Nashville school board fiddles while system burns

I’ve been an interested observer of the Nashville schools for many years. Long before I ever had children, I volunteered in the East Nashville schools. [Actually, even before I lived in East Nashville. But that's another story.]

I believe wholeheartedly in the concept of public education — that we should be educating everyone to the best of their abilities, and that part of the education is learning about people who aren’t just like you. Nashville has so many private schools it’s crazy [again, another story], but in most of the ones I know, you won’t find much diversity. In the few [typically either the really expensive or the really cheap ones] that do have diversity, you find ethnic/cultural diversity but not socioeconomic diversity, though that’s not universally true.

I continue to believe what I learned growing up in a public school system, though. My county had two high schools, one large one covering most of the county [which I attended] and one small, covering one small town. My high school was about as ethnically and economically mixed as you can be in a small rural county. I came from an upper middle class home — my dad owned a business in town — and I went to school with a few kids far wealthier than I, and many other middle class kids, and lots of poor kids. About half the kids were black, half white. A few kids from other ethnic backgrounds. Mostly but not all Christian.

And I learned far more than math, science, literature and history. I learned a lot about how poverty affects people. Had I gone to a private school in the next county over, I could have easily lived my entire childhood in a small town without really seeing poverty close up. Instead, I went to school with kids who didn’t have electricity or indoor plumbing. I remember my shock at learning about a classmate’s humble living conditions, and how it changed my perspective on her.

Well I could ramble on all day about that sort of thing, but the main point is, I think having a great public education system makes it easier for us to understand each other — never mind the benefits of an educated citizenry and workforce.

But when an educational system isn’t actually educating — well, that’s a problem, no? When the 9yo was ready for kindergarten, we looked seriously at several private schools, unwilling to sacrifice her education for our principles. But we were lucky to have a wonderful, new public school open in our own neighborhood that year. She’s been well educated the past several years in a warm, loving environment, surrounded by kids from most any ethnic and economic background you could name. Absolute perfection.

Would that I could say the same for the rest of the Metro schools. Test scores are abysmal in much of our public system, but particularly in several of our large high schools. Speaking of large, our high schools tend toward the enormous side. Never mind large class sizes — when you put 2000 students together in one building, it makes it very difficult to serve the needs of individual students.

I believe many of the problems of the Nashville schools to be the result of years of disinterest on the part of the middle and upper classes. Nashville itself has around a 13% poverty rate. Nashville public schools have 70% of their students on free or reduced lunch. Even if we accept that the Census definition for poverty is a somewhat different measure than qualifications for free/reduced lunch, the disparity is clear. Our public schools today are largely educating only the poor. And they have the political clout and resources that go along with that.

Not to say they don’t have money. The school budget for the current year is $621 million, out of a $1.6 billion Metro budget — almost 40% of what Nashville government spends. In 2006, the Census reports that Tennessee school districts on the whole spent about $6,900 per pupil — 48th in the nation in per-pupil spending. In the current year, Nashville is spending more than $8000 a student — much closer to the national average than the rest of the state.

Now, I can tell you all kinds of reasons why I think we should be spending even more, but I think we could also be doing much better with what we have. I’m most disappointed in the lack of leadership from our school administration and our school board over the past few years. Here’s what I’m waiting to see:

• A plan that will ensure each student is prepared for the college of his or her choice. I heard a magnet school principal earlier this year explain that she was working to prepare students for Tennessee’s public universities. No offense to our public universities — but if our magnet schools aren’t encouraging their students to shoot for Ivy League and Ivy-League quality public universities, what the hell is going on? Today, finances will certain dictate most college applications, but if you’re qualified to attend a top school, you are on a better path for success no matter what school you actually attend. The admission requirements for Tennessee’s public universities just aren’t that rigorous, folks.
• A plan that will ensure kids who don’t want to attend college are ready for technical and career training to help them succeed in the information economy.
• A plan to ensure parental and community involvement in every school in Davidson County. Many kids can see for themselves that no one cares if they succeed or drop out.

What is our school board doing? I’m not really sure. There’s a lot of focus on hiring a new director. I think part of the problem is the school board works on a policy governance model — meaning, they approve new policies and set goals but don’t actually do anything about day-to-day running of the schools. That’s the director’s job. While I agree that in general, this may be a sound operating principle for a board, I see the Metro school board often hiding behind this paradigm in practice. It seems to me that the way the Nashville school board views policy governance, it’s easy to shuffle responsibility from one party to another.

I want someone to stand up and take responsibility for the students in this district, and for giving the community a reason to support the schools. If our city continues to believe our schools are failing, they most certainly will continue to fail.

Tagged as: Education, Metro Nashville school board