. It probably was unforgettable for the students involved. I do not begrudge them the opportunity.

I do wonder who decided what they were going to write about.

Per the MNPS press release, rather than being a collection of individual songs, the album tells a larger story about growth, perseverance, belonging, and purpose, with each track representing a different stage of the student journey.

Superintendent Dr. Adrienne Battle said:

“When I listen to these songs, I hear more than incredible music. I hear students who know their voices matter. This album reflects the creativity, resilience, and limitless potential of our young people. Programs like the Songwriting Summit demonstrate what is possible when students are empowered to tell their own stories through the arts.”

Her words were echoed by Dee Hammonds, director of the Songwriting Summit:

“As people listen to this entire project, I hope they hear what is possible when we believe in students and give them the space, support, and guidance to do high-level work.”

Those are lovely words. They also reveal the tension.

Several years ago, I had a conversation with a friend who is a Grammy Award-winning producer.

“You know what I miss?” he said. “Kids going into a garage and doing everything all wrong that somehow turns out all right. Kids doing it because they felt it, not to be stars. Nowadays, at the end of the first rehearsal, members are discussing who’s going to post to social media, who’s going to call a manager, and who’s going to reach out to a designer.”

Somebody needs to remind Dee Hammonds that some of our most timeless music was produced by young people nobody believed in, working in spaces they carved out without anybody’s permission, guidance, or belief.

They did not begin by outlining their journey through growth, perseverance, belonging, and purpose. They began because they had something inside them that needed to come out.

The Songwriting Summit project reaches around 50 students. Meanwhile, every middle school and high school across the district has at least twice that number playing in its school band.

Those bands may not win awards or attract stars. Nobody may issue a press release about the second-chair trombone player who mastered a difficult passage or the freshman who found a place in the percussion section.

But those programs are every bit as important in the lives of those students, and they need every ounce of support we can give them.

Here is what too many people fail to understand: Art does not have to be “great” to be impactful. Its power lies in its creation.

The garage band may never play beyond the garage. The student writing poems nobody else will read may never publish a book. That does not make the work less valuable.

Every Child Known—as Long as They Match the Vision

Schools have increasingly become places where greatness and conformity rule. We tout slogans such as “Every Child Known,” but too often that promise comes with a quiet qualification: every child known, as long as everybody looks roughly alike and moves in the same direction.

Fall outside the norm and you fall outside the vision.

Look at the political battles being fought over schools. The arguments are increasingly about what students cannot have—certain books, phones, charter schools, vouchers, opinions—and rarely about what they should have.

It is not just students who face the wave of conformity. Teachers are constantly under the thumb of pacing guides, scripted lesson plans, prescribed classroom-management programs, mandated assessments, and a growing collection of noninstructional duties.

Here is the irony: Most of us will reinvent ourselves several times over the course of our lives. We may start in one profession only to discover a need—or desire—to change. Divorce, illness, failure, disappointment, and reinvention are all parts of healthy, complicated lives.

How will our children respond? Will they have the tools they need when confronted with challenges no pacing guide anticipated?

I work weddings as a bartender, and I love watching people on that day because the bride and groom feel like they understand exactly what marriage means. Little do they realize the distance between their vision and the reality ahead.

Marriage shifts and changes. It survives through adjustments made by the participants. Suggest to newlyweds that there will be days when they do not even like each other, and they will look at you like a fool.

But it is true.

Life works the same way. Are we really doing this for children—and preparing them to adjust when life refuses to follow the script?

Power, Priorities, and a New Lawyer

Last week, I wrote about MNPS hiring a new director of legal services. Several things about that hire require deeper questions.

First and foremost: Why?

Metro Legal already supplies legal advice to the MNPS Board. What happens if Metro Legal and the new MNPS legal director offer conflicting opinions? Who overrules whom? Who is the client? Whose interests are being protected?

There are financial questions as well. Where did funding for this position come from? When board members approved the budget, were they clearly told that MNPS intended to hire a legal director?

Last month MNPS faced cutting roughly half a million dollars because Metro Council demanded the district pay half the cost of a required audit. After much hand-wringing and rending of garments, the board cut a planned pre-K program—a program with a direct benefit to students.

Yet the district proceeded with hiring a new legal director at a six-figure salary.

That is like a neighbor telling you they are too broke to eat and then watching a brand-new boat appear in their driveway. It does not quite add up.

True, one six-figure salary would not cover the entire audit expense. But I am betting I could find four more.

My friend Julian Vasquez Heilig wrote something on social media this week that, while not directly related, applies here:

“Every hiring decision is a decision about power. Yet most search committees never ask the question that may matter most: What does this person want the power to do?

A résumé reveals accomplishments. It does not reveal whom someone will protect, what they will fund, which criticism they will tolerate, or whether they will expand opportunity for others.

As a dean and provost, I learned that a leader’s real values become visible through budgets, appointments, priorities, and results.

Before we hire, promote, support, or elect someone, we should ask what they believe power is for.”

Hopefully, somebody will ask those questions.

Budgets are declarations of values. A district that cuts a student-facing pre-K program while adding a high-level administrative position has told us what it values, regardless of its next inspirational post.

The Corporate Off-Ramp

The Tennessean recently published an opinion piece touting a solution to the current teacher shortage: Recruit experienced workers who are being aged out of corporate America.

Turning corporate layoffs into a teacher-recruitment strategy sounds clever—right up until somebody checks the invoice.

Teaching is not a corporate consolation prize.

Knowing spreadsheets, marketing, logistics, finance, or project management does not automatically prepare someone to manage 30 children, design instruction, understand adolescent development, serve students with disabilities, differentiate lessons, communicate with families, and satisfy Tennessee’s mountain of accountability requirements.

Subject knowledge matters. So do pedagogy, preparation, temperament, and experience.

Some corporate employees undoubtedly can become excellent teachers, and career changers often bring valuable knowledge. But expecting schools to absorb workers discarded by corporations treats teaching as an employment program instead of a profession.

Then there is the money.

Many workers pushed out under the corporate “Rule of 70” are older, experienced employees. That does not make them unhealthy or unqualified. Nor does it tell us anything about the medical needs of an individual applicant.

But health insurance operates through pools, not flattering individual profiles. Moving a sizable group of older workers into district health-insurance pools could increase total claims and costs. If the state does not provide additional funding, districts could answer those costs with higher employee premiums, larger deductibles, reduced benefits, or fewer dollars available for raises.

Existing teachers—already paying more for less—could wind up subsidizing the state’s shiny new recruitment experiment.

And how many corporate professionals will stay once they encounter the salary, workload, disrespect, and political interference that drove trained educators away in the first place?

The teacher shortage did not fall from the sky. It is the predictable result of policy choices. Tennessee has spent years limiting teacher autonomy, weakening the profession, expanding workloads, politicizing classrooms, and asking educators to accept compensation that does not reflect the demands of the job.

If your bathtub is leaking, the answer is not to keep bringing in fresh buckets. Fix the damn leak.

Tennessee does not lack intelligent people who might teach. It lacks the willingness to compensate, support, trust, and respect the teachers it already has.

What Is the Work For?

A bus full of teachers makes a good photograph. A student album makes a good press release. A new legal director may make administrators feel protected. A pipeline of corporate career changers makes a good opinion column.

But whom do these things serve?

That is the thread running through all of it.

Are we building relationships, or documenting that we built them? Are we nurturing creativity, or curating a marketable version of it? Are we spending limited dollars on children, or protecting the institution? Are we addressing the reasons teachers leave, or searching for the next group of adults willing to replace them?

Public education does not need more performance about the work.

It needs the work.

Quiet, sustained, unphotographed work. Work that respects teachers’ time, gives students room to be imperfect, funds unglamorous programs, treats budgets as moral documents, and values teaching as a profession rather than a landing spot for people corporate America no longer wants.

Nobody needs another picture of smiling teachers gathered around chart paper.

Show me the choices.

Show me who gets funded and protected. Show me which criticism is tolerated. Show me whether students and teachers have room to develop voices that do not match the district’s preferred soundtrack.

That will tell us what the power is for.

And it will tell us whether any of this is truly being done for the kids.

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Nobody reads it, everybody quotes it.

“She informed me, matter-of-factly, that she was old enough to know the difference between intriguing and fucked up. ‘You should go for younger women,’ she advised me. ‘They can’t always tell.’”

—Tana French, In the Woods

All good things must come to an end, and summer is nearing its close.

Metro Nashville Public Schools teachers return to their buildings today. In 10 days, the students will join them, officially closing the door on yet another summer.

Over those next 10 days, teachers will do the multitude of things required to get ready for the upcoming school year. They’ll arrange classrooms, attend faculty meetings, decorate bulletin boards, review student information, learn new software, sit through mandated training, prepare lesson plans, answer emails, track down supplies and try to remember the password they created last May.

Somewhere in there, they may even find a little time to prepare to teach.

A chef taught me many years ago that preparation was the secret to success. The better the preparation, the more likely everything will run smoothly once the doors open and the customers arrive.

Unfortunately, teachers are frequently forced to steal that preparation time from district initiatives and state mandates. Everyone has something that teachers absolutely must hear before students arrive. Every department has a presentation. Every administrator has a priority. Every vendor has a new program that will supposedly make teachers’ lives easier—right after they complete the required three-hour training module.

This is also the time of year when district leaders like to tout having filled nearly every position.

Please don’t be fooled.

There is a difference between “every position filled” and “fully staffed.” It’s a little bit of a shell game.

Combining classrooms, discontinuing offerings, shifting staff between buildings, increasing class sizes and using candidates with provisional licenses are all tools districts can utilize to mask hiring issues. If you eliminate a position you couldn’t fill, technically you no longer have a vacancy.

See how that works?

According to Sean Braisted, chief of communications and technology for MNPS, the district has 155 teacher vacancies heading into the start of this school year.

It’s kind of amazing how that number stays roughly the same year after year.

If you listen closely to Braisted, you’ll hear confirmation of the aforementioned strategies, just delivered in prettier language.

“Our Human Resources team has worked throughout the summer alongside school leaders to recruit and hire qualified educators, and we expect to fill additional positions leading up to and after the first day of school, as is typical each year.”

“As is typical each year” is doing some heavy lifting there.

Braisted continued:

“Schools routinely adjust staffing assignments, balance class schedules, and implement other instructional strategies to ensure students have qualified teachers in their classrooms on day one while positions are being filled.”

“Adjust staffing assignments” and “balance class schedules” sound much better than “move people around” and “put more children in a classroom.”

Teacher shortages have grown over the past decade as the job has become increasingly untenable. Teachers are no longer expected simply to teach. They are expected to wear multiple hats in an effort to earn their paycheck, all while working under increased scrutiny.

They are instructors, counselors, data analysts, social workers, disciplinarians, technology troubleshooters, attendance officers, curriculum experts, test administrators and, occasionally, human shields.

Then we act surprised when fewer people want the job.

When I first started bartending four decades ago, the responsibility for a fake ID largely fell on the shoulders of the person presenting it. Over time, that changed. Now, it’s my fault if I fail to catch the fake ID.

Teaching has followed a similar path.

Where the onus to learn once rested primarily on the student, it has increasingly passed to the teacher. If a student fails to complete an assignment, the first question is often what the teacher did to encourage completion. If a student is chronically absent, the teacher is expected to document attempts to reengage them. If a student refuses to participate, educators must explain what strategies they tried.

In doing so, we fail to account for all the outside variables that go into learning.

Teachers matter tremendously. But they cannot control whether a child gets enough sleep, attends school regularly, completes assignments, has stable housing or receives support at home. They cannot overcome every societal failure during a 50-minute class period.

Still, over the next 10 days, Nashville school buildings will be full of teachers doing their best to navigate those barriers and find ways to benefit students.

For that, we are blessed.

Thank you, teachers, for your continued dedication and commitment. I hope somebody remembers to give you time to prepare.

A SIMPLE AMENDMENT BECOMES ANYTHING BUT SIMPLE

Pre-school-year board meetings are particularly interesting.

Last week, one surrounding school board passed a policy prohibiting teachers from dating former students. I’m not quite sure how you enforce that one—or why the subject rose to the level of meriting board action.

Maybe they’ve had a run on teacher/former-student relationships. If so, I’d argue that speaks to a much bigger issue.

But I digress.

This week’s MNPS board meeting brought its own bit of weirdness while also showing a not-so-flattering side of Director of Schools Dr. Adrienne Battle.

The weirdness started in the Governance Committee. MNPS likes to conduct much of its business in committee meetings, semi-shielded from public attention.

Committee members were approving changes to board policies to align with recently enacted state laws that went into effect July 1. It was a fairly rudimentary process until they reached the policy governing teacher sick leave and personal days.

State lawmakers, in an effort to reduce the burden on teachers to prove they were actually sick, passed legislation limiting the number of sick days a teacher can earn annually. However, the law puts no cap on the number of personal days a district may allow teachers to earn.

The new sick-day cap is two days lower than what teachers previously received.

MNPS hasn’t needed a specific policy covering this because the state didn’t regulate the matter in the same way. Like many districts, MNPS found a workaround to ensure teachers received the maximum number of leave days.

More recently, the number of days was addressed through the memorandum of understanding reached through collaborative conferencing.

The new law changes that.

The simplest solution—and trust me, none of this is actually simple—would be to convert two sick days into two personal days.

That was the proposal put forward by Dr. Battle. The revised board policy would mimic the language of the new law.

There was just one potential problem.

Under the proposal, teachers with 10 or more years of service could potentially lose a leave day.

Board member Abigail Tylor recognized the issue. After explaining it several times, she proposed an amendment acknowledging both the role of the MOU and the potential shortage.

It was a straightforward change. Tylor wanted to add the words “at least” before the number of personal days.

The law’s intent would remain intact, while the board would make clear that it supported teachers receiving all the leave days they had earned.

The amendment came with no immediate fiscal cost because the board would still have to approve the total number of days proposed through the MOU.

Dr. Battle was not happy with the solution.

She pushed back—hard.

Battle argued that her team had already done extensive work on the policy. At one point, she clapped her hands while addressing Tylor, much like a teacher might clap while correcting a student.

Board members often remind the public that they are responsible for only one employee: the Director of Schools.

I’m not sure I’ve ever had a boss who would have taken kindly to being addressed in the manner Battle addressed Tylor.

Eventually, Battle called on the newly hired director of legal services, Dana Osbruck, to advise the board. This apparently served as the board’s first introduction to Osbruck.

The legal director proceeded to offer legal advice and opposed the proposed amendment.

The problem is that Osbruck is the legal adviser for Dr. Battle and the district—not the elected school board.

That distinction became considerably clearer during the full board meeting when the policy was revisited.

The amendment ultimately failed in committee, primarily over what I would argue was a misunderstanding of the collaborative-conferencing process.

The MOU process is lengthy and involved. It can take years to complete, its conclusions are nonbinding, and the process itself isn’t guaranteed to remain in place. State lawmakers came close to eliminating collaborative conferencing this year, and they are likely to pursue that goal again.

Considering those factors, it might be a good idea to codify the board’s intentions.

During the full meeting following the committee session, board member Zach Young raised the amendment again.

Board member Erin Block argued that the district’s legal department had already weighed in and counseled against the amendment.

That was when Metro Legal—the entity that actually represents the board—felt compelled to interject.

Metro Legal attorney Nani Gilkerson clarified that her office had not previously provided an opinion and that Metro Legal—not Osbruck—serves as the school board’s official legal counsel.

When asked directly about the amendment, Gilerson said it didn’t believe the words “at least” were necessary but saw no legal problem with including them.

The amendment failed again.

I honestly don’t believe teachers will ultimately lose a leave day. But the argument created several new conundrums.

We now have a situation in which the board has legal counsel while the board’s sole employee has separate legal counsel.

Maybe the two legal teams will remain in step going forward, but they weren’t in this case.

Which opinion ultimately prevails when the two disagree?

Remember how I’ve repeatedly argued against intertwining the school district and city government? Remember how the Metro Charter established them as separate entities?

The school board receives its legal advice from Metro Legal, which is part of city government. There has long been a push for more representation of the Mayor’s office in Metro Schools. If the board attempts to adopt Battle’s legal director as its own adviser, how will that be received in the mayor’s office?

Dr. Battle reportedly had some pointed comments for the Gilkerson after she offered a contrary opinion. The attorney stood by her assessment, but one has to wonder how that disagreement will play out in the mayor’s office or Metro Council chambers.

There is one more wrinkle.

The board presumably had to approve the funding for a legal adviser who may now offer opinions contrary to those of the board’s existing legal adviser.

That doesn’t feel like a particularly prudent use of resources.

DEFENDING STUDENTS OR DEFENDING THE SYSTEM?

Tuesday’s meeting also saw the board consider four new charter-school applications.

To no one’s surprise, all four were rejected.

What was surprising was how openly several board members discussed their priorities. Financial impact on the district was repeatedly cited as a central reason for denial.

Vice Chair Berthena Nabaa-McKinney, who represents District 4 and chairs the Budget and Finance Committee, said her concerns were rooted in financial stewardship, equity and accountability.

She argued that approving additional charter schools would further strain district resources because Tennessee lacks a sufficient funding structure to absorb the impact.

Nabaa-McKinney talked about the fixed costs MNPS carries to serve roughly 80,000 students and how every new charter school redirects public funding away from the district.

“The decision is not about whether individual charter schools can do good or are doing good, it’s about financial reality facing our district. Those obligations do not decrease simply because of enrollment shifts.”

She isn’t wrong about the fixed costs.

Buildings still require electricity. Buses still have to run. Central-office departments don’t disappear because a school loses 10 students. A district can’t reduce expenses dollar for dollar every time a child leaves.

Board member Abigail Tylor added that Tennessee’s student-based funding formula means a traditional MNPS school losing even 10 students to a new charter school could suffer a significant financial impact.

Several board members echoed that sentiment.

But what has become increasingly clear to me is that we’ve shifted from defending the student to defending the system.

The expectation appears to be that even if those 10 students aren’t getting what they need, they owe it to the district to remain in their assigned school in order to preserve the existing structure.

The argument is no longer that the school is serving those children well. The argument is that their departure might hurt the school financially.

Those are not the same thing.

I understand the financial realities. I understand the problems created when money follows students while a district’s fixed costs remain. I understand that approving a new charter school can create ripple effects across nearby schools.

But none of that changes the fundamental question:

What does the individual student need?

If a traditional school is meeting that need, families will have fewer reasons to leave. If it isn’t, asking children to remain for the good of the system is a difficult position to defend.

Students are not funding units.

They are not responsible for protecting a district’s market share. They do not owe their enrollment to MNPS simply because the district built a financial structure that depends on retaining them.

The district exists to serve students. Students do not exist to sustain the district.

That doesn’t mean every charter application should be approved. Charter operators should face serious scrutiny. Their academic plans, financial assumptions, disciplinary policies, leadership capacity and promises to families should all be examined closely.

Some applications deserve rejection.

But “we can’t afford to lose the students” is not, by itself, a student-centered argument.

It’s an institutional one.

This distinction matters because MNPS is already losing enrollment. Families are making choices—with charter schools, private schools, homeschooling, surrounding districts and sometimes simply leaving Nashville altogether.

The answer cannot be to restrict those choices while refusing to ask why families are looking elsewhere.

The answer has to be building schools that families actively choose.

As teachers return to their classrooms, most will do exactly that. They will unpack boxes, write names on folders, create welcoming spaces and spend the next 10 days preparing to serve whichever children walk through their doors.

They’ll do it despite the vacancies, the mandates, the meetings, the legal disputes and the policy arguments happening above them.

They’ll do it because teachers remain focused on the students in front of them.

It would be nice if the rest of the system followed their example.

Because defending an institution is not the same thing as serving a child.

And that is not a position I can endorse.

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Let’s step out of the schoolhouse for a moment and talk politics.

You may know that Tennessee is in the middle of a governor’s race.

Early voting for the August 6 primaries started this week. But if you read the paper, listen to the radio, or occasionally peruse the socials, you might get the impression that the race just started.

It didn’t.

Tennessee is a pretty red state. It wasn’t always that way, but Republicans have dominated state politics for roughly the past 15 years. The party now controls the governor’s office, both chambers of the General Assembly, both U.S. Senate seats and eight of the state’s nine congressional districts.

That’s not a majority. That’s ownership.

One of the driving forces behind Tennessee’s political transformation was the battle over creating a state income tax. Tennessee didn’t have one, didn’t want one and made it clear that anybody trying to create one was going to pay a political price.

There was all kinds of drama surrounding that battle, including protesters circling the Capitol in their cars and honking their horns. At one point, the doors to the legislative chamber were opened to the public.

One of the lawmakers who built her political identity during that fight was Marsha Blackburn.

Blackburn went on to serve in Congress and then became the first woman elected to represent Tennessee in the United States Senate. In that role, she became a consistent and enthusiastic supporter of President Donald Trump, who remains extremely popular in Tennessee.

Now 74 years old, Blackburn is ready to come home and put the finishing touches on her political career as governor of Tennessee.

None of this should be a surprise.

Her intentions have been on the record for at least a year, and her interest in the job was widely discussed long before she made an official announcement. When she finally entered the race last August, she immediately became the overwhelming favorite.

The only surprise is that some folks are acting surprised.

For most of the past year, there has been some grumbling about the race, but it has basically remained a low rumble. What was there to talk about when Blackburn was sitting on a commanding lead and possessing statewide name recognition that none of her opponents could match?

Some people hollered that she should debate her Republican opponents.

But with the kind of lead she held, why would she?

There is no political benefit for Blackburn to debate. There are only potential pitfalls. A debate might be good for voters and good for democracy, but campaigns are rarely designed around what is good for voters or democracy.

Campaigns are designed to win.

I had one political operative tell me that the primary reason Blackburn’s opponents were calling for a debate was to publicly pin her down over her response to January 6 and whether she had been sufficiently supportive of Donald Trump.

That may also help explain why Trump has not officially endorsed her in the race.

Being forced to defend that record might create problems for Blackburn in a Republican primary. In a general election, however, a little distance from January 6 could actually help her.

That’s politics. The answer changes depending on who is asking the question.

Over the last couple of weeks, what had been a rumble has become considerably louder. Some of that noise has come from Blackburn’s own missteps, including a bizarre campaign ad about China in which she smashed fortune cookies inside a Chinese restaurant.

Because apparently the road to the Tennessee governor’s office now runs through the appetizer section at P.F. Chang’s.

The ad was supposed to demonstrate toughness toward China. Instead, it created a round of headlines and social-media mockery. Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell even responded with his own fortune-cookie video, prompting another response from Blackburn.

If nothing else, we now know the campaign has reached the mature policy-discussion stage.

But most of the sudden attention seems to be coming from people who have only recently discovered that Blackburn is running.

There are a fair number of Tennesseans who can’t stand Marsha Blackburn. Most of them live in the state’s urban areas, where her politics and style are viewed considerably differently than they are in rural Tennessee.

Over the years, I’ve come to the realization that it is better to be hated than ignored.

Hatred still represents engagement. It means people know who you are, understand what you stand for and are motivated by your presence.

Being ignored is political death.

That presents a problem for Blackburn’s Republican opponents, U.S. Rep. John Rose and state Rep. Monty Fritts.

Both men have struggled to break through Blackburn’s enormous advantage in name recognition. They may be good dudes to sit beside at a church supper, but as statewide political candidates, they can appear pretty bland.

Well, as long as you don’t listen too closely to what they say.

In January, Fritts received national attention after calling for capital punishment for people involved in providing gender-affirming medical care to children.

“I think that anyone who would try to disfigure a child through hormones or surgery, you might be eligible to capital punishment.”

Fritts has also expressed some extremely restrictive views on abortion. He told NewsChannel 5 that he would criminalize abortion in every case—including pregnancies resulting from rape—and compared the punishment to that imposed on murderers.

He also said he opposes allowing rape victims access to the morning-after pill.

For the record, the FDA has clarified that emergency contraception prevents pregnancy. It does not terminate an existing pregnancy.

Fritts remains unconvinced.

Rose is a little more conventional, although politically he is not all that different from Blackburn. He has presented himself as a businessman, farmer and conservative outsider, despite having served in Congress since 2019.

Rose stood with Trump during the political fight surrounding January 6. He may not generate the kind of national headlines Blackburn does, but it is difficult to identify how his administration would differ significantly from another four years of Gov. Bill Lee.

Is there anybody out here in Tennessee clamoring for another four years of Bill Lee?

Personally, I don’t think so.

That doesn’t mean Tennesseans will reject it. We have a long and proud history of complaining about state government before voting to preserve it exactly as it is.

On the other side, Democrats appear to be rallying around Memphis City Council member Jerri Green.

By all accounts, Green is a smart, accomplished and wonderful woman. She is an attorney, former public defender and advocate for working families.

But roughly half of Tennessee Republicans view Memphis as part of Mississippi, while the other half view it as a failed city whose problems might somehow become contagious if they drive too far west on Interstate 40.

Are those voters really going to hand the keys to the state to a Memphis City Council member?

Green may win the Democratic primary, although she is not the only Democrat on the ballot. But without peeling away a meaningful number of Republicans and independents, she is destined to become another good person placed in an unwinnable race by the Tennessee Democratic Party.

Her name will be forgotten by most voters within a year.

At some point, Democrats are going to have to invest early—and heavily—in candidates capable of building a statewide organization. You cannot wait until the Republican nominee is virtually selected and then begin searching the couch cushions for campaign money.

It’s not like Democrats lack viable alternatives.

In the state House alone, you have lawmakers such as Bob Freeman, Vincent Dixie and John Ray Clemmons who could mount credible campaigns with sufficient planning and financial support.

Over in the Senate, Jeff Yarbro could be a formidable candidate if he laid off the sound bites, embraced the larger picture and started building a statewide campaign before the ballots were printed.

You’ve got to win elections before you can make changes.

That sounds obvious, but Tennessee Democrats often behave as if winning would somehow compromise their principles.

As it stands, the party has chosen to resemble the Chicago Cubs of my youth: longtime, lovable losers with one championship in about 70 years.

Being a lovable loser is easier than winning championships. Expectations remain low, the checks keep coming and nobody is held responsible for the final score.

So let’s embrace our role and cash the checks.

If you remain unconvinced, follow the money. More than $21 million has flowed into the governor’s race, with Blackburn and Rose holding enormous financial advantages over every Democrat. Blackburn raised a record-setting $5.5 million during her first five months alone, while Rose entered the campaign with millions that included a substantial personal loan.

The exact totals change with each disclosure, but the central fact does not: Republicans are funding a statewide heavyweight fight while Democrats are passing around a collection plate.

Bottom line, getting worked up about Marsha Blackburn three weeks before the primary is an exercise in futility.

I hate political anointments as much as the next guy. Voters deserve debates. They deserve detailed policy positions. They deserve something more substantial than fortune cookies, red hats and declarations about who loves Donald Trump the most.

But kicking and screaming works best before the ballots are printed.

At this juncture, the options have already been drastically narrowed.

That doesn’t mean you capitulate.

Just the opposite.

It means you fight for better candidates, stronger organizations and a Democratic Party capable of competing beyond Nashville and Memphis.

Starting right now.

JUST FOR THE RECORD

As I mentioned last week, Tennessee has updated its student report card with the 2025–2026 TCAP results.

Meh.

I’m not sure what the numbers mean—or what anybody is expected to do with the data—considering schools start back in roughly three weeks.

I don’t suspect many teachers are scrapping the lesson plans they spent the summer creating in order to rebuild everything around test results that arrived in the middle of July.

At best, these numbers are cocktail-party conversation fodder.

Though I must confess, I’ve never attended a social gathering among parents that involved an extended conversation about district-level proficiency rates.

Maybe I’m going to the wrong parties.

In case you are interested, the Tennessee Department of Education’s analysis tells us:

• In 30 districts, more than 50 percent of students met or exceeded expectations in all reported subjects.

• In another 78 districts, more than 40 percent met or exceeded expectations.

• A total of 86 districts increased proficiency rates in all reported subjects between 2024–2025 and 2025–2026.

• The dashboard currently includes English language arts, math and social studies. Science was excluded because it is in a standard-setting year.

Commissioner of Education Lizzette Reynolds celebrated the results:

“These district-level results showcase the commitment and hard work of Tennessee districts and educators in preparing students for success. By leveraging this data to guide decisions and strategic investments, Tennessee is prepared for the work that lies ahead as we continue to put our students first.”

Great.

The State Report Card can be found at ReportCard.TNedu.gov. Use the search bar in the upper-right corner to find your district, then select “2026 TCAP Results” from the menu.

If you are looking for individual student results, you’ll have to wait a little longer. The state says those will be available through the TCAP Family Portal later this month.

Because nothing says “actionable data” like delivering it after teachers have packed up their classrooms for summer.

MONEY IN, MONEY OUT

MNPS teachers are theoretically getting a raise.

The recently approved budget includes approximately $22 million for salary steps and cost-of-living adjustments—still short of what teachers requested.

The minimum salary for a full-time certified MNPS educator is now $53,610 for someone with a bachelor’s degree and $58,109 for someone with a master’s degree. That is moderately higher than Tennessee’s $50,000 minimum salary for a full-time teacher.

The MNPS budget includes $10.47 million to move eligible employees to their next salary step. All MNPS employees will also receive a 1.7 percent cost-of-living adjustment, costing approximately $11.7 million.

Health and pension expenses increased by another $15.38 million.

So while teachers may see a little more money printed on their paychecks, that doesn’t mean all of it will make it into their bank accounts.

Benefit costs are rising. Groceries are rising. Utilities are rising. Insurance is rising.

Nashville property taxes have risen as well. Mine increased by around $200. That’s fairly substantial, and it is worth remembering that the affordability problem doesn’t begin and end with teachers.

It affects bus drivers, cafeteria workers, paraprofessionals, police officers, firefighters, librarians and virtually every other city employee expected to serve Nashville while struggling to afford living anywhere near Nashville.

A 1.7 percent adjustment is better than nothing.

But “better than nothing” isn’t the same as keeping pace.

It ain’t cheap to live in Nashville.

It isn’t cheap to live in the surrounding counties either.

And unlike campaign money, nobody seems interested in raising $10 million to help the people actually doing the work.

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.

“you are brought face to face with the great question about the soccer coach: Does he really matter? It turns out that coaches or managers (call them what you like) simply don’t make that much difference.”
― Simon Kuper, Soccernomics: Why England Loses, Why Germany and Brazil Win, and Why the U.S., Japan, Australia, Turkey--and Even Iraq--Are Destined to Become the Kings of the World’s Most Popular Sport

Summer in Tennessee has become as predictable as humidity, backyard cookouts, and someone insisting they’ll finally clean out the garage.

It’s also the season when the state quietly releases standardized testing results.

The cynic in me has always believed that’s by design.

Families are on vacation. Kids are at baseball tournaments. Parents are trying to squeeze every last ounce out of summer before backpacks and alarm clocks return. It’s the perfect time to release information that otherwise might dominate the conversation for weeks.

For the most part, it works.

But my favorite part of the process isn’t the release itself.

It’s the week before.

Districts receive the results before the public does, ostensibly to verify data and prepare communications. In reality, it gives every communications department in the state an opportunity to build a narrative before anyone else sees the numbers.

Every quote has been polished.

Every press release has been reviewed.

Every talking point has been rehearsed.

By the time parents finally see the scores, they’re also handed the official interpretation.

That’s not transparency.

That’s marketing.

The Great Myth

The story almost always begins the same way.

“We’re pleased with our progress...”

“Our students showed growth...”

“We’re moving in the right direction...”

Sometimes that’s true.

Sometimes it isn’t.

But nearly every narrative rests on the same assumption:

Higher test scores equal a better school system.

Hold on.

That’s only true if the test is actually measuring everything that matters.

I’m still waiting for someone to convince me that it does.

Because here’s the uncomfortable truth.

Most of us have never actually seen the test.

Parents can’t review it.

Taxpayers can’t inspect it.

Community members can’t determine exactly what is—or isn’t—being measured.

Instead, we’re expected to trust experts who assure us everything is working exactly as intended.

Imagine trying to measure your house with a blank strip of wood.

You place it against the wall.

Someone takes it away.

A week later they return and tell you your living room is exactly 18 feet, 4 inches.

You ask how they know.

They explain they’re experts.

That’s essentially how standardized testing works.

The measurement is hidden.

The interpretation belongs to someone else.

The public simply accepts the result.

Speaking of Experts...

As a brief detour...

I’ve noticed we’re living in the golden age of experts.

This morning Yahoo featured an article explaining the mistakes travelers make in airport lounges—with advice from airport lounge experts.

Airport lounge experts.

I sat there for several minutes wondering how exactly one becomes certified in that field.

Do you spend enough time eating stale crackers and charging your phone beside strangers that eventually someone hands you a diploma?

Apparently everyone is an expert now.

Except parents.

Parents just get report cards.

The Numbers Tell a Different Story

This year’s TCAP results have produced the predictable headlines.

The Tennessee published an analysis that was notably less celebratory than many district press releases.

Their biggest discovery?

Affluent districts continue outperforming poorer districts.

Shocking.

Williamson County posted a 74% proficiency rate in Algebra II.

Humboldt City Schools posted 2%.

Geometry showed an even wider spread.

Williamson: 76%.

Humboldt: 2%.

Seventy-plus percentage points separate children attending schools in the same state.

That’s not merely an achievement gap.

That’s a resource gap.

An opportunity gap.

A reality gap.

Yet somehow we’re still pretending everyone starts from the same place.

The Swings That Should Raise Questions

Some of the biggest stories weren’t even the statewide averages.

They were the dramatic changes inside individual districts.

Pickett County experienced enormous gains.

Bells City saw dramatic declines.

Those kinds of swings should trigger investigation—not celebration or condemnation.

Because educational outcomes don’t usually change that dramatically overnight.

Context matters.

Did families move into the district?

Did instructional priorities change?

Was curriculum narrowed?

Were teachers reassigned?

Did leadership change?

Were students spending more time preparing specifically for the assessment?

Those are the questions worth asking.

Instead, we often stop at the percentages.

That’s dangerous.

Small Numbers Matter Differently

There’s another issue often ignored.

Scale.

If a small district has only 100 students and ten more fail to reach proficiency, that’s a ten-point swing.

Metro Nashville can add or lose hundreds of proficient students without seeing anything close to that kind of percentage movement simply because the denominator is so much larger.

Statistics without context create misleading conclusions.

Unfortunately, context rarely fits neatly into a headline.

Money Still Matters

Despite every political argument to the contrary...

Money matters.

Resources matter.

Teacher retention matters.

Stable housing matters.

Access to healthcare matters.

Family income matters.

Anyone arguing otherwise isn’t looking honestly at the data.

You simply cannot claim educational equity while simultaneously accepting seventy-point proficiency gaps between districts.

Those numbers demand more than applause or criticism.

They demand curiosity.

Test Scores Aren’t Really About Students

Here’s the uncomfortable part.

Too often, standardized testing has less to do with students than adults.

School boards.

Legislators.

Superintendents.

Political campaigns.

Funding decisions.

Media narratives.

Everyone wants the numbers to support their position.

Students become supporting actors in someone else’s story.

That’s backwards.

The TISA Conversation

Supporters of Tennessee’s new funding formula frequently point out that rural districts now receive additional weighted funding.

That’s true.

It’s also incomplete.

Every additional state investment requires local governments to contribute more.

How do counties raise additional revenue?

Taxes.

Communities with limited tax bases remain limited.

Good intentions don’t always produce equitable outcomes.

Policy is measured by implementation—not press releases.

Then There’s Lilith Pipkin

If you want an example of adults protecting systems instead of serving students, look no further than Antioch High School.

In 2025, Lilith Pipkin lost one of her closest friends when Josselin Corea Escalante was murdered during the Antioch school shooting.

That tragedy alone should permanently shape how adults viewed her.

Months later, while preparing for a JROTC meeting, Lilith overheard students discussing a gun.

She discovered a note warning students to leave school at 1:30 because someone supposedly had a gun.

She did exactly what we tell students they’re supposed to do.

She reported it.

Then everything unraveled.

According to reporting by The Tennesseean, administrators quickly shifted from thanking the student who reported the threat to treating her as the suspect.

She recalls being yelled at.

Threatened with jail.

Questioned for hours.

Police ultimately declined criminal charges.

The district expelled her anyway.

For twelve months.

Her father had only ten days to appeal.

Unable to immediately hire legal counsel, he spent those days simply trying to obtain evidence.

Afterward, he retained a forensic handwriting expert who concluded Lilith did not write the note.

Yet the expulsion remained.

Every Student Known?

MNPS proudly promotes the phrase:

Every Student Known.

It’s an admirable slogan.

Cases like this make it difficult to believe.

If your goal is serving students, shouldn’t every reasonable effort be made to correct mistakes?

Privacy laws certainly prevent districts from discussing disciplinary matters publicly.

They do not prevent districts from fixing them.

The Human Cost

There’s another question that rarely gets asked.

Even if Lilith ultimately returns to Antioch High School after her expulsion expires...

What does that return actually look like?

Can a teenager who publicly fought the district simply walk back into school as though nothing happened?

Relationships matter.

Trust matters.

School climate matters.

Public disputes leave scars.

The Contrast Is Hard to Ignore

Three months before the Antioch shooting, the eventual shooter reportedly pulled a box cutter on another student.

He received a brief suspension.

Lilith reports a threat.

She is expelled for a year.

I’m struggling to reconcile those responses.

Hindsight tells us the earlier incident deserved greater intervention.

I’m still searching for the tragedy prevented by removing Lilith from school.

We’ve Seen This Before

Unfortunately, this isn’t isolated.

A twelve-year-old MNPS student was temporarily jailed and expelled after reposting an online threat that he insisted he shared as a warning.

A similar case involving an autistic student in Wilson County resulted in litigation.

Different districts.

Different students.

Same pattern.

Adults prioritize institutional protection.

Students pay the price.

Adults Get Grace

Kids Don’t.

Which brings me to Tennessee’s teacher licensure changes.

The State Board is revising certification requirements.

Among the changes is allowing teacher candidates who pass portions of their licensing examination to retake only the sections they failed.

Supporters argue this isn’t lowering standards.

Candidates must still demonstrate competency in every required area.

Fair enough.

I actually agree.

But here’s my question.

Why doesn’t that same philosophy apply to students?

When students struggle on standardized tests, we rarely hear similar arguments.

Instead we hear lectures about accountability.

Rigor.

High expectations.

No shortcuts.

Apparently nuance exists for adults.

Not children.

Goodbye edTPA

Perhaps the most significant change is eliminating the edTPA requirement for many teacher candidates beginning July 1, 2026.

Professional Educators of Tennessee CEO JC Bowman explained the reasoning well.

After years of experience, policymakers concluded the assessment created significant expense and administrative burden without providing enough value.

Instead, Tennessee will rely more heavily on supervised clinical practice.

Teaching, after all, is learned inside classrooms—not portfolios.

That makes sense.

Real experience matters.

Observation matters.

Context matters.

Funny how quickly we recognize those truths for adults.

Sound Familiar?

If supervised experience tells us more about teachers than standardized portfolios...

Couldn’t the same argument be made about students?

Wouldn’t classroom performance, long-term growth, projects, writing, attendance, participation, resilience, curiosity, and critical thinking paint a fuller picture than a single assessment?

I think so.

I’m not suggesting we abandon testing.

Data has value.

I spend an unhealthy amount of time analyzing it.

But data is supposed to begin conversations—not end them.

Numbers are clues.

They’re not conclusions.

The Difference Between Data and Wisdom

One of the biggest mistakes education makes is confusing measurement with understanding.

Data tells us what happened.

It rarely tells us why.

That requires people.

Context.

Experience.

Questions.

Curiosity.

The danger isn’t collecting data.

The danger is worshipping it.

Final Thoughts

I don’t dislike data.

Far from it.

Anyone who has followed Dad Gone Wild knows I’ll happily spend hours buried in enrollment spreadsheets, funding reports, disciplinary records, and budget documents.

Data matters.

But it isn’t everything.

When numbers become more important than children...

When public relations become more important than transparency...

When institutions become more important than individuals...

We’ve lost the plot.

Education should never become an exercise in protecting narratives.

Its purpose is preparing kids for life.

Everything else is secondary.

So yes...

Release the scores.

Publish the spreadsheets.

Celebrate success.

Own failure.

But don’t ever confuse a percentage with a child.

Because unlike standardized tests...

Kids are more than numbers.

“Politics is like dice: the better the player, the worse the man.”
― C.J. Sansom, Heartstone

The Fourth of July has always been my favorite holiday.

Growing up, it marked the unofficial beginning of summer, when city folks would begin their annual migration to our little summer hideaway. For a kid, there wasn’t much more you could ask for. Days were spent swimming until your fingers wrinkled, eating far too many hot dogs and hamburgers, celebrating the birth of my favorite nation, and waiting for darkness so the fireworks could begin.

To me, it was always a pure holiday.

No agendas.

No speeches.

Just family, friends, neighbors, and the celebration of the greatest experiment in self-government the world has ever known.

There is a time and a place to debate America’s failures. Lord knows we have them. Like every family, every community, and every person, this country is imperfect.

The Fourth of July ain’t it.

It would be like throwing someone a birthday party only to spend the afternoon reminding everyone about the time they cheated on their spouse, skipped volunteering at the local food bank, or lied to their boss.

“Hey, remember that time you...”

You get the picture.

There are 364 other days each year to argue politics, revisit history, and debate where America has fallen short.

The Fourth is about gratitude.

It’s about neighbors gathering around backyard grills.

It’s about children running through sprinklers while adults argue over whether charcoal still beats propane.

It’s about small-town parades, American flags hanging from front porches, and fireworks that somehow never get old.

Most of all, it’s about remembering what we value.

I hope y’all have a fantastic holiday, whether you’re spending it at the beach, in the backyard, on the lake, or downtown watching the fireworks.

Eat an extra burger for me.

Or, if you absolutely must...

...a black bean burger.

Holidays have a funny way of reminding us what matters.

Politics does too.

Every budget.

Every appointment.

Every policy decision.

Every campaign promise.

Eventually they all answer the same question:

What do we value?

Over the past month, Tennessee has provided several fascinating answers.

Some have come from candidates running for governor.

Some have come from one of the state’s most influential education organizations.

Some have come from Metro Nashville Public Schools.

And while they may appear to be separate stories, they all point to the same larger question:

Who is really keeping score in Tennessee education?

July also marks the point when campaign season begins shifting into high gear.

Here in Tennessee, however, “campaign” may be giving this governor’s race more credit than it deserves.

Right now, it feels more like a coronation than a contest.

On the Republican side, Senator Marsha Blackburn continues to enjoy a comfortable double-digit lead over Monty Fritts and Jim Rose. Unless something dramatic changes, neither challenger appears positioned to make this particularly competitive.

Democrats, meanwhile, appear ready to nominate Memphis City Councilwoman Jerri Green.

Once again, Tennessee Democrats seem more interested in explaining why they can’t win statewide elections than figuring out how to win them.

That may sound harsh.

But elections are about persuasion.

Politics is perception.

And right or wrong, Memphis continues to struggle with its image across much of Tennessee. Recent census estimates showed it was the only major city in the state losing population. Its school district is now operating under a newly created state oversight board.

Fair or unfair, those realities shape how voters think.

So if you’re trying to persuade voters in East Tennessee, Middle Tennessee, or suburban counties surrounding Nashville, beginning with a candidate whose political identity is closely tied to Memphis presents an uphill climb.

Yet here we are again.

The governor’s race matters for reasons extending well beyond the Governor’s Mansion.

Whoever wins will almost certainly appoint Tennessee’s next Commissioner of Education.

That single appointment could influence education policy for years.

The last four commissioners have all emerged from the same general education reform ecosystem, with connections to Jeb Bush’s ExcelinEd and Chiefs for Change.

Maybe that’s coincidence.

Maybe it isn’t.

This year, however, something feels different.

If you want to understand where Tennessee education policy may be headed next, don’t just watch the governor’s race.

Watch the organizations helping shape the governor’s choices.

Near the center of that conversation sits the State Collaborative on Reforming Education.

Most people simply know it as SCORE.

Founded in 2009 by former U.S. Senator Bill Frist, SCORE describes its mission as improving education from kindergarten through career. It researches education policy, advocates for teachers, publishes reports, and promotes statewide initiatives designed to improve student achievement.

All of which sounds very good...

...if you say it fast.

Over the last decade and a half, SCORE has quietly become one of the most influential education organizations in Tennessee despite never appearing on a ballot.

The organization has championed the Science of Reading, standardized testing, teacher effectiveness measures, and major changes to school funding.

At times, SCORE has functioned almost like a de facto Department of Education. For several years, it even funded a position within the Tennessee Department of Education itself.

Why one private nonprofit enjoys that singular privilege has always struck me as a fair question.

SCORE also enjoys reminding Tennesseans that our state became the fastest-improving education system in the country based on National Assessment of Educational Progress scores.

That’s true.

It also happened nearly fifteen years ago.

Education, much like baseball, eventually asks the same question.

What have you done lately?

SCORE recently highlighted this statistic:

“In 2009, Tennessee ranked 11th out of 14 Southern states and 41st nationally using the same methodology. By 2024, it ranked first in the South and 17th in the nation.”

That’s real progress.

No one should deny it.

But let’s also recognize the timeline.

It took roughly fifteen years to climb twenty-three places nationally.

At that pace, should we expect another fifteen years before reaching the top five?

More importantly...

Are we measuring the right things?

That’s the question almost nobody in education wants to ask.

Doing well on a standardized assessment doesn’t automatically mean students are receiving the best possible education.

It means they’re doing well on that assessment.

Those aren’t necessarily the same thing.

We’re living through one of the biggest technological revolutions in modern history.

Artificial intelligence is transforming workplaces.

Automation is reshaping industries.

Many of the jobs today’s kindergarten students will eventually hold don’t even exist yet.

Shouldn’t we at least ask whether our measures of educational success need to evolve alongside the world our students are inheriting?

Imagine evaluating schools during the Industrial Revolution by celebrating how well students performed on tests measuring agricultural skills.

Would anyone have considered that the gold standard for educational success?

Of course not.

A truly great education system prepares students for the future they’ll inherit—not simply the test they’ll take.

One thing standardized testing is exceptionally good at, however...

...is attracting money.

Over the years, SCORE has generated millions of dollars in private support while positioning itself as one of Tennessee’s leading education policy organizations.

The Bill Gates Foundation has been one of SCORE’s major financial supporters over the past decade. In June 2026, the Foundation awarded SCORE $412,500 in general operating support over a six-month period.

To be clear, there is nothing improper about private foundations supporting education organizations.

Philanthropy has long played an important role in American education.

The question isn’t whether the Gates Foundation can support SCORE.

Of course it can.

The question is whether organizations receiving substantial private funding should wield the level of influence they currently do over public education policy without the same public accountability required of elected officials.

Money doesn’t automatically buy influence.

But it certainly buys access.

And when the same organization receiving significant philanthropic support is helping shape statewide policy, funding positions within the Tennessee Department of Education, and seeing its leadership appointed to influential oversight boards, it’s reasonable to ask just how much influence unelected organizations should have over Tennessee’s public schools.

Take SCORE CEO David Mansouri.

Despite never having earned a degree in education—I think he majored in piccolo—and never having worked in a public school, Mansouri recently found himself appointed to the newly created Memphis Schools Oversight Board by House Speaker Cameron Sexton.

There is nothing improper about the appointment.

But there is certainly something worth examining.

After all, Mansouri lives in Nashville, not Memphis.

So why him?

Hmmm...

Consider a couple of things.

State Representative Mark White, the longtime chairman of the House Education Committee, has maintained a close relationship with SCORE for years. White also serves on the governing board for the National Assessment of Educational Progress—the same assessment SCORE frequently points to as evidence of Tennessee’s educational success.

Do I know exactly how Mansouri’s appointment came about?

No.

What I do know is Tennessee education has become a remarkably small world.

The same organizations.

The same foundations.

The same policy circles.

The same names.

Eventually you begin asking whether these are truly independent voices or simply different seats around the same table.

It’s also worth looking at who occupies those seats.

SCORE’s board includes longtime lobbyist Chuck Cagle, former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Hyde Foundation leader Barbara Hyde, Ballad Health CEO Alan Levine, Scarlett Family Foundation President Tara Scarlett, and Dee Haslam, wife of former Governor Bill Haslam.

That’s an impressive collection of leaders.

It’s also an extraordinarily influential one.

It’s worth remembering that Governor Haslam recently appeared before the Metro Nashville Board of Education in support of Superintendent Adrienne Battle. Education has long been a priority for the Haslam family, and their continued involvement is hardly a secret.

Another observation.

If you’re keeping SCORE—pun fully intended—the organization’s sixteen-member board currently includes one Hispanic member and two Black members while advising education policy in a state where roughly 37 percent of public school students are children of color.

Whether readers find that meaningful is up to them.

I simply think it’s a question worth asking.

By now you’re probably thinking:

“That’s all interesting, TC, but what does any of it actually mean?”

Fair question.

Here’s why I think it matters.

Early indications suggest Tennessee’s next Commissioner of Education could emerge from recommendations made by—or closely associated with—the same education policy network SCORE has helped cultivate.

One name continues surfacing in those conversations.

Knox County Schools Superintendent Dr. Jon Rysewyk.

Rysewyk assumed the superintendent’s role in June 2022 after serving as the district’s Chief Academic Officer. By most traditional accountability measures, he’s earned a solid reputation. Knox County has improved academically, and supporters point to rising assessment scores as evidence his instructional strategies are working.

That’s certainly part of the story.

Managing a school district, however, requires much more than improving test scores.

Eventually every superintendent runs into the same reality.

Budgets.

And budgets have a funny way of exposing strengths and weaknesses standardized tests never reveal.

Knox County Schools recently announced a revised budget after local and state funding changes created a $7.8 million shortfall for the 2026-27 school year.

The explanation deserves attention because it illustrates exactly how Tennessee’s new education funding formula works.

As Dr. Rysewyk explained:

“Fiscal capacity is basically the state looking at different counties and saying, ‘What is their potential to pay?’ What they did in April was they readjusted that and basically said they believe Knox County has the ability to contribute more at the local level—and so they withheld more of the state dollars that we would have gotten.”

That’s not just a Knox County story.

That’s a Tennessee story.

When lawmakers replaced the Basic Education Program with TISA, supporters emphasized the formula’s “hold harmless” provision. Districts were promised they wouldn’t immediately lose state funding during the transition.

That promise was true.

It just wasn’t forever.

Eventually districts begin living under TISA as it was actually designed.

When the state concludes a county has a greater ability to raise local revenue, state dollars can decrease.

Somebody has to make up the difference.

Sometimes that’s county government.

Sometimes it’s local taxpayers.

Sometimes it’s school districts reducing services.

Often it’s a combination of all three.

Several smaller districts have already begun feeling that pressure.

More likely will.

None of this should surprise anyone.

Many of these concerns were raised before TISA was ever adopted.

It’s also worth remembering one more thing.

SCORE wasn’t simply observing that debate.

It was one of TISA’s strongest advocates.

Which brings us back to Nashville.

Metro Council recently approved a forensic audit of Metro Nashville Public Schools.

Frankly...

It’s overdue.

Whether that audit uncovers widespread problems or simply confirms everything has been handled appropriately, taxpayers deserve the answers.

When you’re entrusted with well over a billion dollars in public money, transparency shouldn’t be optional.

It should be expected.

Council also directed MNPS to contribute approximately $470,000 toward paying for the audit.

That raises an interesting question.

Can Metro Council actually tell an independently elected school board how to spend its money?

Many of Nashville’s newer residents probably assume the answer is yes.

The Metro Charter says otherwise.

When Metropolitan Government was created, its architects intentionally established an independent Board of Public Education. The idea was simple.

City Hall funds the schools.

The school board governs them.

The mayor proposes education funding.

Metro Council approves the budget.

The Board of Education operates the district.

Those lines were drawn intentionally to keep day-to-day politics out of public education.

Reality, however, has become a little blurrier.

Over the past several years, Superintendent Adrienne Battle has increasingly allowed City Hall to become involved in decisions that traditionally belonged to the district.

The clearest example came last year when MNPS adjusted school start times to help facilitate one of Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s transportation initiatives.

Whether you supported that decision isn’t really the point.

The point is precedent.

Once you voluntarily invite political influence into operational decisions, it becomes much harder later to argue politicians should stay outside the fence.

So I’m genuinely curious.

What legal mechanism requires MNPS to spend nearly half a million dollars on this audit?

Could the district refuse?

Could the school board simply tell Metro Council to pound sand?

Perhaps.

Although I suspect no one wants to pick a budget fight with the body approving hundreds of millions of dollars in local education funding.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume Council’s directive stands.

MNPS needed to find $470,000.

The district’s solution?

Eliminate a proposed pre-kindergarten program serving the Hillwood cluster.

Think about that.

The audit didn’t eliminate pre-K.

A budget decision did.

School board member Rachel Elrod acknowledged exactly what happened.

As Tennessean columnist Andrea Williams reported:

“Those are priorities for the board, but it has not been the main priority of the board. And the main priority of our board has always been employee compensation.”

I appreciate the honesty.

At least now everyone understands the priorities.

Andrea Williams went a step further.

She wrote:

“It’s a trick of modern industry—and education is a capital-I industry—to create a false sense of scarcity that convinces poorly paid underlings to fight for scraps while well-paid administrators...sit back and watch it all play out.”

She then asked the question many taxpayers are probably asking themselves:

“After all, if MNPS money is so tight, and early childhood education is on the line, do central office employees who already make $100-, $150- or $200,000 a year need an annual step increase, every year?”

Finally:

“Since the board just doled out a historic settlement, as well as $165,000 for Battle’s office suite remodel, could they have peeled away the $470,000 audit fee from the top of the organizational chart, instead of taking from the students at the bottom?”

Those are fair questions.

Personally, I know where I might have started looking.

Principals and central office administrators recently returned from a three-day leadership retreat in Louisville.

Leadership retreats have value.

Professional development has value.

The question is whether those expenditures should outrank expanding access to early childhood education when dollars become scarce.

Sometimes leadership isn’t about finding more money.

Sometimes it’s about deciding what matters most.

Because budgets reveal priorities.

Not mission statements.

Not strategic plans.

Not PowerPoint presentations.

Budgets.

There is rarely a discussion about MNPS’s disappointing proficiency rates that doesn’t eventually circle back to early childhood education.

District leaders routinely remind us that children who start behind often spend years trying to catch up.

They’re right.

Which makes the Hillwood decision even more revealing.

When forced to choose, the board protected one priority by sacrificing another.

Whether you agree with that decision or not, at least now everyone understands the order of priorities.

And perhaps that’s the larger lesson running throughout this entire column.

The governor’s race.

SCORE.

The Gates Foundation.

TISA.

The Metro Charter.

The forensic audit.

The Hillwood pre-K program.

They may sound like separate stories.

They’re really the same story.

Who decides what matters?

Mission statements tell us what organizations hope we’ll believe.

Budgets tell us what they actually believe.

If you want to understand education in Tennessee, don’t just follow the speeches.

Don’t just follow the politics.

And don’t just follow the test scores.

Follow the money.

You’ll learn who’s really Keeping SCORE.

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Two weeks ago today I was sitting in the bleachers watching my son’s baseball game.

The game had ended, parents were beginning to drift toward the parking lot, and we were making our way down the bleachers to meet up with the boys. It was one of those completely ordinary moments that make up most of life. Nothing memorable. Nothing remarkable.

Then, for just a second, I got distracted.

I missed the last step.

Gravity did what gravity has done since the beginning of time, and 235 pounds of middle-aged dad slammed squarely into the steel railing behind the backstop.

There isn’t an elegant way to describe what came next.

The wind left my body instantly. If you’ve ever had the breath knocked out of you, you know that terrifying feeling where your lungs simply refuse to cooperate. Your brain is screaming, “Breathe!” while your body is busy pretending it has never heard of oxygen.

Eventually, the air came back.

The embarrassment arrived first.

Because once you reach your fifties, falling in public isn’t just painful—it becomes a public event.

The first thing you do isn’t check to see if you’re injured.

You look around to see who witnessed your humiliation.

I dusted myself off, assured everyone I was fine, and walked to the car convinced I’d be sore for a few days.

After all, dads don’t get hurt.

We get “a little banged up.”

The next morning was painful.

Everything hurt.

Rolling over in bed hurt.

Standing up hurt.

Laughing hurt.

Breathing hurt.

Still, I had a wedding to bartend.

Anyone who’s worked weddings knows there really isn’t much room for calling in sick. Brides generally aren’t interested in hearing that the bartender’s ribs are a little cranky.

So I loaded the van, showed up, smiled for eight hours, mixed drinks, shook cocktails, carried ice, and somehow convinced myself everything would work itself out.

That’s one of the great lies middle-aged men tell themselves.

“It’ll be fine.”

Usually accompanied by another classic:

“I don’t need to see a doctor.”

By Monday evening, even I had to admit this wasn’t getting better.

Every breath seemed a little shorter.

Every movement hurt a little more.

Sleeping had become an exercise in creative positioning.

Just down the road from my house sits one of those brand-new neighborhood emergency rooms.

My plan was simple.

Slip in.

Get an X-ray.

Have somebody tell me I bruised a rib.

Pick up a prescription.

Go home.

Be in bed by ten o’clock.

You know what they say about the best laid plans.

Within an hour I wasn’t headed home.

I was headed to TriStar Skyline Trauma Center.

The scans revealed two broken ribs and a rather significant hemothorax. Blood had begun collecting around my lung.

Apparently, falling down bleachers is a little more complicated at fifty-something than it was at fifteen.

The trauma team moved quickly.

Doctors calmly explained they needed to make an incision in my side and insert a chest tube to drain the blood.

Five minutes earlier I thought I needed an X-ray.

Now I had plumbing.

It’s amazing how quickly life adjusts your expectations.

Just like that, my quick trip to the emergency room became a five-day stay in the trauma unit.

I’ve spent the better part of the last decade writing about education.

Politics.

School boards.

Government.

Media.

People telling carefully crafted stories that don’t always match reality.

If you’re not careful, you can become cynical.

Maybe even a little jaded.

Spend enough time reading social media and cable news and you begin believing America is nothing more than people yelling at each other.

Everybody’s angry.

Everybody’s offended.

Everybody’s convinced the other side is destroying the country.

Then life has a funny way of forcing you outside your own little bubble.

Lying in a trauma unit for five days gave me a front-row seat to a different America.

One you rarely hear about.

Trauma nurses.

Respiratory therapists.

Patient care technicians.

Housekeeping staff.

Doctors.

People whose names you’ll never know but whose work matters every single day.

There isn’t a glamorous thing about what they do.

Television has completely lied to us.

Hospital dramas somehow manage to make nursing look exciting.

Reality looks a little different.

Reality is twelve-hour shifts.

Reality is cleaning blood.

Reality is cleaning vomit.

Reality is cleaning things I won’t mention because some of you are probably eating breakfast.

Reality is helping complete strangers through the worst day of their lives.

Over and over again.

For twelve straight hours.

I watched these nurses move from room to room without ever really stopping.

There were no extended coffee breaks.

No gathering around the water cooler to debate Taylor Swift’s latest appearance at Tight End University.

No disappearing into the office for an hour.

Just constant motion.

Blankets.

Medication.

Bandages.

Questions.

Families.

Monitors.

Call lights.

One patient after another.

Hour after hour.

And somehow...

They smiled.

Not fake smiles.

Real ones.

The kind that make frightened people feel like everything might actually be okay.

I found myself watching them more than I watched television.

There was something remarkable about the quiet professionalism.

Nobody was looking for applause.

Nobody was updating social media.

Nobody was issuing a press release celebrating another record-setting day.

They simply did the work.

At one point I finally asked my nurse a question that had been bouncing around in my head for days.

“Why in God’s name would you want this job?”

She laughed.

Then she explained.

She talked about helping people.

Being present for families.

Making a difference on someone’s worst day.

Despite her best efforts...

I’m still not sure I completely understand.

Because if you gave me a choice between cleaning trauma rooms or breaking up an argument between fraternity brothers over who drank the last bottle of Tito’s...

I’m probably choosing the fraternity.

But Lord am I grateful people like her exist.

They reminded me of something I’ve slowly forgotten.

The America portrayed every night on television isn’t the only America.

There is another one.

One where people quietly go to work every day.

One where strangers sacrifice for strangers.

One where service still matters.

One where humanity takes precedence over ideology.

That entire week...

Not one person asked me if I voted for Donald Trump.

Not one person asked whether I supported Joe Biden.

Nobody asked about immigration.

Nobody asked where I stood on vouchers.

Nobody wanted my opinion on the latest Supreme Court ruling.

Nobody cared.

They wanted to know one thing.

Was I breathing?

Funny how quickly politics disappears when someone is trying to keep your lung inflated.

There’s probably a lesson in that.

One we could all stand to remember.

Today I’m home.

Still sore.

Recovery is going to take a while.

Broken ribs are patient teachers.

Every cough gets your attention.

Every sneeze becomes a religious experience.

Sleeping remains something of a competitive sport.

But I also came home with something I wasn’t expecting.

A renewed appreciation for the people who quietly keep this country running.

To every trauma nurse...

Every respiratory therapist...

Every patient care technician...

Every doctor...

Thank you.

You have my complete respect.

Though if you don’t mind...

I’m going to go back to admiring you from afar.

I’d really prefer not to see any of you again.

That hospital stay also gave me plenty of time to think.

Unfortunately...

That means all of you now have to read it.

I’ve always said that he who controls the cut scores controls the narrative.

It’s a principle that continues to prove itself year after year.

Imagine I walked into your workplace tomorrow and announced we’d developed a brand-new evaluation system.

Every employee would be judged by it.

Raises would depend on it.

Promotions would depend on it.

Bonuses would depend on it.

Job assignments would depend on it.

There would be only one catch.

You’d never actually get to see the assessment.

We’d administer it behind closed doors.

Disappear for a month.

Then come back and tell you how you did.

“Congratulations. You exceeded expectations.”

Or maybe...

“You need improvement.”

Either way, you’d never know why.

You couldn’t review the questions.

You couldn’t challenge the grading.

You couldn’t compare your answers with anyone else’s.

You’d simply have to trust us.

Most of you would laugh us right out of the building.

Yet that’s essentially how we continue to evaluate schools and students.

Every summer we’re handed another collection of charts and graphs.

Press releases proclaim “historic gains.”

Districts celebrate “record-breaking achievement.”

Politicians congratulate one another on “bold leadership.”

Meanwhile, the actual assessment remains largely hidden from the people whose lives are shaped by it.

The public is expected to applaud from a distance.

Just trust us.

This week, state and district leaders received the latest TCAP results before the public did, giving everyone time to prepare their talking points before parents ever saw a headline.

And, as if on cue...

Everything was wonderful

According to the Tennessee Department of Education, third-grade English Language Arts proficiency reached its highest level since at least 2017. Third-grade ELA proficiency increased by 3.2 percentage points from last year. Eighth-grade ELA climbed 2.7 points. English II rose 3.8 points. Fourth-grade math increased 3.6 points, and high school Geometry jumped an impressive 5.6 points.

Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds celebrated the results.

“I am very proud of our gains in student achievement, highlighting our success in implementing strategies that elevate learning across all grades and subjects. This continued progress ensures every Tennessee student has the opportunity to succeed.”

That’s the part that always catches my attention.

Our success.

Our strategies.

Our implementation.

Education bureaucracies are remarkably eager to take credit for improved scores.

But here’s my question.

How exactly do we know which strategy produced which result?

Schools are enormously complicated organizations.

Student learning is influenced by parents, teachers, attendance, poverty, curriculum, tutoring, technology, discipline, motivation, nutrition, sleep, class size, school leadership, and about a thousand other variables.

How do you isolate one variable and confidently proclaim:

“This is why scores improved.”

The honest answer is...

You really can’t.

Yet every summer we hear the same carefully crafted story.

The strategy worked.

Leadership worked.

The plan worked.

Mission accomplished.

Read the quotes attached to these results and one thing becomes abundantly clear.

Everybody already knows who’s getting the credit.

Chelsea Crawford, Executive Director of TennesseeCAN, put it this way:

“Once again, Tennessee is proving that meaningful progress is possible when leaders stay relentlessly focused on measurable student learning. Our students can and will achieve at high levels when we set high expectations, measure learning honestly, and refuse to lower the bar.”

Well...

Thank goodness we have those leaders.

Over at Metro Nashville Public Schools, it was more of the same.

According to the district, this year’s results prove that the momentum is “real, sustained, and undeniable.”

The district highlighted gains in English Language Arts, mathematics, and social studies.

Social Studies jumped 4.1 percentage points.

English II increased 6.5 points.

Integrated Math III climbed an eye-popping 7.9 points.

The district also noted that MNPS outpaced the state in several tested subjects.

Then came the quote everyone expected.

“Our success is undeniable, and it belongs to our students and the educators who believe in them. By staying focused on improving the conditions for teaching and learning, we are giving our students the support they need to thrive. Building on last year’s record results, these gains reflect the determination of our students and their families, the dedication of our teachers, and a community committed to excellence. We could not be prouder, and we are just getting started.” — Dr. Adrienne Battle

Maybe she’s right.

I sincerely hope she is.

Every child in Nashville deserves an outstanding education.

But here’s where I continue to struggle.

How do we know?

Not how do we know the scores increased.

We know they did.

How do we know the scores tell the entire story they’re being asked to tell?

Those are two completely different questions.

Maybe these gains represent genuine improvements in student learning.

Maybe they don’t.

Maybe they’re somewhere in between.

The point isn’t that the numbers are wrong.

The point is that the public has almost no ability to independently verify the narrative built around them.

We’re simply told to believe.

Trust us.

It reminded me of my week in the trauma unit.

Nobody asked me to trust blindly.

When they inserted a chest tube, they explained exactly why.

When they ordered another CT scan, they showed me the images.

When my lung improved, they showed me the X-rays.

Transparency builds confidence.

Education too often asks for confidence without transparency.

That may explain why Metro Council recently approved the district’s $1.437 billion budget while simultaneously insisting on something many people inside the district apparently found offensive.

An independent performance audit.

Think about that for a second.

The largest single investment Metro makes each year.

Nearly a billion and a half dollars.

The last operational and performance audit was conducted in 2014.

Twelve years ago.

Since then, district enrollment has declined while the budget has nearly doubled.

If you’re a taxpayer, asking a few questions seems perfectly reasonable.

Metro Council Budget Committee Vice Chair Jason Spain certainly thought so.

“This is the largest single investment that Metro makes, and I think it’s incumbent upon us to make sure that we are seeing a return on that investment,” Spain said. “What we hear from the school board is all about growth: TVAAS level five growth for four years running, and historic highs, and graduation rates, and ACT scores, which is all great and worth celebrating. It absolutely is, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. I want to see not just comparisons to where we’ve been, but comparisons to where we should be.”

There it is.

That’s the conversation we should be having.

Notice what Spain didn’t say.

He didn’t dismiss the district’s accomplishments.

He didn’t accuse anyone of manipulating scores.

He didn’t suggest teachers weren’t working hard.

In fact, he explicitly said those accomplishments were “worth celebrating.”

His point was something entirely different.

Growth matters.

Progress matters.

But growth alone doesn’t answer the bigger question.

Are we where we should be?

If I make a 40 on a test one year and a 50 the next, I’ve unquestionably improved.

I’ve also still failed.

Context matters.

That’s why performance audits matter.

They’re not designed to erase success.

They’re designed to determine whether the success we’re celebrating matches the investment taxpayers are making.

Those two ideas aren’t mutually exclusive.

In fact, they should go hand in hand.

The response from the school board surprised me.

MNPS Budget Committee Chair Berthena Nabaa-McKinney told The Nashville Banner:

“It blindsided all of us as a board. It blindsided district leadership. To this day we still don’t have a clear explanation of what the goals or objectives are.”

Then came the discussion over how to fund the district’s portion of the audit.

After lengthy debate, the board chose to eliminate funding for the Hillwood Early Learning Center.

A budget item that directly impacts children.

That certainly was a choice.

Personally...

I might have started somewhere else.

Maybe the travel budget.

Maybe conferences.

Maybe administrative spending.

Maybe some of those professional learning trips that somehow always seem to involve hotels in another city.

Call me old-fashioned, but if I’m looking for less than one-half of one percent of a $1.437 billion budget, my first instinct probably isn’t to begin with services for children.

Spain noticed the same thing.

“It’s concerning that they couldn’t find a way to find less than four hundredths of 1 percent of their budget without impacting services to students, and that’s sort of the point of the audit. I think pre-K is a good use of those funds. ... I know they place a great emphasis on supporting their employees, and that’s incredibly important. They had other options available to them.”

He wasn’t finished.

“They didn’t raise an eyebrow at [the legal settlement] and apparently found a way to pay for that without impacting services to students. They spent $165,000 on a bathroom renovation, and that’s fine if they’ve got the funding available to do it, but the point is those types of expenses didn’t give them pause or cause them to make cuts to programs that serve our students, so I don’t see why it was necessary that this one did.”

Council Budget Chair Kyonzté Toombs largely agreed.

She questioned whether the district had dug deeply enough to identify the approximately $470,000 it needed without reducing services to students.

Personally, I look forward to seeing the audit.

Not because I’m convinced it’s going to uncover some earth-shattering scandal.

Maybe it will.

Maybe it won’t.

But transparency has a funny way of building confidence.

If everything is working as well as we’re told, then an independent audit should reinforce that story.

If improvements are needed, taxpayers deserve to know that too.

Either outcome is a win.

Because accountability isn’t the enemy of public education.

It’s one of the things that makes public education worthy of the public’s trust.

Quick Hits

Williamson County

Longtime Williamson County Schools Superintendent Jason Golden has announced his resignation just days after receiving a new contract. He’ll become Associate Director of Finance, Administration, and Legal Services for the Franklin Special District. Williamson County now begins another superintendent search. If I were advising MNPS, I’d encourage Deputy Superintendent Mason Bellamy to throw his hat into the ring. It gets him his first superintendent’s job, gives Williamson County an experienced administrator, and provides a little organizational clarity back in Nashville. Everybody wins. Well...maybe not everybody.

MNPS

Chief Strategy Officer Sarah Chin is expected to leave the district at the end of July. Whether the rumors about her influence are true or not, losing your chief strategist is never insignificant. It’ll be worth watching who Dr. Battle chooses to fill one of the most important positions in the district.

Five days in a trauma unit reminded me of something I’d forgotten.

There are still people who quietly go to work every day without demanding applause.

They don’t issue press releases.

They don’t hold victory laps.

They don’t proclaim “historic achievements.”

They simply do hard things for complete strangers.

They earn trust one patient at a time.

Education could learn something from that.

Trust isn’t built with slogans.

It isn’t built with glossy reports.

It isn’t built by declaring your own success.

It’s built through transparency.

It’s built through accountability.

It’s built by inviting people to look under the hood instead of asking them to admire the paint job.

Broken ribs heal.

Mine will.

Eventually.

Broken trust?

That takes a whole lot longer.

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And remember..

.

“It seems a universal rule in this world that people will always look for victims and scapegoats, does it not? Especially at times of difficulty and tension.”
― C.J. Sansom, Dissolution

Remember that old lyric, “It’s summertime and the living is easy?”

Whoever wrote that clearly didn’t have teenagers.

Summer used to mean a slower pace. School was out. The alarm clock got a break. Families took vacations. Kids disappeared until dark and somehow survived without location sharing, Life360, or a parent tracking their every move through three different apps.

Not anymore.

These days summer feels less like a season and more like a second job.

I’ve got a daughter heading into her senior year who is spending June doing college prep, meeting with tutors, squeezing every possible point out of the ACT, and trying to navigate a process that somehow gets more complicated every year.

I’ve got a son entering what could be the most important stretch of his athletic career. June means baseball. June means football. June means camps, workouts, throwing programs, travel schedules, and dreams of what might happen after high school.

And while families are trying to keep all those plates spinning, policymakers are hard at work.

Summer, after all, is when the students disappear.

No students means fewer distractions.

No students means fewer parents paying attention.

No students means lawmakers, administrators, consultants, and education experts can gather in conference rooms and retreats across the state and cook up their newest ideas about how schools should operate.

Some of those ideas are good.

Some are questionable.

And some make me long for the simplicity of a one-room schoolhouse.

Before I dive into the latest round of educational shenanigans, let me restate a few principles I’ve developed over the past decade writing this blog.

They’re not revolutionary.

In fact, they’re remarkably simple.

Which is probably why they’re ignored so often.

The Relationship Is Everything

The single most important factor in a student’s educational experience is the relationship between a student and a teacher.

Not a test score.

Not a curriculum map.

Not a strategic plan.

Not a consultant’s PowerPoint presentation.

A relationship.

Everything else flows from that.

If a policy strengthens that relationship, it’s worth considering.

If a policy weakens that relationship, it belongs in the trash.

That’s the lens through which I view virtually every education proposal that comes across my desk.

The second principle is equally straightforward.

Teachers cannot be effective without effective administrators.

And effective administrators understand who they work for.

Far too many school leaders believe their primary responsibility is protecting the Director of Schools.

That’s backwards.

Completely backwards.

The principal’s job is to support teachers.

To remove obstacles.

To create conditions where teachers can build relationships with students.

To establish an environment where learning can occur.

The moment administrators become more concerned about protecting central office than protecting classrooms, the entire system begins to break down.

The third principle is one policymakers continually struggle to understand.

Children are not empty containers waiting for adults to pour knowledge into them.

Kids have their own interests.

Their own motivations.

Their own agendas.

Ignore those realities at your own peril.

The fastest way to lose a classroom is to assume students exist solely to absorb whatever adults have decided is important.

Education requires engagement.

Engagement requires connection.

Connection requires listening.

Yet many education initiatives seem designed around the exact opposite philosophy.

The Myth of Expertise

One of my personal struggles is deciding how much value to place on reading about something versus actually doing it.

I love reading.

Always have.

But reading can be deceptive.

Reading about baseball doesn’t make you a baseball player.

Reading about parenting doesn’t make you a parent.

Reading about education doesn’t make you an educator.

Experience matters.

Failure matters.

Trial and error matter.

The lessons learned from doing something are fundamentally different than the lessons learned from reading about it.

Unfortunately, a lot of education policy gets crafted by people who mistake information for experience.

That’s how we end up with adults who haven’t spent meaningful time in classrooms confidently telling teachers how classrooms should operate.

It’s how we end up with policies that sound good in interviews but fall apart in practice.

Which brings us to State Representative Scott Cepicky.

Defining “Winning”

This week Cepicky sat down with The Tennessee Star to discuss education priorities.

Let me be clear.

I genuinely like Scott Cepicky.

I think he’s thoughtful.

I think he cares.

I think he works harder than most legislators to understand education issues.

Those qualities matter.

Good intentions matter.

But good people can still arrive at conclusions I disagree with.

During the interview Cepicky said:

“It’s about winning, right? And we have to win with our kids.”

That sounds great.

The problem is nobody ever defines what winning means.

Because that’s where things get complicated.

In education circles, winning almost always means test scores.

Your scores are higher than my scores.

Therefore you win.

I understand the appeal.

It’s measurable.

It’s quantifiable.

It’s easy to place on a chart.

But it also misses a lot.

Standardized tests capture a single moment.

One day.

One snapshot.

One measurement.

Nothing more.

Imagine applying that logic to sports.

If Ja Morant outscores LeBron James in a game, does that make Morant the better player?

Of course not.

That would be ridiculous.

Yet we routinely make similar assumptions in education.

A single data point becomes evidence of success or failure.

An entire narrative gets built around one measurement.

Education should be less about winning and more about serving.

I don’t particularly care whether Tennessee scores higher than Oklahoma.

I care whether Tennessee students are being served.

Those aren’t always the same thing.

The Rankings Game

Cepicky also noted:

“We were 47th in education. We’re now 22nd.”

That statement gets repeated often.

And maybe it’s true depending on which ranking system you’re using.

But rankings deserve healthy skepticism.

Because rankings are often less about reality and more about methodology.

One organization says you’re 22nd.

Another says you’re 31st.

A third says you’re 18th.

Everyone grabs the number that makes them look best.

The more interesting discussion involves literacy.

Cepicky pointed out third-grade reading proficiency has increased from roughly 26 percent to the mid-40 percent range.

That’s real progress.

It deserves recognition.

But then he added:

“If we get to 50, they’re gonna be patting me on the back and patting everybody on the back about how great a job we’re doing, and 50 percent of our kids still can’t read and comprehend on grade level. If you were in sports, you’d be terminated immediately.”

Now hold on.

Scott comes from a baseball background.

A sport where hitting .300 makes you a star.

A sport where hitting .400 puts you among legends.

So no, you probably wouldn’t get fired.

You’d likely make the Hall of Fame.

The bigger issue is something education leaders never acknowledge.

If proficiency ever reaches 50 percent, somebody will simply move the goalposts.

That’s how the system works.

Standards change.

Benchmarks change.

Cut scores change.

The target moves.

It always does.

The One-Room Schoolhouse Solution

One of Cepicky’s proposed solutions involves what feels like a return to a simpler era.

He wants textbooks back in classrooms.

Actual books.

Paper.

Pencils.

Handwriting.

Direct instruction.

Even cursive.

He said:

“We are looking at getting textbooks back in the classrooms in K-5, tried and true, proven.”

And:

“Hard copy textbooks. Pen and pencil with the kids.”

And yes, he also advocated for expanded cursive instruction because it activates different parts of the brain.

Now before anyone accuses me of being anti-book, let me clarify.

There is absolutely value in physical books.

There is value in handwriting.

There is value in minimizing screen dependence.

In some ways, the one-room schoolhouse model got important things right.

Students knew their teacher.

Teachers knew families.

Relationships mattered.

Community mattered.

The school belonged to the people it served.

Those are lessons worth remembering.

But nostalgia can be dangerous.

The goal isn’t recreating 1920.

The goal is building effective schools in 2026.

And those aren’t always the same thing.

The Discipline Conversation

Where Cepicky absolutely hits the mark is discipline.

He said:

“We’ve got to stop this mentality of we’re gonna hold back the education of 29 kids because one kid doesn’t wanna behave. It’s gotta stop.”

That’s exactly right.

A classroom cannot function without order.

Teachers cannot teach if chaos dominates the environment.

Students cannot learn if disruptions consume instructional time.

This isn’t complicated.

It’s common sense.

And teachers know it.

Which may explain why Tennessee is experiencing such severe teacher attrition.

According to recent reporting, Tennessee lost more than 7,400 teachers between the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years.

That’s staggering.

Professional Educators of Tennessee CEO J.C. Bowman described it this way:

“It’s a Peace Corps mentality.”

That’s a devastating observation.

Teaching increasingly resembles a temporary assignment rather than a profession.

People enter.

Serve a few years.

Leave.

And discipline problems remain one of the biggest reasons why.

Meanwhile in Metro Nashville

Which brings us to Metro Nashville Public Schools.

This week MNPS released data claiming exclusionary discipline has decreased significantly compared to previous years.

In plain English?

Suspensions are down.

According to district officials, that’s because students are making better choices.

Dr. Elisa Norris said:

“Our students are making different choices. This is a reflection of them feeling welcomed, of them making different choices. And by extension, we are seeing that in the data.”

Maybe.

Or maybe not.

Bowman offered a different perspective:

“We hear from our teachers. They tell us that there’s a lot of things that are not reported, or they are not dealt with when they are reported.”

That’s worth considering.

Because data can tell stories.

But data can also hide stories.

Reducing discipline referrals doesn’t necessarily mean reducing discipline problems.

Sometimes it simply means changing reporting practices.

Teachers across the district routinely describe frustration with disciplinary processes.

They talk about referrals that go nowhere.

Consequences that never materialize.

Behaviors that repeatedly return to classrooms.

When those experiences become common, teachers eventually stop reporting.

Not because problems disappear.

Because they don’t believe reporting matters.

That’s a very different reality than the one presented in district presentations.

Data Versus Reality

One of the biggest weaknesses in modern education is the obsession with metrics.

Everything becomes a number.

Everything becomes a dashboard.

Everything becomes a data point.

The assumption is that if something can be measured, it can be managed.

But schools aren’t factories.

Children aren’t spreadsheets.

Teachers aren’t algorithms.

Reality is often messier than the charts suggest.

Take crime statistics.

Arresting fewer people doesn’t automatically mean less crime.

Sometimes it means fewer arrests.

Those aren’t the same thing.

Similarly, fewer suspensions don’t automatically mean fewer behavioral issues.

Sometimes they mean fewer suspensions.

Again, not the same thing.

That’s why classroom voices matter.

Ask teachers what they’re experiencing.

Ask students.

Ask families.

You may discover a reality that looks very different from official presentations.

My Own Experience

This issue hits particularly close to home.

My own high school student was suspended during testing season for throwing an empty Pringles can in a cafeteria.

A first-time offense.

Yet somehow it escalated into a Level 400 violation.

Expulsion became a possibility.

That’s difficult to reconcile with narratives suggesting suspension has become a last resort.

Either discipline standards are inconsistent or the data isn’t telling the full story.

Possibly both.

And when Teacher of the Year recipients resign citing lack of support, it’s hard not to question whether the system is functioning as advertised.

The people closest to classrooms often tell a very different story than the people presenting data.

Maybe we should listen to them.

The Louisville Retreat

Then there’s the annual summer pilgrimage.

This year MNPS administrators traveled to Louisville.

The agenda included leadership discussions, planning sessions, and even a private tour and dinner at Churchill Downs.

The district says conversations focused on future initiatives and increasing parent engagement.

One discussion topic reportedly encouraged parents to ask children:

“What does an IB scholar look like?”

Now maybe it’s just me.

But after thousands of hours of conversations with my kids, neither has ever asked that question.

Not once.

Kids want to talk about friends.

Sports.

Relationships.

Teachers.

Music.

Stress.

Dreams.

Problems.

Life.

I’ve always believed car conversations are powerful because kids eventually reveal what’s actually on their minds.

The key is letting them set the agenda.

Adults constantly tell kids what matters.

Very few adults genuinely listen when kids tell us what matters to them.

The one-room schoolhouse understood something modern systems often forget.

Community starts with listening.

Not messaging.

Not branding.

Listening.

Follow the Money

Naturally, people want to know what these retreats cost.

Unfortunately, getting clear answers isn’t always easy.

Much of the funding runs through Alignment Nashville, a nonprofit organization that receives public funding and contracts with MNPS for conference-related services.

Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s proposed budget includes additional funding for the organization.

Which raises a simple question.

Why?

What exactly was accomplished in Louisville that couldn’t have been accomplished in Nashville?

Nashville hosts national events.

Major conventions.

Large-scale conferences.

Surely it can host a principal retreat.

If taxpayer dollars are involved—even indirectly—the public deserves transparency.

That’s not an unreasonable expectation.

It’s basic accountability.

The Growing Bureaucracy

One final development caught my attention.

MNPS announced plans to establish a philanthropic arm.

Let that sink in.

A public school district funded by taxpayers wants to create a philanthropic arm.

At the same time, district leadership is exploring adding in-house general counsel rather than relying solely on Metro legal services.

Maybe there are legitimate reasons.

Maybe those explanations will come.

But it’s hard not to notice a pattern.

The bureaucracy continues expanding.

The administrative structure continues growing.

The organizational chart gets larger.

Meanwhile, teachers continue leaving.

Classrooms continue struggling.

And relationships—the one thing that matters most—often feel like an afterthought.

Back to the One-Room Schoolhouse

Maybe that’s why the image of a one-room schoolhouse keeps coming back to me.

Not because everything was better.

It wasn’t.

Not because we should abandon modern education.

We shouldn’t.

But because the one-room schoolhouse understood a truth we’ve spent decades trying to outsmart.

Education is fundamentally human.

It’s built on relationships.

It’s built on trust.

It’s built on listening.

It’s built on community.

The further we move from those foundations, the more complicated our solutions become.

And the less effective they seem.

Maybe the future of education isn’t found in another dashboard, another initiative, another retreat, or another consultant’s report.

Maybe it’s found in rediscovering the basics.

A teacher.

A student.

A relationship.

Everything else is just furniture.

Nobody Reads It. Everybody Quotes It.

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“Nothing is a cliche when you’re living it.”
― Ben Lerner, The Topeka School

Sometimes I get the answers to questions before I even publicly ask them.

Case in point: high school graduations.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve heard a steady stream of complaints about Metro Nashville Public Schools graduation ceremonies. Most were held at Municipal Auditorium, while a handful took place at Lipscomb University and the Grand Ole Opry House. The complaints weren’t necessarily about the graduates, the schools, or even the ceremonies themselves. They were about the experience.

Parking.

Lots and lots of complaints about parking.

Over the years, MNPS has steadily moved toward homogenizing graduation ceremonies. There’s a graduation handbook. There are scripts. There are prescribed procedures. There are expectations for how things should look, sound, and feel. In some ways, it’s understandable. A district the size of MNPS wants consistency.

Still, I can’t help but notice the irony.

In a district that loves to remind us that it is committed to “Every Child Known,” everything increasingly feels exactly the same.

Scripted ceremonies.

Scripted celebrations.

Scripted experiences.

At some point you start wondering whether we’re celebrating individual students or simply managing an event.

The biggest complaint I heard involved the cost of parking downtown. Students were expected to attend rehearsal the day before graduation, which meant families were paying to park multiple times. By the time everything was finished, many families were spending around $40 or more each visit.

Now, if you’re fortunate enough that forty bucks feels insignificant, good for you.

For a lot of working-class families, forty dollars isn’t insignificant.

It’s groceries.

It’s gas.

It’s a utility bill payment.

It’s the difference between ordering pizza on Friday night and eating leftovers.

I remain puzzled why an event planned months in advance can’t somehow incorporate parking into the equation. Maybe there are logistical reasons. Maybe there are contractual reasons. Maybe there are financial reasons.

Whatever the reason, it still feels like an unnecessary burden.

To be fair, bus transportation was available. But after talking with several students, the consensus seemed to be that the process was confusing and not particularly practical for their needs.

After hearing complaints all week, I found myself grumbling to a friend.

“I don’t know why we don’t just hold graduation on the football field like we used to.”

As often happens, the universe immediately decided to provide a counterargument.

Because that’s exactly what happened in Williamson County.

And then it rained.

Not a gentle spring shower.

Not one of those light Tennessee drizzles that comes and goes.

The skies opened.

Centennial High School and Franklin High School held graduation ceremonies outdoors, and students ended up celebrating one of the biggest milestones of their lives in a torrential downpour.

Predictably, parents were unhappy.

Dr. Michelle Wyatt summed up the frustration after watching her goddaughter graduate:

“Our baby did it! Congratulations Brooklynn Michelle Broadnax. We are so proud of you. We love you! Now: Centennial High School is totally OUT OF ORDER!!! These children deserved to have a graduation!!!!!”

Then, in one of those moments that reminds you social media has broken everyone’s brains, Marjorie Taylor Greene weighed in.

Yes. That Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Her argument was straightforward:

“This is ridiculous. The school should have organized graduation indoors. The graduates and their families deserved a nice ceremony.”

Williamson County Director Jason Golden offered a reasonable explanation. Families traditionally wanted graduations on campus. The district watched forecasts and radar. They believed they could finish before the weather arrived.

Mother Nature had other ideas.

And that’s when it hit me.

There isn’t a right answer.

Hold graduation downtown and people complain about parking.

Hold graduation at school and people complain about rain.

Limit attendance and people complain about ticket availability.

Expand attendance and people complain about logistics.

In the age of social media, every decision is simultaneously the worst decision ever made.

That’s not a criticism.

It’s just reality.

Someone is always going to be angry.

The challenge isn’t finding a perfect solution.

The challenge is accepting that one doesn’t exist.

Everybody Has the Secret Formula

If graduation debates have taught me anything, it’s that everyone thinks they know how schools should operate.

The education policy world is absolutely overflowing with people who possess unwavering confidence in solutions to problems they have never personally experienced.

They’ve never taught.

They’ve never managed a classroom.

They’ve never broken up a fight in a hallway.

They’ve never called a parent to explain why a student failed a test despite not completing a single assignment.

But somehow they’ve cracked the code.

Usually the pattern is predictable.

First, they discover a miracle solution.

Then they convince enough people that they’ve discovered a miracle solution.

Then they either start a charter school or create a foundation.

Sometimes they do both.

Then they descend from the mountain carrying educational commandments.

The latest prophet to emerge is Tennessee Star publisher Michael Patrick Leahy.

Leahy is advocating for a dramatic overhaul of Tennessee education through something known as Direct Instruction.

At first glance, it sounds reasonable.

Maybe even compelling.

That’s usually how these things work.

The sales pitch is always cleaner than the implementation.

Leahy argues that despite increasing education spending, academic outcomes remain disappointing.

“It’s a huge problem because the more money we’ve spent on it, the worse the performance of kids has become.”

The statement sounds convincing.

The problem is that reality tends to be more complicated.

I’ve spent enough time around schools and students to know that today’s students are doing things that would have seemed extraordinary a generation ago.

The technology they’re using.

The research they’re conducting.

The expectations placed upon them.

The opportunities available to them.

None of that suggests a society producing less capable young people.

What it suggests is that we’re measuring success through increasingly narrow lenses.

And that’s worth discussing.

Leahy’s critique eventually lands where many education reform conversations land:

Teachers unions.

Of course.

Everything eventually comes back to teachers unions.

During his radio show, Leahy highlighted comments from education activist Liz Wright criticizing unions and the educational system.

At this point I should probably confess something.

I am married to a teacher.

Not a temporary teacher.

Not someone who taught for eighteen months before becoming an education consultant.

A career teacher.

The kind who actually stays in the classroom.

Which means I’ve had a front-row seat to the realities of public education.

Teaching is hard.

Really hard.

It’s emotionally exhausting.

Politically vulnerable.

Professionally demanding.

And frequently thankless.

Teachers unions aren’t perfect.

No organization is.

But if you’ve ever watched what classroom educators deal with on a daily basis, you understand why collective representation exists.

Without it, many teachers would be swimming with sharks without a cage.

The Appeal of Direct Instruction

Leahy’s preferred solution is Direct Instruction.

For those unfamiliar, Direct Instruction is a highly structured educational model built around explicit teaching, scripted lessons, measurable outcomes, and carefully sequenced curriculum.

There is evidence that it can work.

Depending on how you define success.

That’s an important qualifier.

Because educational success is often in the eye of the beholder.

If your goal is maximizing performance on specific measurable tasks, Direct Instruction can be effective.

If your goal is cultivating curiosity, creativity, exploration, and independent thinking, the conversation becomes more complicated.

What concerns me isn’t necessarily the existence of Direct Instruction.

It’s the assumption that it should become the dominant model everywhere.

Education reformers often fall in love with universal solutions.

Teachers know better.

Students are different.

Schools are different.

Communities are different.

What works in one classroom may fail spectacularly in another.

That’s why good teachers employ multiple strategies.

They adapt.

They adjust.

They respond.

They don’t simply read scripts.

And that’s where Direct Instruction starts making me nervous.

A heavily scripted curriculum inevitably diminishes teacher autonomy.

Maybe that’s intentional.

Maybe that’s accidental.

Either way, the effect is similar.

The teacher becomes less professional and more technician.

Less educator and more operator.

Anybody can follow a script.

Not everybody can teach.

Those are different things.

Private schools understand this.

The same people advocating highly structured scripted learning for public school students are rarely marketing those same experiences to affluent families.

Funny how that works.

When wealthy parents are spending tuition dollars, they want innovation.

They want creativity.

They want individualized experiences.

When we’re talking about public schools, suddenly the answer becomes standardization.

The Cost Nobody Mentions

Another thing missing from these conversations is cost.

Education reform advocates frequently discuss wasteful spending.

They rarely discuss the cost of implementing their own ideas.

Direct Instruction isn’t free.

Curriculum materials aren’t free.

Training isn’t free.

Teacher resources aren’t free.

Student workbooks aren’t free.

The irony is difficult to ignore.

Many advocates for limited government eventually arrive at the same conclusion:

The state should mandate the thing they like.

Leahy ultimately argues that Tennessee lawmakers should introduce Direct Instruction throughout public schools statewide.

Which is fascinating.

Because every conversation about local control somehow ends when somebody discovers a policy preference.

Then suddenly statewide mandates become acceptable.

Apparently government overreach depends entirely on whether you agree with the policy.

Who knew?

Principal Season

May is always principal season.

While students are preparing for graduation and teachers are counting days until summer, district leaders are busy playing musical chairs with school leadership.

This year MNPS announced fourteen principal appointments.

Some make sense.

Some raise questions.

Most probably fall somewhere in between.

Principal placement is one of the hardest jobs in education.

The right principal can transform a school.

The wrong principal can create years of instability.

Finding the right fit isn’t easy.

It requires judgment, experience, timing, and occasionally luck.

And let’s be honest.

Politics.

Before anyone gasps, principal appointments have always involved politics.

That’s not unique to MNPS.

That’s not unique to Tennessee.

That’s public education.

The challenge is balancing politics with competence.

The hire drawing the most attention is at Hume-Fogg.

With longtime principal Kelly Harris retiring after fourteen years, one of Tennessee’s most celebrated high schools is entering a period of significant transition.

The school is losing experienced leadership at multiple levels.

That’s a lot of institutional knowledge walking out the door.

Which makes the replacement decision particularly important.

The incoming principal brings assistant principal experience from Williamson County and has been involved in diversity and recruitment initiatives.

Reasonable people can disagree about those initiatives.

That’s not really my concern.

My question is simpler.

Is this the right fit?

Hume-Fogg isn’t just another school.

It’s one of the crown jewels of the district.

It consistently ranks among the strongest academic institutions in Tennessee.

Replacing a long-serving successful leader is difficult under any circumstances.

Doing it with someone relatively inexperienced inevitably generates scrutiny.

That’s not unfair.

It’s expected.

Especially given Hume-Fogg’s unique place within district politics.

For years the school has occupied an interesting position.

Celebrated for academic excellence.

Criticized for demographic realities.

Admired by families.

Viewed skeptically by some advocates.

It’s a school that often becomes a proxy battle in larger conversations about equity, access, achievement, and opportunity.

So naturally every leadership decision gets magnified.

The Eye Test

Some of the other appointments have generated similar conversations.

A few involve candidates with limited assistant principal experience.

Some arrive from districts facing their own challenges.

Others come from specialized instructional backgrounds rather than traditional administrative pathways.

Could they all be excellent?

Absolutely.

I hope they are.

Schools need great leaders.

Students deserve great leaders.

Teachers deserve great leaders.

But experience matters.

I’m a sports guy.

Everything eventually becomes a sports analogy.

Nobody gets called up to the major leagues without proving something first.

You spend time in the minors.

You develop.

You make mistakes.

You learn.

Then you move up.

Education leadership should probably work similarly.

Not because experience guarantees success.

It doesn’t.

But because experience provides perspective.

And perspective matters when you’re responsible for hundreds of students and dozens of employees.

That said, leadership isn’t solely about résumés.

Character matters.

Accessibility matters.

Relationships matter.

Which brings me to one appointment I genuinely feel good about.

Lish Burgess.

Over the years, Lish and I spent plenty of time on opposite sides of conversations while he served at Oliver Middle School.

We’ve disagreed.

We’ve debated.

We’ve occasionally frustrated each other.

But one thing I never questioned was his commitment.

His door always seemed open.

Sometimes probably more open than he preferred.

That’s a quality that matters.

Schools need leaders who are visible.

Leaders who listen.

Leaders who show up.

DuPont Hadley is getting someone with experience and heart.

And in education, those things still count for something.

Maybe they count for everything.

So congratulations, Lish.

Don’t make me regret writing nice things about you.

Because if you do, we’ll be right back to arguing.

And frankly, we’re both pretty good at that.

Graduation season always brings perspective.

One minute we’re arguing about parking fees and rainstorms.

The next we’re debating instructional philosophies and principal appointments.

Different topics.

Same underlying truth.

Public education is messy.

It’s complicated.

It’s imperfect.

There are no magic formulas.

No secret sauces.

No miracle programs.

No universal solutions.

Just students.

Teachers.

Families.

Administrators.

Communities.

All trying to navigate an increasingly complicated world.

The temptation is always to believe somebody has finally discovered the answer.

The graduation answer.

The reading answer.

The leadership answer.

The education answer.

The reality is much less satisfying.

There usually isn’t one.

And maybe that’s okay.

Because education has never been about finding perfect answers.

It’s always been about asking better questions.

Nobody reads it. Everybody quotes it.

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Just like that… it’s a wrap. Another school year in the books.

Ready or not, I’ve now got a senior and a junior in the house. I’m decidedly not ready, though both of them most certainly are.

The years have gone so fast while somehow grinding along at the same time. Parenting teenagers is weird like that. One minute you’re standing in a kindergarten pickup line trying to figure out how a five-year-old can lose three jackets in two weeks, and the next you’re calculating how many baseball games and college visits are left before adulthood crashes through the front door.

You think you’ve got all the time in the world and then — bam — it’s over.

Our public school journey has been a mixed bag. Elementary school held such promise. Middle school was… middling. High school, meanwhile, has often felt like a race to the exit sign.

That’s not because my kids are struggling.

Quite the opposite.

Academically, the girl child sits in roughly the top five percent of her class. The boy child has carved out his own lane athletically, starting on both the varsity baseball and football teams. By every traditional metric, both are “successful” students.

But if you think schools are automatically more attractive places for successful kids than they are for struggling kids, I’ve got news for you.

After more than a decade inside the system, I can testify to this: public education is largely geared toward the middle. The system pushes lower-performing students upward while simultaneously trying to place a ceiling on higher-achieving students — all in an effort to defend the idea that public schools can effectively serve everybody in exactly the same way.

That statement tends to make people uncomfortable, but it’s true.

Metro Nashville Public Schools loves to celebrate the exceptional achievements of its student body. Every district does. Test score gains get packaged into press releases. Graduation rates become hashtags. State recognitions become LinkedIn celebrations for administrators and consultants.

But I can promise you this: ninety-five percent of student success comes from two things — individual hard work and a meaningful connection with a teacher willing to work every bit as hard as the student does.

And here’s the part central office rarely highlights: the system itself often makes both the student and the teacher jump through hoops in order to excel.

That’s where good principals matter.

A truly good principal creates the conditions for success. They protect teachers from unnecessary nonsense. They give educators the freedom and support to do extraordinary things. They recognize that education isn’t produced by a spreadsheet alignment meeting or a slogan printed on a banner. It’s produced by human beings building trust with other human beings.

Unfortunately, not everybody who holds the title of principal qualifies as a good principal.

A lot of kids graduate with untapped potential because nobody in authority ever prioritized what was best for the student over what looked best to central office.

Recently, Alignment Nashville announced that MNPS Director Dr. Adrienne Battle had been named the 2026 Mid-Cumberland Superintendent of the Year by the Tennessee Organization of School Superintendents. Alongside the announcement came the expected avalanche of accolades.

Dr. Gary Lilly, Executive Director of TOSS, said, “Dr. Battle is truly leading the region in the impact she is having on students in Nashville. This award is a recognition from her peer superintendents in Mid-Cumberland of years’ worth of innovation and service.”

Metro Nashville Board of Education Chair Freda Player added, “The progress MNPS has made is not accidental. Four consecutive years of Level 5 growth, record academic results, and gains that continue to outpace the state all point to a district with a clear vision and the discipline to follow through.”

No, Freda, it’s not accidental.

But what’s missing from those statements are the people actually doing the work.

It’s the baseball coach hitting ground balls for a kid at 9:30 at night because that kid wants to get better.

It’s the English teacher who sees through a teenage boy’s outward behavior and refuses to give up on him even when he’s making it difficult.

It’s the theater teacher spending weekends helping students discover confidence and purpose they didn’t know they possessed.

It’s the math teacher quietly instilling confidence in a student while administrators actively undermine him.

It’s the principal who protects all of those people so they can do their jobs.

That’s the story.

Not the slogan.

Dr. Battle, a Nashville native, John Overton graduate, and the first MNPS graduate to lead the district, said the award reflects “the work of our entire district: our students, educators, school leaders, support staff, families, Board of Education, Mayor and elected leaders, and community partners.”

I’d argue a more accurate rewrite would be:

“This shows what’s possible when teachers and students are supported by people willing to prioritize children over systems.”

Along the way, we’ve been blessed to encounter some magical educators and coaches who helped push my kids forward and expand their world. We’ve also encountered people who seemed intent on placing governors on their growth.

This year was no exception.

One teacher worked tirelessly to pull the best out of my son even when he made the process difficult. Another continuously reinforced my daughter’s confidence in her own academic ability despite the institutional pressures around him.

Those people matter.

As parents, you curate these experiences over time. The bright lights eventually outshine the people trying to funnel every child toward the same median outcome.

And now, for a couple months at least, all of that gets placed on the shelf.

Summer’s here.

The living may not be easy, but it’s a whole lot less intense.

Speaking of intensity, Tennessee’s absurd Third Grade Retention Law continues marching onward like a zombie policy nobody wants to admit doesn’t work the way it was originally advertised.

And as always, the media coverage continues to miss the mark.

The Tennessean recently reported that the release of third-grade reading scores “set off a fast-moving timeline to determine if tens of thousands of public school students will be held back or not.”

Technically, that’s true.

Practically, everybody involved knows it’s nonsense.

Despite years of political rhetoric and public fearmongering, Tennessee has retained fewer than 600 students annually under the law since its implementation. That number even includes students voluntarily retained by parents.

Yet every year the headlines suggest a statewide educational apocalypse.

The paper also explained that Tennessee’s retention law requires students to “earn a passing score” on the English language arts portion of TCAP to advance to fourth grade.

Except TCAP isn’t actually a pass/fail test.

It’s a snapshot.

That distinction matters.

The state has arbitrarily decided that students who fail to reach “meets expectations” should potentially face retention. I say potentially because lawmakers have added so many escape hatches into the process that most students advance anyway through retakes, summer school, tutoring, or portfolio appeals.

And what do all those interventions have in common?

Money.

Lots of money.

You didn’t think testing companies were supplying free retakes, did you?

You thought tutoring providers were volunteering out of the goodness of their hearts?

You thought summer programs materialized from thin air?

There is always a financial component.

Always.

Are some students benefiting from interventions? Sure. Probably.

Are others simply being pushed through a bureaucratic theater production designed to justify a policy already politically entrenched? Also yes.

Sometimes the difference between “approaching expectations” and “meets expectations” is literally one or two questions on a single test administered on a single day.

Without interventions, would some students naturally improve anyway? Probably.

Would some not improve? Probably.

But either way, every intervention creates another vendor contract, another consultant talking point, another adult résumé bullet point.

The machine keeps moving.

Meanwhile, Tennessee officials get to celebrate moving from 42nd to 26th in national education rankings and continue recycling the “fastest improving state” line like it’s still fresh fifteen years later.

My personal favorite talking point is the claim that Tennessee has been the fastest state at recovering from “learning loss.”

Learning loss.

That phrase alone deserves scrutiny.

The idea that children somehow stopped learning during the pandemic has always struck me as absurd. They were absolutely learning. They just weren’t necessarily learning the things adults could easily quantify or take credit for.

And therein lies the problem.

Our entire education accountability culture increasingly revolves around measuring only the forms of learning that fit neatly inside spreadsheets, dashboards, and PowerPoint presentations.

Which brings me to another recent story.

Big Machine Records CEO Scott Borchetta was loudly booed during a commencement speech at Middle Tennessee State University after praising artificial intelligence.

He told graduates, “AI is rewriting production as we sit here.” The crowd responded with boos.

Borchetta didn’t back down.

“I know it. Deal with it,” he responded. “It’s a tool… make it work for you.”

Here’s the thing:

He ain’t wrong.

And it isn’t just AI changing the world.

Technology changes everything. Economics change everything. Culture changes everything. Education changes whether systems are prepared for it or not.

Standing around booing the messenger doesn’t stop the transformation.

The challenge for schools isn’t preventing change. The challenge is preparing students for a world changing faster than bureaucratic systems are capable of adapting.

That means reassessing what we value.

What skills matter?

What knowledge matters?

What actually prepares students for the future?

And are our assessments aligned with reality, or are they still measuring a world that no longer exists?

In the meantime, if you’re a parent dealing with third-grade TCAP panic, here’s my advice:

Play the game.

But don’t overemphasize the test.

It’s a snapshot, not a life sentence.

Talk to your teachers. They can usually provide the context politicians and media outlets leave out.

The Tennessee State Board of Education also took another step this week toward allowing some students to opt out of portions of the state’s world language graduation requirements.

Under the proposed policy, students could substitute certain elective courses for one of the required world language credits, provided the decision aligns with a student’s “High School and Beyond Plan.”

I’ll be honest.

I’m not entirely sure what a “High School and Beyond Plan” is supposed to mean in practical terms, but I am familiar with the old saying:

“Man plans. God laughs.”

I can’t say I’m surprised that world language requirements are being deemphasized. In practice, many schools already offer limited options, typically narrowing choices to Spanish or French.

Meanwhile, we continue pretending we’re preparing students for a truly global economy while ignoring where economic and cultural influence is actually expanding.

Try finding robust Chinese or Korean language offerings in most Tennessee public schools.

Good luck.

In a world where Asian economic influence continues growing, those languages arguably create more long-term opportunity than many traditional offerings.

But educational policy discussions often lag decades behind reality.

By the time systems fully adapt, the world has already shifted again.

Before wrapping this up, let’s talk briefly about the MNPS budget currently sitting before Metro Council.

The district proudly highlighted its proposed 1.7% cost-of-living adjustment for employees, describing the increase as part of a commitment to helping employees keep pace with rising costs.

Sounds great on paper.

Until you do the math.

A teacher earning $50,000 annually would receive roughly an additional $850 per year before taxes.

Spread over twenty-six paychecks, that’s about $38 per check.

I’m not sure anybody’s living costs are only increasing by thirty-eight dollars every two weeks.

What’s also missing from those calculations is the dramatically increased workload and expectations placed on teachers over the last several years.

Teachers are asked to be educators, counselors, behavioral specialists, technology coordinators, testing coordinators, attendance specialists, crisis managers, and public relations representatives all at once.

And increasingly they’re expected to accomplish all of it while smiling through district branding campaigns about “joy” and “belonging.”

One other budget line caught my attention: roughly $200,000 dedicated toward building a philanthropic services arm designed to attract external funding aligned with district priorities.

That’s interesting.

Especially considering some outside partners already help fund retreats and travel opportunities for district leadership and administrators.

I’d love to hear more about how those relationships operate and what influence accompanies them.

Because public education increasingly feels caught between two competing realities:

On one hand, schools desperately need community support and resources.

On the other, the growing reliance on outside partnerships creates entirely new questions about influence, priorities, and accountability.

And somewhere in the middle of all that are teachers trying to teach kids and kids trying to figure out who they’re becoming.

Which, honestly, is probably where this whole conversation should have started in the first place.

Anyway.

The backpacks are finally down.

The alarm clocks can relax.

The school buses will disappear for a little while.

And parents across Nashville will spend the next ten weeks pretending they aren’t already silently counting how many days remain until August.

Happy summer, everybody.

It has been an interesting month here in Tennessee.

Last week, Governor Bill Lee called state legislators back into session for the purpose of redistricting the state in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling against a provision in the 1965 Voting Rights Act designed to create and preserve Black voting blocs. That ruling opened the door for state lawmakers to tip the scales prior to the upcoming midterm election.

Redistricting is not unique to Tennessee. Across the country, efforts are underway to redraw electoral maps in pursuit of political power. This is not some new phenomenon born in the age of social media outrage and cable news hysteria. Gerrymandering has been around for generations. In parts of the Northeast and on the West Coast, political maps have long been drawn with surgical precision.

In California and Chicago, it can be just as difficult for a Republican to get elected as it is for a Democrat to get elected in Tennessee.

Doesn’t make it right.

But it does make it reality.

What makes Tennessee’s effort especially unique is the way the new map divides Memphis and its predominantly Black community, attaching part of it to overwhelmingly white and affluent Williamson County.

That’s quite a stretch considering the communities sit roughly 200 miles apart.

Between them is a whole lot of farmland, rural communities, and folks who probably don’t believe they have much in common with either.

The move comes with an election already looming, which has thrown candidates into absolute chaos. Some candidates who already launched campaigns suddenly found themselves shifted into entirely different districts. Filing deadlines had to be extended from March 10 to May 15, and some candidates are essentially sitting on the sidelines hoping the courts eventually strike down the maps and restore the districts they originally qualified for.

And they still might.

A federal judge denied Democratic officials and voters a temporary restraining order and injunction, but anybody who has watched redistricting fights over the years knows these things have a tendency to drag out like a bitter divorce.

Meanwhile, the political math behind all of this is obvious.

The Cook Political Report found Republicans could gain substantially from the nationwide reshuffling. California and Utah may yield several Democratic seats, while states like Texas, Louisiana, Missouri, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, Ohio, and Florida could collectively add around 15 Republican seats.

This isn’t ideology.

It’s arithmetic.

Politics stopped being about persuasion a long time ago. Now it’s largely about engineering advantage.

That’s what makes all the political theater surrounding these debates so exhausting.

Because as serious as the issue is — and it is serious — the actual discussion keeps getting buried beneath performance art designed more for fundraising emails and social media clips than changing minds.

I promise you, nobody saw State Senator Charlane Oliver standing on her desk in the chamber holding a banner accusing lawmakers of racial segregation and white supremacy and suddenly changed their position.

Nobody watched Representative Justin Jones light a Confederate flag on fire inside the Capitol and thought, “You know what? I’m switching sides.”

Likewise, I seriously doubt Speaker Cameron Sexton removing Democrats from committees earned Republicans a wave of new voters either.

All of it generates headlines.

All of it generates clicks.

All of it generates campaign donations.

But very little of it actually changes outcomes.

And ultimately, elections are supposed to be about outcomes.

That’s the part that both parties often ignore. Neither political base is large enough to dominate on passion alone. Most elections are won somewhere in the middle by people who are tired, distracted, annoyed, or simply trying to survive the week.

The loudest voices in politics tend to forget that.

Or maybe they remember it perfectly and simply don’t care.

Because outrage is profitable.

Especially curated outrage.

Party leaders often frame this kind of political theater as “fighting for the little guy,” and there’s certainly truth in that. But I was always taught that if you’re going to fight, you fight to win. And if your tactics aren’t producing victories, eventually you need to reevaluate the tactics.

Some of today’s leaders seem far more interested in building personal brands than building durable coalitions.

Their social media following grows.

Their fundraising totals increase.

Their television appearances multiply.

Yet their actual political influence rarely expands alongside it.

You can complain about inequity until the cows come home, but if you can’t figure out how to consistently win elections, nothing changes.

And here’s the ironic part.

Much of the rhetoric this week has centered around voter disenfranchisement. But years ago, I learned something watching workplace disputes unfold: when two employees engage in a loud, public feud in front of management, the boss rarely stops to study the nuance of who was technically right and who was technically wrong.

Eventually, management just gets tired of both of them.

Voters are management.

And when politics becomes constant screaming, a lot of voters simply disengage altogether.

That may be the single biggest threat facing American democracy right now — not apathy born from ignorance, but apathy born from exhaustion.

Sometimes being right isn’t enough.

Sometimes presentation matters.

Sometimes rigorous self-evaluation is necessary.

And sometimes the people screaming the loudest are actually convincing fewer people than they think.

While lawmakers redraw maps in Nashville, schools across Tennessee are quietly redrawing lives.

As the end of the school year approaches, teachers are beginning to learn their fate for next year. Some will be reassigned. Others will be searching for work outside their district entirely.

This process happens every spring, though most people outside education barely notice it.

Parents are focused on graduations, vacations, baseball tournaments, prom pictures, and making it through the final weeks before summer.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, teachers are anxiously refreshing emails wondering whether they’ll still have a classroom come August.

The stories spread quickly this time of year.

Some are accurate.

Some are exaggerated.

Some are half-true accounts passed from one faculty lounge to another until nobody knows where they started.

But the anxiety underneath them is absolutely real.

Employment uncertainty impacts far more than individual workers. It affects spouses, children, mortgage payments, childcare arrangements, transportation, healthcare, and family stability.

One staffing decision can completely alter a household routine.

Metro Nashville Public Schools categorizes non-renewed employees into four groups.

There are “Displaced” employees, whose positions disappeared because of district-level budget or programming decisions.

There are “Unassigned” employees — tenured teachers whose positions vanished because of school-level changes but who remain eligible for placement after June 15 if they don’t secure another role first.

There are “Non-renewed eligible” employees, which includes non-tenured staff and large numbers of permit or waiver teachers whose annual permits expire automatically each year.

And finally, there are “Non-renewed ineligible” employees — educators who were not retained because of documented performance concerns.

This year, MNPS has 659 teachers searching for new assignments.

Five hundred nineteen are eligible for rehire.

Only 29 have been deemed ineligible.

That distinction matters.

Because in a political climate where every staffing change immediately becomes a social media controversy, context often disappears.

The reality is many of these changes are tied directly to enrollment declines and shrinking school-level budgets.

Fewer students means less funding.

Less funding means fewer positions.

And eventually those reductions land on real people.

Some schools are absorbing particularly heavy losses:

• Antioch High School: 18

• Cane Ridge High School: 16

• John Overton High School: 16

• Thomas Edison Elementary: 16

• McGavock High School: 15

• Una Elementary: 15

• John F. Kennedy Middle: 14

• A.Z. Kelley Elementary: 14

Now, context matters here too.

Large comprehensive high schools naturally employ larger staffs, which means larger reductions when cuts become necessary. A school with 150 teachers cutting 15 positions is very different from a small elementary school cutting 15.

Still, those numbers carry emotional weight.

Because behind every reduction is somebody cleaning out a desk.

Somebody updating a résumé.

Somebody sitting in a parking lot after work wondering what comes next.

And one of the more interesting parts of the data involves permit teachers.

Tennessee law allows districts to hire non-licensed teachers on temporary permits if they can show progress toward full certification. Those permits expire annually and may only be renewed for up to three years.

Of the 519 employees eligible for rehire, 427 are permit holders.

That number raises uncomfortable questions.

Not just about staffing shortages, but about the long-term pipeline into the profession itself.

Because districts don’t rely on hundreds of permit teachers when the profession is thriving.

They rely on them when they can’t fully staff classrooms with licensed educators.

And yet, despite all the talk about “supporting teachers,” the profession increasingly feels trapped between impossible expectations and declining public trust.

Teachers are expected to solve academic deficits, mental health crises, discipline challenges, food insecurity, attendance problems, political polarization, and societal instability — often while being blamed for outcomes largely outside their control.

At the same time, public discourse surrounding education has become relentlessly combative.

Everybody says teachers matter.

But increasingly, fewer people seem interested in making the profession sustainable.

The district’s data is informative, but incomplete.

It remains unclear whether the totals reflect positions, individuals, support staff, or specific teaching assignments.

It would also help to compare these figures to prior years in order to determine whether this represents an outlier or an annual pattern.

That’s one of the challenges with education reporting.

Numbers without trend lines create confusion.

And confusion tends to get filled with assumption.

Still, the broader picture feels hard to ignore.

Enrollment declines continue.

Budgets tighten.

Veteran educators retire.

Fewer young people enter the profession.

And districts increasingly patch holes wherever they can.

That’s not unique to Nashville either.

It’s happening all over the country.

Which brings us to Harriet Medlin.

She may not have originally wanted to become a teacher, but Brentwood High School’s Harriet Medlin ultimately built a career that lasted 57 years.

“ I did everything I could to avoid it,” she said. “I went to a small private liberal arts college having no idea what I really wanted to do, but teaching was not one of them.”

Honestly, there’s something refreshing about that level of candor.

No inspirational movie script.

No childhood dream narrative.

No “I always knew.”

Just honesty.

She wanted to go into advertising.

But this was 1968.

“ I wanted to go into advertising, but you have to remember, this was in 1968,” she said. “So when a recruiter for an advertising firm came on campus and I walked into the session, he looked at me and he said, ‘Honey, you’re in the wrong room, this is a man’s job.’”

That one sentence says more about that era than a textbook chapter ever could.

Devastated by the interaction, she eventually followed her mother’s advice and obtained a teaching license.

And what followed was nearly six decades inside classrooms during one of the most transformative periods in American education.

When Medlin began teaching in Williamson County in the fall of 1968, integration had only recently taken effect. Franklin’s historically Black school, Natchez High, had closed and reopened as a vocational annex. Students were bused back and forth between campuses during the school day.

Sixteen first-year teachers were essentially dropped into the middle of enormous cultural and social upheaval.

“It was really rough; there were lots of fights,” she recalled.

Then came the story that sticks with you.

A student walked into her classroom and calmly informed her that he had cut another student’s throat on the bus.

“He said, ‘The police will be here shortly because I cut this kid’s throat on the bus.’ I was 22 years old at the time, and all I could think of to say was, ‘Well, is he dead?’ And he said, ‘No, I think he’s gonna be OK.’ But sure enough, pretty soon the police came and handcuffed him and took him out.”

Imagine being 22 years old and navigating that.

No trauma-informed training seminar.

No social media support groups.

No district crisis response team.

Just a young teacher trying to survive the day.

“I would go home at night and cry and call my mom and tell her everything that had happened that day,” she said. “‘Well, why don’t you just quit?’ And I said, ‘No. They may make me cry, but they’ll never make me quit.’”

That line stayed with me.

Because somewhere along the way, education lost a little of that stubborn resilience.

Not because teachers became weaker.

But because the system itself became heavier.

The job today is almost unrecognizable from what it once was.

Medlin points to technology and increasing restrictions on teachers as two of the biggest changes she witnessed over her career.

She’s right.

Technology has transformed education in ways both remarkable and exhausting.

Students now carry the entire internet in their pockets.

Parents can contact teachers instantly.

Assignments are digital.

Testing is digital.

Communication is constant.

And yet, despite all the advances, schools often feel more disconnected than ever.

Teachers now operate under layers of scrutiny unimaginable decades ago.

Everything can become public instantly.

Every interaction can be recorded.

Every lesson can become political.

Every mistake can become viral.

And somehow, amid all of that, they are still expected to connect with kids.

That’s why Medlin’s advice matters.

“You have to maintain a sense of humor, and don’t be afraid to use your personality. You have to connect with them first before they’re going to learn anything from you.”

Simple.

Human.

True.

For all our obsession with standards, testing models, AI tools, data dashboards, and accountability frameworks, education still comes down to relationships.

Always has.

Always will.

And maybe that’s worth remembering in a moment when so much of public life feels performative and transactional.

Politics increasingly rewards outrage.

Social media rewards conflict.

Institutions reward branding.

But classrooms still reward authenticity.

Kids know when adults care.

They also know when adults are pretending.

Maybe that’s the lesson tying all of this together.

Whether it’s politicians performing outrage in the Capitol or schools scrambling through another season of uncertainty, eventually substance matters more than spectacle.

Or at least it should.

Because underneath every headline, every protest, every district report, and every political stunt are actual people trying to navigate complicated lives.

Teachers trying to hold classrooms together.

Families trying to plan for the future.

Communities trying to figure out where they belong on a map someone else drew.

And voters trying to decide whether anybody is still talking to them honestly.

Sometimes being right isn’t enough.

Sometimes the presentation matters.

And sometimes the people quietly doing the work deserve more attention than the people shouting for the cameras.

Venmo: @Thomas-Weber-10
Cash App: $PeterAveryWeber
Tips: Norinrad10@yahoo.com

“This society hasn’t changed one bit. People who don’t fit into the village are expelled: men who don’t hunt, women who don’t give birth to children. For all we talk about modern society and individualism, anyone who doesn’t try to fit in can expect to be meddled with, coerced, and ultimately banished from the village.”
― Sayaka Murata, コンビニ人間 [Konbini ningen]

It’s that time of year again.

The annual ritual.

The one where we all pretend—collectively, convincingly, and without much resistance—that we are accurately measuring student learning. And not just measuring it, but measuring it for the benefit of students.

That’s the part that requires the most suspension of disbelief.

Because for the past two weeks, classrooms across Tennessee—and here in Nashville—have been stripped bare. Walls cleared. Anchor charts removed. Anything that might hint at actual learning quietly taken down like contraband before a raid. Teachers sterilizing their rooms as if knowledge itself might contaminate the testing environment.

Students, meanwhile, trudge in.

They sit.

They click.

They bubble.

They wait.

All to worship at the altar of standardized testing.

Never mind that Tennessee districts already administer three benchmark tests a year. Those don’t count—not really. This one does. This is the one that matters. The one that will reveal the truth about student learning.

Like Santa’s list, it’s supposed to tell us who’s been naughty and who’s been nice.

And for two weeks, while we measure, actual instruction comes to a halt. Not paused. Halted. Suspended in favor of a process that has become less about learning and more about sorting, labeling, and assigning value—not to students, but to adults.

Because that’s what this is really about.

If enough kids score well, congratulations—you get to wear the crown of Master Educator. Your school gets to celebrate. Your district gets to issue a press release. Everyone gets to pretend the system is working exactly as intended.

But if they don’t?

Well, then things get uncomfortable.

Because in Tennessee, poor test performance isn’t just a data point—it’s a threat. A justification. A lever that can be pulled to trigger state intervention or takeover, despite a pretty thin track record of the state actually doing it better.

And if the state fails?

The cynic in me says what the cynic always says:

He who controls the data controls the narrative.

So we’ll get the usual spin. A little talk about “progress.” A reminder that there are “no magic bullets.” Maybe a nod to how “this work takes time.”

But not much else.

Because one thing has become increasingly clear: education is one of the few fields where the further you get from the people you serve, the more your compensation increases—and the less accountability you actually face.

The Secrecy Problem

Here’s the part that should bother more people than it does:

Nobody really understands the test.

Not fully.

Not in the way you’d expect for something that carries this much weight.

I’m not talking about sample questions or practice packets. I mean an honest-to-God, front-to-back copy of the exam. The real thing. The thing students actually sit down and take.

Most of us have never seen it.

A few years back, there was a push to have elected officials take the test. A simple enough idea—if you’re going to base major policy decisions on it, maybe you should experience it yourself.

That effort went about as you’d expect.

Officials signed non-disclosure agreements, took the test, and then came back to tell us it was a “great assessment.” And that was the end of that.

If any of them have taken it recently, I haven’t heard about it.

And that raises a pretty basic question:

If I hired you to build houses, and every house you built came out crooked… wouldn’t I eventually ask to take a look at your measuring tape?

The “Guidance” Myth

We’re told—repeatedly—that these tests are designed to “guide instruction.”

To ensure no child falls through the cracks.

To give parents meaningful information about how their kids are doing.

It all sounds great.

There’s just one problem.

By the time the results come out, we’re already moving into the next school year.

No one is adjusting lesson plans in real time. No one is reshuffling class rosters based on TCAP results that arrive months after the fact. No one is meaningfully altering curriculum because of a score report that lands long after decisions have already been made.

What actually happens?

A handful of adults beat their chests over gains.

Others quietly slide disappointing results into the bottom drawer of their desks.

And then we do it all over again.

The Kids Know

Here’s the part we don’t say out loud often enough:

The kids know.

Despite all the messaging. Despite the pep talks. Despite the automated phone calls the night before testing begins reminding parents to make sure their child is well-rested.

Let’s be honest.

Is anyone actually receiving that call and saying, “Johnny, testing starts tomorrow—you better get to bed early”?

Of course not.

And that call—well-intentioned as it may be—sends another message too.

A quieter one.

“You can come to school 160 days a year tired, cold, and hungry… but on testing days, that won’t cut it.”

Think about that.

Think about what that says about priorities.

Because it sure sounds like we’re not serving students.

It sounds like students—and teachers—are serving the system.

Serving the adults.

And at some point, that needs to be flipped.

Meanwhile, at Ocean Prime…

While classrooms are stripped bare and teachers are being evaluated based on test scores they can’t fully see or control, another story has been making the rounds.

WSMV investigative reporter Chris Finley recently took a closer look at spending by Metro Nashville Public Schools Director Adrienne Battle.

And the numbers raised some eyebrows.

According to Finley’s reporting, Dr. Battle spent $19,293 on travel over the past two years. That includes:

• More than $12,700 on hotels

• More than $4,600 on dinners

• Around $1,800 on rental cars

Trips included destinations like Tampa, Boston, Sevierville, Dallas, Washington, and Atlanta for conferences.

Now, on its own, $20,000 might not sound outrageous.

Until you compare it.

Memphis’ superintendent spent $721 over that same period.

Williamson County’s superintendent spent $8,120.95.

Sumner County’s superintendent spent $1,021.38.

Rutherford and Wilson County superintendents?

Zero.

And then there’s the dinner.

At Ocean Prime in Washington, D.C., the bill for Dr. Battle and staff came out to $711.24.

Sea bass.

New York strip.

You eat well when you travel with MNPS leadership.

To be fair, the district offered a defense:

“Occasionally, it’s necessary to cover the cost of group meals involving the Superintendent and senior leadership team… These working meals… allow the team to maximize their time away from the district by continuing important discussions… and support effective decision-making that directly benefits students.”

That’s the explanation.

And look, I get it.

People need to eat.

Conversations happen over meals.

But are we really supposed to believe that Ocean Prime is uniquely equipped to foster collaboration in a way that, say, Chili’s is not?

That a $700 dinner produces better outcomes than a $70 one?

That the key to “effective decision-making” is a perfectly cooked sea bass?

Because that’s a tough sell.

Especially when you zoom out.

Especially when you consider what else is happening in the district.

The Louisville Retreat

Finley’s report didn’t even touch on what’s coming next.

The district’s upcoming principal retreat to Louisville.

Two nights.

Roughly 250 people.

Three days of meals and snacks.

And for senior staff?

A couple of extra days tacked on.

Again, maybe there’s value there.

Maybe there are sessions, conversations, planning opportunities that matter.

But I keep coming back to the same question.

The same litmus test that should be applied to every dollar spent in public education:

Does it benefit kids?

Just like the now-infamous $30,000 bathroom initiative, I have a hard time making that argument here.

The Other Shoe Drops

And while all of this is happening—testing, travel, retreats—there’s another reality unfolding much closer to the classroom.

It’s staffing season.

The time of year when teachers and principals find out if they’ll have jobs next year.

Earlier this week, displaced teachers received emails asking them to meet with their principals.

Those meetings carry weight.

Because that’s where they find out if they’re eligible for rehire.

If they are, they can look for another position within the district.

If they’re not?

They’re out.

And here’s the part that should raise alarms:

There is no appeal process.

None.

The decision has already gone through what’s described as a “rigorous review,” and that’s that.

For a profession already dealing with shortages, burnout, and retention issues, that’s a hell of a message to send.

The Enrollment Mystery

What makes this even more confusing is the “why” behind it.

Word on the street is that this year’s unusually high number of displaced teachers is tied to decreased funding driven by enrollment declines.

Which would make sense—if the numbers actually lined up.

But if you’ve been following along, you know I’ve been digging into enrollment data for months.

Earlier this year, I flagged what looked like a loss of roughly 2,000 students based on data from the district’s own data warehouse.

MNPS Chief of Communications Sean Braisted pushed back.

He pointed to comparisons between the 20-day and 40-day counts for the 2025–2026 school year, arguing that enrollment was actually up by 481 students. He also shared mid-year numbers showing most schools with only minor fluctuations.

Stable.

That was the message.

And yet, here we are just a few months later, watching school budgets get cut—painfully so—in ways that suggest anything but stability.

So which is it?

Because both things can’t be true.

Leadership Shuffle

At the same time, leadership changes are rolling through the district.

Right now, there are 12 principal openings in MNPS:

1. Smith Springs Elementary

2. Glengarry Elementary

3. Glencliff Elementary

4. Glenview Elementary

5. DuPont Hadley Middle

6. Park Avenue Elementary

7. Apollo Middle

8. Wright Middle

9. Murrell Special Education School

10. Glencliff High

11. Hume-Fogg High

12. Glendale Elementary

Some of these are routine.

Others are not.

Hume-Fogg, for example, is one of the district’s crown jewels—a nationally ranked magnet school that has thrived under Principal Kellie Hargis.

With Hargis retiring, the school is also losing an assistant principal and a dean.

That’s a lot of institutional knowledge walking out the door at once.

And anyone who thinks being a principal—especially at a school like Hume-Fogg—is just a matter of “rolling out the basketball and letting the talent play” hasn’t been paying attention.

Leading a school where expectations are sky-high and politics are always just beneath the surface is its own kind of pressure cooker.

And then there’s Glencliff.

Nearly the entire cluster is undergoing a leadership overhaul heading into next year.

That’s not just change.

That’s disruption.

So Where Does That Leave Us?

If you’ve made it this far, you probably get it.

You see the patterns.

You see the contradictions.

You see the gap between what’s said and what’s done.

We say testing is about students—but structure it around systems.

We say spending decisions benefit kids—but struggle to explain how.

We say enrollment is stable—while cutting budgets and positions.

We say teachers matter—while offering them no path to challenge decisions about their own employment.

And through it all, the system keeps moving.

Testing season comes and goes.

Reports get released.

Press conferences get held.

Steak dinners get eaten.

And classrooms?

They keep adapting.

Teachers keep showing up.

Students keep navigating a system that often feels more focused on measuring them than supporting them.

At some point, we have to decide what we actually believe.

And more importantly—what we’re willing to question.

Because if none of this gets challenged, nothing changes.

And if you think that matters…

You know where to find me.

Venmo: @Thomas-Weber-10
Cash App: $PeterAveryWeber
Tips: Norinrad10@yahoo.com

Yesterday marked the end of Tennessee’s 114th General Assembly.

It was an odd one.

A little longer than expected for an election year. A little louder. A little more performative. And if you were paying attention, a little more revealing about where things are headed.

They had a lot to do, I guess.

Or at least, they had a lot they wanted to be seen doing.

Because when you step back and look at the body of work, what stands out isn’t just what passed—it’s the pattern. The themes. The priorities.

This was a session marked by laws limiting protest rights in schools, permitting the Ten Commandments to be displayed in classrooms, opening the door for a state takeover of Memphis schools, and—of course—continuing the slow, steady expansion of vouchers.

And then there were the ideas that didn’t quite make it across the finish line.

Among them: multiple attempts to require schools to count undocumented students.

That effort, like a few others, mostly failed.

But “failed” doesn’t mean unimportant.

Because when lawmakers spend time introducing, debating, and refining an idea, they’re not just tossing it out for fun. They’re testing the waters. Seeing what sticks. Figuring out how far they can push.

And in this case, what they were pushing toward was pretty clear.

Testing, Testing… and More Testing

There was also the strange little saga of state testing.

At one point, lawmakers moved to exclude schools participating in the original voucher program from state testing requirements.

That effort failed.

And then—because nothing ever really dies at the legislature—it came back two days later. Stripped down. Controversial elements removed. Voucher expansion peeled away.

And just like that, it passed.

Let me be honest here.

Listening to grown adults argue over the merits of state testing made me want to stick a fork in my eye.

Not because testing doesn’t matter.

But because the conversation is so often detached from reality.

Lost in all the shouting were a couple of basic facts.

First, the state already allows districts to choose their own benchmark tests from a list of seven different assessments. And by law, they’re required to administer those tests three times a year.

Three.

Different.

Times.

So we already have a system where measurement varies from district to district, test to test, window to window. Apples-to-apples comparisons? Good luck.

And yet, somehow, nobody seemed particularly bothered by that.

No outrage. No floor speeches. No dramatic warnings about data integrity.

But now—now—we’re supposed to take the results of a single state test, administered on a single day, and treat it like it was handed down on stone tablets.

Immutable. Absolute. Beyond question.

And not just that.

We’re supposed to weaponize it.

“You’re Scared”

That’s where things really came into focus.

During one of the debates, Rep. Sam McKenzie put it plainly:

“You’re scared. You’re scared that this experiment is failing,” Rep. Sam McKenzie, a Knoxville Democrat, said on the floor. “Experiments are great. You get your hypothesis, and you perform your experiments. That’s a good thing, that’s the scientific way. But sometimes the measurement does not align with your hypothesis.”

That’s not just a shot across the aisle.

That’s an indictment of the entire framework.

Because if you’re designing a system where the measurement has to prove your point—where the outcome is predetermined—then it’s not accountability.

It’s theater.

And what kind of message does that send to students?

“Hey kids, we need you to score well on this test so we can win a political argument.”

That’s not education.

That’s conscription.

This Isn’t a Game

Somewhere along the way, we started treating education like a sporting event.

Pick your side. Wear your colors. Cheer your team.

Public vs. private. District vs. charter. Vouchers vs. “the system.”

And now even test scores are being dragged into it like box scores after a Friday night game.

But education isn’t a game.

It’s not about winning.

It’s about preparing kids for life.

That’s it.

That should be the goal. That should be the metric. That should be what we celebrate.

And for millions of kids, the public school system does that job really, really well.

But not for all of them.

There are always going to be students who need something different. Something more. Something outside the traditional model.

And those kids should have options.

Real options.

Not politically convenient ones. Not ones designed to score points. But options that actually meet their needs.

The Myth of Being Broke

Now let’s talk about something that comes up every single year:

The idea that schools are perpetually on the brink of financial collapse.

You hear it over and over again.

“We’re underfunded.”
“We don’t have enough resources.”
“We can’t do more with less.”

And look—there’s truth in that.

But there’s also a disconnect.

Because at the same time those arguments are being made, you see spending decisions that don’t exactly scream “we’re scraping by.”

Take Metro Nashville Public Schools.

Since Dr. Adrienne Battle took over, principals have been taking annual out-of-town trips for summer meetings.

It started small.

A state park.

Reasonable.

Then it grew.

Further away. Bigger. More people.

Last year? Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

This year? Louisville.

Why Louisville?

Seems like a cool place. But is it neccesaary?

And it’s not just principals going.

You’re talking central office staff too. Roughly 250 people when you add it all up.

That’s not a small tab.

That’s real money.

So here’s the question:

What’s the return?

Is there any measurable impact on student outcomes?

Any data point that says, “Yes, sending hundreds of administrators out of town for a few days directly improves what happens in the classroom”?

I’ve been asking that for a while.

Still waiting on an answer.

The “Not Taxpayer Money” Defense

Now, to be fair, district leadership will tell you this isn’t funded by taxpayer dollars.

They’ll say it’s covered by a local nonprofit.

Fine.

Let’s accept that for a second.

Even then—there’s another issue.

MNPS is almost entirely funded by taxpayer dollars.

So if you’re going to spend a half-million dollars on something like this—and that’s a reasonable estimate—you’d think there might be some value in keeping that money local.

Investing it back into the Nashville economy.

Hotels. Restaurants. Service workers. Drivers.

Instead?

Louisville gets the boost.

Their hotels. Their bartenders. Their servers. Their economy.

Not Nashville.

Not the people whose tax dollars fund the system in the first place.

And again—for what?

That’s the disconnect.

That’s what people are reacting to when they hear “we’re broke.”

Memphis and the Takeover Debate

Back at the legislature, one of the more significant moves this session was the bill allowing a state takeover of Memphis schools.

This one got heated.

Supporters argued that intervention is necessary.

The data point they kept going back to?

More than 75% of Memphis students are not proficient in reading and math.

That’s a real problem.

No sugarcoating it.

But there’s another piece of the data that matters too:

Memphis has earned the highest possible score in academic growth for four straight years.

So what do you do with that?

Growth is good.

Improvement is good.

But if students aren’t reaching proficiency, does growth really matter?

That’s the uncomfortable question.

Because nobody gets into college based on growth scores.

Nobody gets hired because they improved faster than average.

Outcomes matter.

At the same time, there’s a different question that doesn’t get asked nearly enough:

What makes the state think it will do better?

Because historically, there’s not a lot of evidence to support that idea.

State takeovers sound decisive.

They sound like action.

But results?

That’s another story.

The Moment That Said Too Much

And then there was the moment.

Every session has one.

This year, it came during that Memphis debate.

State Senator Adam Lowe decided to share a joke from back home in Calhoun:

That maybe the best way to improve Tennessee education would be to give Memphis to Arkansas.

Yeah.

That didn’t go over well.

Because jokes like that tend to reveal more than they’re supposed to.

Campaign Season Begins

With the session over, the focus shifts.

Campaign season is officially underway.

Fundraising ramps up. Messaging tightens. Lines get drawn.

This year, Tennessee is electing a new governor.

Right now, Senator Marsha Blackburn looks like the clear frontrunner on the Republican side.

Double-digit lead.

Strong name recognition.

And on the Democratic side… well, history suggests it’s an uphill climb.

A steep one.

But the bigger story might not be the governor.

It’s what comes after.

Because a new governor means a new Commissioner of Education.

And a new commissioner means a new agenda.

New priorities. New strategies. New experiments.

That’s where things get interesting.

MNPS: The Rumor Mill

Let’s dip into the local side for a minute.

Because while the state was wrapping up, the MNPS rumor mill has been doing what it does best.

First up: James Witty.

Former virtual school principal. Then HR executive.

Now? Gone.

He posted the standard “moving on” message.

Grateful. Reflective. Non-specific.

And in a district where secrets rarely stay secret, nobody seems to know what’s next.

Which, honestly, makes it more interesting.

Then there’s Mason Bellamy.

Left his role as Chief Academic Officer to “reconnect with his wife.”

Six months later?

Back in a chief role.

With a raise.

Despite policy that says you’re supposed to wait a year before returning.

Now he’s Chief of Special Projects.

What projects?

Good question.

He was brought back to oversee the rollout of weapons detection systems.

That’s done.

Expansion to middle schools?

Also done.

So what’s left?

Nobody seems to know.

Which either means it’s incredibly important…

Or not at all.

Equity—In Theory and Practice

I often take issue with how we talk about equity.

Not because the idea is wrong.

But because the practice rarely matches the rhetoric.

Case in point:

Recent coaching hires for women’s high school sports.

Every one of them?

Black male coaches.

Now let me be clear.

This isn’t a criticism of those coaches.

At all.

Some of them are excellent.

One of them probably should be coaching the boys’ team.

But the question still stands:

Are there no qualified women in Davidson County to coach women’s sports?

Because if we’re going to talk about equity—constantly—publicly—loudly—

Then at some point, we have to practice it too.

The Workbench

This isn’t corporate media.

There’s no team.

No budget.

No handlers.

It’s just me.

Trying to keep up.

Trying to make sense of it.

Trying to follow how all of this fits together.

And the best way I know how to think about it is the same way I think about the old hi-fi gear sitting on my workbench.

You open it up.

You look inside.

And eventually, you start to see it.

Where things are supposed to move.

Where they’re getting stuck.

Where the grease has hardened and everything just… slows down.

And once you see it, the fix usually isn’t complicated.

It’s attention.

It’s honesty.

It’s being willing to say, “This isn’t working.”

But that’s the part that’s hardest for systems.

Because systems—especially big ones—don’t like admitting that.

They’d rather keep pushing.

Keep forcing it.

Grinding the gears.

Pretending everything’s fine.

Until something breaks loud enough that nobody can ignore it anymore.

If You Made It This Far

If you’ve made it this far, you probably get it.

You see the patterns.

The contradictions.

The gap between what’s said and what’s done.

And if you think that matters…

You know where to find me.

Venmo: @Thomas-Weber-10
Cash App: $PeterAveryWeber
Tips: Norinrad10@yahoo.com

“If there is one class of person I have never quite trusted, it is a man who knows no doubt.”
― Geraldine Brooks

I’ve picked up a new hobby recently.

Admittedly, not a great one for an aging gent with fading eyesight, but one that brings me a certain kind of peace—and maybe more importantly, keeps the mind working in ways that scrolling a phone never will.

I’ve been picking up old hi-fi gear. Mostly stuff from the ‘70s and early ‘80s. Estate sales, Facebook Marketplace, the occasional “this thing’s been sitting in a garage for 20 years” special.

And then I try to fix it.

Now, let’s be clear—I’m not particularly good at fixing it. Not yet, anyway. At this stage, I’m probably better at taking things apart than I am at putting them back together. There’s a growing graveyard of “projects” that currently function more as educational experiences than restored pieces of audio history.

But with each teardown, something clicks.

You start to see how it all fits together. You start to understand the logic behind the machine.

Because that’s the beauty of equipment from that era—it’s mechanical. It’s deliberate. It’s rooted in logic you can actually follow.

You open one up, and you can trace the path. You can see where the signal goes, where the movement begins, where it’s supposed to stop. When something isn’t working, it’s usually not a mystery. It’s friction. It’s buildup. It’s neglect.

More often than not, the fix isn’t glamorous. It’s cleaning. It’s fresh grease. It’s patience.

Not all that different from life, really.

Fixing this gear has a rhythm to it. Follow the flow. Learn as you go. Apply change where the system has broken down.

The first time you open one up, it’s intimidating. Wires everywhere. Gears that don’t look like they belong to anything you recognize. A whole lot of “what in the world am I looking at?”

But then, slowly, you start to recognize things.

There’s the cam.
There’s the actuator.
There’s the lever that’s supposed to trip the shutoff.

You start to recognize the signs of grease that’s aged and hardened—gumming everything up, slowing things down, preventing the system from doing what it was designed to do.

And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

There’s something reassuring about that.

There’s also something instructive.

Because if you’re paying attention, you start to realize just how many systems in life operate the exact same way.

Every once in a while, you come across a story that makes you stop and think:

“How’d they miss that?”

Not just the action—but the moment. The awareness. The basic understanding of how something is going to land.

There’s a story out of Tennessee that’s been making the rounds this week.

During a live-streamed Washington County Board of Education meeting, board member Keith Irvin sat next to a female student, put his arm around her, and said:

“God, you’re hot.”

Now, it doesn’t take a whole lot of imagination to figure out how that was received.

People got upset. Quickly. Loudly.

As they should.

Irvin, for his part, says the comment is being taken out of context. That he wasn’t referring to her appearance, but to her performance at the meeting—that she was “on a roll,” asking strong questions, engaging thoughtfully.

In a statement, he said:

“When I mentioned she was hot, I meant she was on a roll. It was nothing to do with her appearance.”

And look—I have no reason to believe he’s lying.

I can absolutely believe that in his mind, that’s what he meant.

But here’s the problem.

Meaning doesn’t matter nearly as much as understanding how something is going to be received.

A grown man.
An elected official.
Sitting next to a high school student.
Putting his arm around her.
And using a phrase that, in just about every modern context, is associated with appearance.

That’s not a “gotcha moment.”

That’s a failure to understand the system you’re operating in.

Irvin also said:

“I’m not always good with words. I sometimes say things in a way that doesn’t convey what I mean.”

That might be true.

It’s also not an acceptable defense for someone in a leadership role in 2026.

We live in a world where everything is recorded. Everything is clipped. Everything is shared.

There are no side conversations anymore.

There is no “that’s not what I meant” buffer.

And if you haven’t adjusted to that reality, then you’ve got hardened grease in the system—and it’s going to cause problems.

Predictably, the backlash came quickly.

A petition calling for Irvin’s removal has gathered thousands of signatures. Community members are speaking out. Media coverage has amplified the moment.

One organizer described it as part of a broader issue:

“It’s the ‘good ole boy’ system. They protect each other and let each other get away with whatever they want, and it needs to stop.”

And maybe that’s true.

Maybe this is about more than one comment.

But somewhere in the middle of all of this, something—or rather someone—has gotten lost.

The student.

We’ve turned her moment into a battleground.

There’s outrage. There’s defense. There are statements and counterstatements and petitions and interviews.

But has anyone stopped and asked:

What does she want?

I raise my son with the belief that you don’t assume women need your help. That they’re capable of handling their own business. That if they need support, they’ll ask for it.

The same applies as a parent in general.

I try—emphasis on try—to give my kids space to fight their own battles. I offer advice. I offer perspective. But I don’t jump in unless I’m asked.

Do they lose sometimes because of that?

Absolutely.

But the lessons tend to stick a little better when they’re earned.

From everything we’ve heard, this student handled herself exceptionally well in that meeting. She asked thoughtful questions. She engaged. She held her own.

I have no doubt she’s capable of expressing how she feels about what happened.

And I can’t help but wonder if anyone gave her the chance to do that before the adults showed up with microphones and petitions.

Now, maybe they did.

Maybe she was deeply offended and wanted action taken.

If that’s the case, then fine—full steam ahead.

But if not, then we’ve done what adults too often do.

We’ve taken ownership of something that wasn’t ours to begin with.

As for Irvin, there’s a larger question at play.

Not just about what he said—but what it says about his ability to lead.

He’s been on the board a long time. Long enough that it’s entirely possible he hasn’t kept up with how quickly social expectations have shifted.

And if you can’t recognize that telling a high school student she’s “hot” is inappropriate—regardless of intent—then how equipped are you to create policy that reflects the reality students are living in today?

Sometimes leadership isn’t about digging in.

Sometimes it’s about recognizing when you’ve become the distraction.

Sometimes it’s about stepping aside.

Because here’s the reality: every word he says from this point forward is going to be filtered through that moment.

Every statement.
Every vote.
Every attempt at communication.

That’s not fair, maybe—but it’s real.

And effective communication requires clarity. It requires removing obstacles, not becoming one.

Right now, he is the obstacle.

There’s no real upside to trying to weather this storm.

But if history tells us anything, it’s that when the interests of adults and the interests of kids collide…

We all know who usually wins.

While we’re on the subject of school boards, let me ask you a question.

Did you know the Metro Nashville Public Schools board is holding an election this year?

Go ahead. Be honest.

Yeah. That’s what I thought.

Let me catch you up.

This year, the even-numbered seats are up—Districts 2, 4, 6, and 8.

Districts 2 and 8? Incumbents. No challengers.

District 4 has two candidates.
District 6 has three.

All Democrats.

Which means once the primaries are done, all four winners will run unopposed.

So if you’re looking for sweeping change…

You might be looking in the wrong place.

Personally, I’m keeping an eye on Jennifer Bell and Fran Bush.

Bell brings experience as an educator.

Bush brings something just as valuable—she’s willing to challenge the system.

At a recent forum, Bush pointed to something parents across the district have been saying for years:

“Parent engagement hasn’t been there… Parents don’t feel like they’re connected to MNPS.”

She’s not wrong.

You hear it everywhere.

At ballfields. In parking lots. In those quiet conversations that happen after school events.

There’s a disconnect.

And when people feel disconnected, they leave.

That shows up in enrollment numbers. It shows up in the rise of charter schools. It shows up in interest in vouchers.

Incumbent Cheryl Mayes pushed back on that idea, pointing instead to immigration fears as a major factor in declining enrollment.

That may be part of the picture.

But the idea that families are pulling their kids out of public schools and moving to private options because they’re afraid to attend school?

That’s a tough sell.

There are bigger forces at play here.

And one of them is control.

Bush touched on that too:

“Teachers can only do what they are allowed to do… sometimes they can’t go outside the box because it’s all about testing.”

That’s been the direction for a while now.

Centralized decision-making.
Standardized approaches.
A belief that improvement comes from the top down.

The problem is, classrooms don’t work that way.

Teachers aren’t interchangeable parts.

They’re the system.

And when you strip them of autonomy—when you reduce everything to pacing guides and testing metrics—you don’t create consistency.

You create tension.

And tension doesn’t help kids learn.

But it does make adults feel like they’re in control.

Another voice worth listening to came from Mary Polk, a bus driver running in District 6:

“We need to stop being a rubber stamp… As a board, you’re supposed to make policy and make policy work.”

That word—rubber stamp—keeps coming up.

And it’s sticking.

Because people are starting to notice.

A board that values agreement over accuracy.
Stability over accountability.
Harmony over hard decisions.

Trying to make omelets without breaking eggs.

It doesn’t work.

It never has.

But come May 5th, the outcomes will be what they are.

And we’ll all move forward pretending this is what choice looks like.

Because in today’s version of democracy, sometimes the illusion of competition is enough.

Meanwhile, over at the Tennessee General Assembly, things are moving at their usual end-of-session pace—which is to say, fast enough that even people paying attention are struggling to keep up.

Bills are changing in real time.

Amendments are appearing and disappearing.

What’s alive, what’s dead, and what’s been quietly reshaped depends on the hour.

Take the voucher expansion bill.

The House recently amended its version, pushing the program to 35,000 students next year—an increase of 15,000.

The Senate? They want 40,000.

Because of course they do.

The House version also adjusts “hold harmless” funding—meaning districts would only receive funding for students who actually take vouchers, not for overall enrollment losses.

That’s not a small tweak.

That’s a structural shift.

And it has the potential to hit district budgets hard.

There was also a provision requiring districts to report the number of undocumented students.

That got dropped.

Which tells you something about where the pressure points are.

The big question now is whether there are enough votes to get anything across the finish line.

Republicans have a supermajority, but even within that, there’s division.

And when divisions show up this late in session, strange things can happen.

The clock becomes a factor.

Deals get made—or don’t.

And sometimes, everything just… stalls.

If that happens, the program may only expand by 5,000 seats, as already written into current law.

Which, in this environment, might qualify as restraint.

We’ll see.

This isn’t corporate media.

There’s no team.
No budget.
No handlers.

It’s just me.

Trying to keep up.
Trying to make sense of it.
Trying to follow the flow.

Same as that old hi-fi gear sitting on the workbench.

You open it up, and eventually you see it—
where the system is supposed to move,
where it’s getting stuck,
where the grease has hardened and everything just… slows down.

And once you see it, the fix usually isn’t complicated.

It’s attention.
It’s honesty.
It’s a willingness to admit something isn’t working the way it should.

The problem is—unlike a turntable—
the people running these systems don’t always want to be fixed.

They’d rather keep forcing it.
Grinding gears.
Pretending it still works.

Until something breaks loud enough that nobody can ignore it anymore.

If you’ve made it this far, you probably get why that matters.

And if you think it does…

Venmo: @Thomas-Weber-10
Cash App: $PeterAveryWeber
Tips: Norinrad10@yahoo.com

That was on full display this week as Metro Nashville Public Schools appeared before a newly created state accountability panel. The hearing stems from recent changes in Tennessee’s school funding laws, which created a process to examine districts with chronically underperforming schools.

On paper, it sounds collaborative. In practice, it feels a little more like a performance.

The Setup

MNPS was called in because six schools—representing 4,692 students in the 2024–25 school year—either received an “F” for two consecutive years or dropped from a “D” to an “F.”

Those schools are:

• Antioch Middle

• Cane Ridge High School

• Chadwell Elementary

• Donelson Middle

• Glenview Elementary

• Paragon Mills Elementary

The panel itself consisted of three members of the Tennessee State Board of Education: Vice Chair Darrell Cobbins, Chair Robert Eby, and Dr. Ina Maxwell.

As required by law, MNPS showed up with the full delegation—Director of Schools Dr. Adrienne Battle, Board Chair Frida Player, Chief Academic Officer Renita Perry, and CFO Jorge Robles.

And then there was the gallery.

Roughly 30 MNPS administrators and principals sat in attendance. Middle of the school day. Seventy-five minute hearing.

I’ll be honest—I don’t get it.

We’re constantly told that every minute matters in education. Instructional time is sacred. Leadership presence in buildings is critical. And yet here we are, pulling dozens of high-level district staff out of schools so they can sit quietly in a hearing room as a show of support.

Every minute counts—until it doesn’t.

“This Is Not About Us”

To his credit, Darrell Cobbins tried to set the tone early.

“I want to make sure that LEAs, district leaders, staff and others understand as well as we do that this is not about us. This is not about you… This is about one million students across the state of Tennessee whose futures have been entrusted to us.
And so we will have to ask some hard-pointed questions. That’s not personal.”

That’s the right framing.

But what followed made it clear pretty quickly that both sides walked into that room prepared to have two very different conversations.

Two Conversations, One Room

The panel wanted to talk about six schools.

MNPS wanted to talk about 150.

Over and over again, panel members tried to zero in—What are the root causes at these schools? What targeted resources are being deployed? What specific leadership interventions are in place?

And over and over again, the district zoomed out—district-wide strategies, system-wide improvements, broad frameworks.

If you’ve listened to Dr. Battle before, none of this was surprising.

The presentation hit all the familiar notes on the education jargon bingo card:

• fidelity

• sense of urgency

• direct instruction

• core strategy

• high-quality instructional materials

• high-dosage tutoring

All of it sounds good.

All of it should sound good.

But unless you can see how those things are actually being implemented—classroom by classroom, school by school—they’re just words.

And that’s part of the problem with these hearings.

The panel can ask questions, but at the end of the day, they’re largely taking the district’s word for it. There’s no real mechanism to verify what “fidelity” looks like inside a third-grade classroom at Glenview or how “high-dosage tutoring” is actually playing out at Cane Ridge.

People often know the questions to ask.

It’s the follow-ups where things get shaky.

Where Are the Teachers?

For most of the 75-minute hearing, teachers were almost an afterthought.

Which is strange, considering how often “direct instruction” and “classroom rigor” were emphasized.

At one point, the conversation leaned heavily into the idea that teacher effectiveness is driven by real-time coaching—frequent walkthroughs, ongoing feedback, constant observation.

That might sound reasonable on paper.

But on the ground?

This year, MNPS teachers have been pretty vocal about what that feels like:

They’re under a microscope.

Frequent walkthroughs. Pop-ins. Observations that disrupt the flow of instruction and leave teachers feeling like they’re performing rather than teaching.

And apparently, that’s not a bug—it’s a feature.

Here’s the thing: education is a relationship-driven profession.

Students learn better from teachers they trust.
Teachers perform better under leaders they trust.

Real-time coaching without a strong relational foundation doesn’t feel like support—it feels like surveillance.

And when that happens, the outcomes aren’t always better instruction.

Sometimes they’re just resentment.

A Fair Question Nobody Wants to Ask

If every teacher needs constant, real-time coaching to be effective, then what exactly are we doing with all the front-end requirements?

Why require degrees?
Why require student teaching?
Why require licensure exams?

Why not just hire anyone and coach them into competency?

It’s an uncomfortable question—but it’s a fair one.

Leadership—or Something Else?

Board Chair Frida Player made a point during the hearing to describe the school board as one that holds Dr. Battle accountable and publicly challenges her when necessary.

That hasn’t exactly been my observation.

But let’s set that aside.

What stood out more was the contrast—almost the irony—between her comments about the board not micromanaging the director and the district’s apparent embrace of micromanagement at the school level.

We don’t micromanage leadership.

We just micromanage everyone else.

Player also talked about “nerding out” on data.

And that’s where things get a little uncomfortable.

Because those data points?

They’re not just numbers.

They’re kids.

And somewhere along the way, that distinction gets lost.

The Principal Pipeline Question

All six schools under discussion have relatively new principals.

Naturally, the panel wanted to know what specific supports those leaders were receiving.

The answer?

Another zoom-out.

District-wide principal supports. Leadership pipelines. Coaching structures. Playbooks.

Again, all of it sounds good.

But where’s the evidence?

Where’s the proof that these systems are producing better outcomes—not just better presentations?

Leadership matters. I don’t think anyone would argue otherwise.

But definitions matter too.

I’ve always believed in a servant leadership model—leaders as facilitators, not enforcers. People who support the work rather than dictate it.

Because at the end of the day, leadership is a choice made by the people being led.

If the people in your building don’t trust you, don’t believe in you, don’t follow you—you may still have the title.

But you’re not leading anybody.

And right now, MNPS seems to favor a model that leans more directive than collaborative.

That’s a tough model to make work in schools.

Finally—Teachers

It wasn’t until the very end of the hearing that teachers really entered the conversation.

When panel members offered recommendations, the first thing on the list was teacher retention.

That matters.

A lot.

Because you don’t improve schools by cycling through staff—you improve them by building stability, consistency, and trust.

The panel also emphasized the need to focus on root causes at the six schools in question.

Which, ironically, is exactly what they’d been trying to talk about the entire time.

The Bigger Picture MNPS Didn’t Want to Talk About

As a result of the hearing, MNPS is now required to develop an action plan for those six schools and present it to the State Board of Education.

And to be fair, I think that was the point all along—to force the district to focus.

Because at one point, the panel openly acknowledged they didn’t even know how many “C” and “D” schools existed in MNPS.

Here’s the answer:

A lot.

According to the state’s latest report card, roughly 96 schools in MNPS fall into the “C” or “D” categories—the bulk of the district sitting squarely in the middle.

And that’s where things get interesting.

Because that distribution?

It’s not random.

It’s the system working exactly as designed.

Most schools cluster in the middle. A few rise. A few fall. And we spend all our time arguing about the margins while ignoring the center.

I’m willing to give the district a little grace here, because what those grades don’t show matters just as much as what they do.

A “D” school making real gains looks the same as one standing still.
A “C” school could represent quiet progress—or quiet stagnation.

So what you’re really looking at isn’t just a grading system.

It’s a fog.

A district where most schools are somewhere between getting better and not getting there fast enough—and nobody seems entirely sure which is which.

The Part Nobody Wants to Say Out Loud

Only six schools were discussed in the hearing.

But there are four more MNPS schools that received an “F” on the most recent report card.

They just weren’t repeat offenders.

That’s the line.

That’s the threshold.

That’s the difference between a hearing and no hearing.

And if that feels a little arbitrary—it’s because it is.

Timing Is Everything—Or Nothing

Here’s the part that’s hard to ignore:

State testing begins in two weeks.

Nothing that happened in that hearing will change outcomes for those six schools this year.

Nothing in the upcoming action plan will affect the tests about to be administered.

By the time MNPS develops and presents its strategy, those schools could already be something different—better, worse, or exactly the same.

Which makes the whole exercise feel a little like… theater.

Kabuki theater, if we’re being honest.

Everyone knows their role.

Everyone delivers their lines.

And at the end, we all pretend something meaningful just happened.

Meanwhile, At the Legislature…

Because no week in Tennessee education policy is complete without a little side show, lawmakers also spent time advancing what’s being called the “Charlie Kirk Act.”

The bill, sponsored by Representative Gino Bulso, would require colleges and universities to:

• Adopt a free speech policy modeled after the University of Chicago

• Align political and social action policies with the Kalven Report

• Prohibit disinviting speakers based on viewpoint

What followed wasn’t really a policy discussion.

It was a debate over Charlie Kirk himself—a national political figure with no real ties to Tennessee.

Representative Sam McKenzie pushed back hard, arguing the bill legitimizes Kirk’s views, including criticisms of the Civil Rights Act and controversial rhetoric about Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Bulso countered:

“The gentleman who appointed her, President Joe Biden, before he ever selected her, said he was going to select a black woman… and I think all of us here can agree it’s inappropriate… to limit the pool… based on race and gender, is itself a racist act.”

McKenzie didn’t mince words in response:

“You look at the resume of every Supreme Court Justice, hers stands out… I don’t care what Joe Biden, Donald Trump, or anybody else said… that is ridiculous.”

And at some point you just sit back and wonder:

What are we doing here?

A state House committee floor probably isn’t the place to relitigate federal judicial appointments.

And this bill?

Feels a lot like a solution in search of a problem.

Bizarro world.

And Then There’s Screen Time

Another bill moving through the General Assembly would limit screen time for K–5 students, including use of educational devices.

Originally, it went even further—proposing to ban devices like Chromebooks almost entirely, except in special circumstances.

Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed.

Because school districts across Tennessee have spent years—and millions—investing in educational technology.

Pulling the plug on that overnight would have been… something.

Still, the bill raises a bigger question:

What exactly are we trying to accomplish?

Technology isn’t going away.

If anything, it’s becoming more central to how we live and work.

So why are we trying to push kids toward an analog experience in a digital world?

And where do parents fit into this?

If I want my child to have access to technology, is that my decision—or the state’s?

We hear a lot about parental rights.

Just not always in consistent ways.

The Common Thread

If there’s a theme running through all of this—from accountability hearings to legislative debates—it’s this:

Adults talking past each other.

State vs. district.
Lawmakers vs. reality.
Policy vs. practice.

Everyone’s trying to control the narrative.

And in the process, the actual work—the hard, messy, relational work of improving schools—gets pushed to the side.

Final Thought

This isn’t corporate media.

There’s no team.
No budget.
No handlers.

It’s just me—trying to keep up, trying to make sense of it, and trying to say the things others won’t.

If you’ve made it this far, you probably get why that matters.

And if you think it does…

Venmo: @Thomas-Weber-10
Cash App: $PeterAveryWeber
Tips: Norinrad10@yahoo.com

“I began to think of school as a prison camp, and my duty was to disrupt, subvert and/or escape. But, of course, there was no escape. I felt I should make some kind of statement. I decided to deliver two tons of horseshit to my housemaster. Just one of those spur-of-the-moment ideas that comes with no logic in tow, but a great deal of emotional momentum.”
― Bruce Dickinson, What Does This Button Do?: An Autobiography

Wednesday morning, I took a phone call from a reporter in Chicago.

They were looking for background on former MNPS Deputy Superintendent Sito Narcisse.

Let that sink in for a minute.

Now look—I’m not here to pretend Sito Narcisse is some sort of villain. He’s not. In my experience, and in the experience of many others in Nashville, he’s a nice enough man. Personable. Approachable. The kind of guy who can sit across from you, nod along, and make you feel like he’s hearing every word you’re saying.

But leadership isn’t about being likable.

And when it came to his time in MNPS, the results just weren’t there. Not close. Not even in the same neighborhood. The execution was lacking, the follow-through inconsistent, and the outcomes—particularly for the students and schools that needed the most support—never matched the promises.

At some point, you have to separate personality from performance.

Because being well-liked and being effective are two very different things.

And in Nashville, whatever goodwill existed on the former couldn’t overcome the reality of the latter.

And that’s what makes what comes next so hard to square.

Somehow, some way, Narcisse has gotten himself named as a finalist for the Chicago Public Schools superintendent job—one of the largest, most complex, most politically charged education leadership roles in the country.

And I’ll be honest with you—that was one of those moments where you just kind of lean back in your chair, shake your head, and ask yourself:

What are we even doing here?

Why am I doing this?

Why do any of us pay attention?

Because Narcisse hasn’t exactly been operating in the shadows. This isn’t some unknown rising star. He’s been in the game for over 20 years.

Two decades.

Two decades of decisions, outcomes, leadership moments—good, bad, and otherwise—all sitting out there, fully available, one Google search away.

And yet…here we are.

The Résumé vs. The Reality

After leaving MNPS, Narcisse landed in East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana. That was supposed to be his next act, his opportunity to lead, to build, to prove.

Instead, he didn’t even make it through his initial contract.

Three years in, Narcisse decided he deserved a raise. Not just any raise—a 22% increase.

Now, I don’t know about you, but when you’re mid-contract and asking for a bump like that, you better have results that jump off the page.

The school board didn’t see it that way.

In fact, their response was about as polite as you can make something that’s fundamentally not polite at all:

“Now that you mention it…we’re not even sure we want you back.”

And they didn’t.

A year after he left, the district found itself without a superintendent again. And in a twist that almost reads like satire, Narcisse offered to return—to step in, to “serve,” to guide the district until a replacement could be found.

You can probably guess how that went.

“No thank you.”

Twice.

And Now…Chicago?

Which brings us to today.

Narcisse is now a finalist for the Chicago superintendent position.

Let’s look at the field.

• Dr. Macquline King — current interim CEO of Chicago Public Schools

• Dr. Sito Narcisse — well…you’ve just read the résumé highlights

Remember that old Sesame Street song?

🎵 One of these things is not like the other… 🎵

Yeah. That.

Next steps include interviews with the mayor and community meetings, with a goal of hiring someone in April.

So yes—this is real.

This is happening.

Representation, Optics, and Strategy

There’s another layer here.

Many in Chicago are raising concerns about the lack of a Hispanic candidate in the finalist pool. And that’s not nothing.

Across the country, school systems are becoming increasingly diverse, and leadership often struggles to keep pace with that demographic reality.

According to Chalkbeat, citing a 2025 study by the Council of the Great City Schools:

• About 20% of superintendents were Latino

• Roughly 45% were Black

• Around 30% were white

• And just 4% were Latina women

That last number should stand out.

So yes, representation matters. It’s part of the conversation whether people like it or not.

And Narcisse? He’s not unaware of that dynamic.

He’s married to a Hispanic woman, Maritza Gonzales. The two came to Nashville around the same time, and if memory serves, were married within months.

They even missed part of that first school year—on their honeymoon.

Now look—I’m not here to judge anyone’s personal life. That’s not the point.

But in a process like this, where optics, narratives, and positioning matter?

I would fully expect that relationship to be part of how Narcisse frames himself in this moment.

That’s not cynical.

That’s just how this game is played.

The Bigger Problem

And here’s the thing—it would be easier to dismiss all of this if Narcisse were an outlier.

He’s not.

This happens all the time.

Education leadership has created a system where administrators can leave one district under a cloud—poor results, strained relationships, questionable decisions—and then reappear months later in a bigger district, with more money, and more authority.

Rinse.

Repeat.

And then people act surprised when the outcomes don’t change.

The question is whether Chicago decides to push him across the finish line.

We’ll see.

Meanwhile, Back in Tennessee…

While Chicago sorts through its leadership choices, the Tennessee General Assembly is sprinting toward the end of session.

And if it feels fast, that’s because it is.

Election year.

Every day in session is a day not spent fundraising, campaigning, or positioning for what comes next.

So things are moving.

Quickly.

A Rare Win for Teachers

Let’s start with some good news—at least depending on your perspective.

The so-called PECA bill failed to advance out of committee in the Senate.

If passed, the bill would have:

• Eliminated collaborative conferencing

• Limited teachers’ ability to meet with labor representatives inside schools

In short, it would have further weakened organized teacher voices in Tennessee.

Union members went all in this weekend—a full-court press.

And for now?

It worked.

The bill is stalled.

But let’s not pretend this is over. These ideas don’t disappear. They regroup.

Next year may be a very different story.

Testing, Testing…Always Testing

If there’s one issue getting real traction this session, it’s testing.

And about time.

We test too damn much.

And increasingly, lawmakers—Republicans included—are starting to say that part out loud.

One bill that did advance would loosen TCAP requirements for students participating in voucher programs.

Under Senate Bill 1585, schools in the Education Savings Account (ESA) program could choose to administer a “nationally standardized achievement test” instead of TCAP.

That’s a shift.

Private schools in the program have been required to give TCAP since 2022. This would change that.

Meanwhile, students in Tennessee’s newer Education Freedom Scholarship program? They’re already not required to take TCAP.

So what’s the rationale?

According to Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson (R-Franklin), it’s about alignment—reducing confusion by making the programs consistent.

Critics see it differently.

They argue this is about hiding results.

Because when you standardize testing across systems, you create comparability.

And comparability can be uncomfortable—especially if outcomes don’t match the marketing.

Supporters counter with a different metric:

Parent satisfaction.

They cite a 91% approval rate among families using voucher programs.

And in their view?

That’s success.

The Pilot Program That Might Matter

Then there’s Representative Greg Martin (R-Hixson), who has introduced legislation to actually study the impact of reducing testing.

His proposal:

A two-year pilot program involving students in 10 of the state’s highest-performing districts, examining whether fewer mandated tests might lead to better academic outcomes.

Now look—there are valid criticisms here.

But I’ll say this:

The man’s heart is in the right place.

As Martin put it:

“Students, families, and educators widely agree that the level of standardized testing occurring in Tennessee Public Schools is just too much.”

He’s not wrong.

In some grades—particularly K–8—students can take up to 22 standardized tests a year across subjects.

Twenty-two.

At some point, you have to ask:

Are we measuring learning?

Or replacing it?

The Observer Effect Problem

There’s a concept in science called the observer effect—the idea that measuring something can change the thing being measured.

That’s where we are with testing.

When everything becomes about test performance, instruction shifts.

Teaching becomes test prep.

And test prep is not the same thing as learning.

Now, last year, Tennessee Department of Education officials testified that increased testing rigor helped drive the state’s rise on NAEP rankings.

Tennessee jumped nearly 20 spots nationally.

That’s real.

But let’s not pretend we’re operating in a controlled lab environment.

Students are not static variables.

They’re influenced by:

• Instruction quality

• Family dynamics

• Economic conditions

• Sleep

• Nutrition

• Peer environments

So when someone says, “It’s the tests that did it,” I can’t help but laugh a little.

Because unless you’re controlling for everything else—which we aren’t—you’re making an argument, not stating a fact.

Transparency…Or Something Like It

Representative William Slater (R-Gallatin) isn’t sold on Martin’s pilot.

He argues it won’t provide enough data to guide statewide policy, especially since it focuses only on high-performing districts.

That’s a fair critique.

Instead, Slater supports House Bill 2277, which would require districts to publicly post all local assessments they administer each year.

And here’s where things get…confusing.

Because I could have sworn we already did this.

Jennifer Smith and Larry Proffitt worked with then-Representative Sheila Butts on legislation requiring districts to list assessments and who mandates them.

I thought that passed.

Apparently?

Not so much.

Which leads to a strange reality:

The tests are mandatory.
The transparency isn’t.

And that, more than anything, tells you where we are.

Rutherford County and the First Amendment

Finally, let’s talk about Rutherford County.

Because if there’s one issue guaranteed to light a fire, it’s books.

The county library board voted 8–3 to move 132 books—many with LGBTQIA+ themes—from the children’s section to the adult section.

Not remove.

Move.

That distinction matters.

Then came the response.

Library Director Luanne James pushed back, stating she is:

“professionally and ethically bound to uphold the First Amendment”

She called the decision “viewpoint discrimination” and argued it violates the community’s right to information.

A Couple of Thoughts

First:

132 books.

That’s not a handful.

That’s not a couple of titles that slipped through.

That’s a collection.

And I have a hard time believing anyone—anyone—has read all 132 of those books closely enough to make individual determinations about each one.

Which raises a bigger question:

How did we get here?

Because a public library, by definition, is supposed to reflect its community.

So either:

• A small group has pushed the collection too far in one direction

• Or another group is reacting too strongly in the opposite direction

Maybe it’s both.

What the First Amendment Actually Says

Second—and this part matters—we’ve got to be careful with how casually we throw around “First Amendment.”

Here it is, in full:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

That’s it.

Nowhere in there does it explicitly guarantee a right to access information in any specific format, location, or section of a public library.

And no—it doesn’t say you can’t move a book from one shelf to another.

Again:

The books are being moved.

Not removed.

You can still read them.

You might just have to walk a few more steps.

Where This Is Headed

Now look—I understand why people are frustrated.

These are cultural battles playing out in public institutions.

They’re messy.

They’re emotional.

And they’re not going away anytime soon.

But if we’re going to invoke constitutional arguments, we owe it to ourselves to do so carefully.

Because the First Amendment is serious.

It deserves more than being pulled out every time we don’t like a decision.

The Through Line

If there’s a common thread running through all of this—from Chicago to Nashville to Rutherford County—it’s this:

We keep confusing process with outcomes.

We assume:

• The right résumé equals the right leader

• The right test equals real learning

• The right policy equals the right result

But reality doesn’t work that cleanly.

It never has.

And until we start being honest about that—about the gaps, the contradictions, the uncomfortable truths—we’re going to keep seeing the same cycles play out.

Different city.

Different bill.

Different headline.

Same result.

One Last Thing

This isn’t corporate media.

There’s no team.

No budget.

No handlers.

It’s just me—trying to keep up, trying to keep you informed, and trying to say what others won’t.

If you value that work:

Venmo: @Thomas-Weber-10
Cash App: $PeterAveryWeber
Tips: Norinrad10@yahoo.com

—

Round here it is Spring Break time — a welcome respite from the crazy school year.

For families with kids in school, Spring Break sits in that strange place on the calendar. It shows up just when the school year feels like it’s starting to grind people down. The mornings are still early. The homework still piles up. The sports schedules are full. The days are getting longer, but somehow everyone still feels tired.

Spring Break is supposed to be the pause button.

Unfortunately, we ain’t one of those traveling families.

You know the ones. The folks posting pictures from Destin or Panama City or some Caribbean beach while the rest of us are sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee and pretending the laundry pile will magically fold itself.

Around here we’ve got baseball, work, and a little bit of battery recharging to keep us occupied — despite the advertised days of freedom.

That’s not a complaint. Just the reality.

Baseball season waits for nobody.

And honestly, after the pace of the school year, sometimes staying home and slowing down is exactly what people need.

Still, the calendar has a way of reminding you that time doesn’t stand still.

The eldest is heading into the final semester of her junior year.

That sentence doesn’t even sound real when I say it out loud.

Junior year.

Which means senior year is right around the corner. Which means college visits, applications, and all those decisions parents spend years pretending they’re not thinking about.

Reality is slowly nipping at our heels.

It’s a surreal feeling watching your kids move through the system that you’ve spent so much time writing about. The years feel long when you’re living them, but when you look back they somehow all compress into a few quick memories.

One day you’re packing lunches.

The next day they’re driving themselves to school.

Time doesn’t ask permission.

It just moves.

So if you had Spring Break this week, I hope you enjoyed it.

Because before long the school year will be over, graduation season will arrive, and summer will roll in before anybody quite feels ready for it.

Meanwhile in Nashville

While families were trying to catch their breath during Spring Break, over on Capitol Hill the Tennessee General Assembly is racing toward the end of its session.

If it feels like it’s been a quick one this year, that’s probably because it has.

Legislative sessions have their own rhythm, and election years tend to move a little faster.

Lawmakers are in a hurry to get out of the halls of power and back on the money trail. Every day spent in Nashville is a day not spent fundraising, campaigning, or reminding voters why they deserve another term.

And this year, there’s a little extra motivation.

Next year at this time Tennessee will have a brand new governor.

And with a new governor comes a brand new Commissioner of Education.

That reality has already started the quiet speculation game.

In education policy circles, people are already asking the question: who’s next?

The Commissioner of Education in Tennessee carries enormous influence. The job controls the implementation of state education policy, oversees the Department of Education, and plays a major role in shaping how legislation actually turns into classroom practice.

In short, it matters.

I’m assuming the current commissioner will take her leave and head back to her home state of Texas once the administration changes hands.

Don’t be surprised if she resumes work with the Jeb Bush-created nonprofit ExcelinEd, which has served as something of a farm system for education leadership across several states.

Which brings up an interesting historical footnote.

The naming of a new commissioner could mark the first time in well over a decade that Tennessee’s education department is led by someone who didn’t come directly out of one of Jeb Bush’s education foundations.

Previous commissioners — Kevin Huffman, Candice McQueen, and Penny Schwinn — all came through the ranks of Chiefs for Change, another Bush-aligned education reform network.

That pipeline has shaped Tennessee education policy for years.

Breaking that pattern would represent a meaningful shift.

Whether that shift actually happens is another story entirely.

When the Bills Start Falling

We are now at that point in the legislative session where the weaker bills begin to fall by the wayside.

It happens every year.

Hundreds of bills get introduced in January. By March, only the ones with real political backing are still moving.

This week saw movement on several education-related proposals, including:

• Expanding the state’s voucher program
• Requiring schools to collect data on undocumented students
• Closing underperforming virtual schools

But the biggest killer of bills this year isn’t common sense.

It’s the fiscal note.

Just like at your house, when money gets tight the list of things you can afford to do suddenly gets a lot shorter.

And right now Tennessee’s state coffers aren’t exactly overflowing.

Revenue projections have cooled, and that means lawmakers have to be more selective about what they pass.

You’d be surprised how many legislative ideas suddenly lose their appeal once somebody attaches a price tag to them.

The Collaborative Conferencing Fight

One bill still moving through the legislature would end collaborative conferencing for teachers.

For those who haven’t followed Tennessee education policy for the last decade, collaborative conferencing replaced collective bargaining after lawmakers eliminated teachers’ unions’ bargaining rights in 2011.

At the time, lawmakers pitched collaborative conferencing as a middle ground — a way for teachers to still have a formal voice in workplace discussions without full union negotiations.

This new proposal goes a step further.

Instead of replacing collaborative conferencing with something new, the bill would simply eliminate the process altogether.

That’s a meaningful change.

The House Education Committee rolled the bill to next week.

Before anyone gets too excited about that delay, there’s an important bit of legislative gamesmanship worth remembering.

The vote was scheduled on the same day the Tennessee Education Association was hosting teachers at the Capitol for their annual advocacy day.

That’s an old legislative trick.

You schedule a vote when the activists are in the building, then roll it to the following week when they’re gone.

Then the bill quietly passes in a much emptier room.

Word around the Capitol is that amendments may be added to soften the blow, but most observers expect the bill to pass out of House Education next week and then clear the full House soon after.

The Senate may be a little trickier.

But odds are the bill eventually passes there as well.

Observation Overload

One issue quietly bubbling beneath the surface is teacher evaluation.

Across Tennessee, teachers are reporting a growing number of classroom observations and walkthroughs.

I’ve heard reports from educators across the state who say they are receiving two or three walkthroughs per day — often without explanation or meaningful feedback.

That’s not exactly the system policymakers envisioned when teacher evaluation reforms were introduced.

One idea gaining traction would create more autonomy for teachers who consistently receive 4- or 5-star ratings in the evaluation system.

In theory, highly rated teachers could face fewer observations and more professional freedom.

But there’s a catch.

The whole idea hinges on the credibility of the rating system itself.

If everyone suddenly becomes a four- or five-star teacher, the ratings stop meaning anything.

That tension has stalled the conversation for now.

Still, don’t be surprised if the issue resurfaces next year.

The “Charlie Kirk Heritage Act”

Meanwhile, over in the State Senate, one of the more unusual bills of the session continues moving forward.

After passing out of committee this week, the so-called “Charlie Kirk Heritage Act” is scheduled to be heard before the full Senate.

If passed, the bill would allow public schools to teach about the influence of religion in American history across nineteen historical topics.

Among the examples listed in the legislation:

• The religious views of the signers of the Declaration of Independence
• Benjamin Franklin’s call for prayer during the Constitutional Convention
• The historical influence of the Black Robe Regiment
• The religious motivations of the Pilgrims
• The role faith played in the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr.

On its surface, the bill frames itself as historical instruction.

Opponents argue it risks crossing the long-established line separating church and state.

The committee’s lone dissenting vote came from Senator Raumesh Akbari, a Democrat from Memphis.

Akbari raised concerns that the bill could influence students rather than simply inform them.

“I don’t think we want to put teachers, especially on higher education campuses, in any sort of situation where they can or cannot teach something,” Akbari said.

“I just think that our public schools are really not the place to push one religion over the other.”

She also noted that American founders like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson advocated a clear separation between church and state precisely to protect religious freedom.

There’s also the curious fact that Tennessee seems determined to honor Charlie Kirk despite the conservative activist having little direct connection to the state.

I suspect this one either stalls out next week or quietly dies somewhere in the House.

But stranger things have happened.

Phil Williams Throws Another Fastball

Last week I referred to Channel 5 investigative reporter Phil Williams as an aging superstar no longer quite at the top of his game.

Well, this week the veteran reminded everybody that he can still bring the fastball.

In a follow-up report on MNPS consulting contracts, Williams enlisted Metro Council member Courtney Johnston to examine the numbers tied to a controversial consulting agreement.

The results raised even more questions.

“Number one, the cost of it is exorbitant,” Johnston said.

“When you look at other contracts that are like this, $20,000 a month is a lot — it’s just a lot.”

Under the contract, The Ingram Group agreed to provide services including:

• Strategic planning and execution
• Government relations
• Philanthropic engagement
• Executive coaching
• Organizational performance consulting
• Financial advisory support

That list raised eyebrows.

“When you look at the scope of it,” Johnston said, “the scope reads like the job description of a blend between the chief of staff and the superintendent of schools.”

“Well, we already have a superintendent and a chief of staff — so why are we paying another quarter of a million dollars a year for a consultant to do this?”

She’s not wrong.

Especially when you consider that Superintendent Adrienne Battle’s cabinet has doubled compared to the previous administration.

Currently nine executive chiefs serve on Battle’s leadership team.

Each of them earns over $200,000 annually.

If you compare the consulting contract to those salaries, it’s fair to argue that the Ingram Group is essentially serving as a de facto member of the superintendent’s cabinet.

That’s not exactly a great look.

The Communications Problem

Williams attempted to interview Superintendent Battle about the contract.

The district declined to make her available.

Instead, they issued a prepared statement.

And it’s worth quoting part of it here:

“Given the increasingly complex political and policy environment in which public schools operate, access to multiple sources of institutional knowledge and experience is valuable to Metro Nashville Public Schools.”

Maybe.

But here’s my question.

Are we really paying a communications chief more than $200,000 a year to produce statements like that?

When dealing with investigative reporters, it’s a little like boxing someone with a longer reach.

You don’t stay outside their range.

You step inside and take away the advantage.

Refusing to talk rarely makes the story go away.

In fact, it usually makes it bigger.

Why district leadership thought declining the interview would settle the matter is beyond me.

Did someone really believe an investigative journalist would read that statement and say, “Well, that answers everything”?

To me this smells like betting on political protection.

The assumption seems to be that as long as leadership stays quiet, allies on the school board, the Metro Council, and inside the mayor’s office will provide cover.

Unfortunately for the district, Courtney Johnston apparently didn’t get that memo.

And when elected officials start asking questions, stories like this have a way of growing legs.

As Johnston herself put it:

“My overall concern here is what this indicates. If this is how they’re doing business, what other contracts are being done sole source that are exorbitant in nature, that are wasting our tax dollars?”

That’s a very good question.

Dr. Battle’s Next Appointment

One interview Superintendent Battle won’t be able to avoid is coming up soon.

On March 23rd, MNPS will appear before the State Board of Education.

The meeting is required by state law.

Last year the legislature passed a measure requiring districts with priority schools — schools that consistently rank among the lowest performing in the state — to present improvement plans directly to the state board.

Lawmakers have grown tired of watching the same schools sit on the priority list year after year.

MNPS has several of them.

Which means the district has to show up.

State law also requires that the Superintendent, Chief Academic Officer, and Chief Financial Officer all attend the meeting.

That should make for an interesting discussion.

Because the last time Dr. Battle was scheduled to appear before state lawmakers, she cancelled just hours before the meeting.

That appearance — before the House Education Committee — had actually been requested by the district itself.

Let’s just say the state board will probably expect her to show up this time.

School Board Races Taking Shape

Meanwhile, the next set of MNPS school board elections is beginning to take shape.

Ballots are set, and primaries begin the first week in May.

A quick snapshot of the races:

District 2
Rachel Elrod is running unopposed.

District 8
Erin O’Hara Block is running unopposed.

District 4
Incumbent Berthena Nabaa-McKinney faces challenger Jennifer Bell, a former MNPS employee.

District 6
As usual, this district has the most candidates.

Incumbent Cheryl Mayes faces two challengers: Mary Nernice Polk and former board member Fran Bush.

And if you’ve followed Nashville politics for any length of time, you know Fran Bush has a knack for getting under the establishment’s skin.

That race could get interesting.

Every candidate in this election is a Democrat.

That shouldn’t shock anybody in Nashville.

But it certainly won’t make everyone happy.

We’ll dig deeper into these races as the primaries approach.

The Work Continues

This isn’t corporate media.

There’s no team.

No budget.

No handlers.

It’s just me — trying to keep up, trying to keep you informed, and trying to say what others won’t.

If you value that work:

Venmo: @Thomas-Weber-10
Cash App: $PeterAveryWeber
Tips: Norinrad10@yahoo.com

Every year, when the Tennessee General Assembly gavels into session, I tell myself the same thing.

Maybe this will be the year sanity prevails.

Maybe this will be the year lawmakers take a look around, review the laws already on the books, and collectively decide: You know what? We’re good.

Maybe — just maybe — they will resist the urge to tinker with everything in sight.

Every year, I am disappointed.

The 2026 legislative session will be no exception.

This week, the insanity was on full display.

Immigration, Data, and the Real Target

Grabbing most of the headlines this week was a bill advancing through the Tennessee House that would require school districts to track and report the immigration status of their students.

If that sounds familiar, it should.

Last year lawmakers attempted to pass legislation that would permit districts to deny students access or charge tuition based on immigration status — a proposal that ran headlong into a rather inconvenient Supreme Court decision: Plyler v. Doe (1982).

That ruling ensures public schools must provide educational opportunities for all students, regardless of immigration status.

This year’s bill strips out the denial of access and instead focuses on data collection.

At its core, however, the legislation appears designed to challenge the Plyler ruling and reopen the broader legal debate.

There is also a financial argument being made.

Educating students who are not fluent in English requires additional resources — translators, specialized instruction, and additional support staff. Some estimates place that cost at roughly half a billion dollars statewide.

As the number of non-English-speaking students in Tennessee has grown, those costs have become a larger concern for some lawmakers.

Critics warn that the bill could jeopardize federal education funding, which currently totals roughly $1.1 billionflowing into Tennessee schools.

House Majority Leader William Lamberth (R-Portland), the sponsor of the bill, acknowledged that concern during committee debate.

He has reportedly reached out to the U.S. Department of Education for guidance on whether the bill could put those funds at risk.

So far, the response has been… less than reassuring.

“We have not been given the idea that it would not,” Lamberth said.
“I understand, in some part, why they would be unwilling to answer a question about a bill that has not passed yet.”

Lamberth maintains the legislation is simply a tool for gathering information, noting that districts would only report aggregate numbers and would not be required to provide the names of students.

Critics remain skeptical.

Even aggregated data, they argue, could still be used to target individual districts.

There is also the issue of the Senate version of the bill, which previously passed with provisions allowing districts to deny enrollment.

Any final legislation would have to go through reconciliation — meaning the finished bill could end up looking very different from the House version.

Protest, Passion, and Signs in the Chamber

The hearing itself was heated.

Seated behind Lamberth during his presentation was a woman holding a sign that read:

“Jesus said, whoever welcomes children welcomes me.”

The sign remained visible throughout the hearing despite chamber rules prohibiting signs.

There were several outbursts during the debate, and protesters were eventually escorted out of the room by the Sergeant-at-Arms.

The bill ultimately passed out of subcommittee and now heads to the House Finance Committee.

As the vote concluded, spectators began shouting loudly enough to force a temporary recess and clearing of the chamber.

I understand the passion.

But disruptions rarely lead to productive debate.

Still, something tells me this issue isn’t going away anytime soon.

The Teacher Union and the Bill That Came Due

Despite living in a union household, I’m not sure there is a more politically ineffective organization in Tennessee than the Tennessee Education Association (TEA).

Over the past decade teachers have seen more responsibilities piled onto their plates while the job itself has become increasingly difficult. At the same time, the union has been pushed further and further out of the conversation, leaving teachers with fewer ways to advocate for themselves while lawmakers and administrators continue making decisions about the classroom from a distance. Teacher shortages are now a constant topic of conversation.

During another committee meeting this week, I heard a lawmaker argue that there is no statewide teacher shortage.

Later — in defense of his own bill — he acknowledged that roughly 6,000 teachers across Tennessee are currently working under emergency credentials.

Which is an interesting way of saying there isn’t a shortage.

Back in 2011, lawmakers eliminated collective bargaining for teachers and replaced it with something called collaborative conferencing.

Think of it as collective bargaining cosplay — it looks similar, but comes with far more restrictions and produces agreements that are not legally binding.

Still, it provides teachers with at least some voice in the process.

Now lawmakers want to eliminate that too.

HB2226 would end collaborative conferencing entirely.

In its place?

Nothing.

Just the assumption that districts will treat teachers fairly on their own.

If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge in Arizona I’d love to sell you.

Teacher unions exist for a reason, and the work they’ve done over the years has improved the lives of educators immeasurably.

But the TEA has also developed a reputation — fair or not — for focusing too heavily on social issues unrelated to the classroom.

That reputation has created enemies.

Including the sponsor of this bill.

Aron Maberry and an Old Political Score

Representative Aron Maberry (R-Clarksville) is the sponsor behind the legislation.

Maberry is a former Montgomery County Commissioner, an Army veteran, and someone with strong ties to evangelical faith communities.

Several years ago Clarksville became the center of a controversy involving “See You at the Pole.”

The national student-led event involves students gathering around their school flagpole before classes begin to pray.

The event itself is legal.

Students absolutely have the right to pray at school.

But schools cannot organize or promote the activity.

Some critics argued the Clarksville event was being promoted using school resources.

Supporters countered that critics were attempting to suppress students’ religious freedom.

Maberry supported the students’ right to pray, arguing that voluntary student religious expression is protected under federal law so long as it is not organized or led by school staff.

The TEA weighed in during that fight.

And later supported a political challenge to Maberry’s seat.

That challenge failed.

Elections have consequences. And in this case, the consequences are about to be felt by teachers across the state.

Maberry argues that ending collaborative conferencing does not silence teacher input, noting that only about 30 districts currently use the process.

But the bill also contains another provision that should concern educators.

It restricts teacher organizations from meeting inside school buildings.

Representative Ronnie Glynn (D-Clarksville) pointed out the practical problem with that.

The TEA currently provides several professional development trainings to districts at no cost.

If the bill passes, districts may be forced to absorb those costs themselves. Unfortunately that wasn’t enough to slow the bill’s roll.

The bill passed out of subcommittee 4-1.

Rumor has it amendments are already being drafted.

It might behoove the union to set aside some of its worst instincts and learn to play better with others.

Because right now, those bridges are burning.

Legislative Odds and Ends

Several other bills caught my eye this week.

HB2395 would require students to learn about the religious beliefs of the nation’s founders.

During debate, Representative Gino Bulso (R-Brentwood) admitted he wasn’t aware the Declaration of Independence contained what the bill called a preamble.

Legal counsel clarified that the reference was to the famous passage beginning:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident…”

I must admit I was a little surprised by the confusion.

But I doubt he was the only one in the room who learned something that day.

Another proposal from Monty Fritts (R-Kingston) would require the construction of a 40-by-40-foot plaza on every public university campus in Tennessee.

That’s 47 courtyards.

Each would display plaques featuring the Bill of Rights, the Tennessee Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Ten Commandments — with the plaza itself dedicated to Charlie Kirk.

Because when most people think of the founding principles of the American republic, the first name that comes to mind is a conservative podcaster from Arizona.

Estimated cost: $18 million.

Fritts disputes that number.

Personally, I’d argue that if the cost were $100, it would still be too high.

Look, I like Charlie Kirk just fine, but we need a little perspective here.

His historical ties to Tennessee are minimal.

Meanwhile, Jesse Jackson, a civil rights leader who spent decades fostering difficult public dialogue, recently passed away and the state couldn’t even agree to lower the flags.

Perspective matters.

But what do I know?

I’m just a guy who thought university campuses were supposed to be dedicated to students.

The Aging Warrior

Sports fans are long familiar with the public decline of the aging warrior.

This past football season, NFL fans bore witness to a future Hall of Famer attempting to hold on to past glory and falling short. Once a nimble runner, Aaron Rodgers struggled to pick up first downs even when wide open fields presented themselves. What once had been routine had suddenly become difficult. Another victim of Father Time.

Sometimes those same moments play out in other corners of the public sphere.

For years, Channel 5 investigative reporter Phil Williams served as something of a boogeyman for public officials across Nashville. The mere sight of his news van pulling into a parking lot was enough to make bureaucrats nervous. Williams built a reputation on detailed investigations and earned multiple Emmys for his work.

These days, however, the fear factor seems diminished.

Earlier this week Williams aired a report examining the relationship between former MNPS Chief of Staff Hank Clay, the Ingram Group lobbying firm, and Metro Nashville Public Schools.

Clay left his role inside MNPS and joined the Ingram Group. Not long after his departure, the Ingram Group entered into a consulting agreement with MNPS that allowed Clay to continue advising district leadership — this time as an outside consultant working through the firm.

At the time the contract was signed in December of 2024, it carried a price tag of $12,000 per month.

That alone raised a few eyebrows.

But the agreement didn’t stay there.

Since then, the contract has grown to $20,000 per month — roughly $240,000 a year of taxpayer money flowing to a lobbying firm that now employs the district’s former Chief of Staff.

For context, that means Metro Nashville Public Schools is paying nearly a quarter of a million dollars annually for outside advice — advice being provided to district leaders who themselves earn salaries in the neighborhood of $200,000 a year.

Part of Clay’s role reportedly includes participating in contract reviews with district leadership, offering strategic guidance on how the district approaches various operational decisions.

Williams’ report focused on a contractor that also happens to be a client of the Ingram Group.

As Williams put it:

“Just to put a fine point on it. Hank Clay is getting paid by taxpayers to advise Metro Schools and then Zayo is paying him to advise them on how to work with Metro Schools?”

A former employee of the contractor confirmed that arrangement.

Naturally, that raised questions about whether the relationship should have been disclosed as a potential conflict of interest.

MNPS spokesperson Sean Braisted wrote:

“While we have no indication of any improper activity, we do believe advance notice of any potential or perceived conflict of interest is appropriate.”

Later statements clarified that the Ingram Group was not involved in procurement or vendor selection, meaning there was technically no overlap.

The more interesting question, however, is who wasn’t in the story.

MNPS Superintendent Adrienne Battle was conspicuously absent — despite the fact that it is difficult to imagine a consulting contract growing from $12,000 to $20,000 a month without the superintendent’s knowledge or approval, especially when it involves one of her closest confidants.

Which raises the obvious question:

Who’s afraid of who?

Because when public money and public institutions are involved, the public deserves the full story — not just the convenient parts.

Watching the report, I couldn’t help but think back to that Rodgers comparison. Once upon a time, Williams’ investigations moved the chains. They uncovered details, connected dots, and forced accountability. This one, however, felt more like a quarterback scrambling toward the sideline before reaching the marker. The play looked promising at first, but in the end it came up short.

While adults argue over politics, contracts, and investigations, students across Nashville are already thinking about the future.

Students and the AI Question

At Metro Nashville Public Schools’ first AI Summit, students from Whites Creek, Glencliff, McGavock, and John Overton weren’t debating whether artificial intelligence belongs in school.

For them, that question is already settled.

Instead they were asking a more practical one:

How can it help them learn better?

Glencliff senior Sean Sanders explained his approach simply.

“I don’t say, ‘Give me the answer.’ I say, ‘Teach me how to do it.’”

To prepare for the ACT, Sanders uses AI to generate practice math problems and walk through solutions step-by-step.

Other students described using AI to format scripts, support research, and clarify difficult concepts.

Whites Creek junior Mikayla Hester described it as a kind of late-night tutor.

“Maybe you’re at home and you’re struggling with something. You can’t always text your teacher or e-mail them at 12 in the morning… Sometimes you can just ask AI, ‘Hey, can you explain this to me?’”

But the students were also clear-eyed about the risks.

Whites Creek junior Easton Clendenin warned that overreliance could erode fundamental skills.

“If we continue to ask AI to do that for us, we’re going to lose that skill.”

Ultimately, the students delivered a message many adults in the room needed to hear.

AI should guide learning — not replace it.

The Work Continues

This isn’t corporate media.

There’s no team.

No budget.

No handlers.

It’s just me — trying to keep up, trying to keep you informed, and trying to say what others won’t.

If you value that work:

Venmo: @Thomas-Weber-10
Cash App: $PeterAveryWeber
Tips: Norinrad10@yahoo.co

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