FOXNEWS Channel 17 tonight had an interesting report about the Metro School board meeting in which an official with the state lectured the board about its failure to meet No Child Left Behind Act requirements.
For the state headed by a governor, who left more Metro children behind with his twisted Core Curriculum as mayor, to lecture any body about fairness and morality is more hypocrisy that Christ ever found with the Pharisees and Sadducees.
But don't worry. The state is never going to get its full hand on Metro Schools. And local officials won't be in control either.
Some of us have already joined behind the scenes to make sure of that, and put a different level of government in control of the school district. And I bet you can guess which level and branch of government will ultimately be in control of Metro Schools for years to come.
We few, we happy few, have the families and the money to file and sustain a class action, civil rights lawsuit to put the school district under the control of a federal judge. With all respect to Dr. Register, he has been saddled with an impossible task.
Our action will not be because of his failure, but that of supposed leaders like Bredesen, Dean and so many other Metro officials including Bill Purcell who have allowed generations of bigotry and racism to dictate their actions and influence their gross moral cowardice.
If you think passage of EnglishOnly is going to give this city a bad image, you've seen nothing yet once we grab the national headlines and attention of universities training future educators.
Our children and this city, of which I am now a citizen, deserve better. Now we have the six-figure dollar support and a large number of families to file for class, fast track status to confront this immorality once and for all, with a judge overseeing Metro schools -- not another bureaucrat who has the audacity to lecture the school board with the sty in her eye.
This would not just be an action for minority and poor children. It is an action for all parents of all colors and classes who felt forced to move to the suburbs for good schools or send their kids to private school. It is also about getting more teachers hired and higher salaries for the best of them.
Parents and taxpayers have been betrayed twice. First, they've had to spend more money for their child's education. Second, they still have to pay for schools they no longer are using because of the abandonment of their needs.
Stay tuned for more updates. Justice can no longer wait.
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Tim, I appreciate your thoughtfulness on this subject. I agree that the state won't take over (I also don't feel that would help). I do feel the need to point out what rarely does, it seems. That bringing up test scores to the point of being on par with districts like Williamson is virtually impossible for an urban school district. And I don't believe that Williamson is that much better than Davidson. I know I am way in the minority on that. The fact is, and I don't know the exact percentage, but Davidson probably has over 20% of their students below the poverty line. Williamson maybe has 1%. And I want to point out that this has nothing to do with race. The fact is that in homes where the parents (especially single parent homes) have to concentrate on working to just to pay the bills, the education of their children generally suffers. I think this would be the same for black, white, or latino children. In Williamson, the teachers generally have an easier job because they have more supportive parents. Same with private schools where parents are paying for an education. That is why No Child Left Behind is flawed- it focuses too much on test scores and because of that, counties like Davidson will always lag. Apart from the demographics, another factor contributes- that of since the fifties and forced bussing we have seen a fairly high percentage of upper income children being sent to private schools.
New ideas do need to be tried, be they charter schools or easier access to magnets. But county wide, the measurements the federal government have forced districts to meet, will always lag. There are many individual schools in Metro that perform just as well as schools in Williamson.
In short, I'd love to see officials from neighboring school districts come into Nashville and try to figure out the problems that have little to do with teachers and principles but everything to do with poverty and resources, as well as kids who come from families that speak English only as a second language. Punishing the school district is punitive and doesn't address the real problems.
Chris/Nashville, TN
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