Things are in the shitter. Things are going to be in the shitter for a while. Our state runs on sales tax and that means that people have to buy stuff in order for our state to have money. People can’t buy stuff if they aren’t working and a lot of us aren’t working.
The top priority of every legislator in Nashville right now should be putting people back to work. Lure jobs here. Whatever it takes.
Sneak into Kentucky and drag their factories back here. Start a public works project to put up a giant toll gate across the Mississippi at Memphis and charge all river traffic to use the river. Put Tennesseans to work, some tunneling under Alabama, some training rats to move through the tunnels, into Alabama’s sewers and up into the homes of Alabamans to steal their wallets and deliver the money to our coffers. And I guess that would put some of us to work breeding all the rats necessary for this.
What about Purity Dairy? I think we can all agree that they have some damn delicious milk. Couldn’t we put Tennesseans to work as milk-pushers? We could circumvent state laws in other states and sell our awesome milk on the black market. We could put Tennesseans to work building a giant black cloth which we would hoist up on the border between North Carolina and us and we could hold evening hostage. If they ever want to see the sun set again, they’d better pony up.
Now, I’m going to freely admit that all of these things are stupid ideas.
But as far as stupid ideas go, they have some merit because they involve us working together as a state in order to benefit everyone in the state.
But I have two observations after looking at the legislation being put forth this year.
1. It’d be nice if the politicians who wanted to just give a big ‘fuck you’ to whoever would just do it.
I mean, wouldn’t it have just been better if Representative Hill had run down the aisle middle fingers blazing as he did his best Gene Simmons face in the direction of the Representatives from West Tennessee rather than to propose this piece of shit legislation? Or this one? (And don’t even get me started on Senator Bunch. He has to be the worst legislator, like some Roman emperor sticking his name to every terrible bill he can find so that he can watch in amusement to see how it plays out. At least Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Bunch has yet to bring any fine mountain music to the Senate chambers while he tries to pass his crap.)
Let me clue you in, folks. The three grand divisions mean less and less every day. It’s a useful way to understand the state to some extent, but if no one in West Tennessee has a job, it doesn’t matter that you’re in East Tennessee; it’s still going to affect you. We are all in this together.
And the shit you propose to protect you from all the imaginary things that might happen from a transcontinental interstate? That hurts other Tennesseans. You know what Tennesseans should be saying in the face of a Mexico to Canada interstate that runs through our state? “Hola, mon frere! Your money is good here! Please spend it. We are so tired of Kansans and Iowans and Minnesotans getting all the transcontinental four-lane traffic!” But perhaps Representative Hill is unaware that you can already easily travel from Monterrey, Mexico to Winnepeg, Canada by interstate already, right now, as we speak?
Perhaps he’d rather play “fuck you, West Tennessee” than look at a map? I don’t know. All I know is that people in West Tennessee want to work and Hill wanted to make it illegal for them to take the perfectly respectable job of putting in an interstate.
Why? Who knows? In a bad economy, though, Hill wanted to keep West Tennesseans from working. It’s not like they’d just run the interstate through East Tennessee instead, so he can’t even argue that he was acting in the interest of his constituents.
He just seems to have wanted to kick West Tennessee when it’s down. Seriously, Hill, next time just flip them off. It’ll reflect less poorly on you.
2. Some legislators, because they don’t have much to offer us in the ways of job creation, have decided on a strategy of making sure that, no matter how bad you have it, you can take solace that someone else in the state has it shittier.
So, you may not have a great job, hell, you might not even have a job. But at least you can easily get a driver’s license to go out looking for a job. Representative Watson wants to make sure that people who don’t yet read and write English don’t have that same privilege. He’s trying to pass a law that all drivers’ license exams be given only in English (and you’ll be unsurprised to learn who the Senate sponsor of this nonsense is).
How does this bring jobs to Tennessee? You think international companies are going to be excited about bringing jobs to Tennessee if it looks like we’ll make life as difficult as possible for the people they bring here to get things set up?
Illegal immigrants already can’t get drivers’ licenses, so Watson is being a heartless jackass to legal immigrants, people who have followed the rules and who are trying to make their way in the country. We could put out the welcome mat, but Watson wants to kick them in the ass.
And he also wants to require that you prove you’re a citizen before being able to vote (again, guess who the co-sponsor is). Now, keep in mind that there’s already a mechanism in place to verify voter registration. You can register to vote as Mickey Mouse, but that doesn’t mean Mr. Mouse is then eligible to vote.
And keep in mind that you can register to vote at all kinds of places. I’ve registered to vote at the Green Hills movie theater and then, when I moved, out front of Kroger. But you think I’m going to let those folks make a copy of my driver’s license or my passport?
Hell no.
Shoot, why doesn’t Watson just call this the “Helping Con Artists More Easily Steal Your Identity” bill and be honest about it?
But let’s not lose sight of the purpose of this bill–to make sure someone’s life is shittier than yours. I mean, your life might suck, but at least you have a driver’s license or a passport. At least you can afford to pay to get a copy of your birth certificate. Hell, at least you have a birth certificate. There are still plenty of people in this state who rely on an entry in the family Bible or a Baptismal record to prove they were born.
Here’s something that’s fun to imagine, though. Voter registrations are, right now, one sheet of paper. There are 3.5 million registered voters in Tennessee. If every registration has to contain two pieces of paper, that’s 7 million sheets of paper the State has to find something to do with.
Has anyone checked to see if Watson owns stock in Hon?
Filed under: The State of Tennessee
Awesome piece of writing…..
If the Tennessee educational system gets much worse, you will have plenty of native-born people in your state who can’t read or write English well enough to pass a driver’s license test.
Yes, as I noticed on my “Friends of Coal license plate” post yesterday, the only reason conservatives get up in the morning and feel inspired to put their pants on seems to be to piss of liberals. I am 100% serious about that. So yes, the idea of Rep. Hill running down the aisle middle fingers blazing is hilarious to me. Because that is EXACTLY what they want to do.
We are in deep trouble. And I don’t think they realize that.
So simply, powerfully, and concisely put, B. I’ve told you before about my highly paid, unionized, taxpayer-funded colleagues who love to rail about ‘liberals’ and ‘socialism.’ From these same mouths regularly proceed condemnations of the corruption in our political system. The epidemic levels of aggressive ignorance and self-immolating spite in this country can not be laid solely at the feet of the conservative movement, but this general condition of social and political devastation is exactly what conservatives have been actively seeking since the height of the Civil Rights movement. If we had an opposition party that was interested more in serving the people (not to mention ensuring the survival of the republic) than in fealty to interests of concentrated wealth, then perhaps we’d get more politicians standing up to ask a simple question: “What’s more important to you: the happiness and well-being of your children, your grandchildren, and yourself; or the ability to say ‘fuck you!’ to niggers, liberals, and all your other bugbears?”
S.B., I think some of them do recognize we’re in deep trouble. But like the assholes who stockpile guns, ammo, and canned goods and moan about the collapse of society (after spending their adulthood voting for anti-gov’t charlatans), maybe these slash-and-burn politicians think they’ve been blessed, privileged, or ordained to rise above and ride through the tribulation they’ve been actively working for. They may be more pathological than we give them credit for.
At this point Orwell isn’t bothering to budge. It’s Octavia Butler who’s rolling over in her grave.
[...] Cat Pants » In Which I Make an Observation about Tennessee PoliticsPosted 10 hours [...]
Just wondering if you would propose a different tax system for our state… I wasn’t sure if you were against a sales tax based economy for the reason that a loss of jobs means a loss of funds. Because actually, taxes are collected on all funds spent, and even people without jobs spend some money. If we were an income tax based state then no one out of a job would be adding funds to the tax collections.
Great writing’ but as I read it I started going down the list of bills that I had filed in my mind and hoping that I wouldn’t have any make your list, and then the anxiety started building up I had trouble breathing for a little bit, until I got to end, and as relief set in I smoked a Cigarette and re-read your post, It was much better the second tome around.
[...] Aunt B has some observations about Tennessee politics. The long and the short of it is, we may be in a “flush twice” situation. [...]
B, I’m not sure that the bills you refer to in your first point really are designed to screw over West Tennessee, or even piss off liberals. Because one thing I’ve noticed about a lot of legislators in this state is that they are unable to perceive that actions have consequences, and what those consequences logically will be. I mean, that anti-highway bill is grandstanding against terrorism and immigration, pure and simple. I’m fairly confident that the people who are proposing them haven’t thought them through nearly clearly enough to figure out that if they pass they have an impact on West TN at all. They just want to be on record as being against what they think their constituents will consider to be bad stuff, is all. I think that kind of stupidity is worse than outright malice, actually, but I don’t think they’re the same thing.
Sam, my dear husband gave me a collection of interviews with Butler for Hannukah, and in the ones from right around the times Parable of the Talents was published she talks about working on a follow-up book to that. Which after a couple of years turns into talk about how she couldn’t write it because it was too depressing to keep going on with. Evidently vampires were more cheerful. So, yeah, what you said.
Jesus Christ woman,
I know you are not stupid, you write too well. Could it be ignorance? Or blind loyalty to some sort of twisted “Lady Liberty” concept?
Trucking is one of the few industries where a blue collar worker can still pull down a decent wage. Mexican truckers are already pulling down those wages thanks to the Bush/Obama border deregulation. Can you imagine the damage that would be done if we allowed unfettered, transnational competition from folks with a standard of living that we wouldn’t apply to our dogs?
Yeah, maybe these bills to oppose this un-funded and probably unrealistic trans continental highway are nothing more than political grandstanding. They cost the state nothing and it puts the feds on notice. I would far rather have more of that versus something that will cost the state (and me, the taxpayer) another dollar.
Seriously, if we wanted to create 14 MILLION plus jobs, we could do it in a matter of a few months. Remove the illegal immigrants from the US and put Americans back to work.
I notice you never addressed the most recent study that conclusively proved that illegals damage the black community far more than they do America as a whole. Care to take a swing?
Oh, I am also sprouting some of this:
http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/showimage/40059/
If you want some for your wet spot let me know.
“Bunch has yet to bring any fine mountain music to the Senate chambers while he tries to pass his crap”? B, you have outdone yourself.
Frank, if “Americans” (which Mexican men and women are) wanted to work in the conditions and for the pay that “illegals” are currently accepting, they’d already have the jobs. Or are you unclear on how the free wage market works?
Though I like your swagga, you’ve also missed the point about there already being numerous North-South transcontinental roads. The only thing Tennessee isn’t going to get is the jobs for building another one. If you’re worried about licensing Mexican drivers for operation on Tennessee highways, then that’s the bill that you ought to back.
The only thing missing here were pictures!
Post pictures of these yahoos and then watch your state.tn.us traffic grow. They hate that because their names get buried in your post and no one cares, but everybody knows a face, especially their own staring back at them and the voters saying “Look at me smiling ear to ear as I waste your time and money.”
Put a face to legislation that isn’t focused on three priorities: jobs, jobs and jobs.
Get ‘em.
While I think Frank went a little over the top, he does have a bit of a point in the rush to do whatever it takes to brings jobs here. There’s short term and long term impact of all these decisions.
There’s little question in the short term we needs jobs in the state…only a fool would say otherwise. Still, if the creation of some jobs for short term gain would result in long term damage to established industries (like trucking) is it really in the state’s best interest?
There has to be a balance to it although I’m really concerned in the midst of the liberals-hate-conservatives-hate-liberals-wash-rinse-repeat world of current politics that any compromise that would balance short vs. long term gain is impossible.
This bit of unreality is just too precious:
Seriously, if we wanted to create 14 MILLION plus jobs, we could do it in a matter of a few months. Remove the illegal immigrants from the US and put Americans back to work.
Frank thinks he can move 14 million undocumented human beings somewhere “in a matter of a few months.” Oh, and there’s got to be enough time left over at the end for all the blue-blooded U.S. Americans to apply for the jobs.
Frank, do you not realize that the little minor logistical problem of where to put a few million people is precisely the reason Reagan offered illegal immigrants a path to citizenship back in the 80s? I believe the term of art these days is “AMNESTY FOR ILLEGALS.” (And yes, it must be spelled out in all capital letters to reflect the hyperventilations conservatives always have when they speak about these matters.)
This is a classic example of the conservative “solution” to any problem: declare an enemy, point the finger of blame at them, and do everything in your power to punish them in some way.
Nah, Frank means that we could hire another 14 million folks to harass anyone who speaks a furrin language.
Hey, Josh, I’m going to side step the question of taxes actually for the reason you get at. We’re in very, very unusual circumstances. May we never see anything this bad again in our lifetimes. And I honestly don’t think, with the kind of unemployment we have, that a different tax system would have made much of a difference.
But I also think that having the “We need an income tax!” “I’m honking my horn in protest” fight is a familiar one that some people would rather have.
No matter what, we need jobs. And figuring out how to bring jobs here is a tough, tough thing.
Far easier if we can just pretend that this is like other times, when we all take to the streets and shout at each other and politicians bluster and grandstand and we all play our parts and know our roles.
This is not those times. And, if we’re going to fix this, we need to not be distracted in the same old ways.
One raid created nearly 1000 jobs.
http://www.greeleytribune.com/article/20061220/BUSINESS/112200084
Another raid creates at least 200 BETTER paying jobs with IMPROVED working conditions:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07017/754517-28.stm
It is beyond simple. ICE investigates employment records along with help from the IRS. They then arrest the board of directors or the president of the company if ONE illegal immigrant is found to be in their employment. We already have laws to cover this. Will the charges stick? Who really cares. Then end result is American’s get jobs.
Can you imagine the impact of an ICE raid at Gaylord? That would produce hundreds of decent jobs for Nashvillians.
As for the mythical Can-Mex corridor? It probably won’t happen but if it does it dooms America’s trucking industry. Here is Obama giving away 500 high paying American trucking jobs:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/mar/12/mexico-truck-ban-to-get-new-look/
If this program is brought to the logical end espoused by our Corporations, then we are looking at the loss of nearly 2 million high paying blue collar jobs. But our Hecho en Mexico stuff will be cheaper.
As far as the logistical nightmare of transporting the invaders, I say let them deport themselves. They got here, they can get back home. Or as long as we are subsidizing Amtrack, lets send them to Crawford, TX. Let the Bushites stew in the mess he helped create.
In case you are interested, here is a slightly racist Berkeley paper that discusses the issues faced by black and latino workers in Nashville and Memphis.
They careful in their use of “illegal” but they come rather close to calling black workers lazy, slow, and greedy.
http://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/GordonLenhardtpaperNov30.pdf
Will the charges stick? Who really cares.
Well, some of us care about law and silly things like that.
Frank, this is exactly the kind of bullshit I’m talking about. We have real problems in this state and your response is “let’s all have a field day raging on about illegal immigrants! Woo hoo!”
That’s your solution? Terrorize illegal immigrants? Why? Because big show of force against people who have it worse off than us will let us ignore our own shitty situations for a while?
How is that any different than what the legislators I’m talking about are up to?
Listen, we have about four million people in Tennessee of working age. The unemployment rate in the state is 10%. The underemployment rate on top of that (people who have jobs but aren’t actually making enough money to make a go of it) is estimated to be at least another 10%.
So, as a conservative estimate, we have 800,000 people in Tennessee who need actual jobs.
There are, if we take the guess of the most rabid anti-illegal immigration people, 150,000 illegal immigrants in the state. Assuming they all have jobs (even though we know some amount of them are children), even if we got rid of all of them, somehow, we’d still have at least 650,000 Tennesseans who need jobs.
So, what’s your big plan after you’re done pretending that illegal immigrants have stolen all our jobs?
But, B, that’s the entire Republican strategy for luring the (shrinking) middle-class vote.
[...] pointed Aunt B.’s post out in Morning Coffee earlier, but I wish to return to it because I believe that, in many ways, she [...]
B,
Thanks for pulling the numbers. So we agree that removing the illegal aliens from TN will create some tens of thousands of jobs for Americans? When is the last time our legislature created even 10,000 jobs?
I never said it is the answer. It is just one answer.
How did we land Nissan, Volkswagen, and Dell(yeah, I know that hasn’t worked out as well as expected)? We had smart people hitting the ground and showcasing our state talent. Governors and local municipality leaders must create and empower head-hunters. Let these head-hunters go “capture” some businesses from other states and countries and “drag” them back to TN.
If our state is not business friendly, then we need to work on fixing that problem. But I don’t think that is the issue. Sales and advertising seem to be our problem.
Now I love Dolly, but I am not talking about her singin and prancin about saying, “Come to Tennessee!” I want Bredesen’s boys playing golf with executives and telling them about our first class highways, our great river and rail systems, our inexpensive power and natural gas, our LACK OF AN INCOME TAX, our well trained workforce, and our cheap realestate prices.
Sell Tennessee. We are a valuable commodity. As our national and world economy begins to rebound, make sure that Tennessee is the first place that businesses think of when they want to move or expand.
That has a greater chance of success than some sort of 21st century ditch digging, WPA-for-TN project.
Nice try, Frank, but we’ve only agreed that your plan to scapegoat illegal immigrants doesn’t solve the problem.
And that your big idea after that is cheerleading.
I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I have to tell you, that scares the shit out of me. I’ve been to a lot of football games and I’ve never seen a cheerleader make a play.
Frank, under your proposed plan, Tennessee would be one of the last places in the US that any business would want to be. You propose making it harder and more expensive for them to get materials into and out of the region, you suggest tolerating the suspension of due process for any non-white person with an accent you deem weird, and you haven’t done a thing about the serious educational deficits in your workforce. You train a monkey; you educate a person.
Tennessee’s infrastructure (like the national infrastructure) is in bad shape. The rail beds are so degraded that we can’t run our (lame, outdated) trains at full speed. Our bridges are falling down. Why in the world would a modern business want to come to a place where the people are earnestly clinging to their status as beautiful backwater?
I have no doubt that part of the problem with recruiting businesses to TN is the stupid bills like the ones the original post called out. CEOs read the paper. They know those idjits in TN are threatening to arrest their own DOT if they work on a federally mandated project.
Do you think that fills them with warm feelings about moving to a place where the folks in charge want to do stupid petty things like that?
Bridgett, you are sadly correct about one point. If Tennessee unilaterally made(and more importantly, enforced) laws that jailed the employers of illegal aliens, then we wouldn’t have a slave class to offer to substandard corporations.
Your other points are wildly off target.
Our roads and infrastructure are some of the best in the nation.
http://www.newschannel5.com/Global/story.asp?S=11948840
http://news.tennesseeanytime.org/node/817
Our railroads are in great shape. We move more material at cheaper prices than we ever have. I think you are confusing FREIGHT rail with PASSENGER rail. Freight rail usually turns a profit. Passenger rail systems haven’t turned a profit in America or the world in the last 50 years. One can look at the Japanese model and claim that they now turn a profit since they have been privatized. To do that, one would have to ignore the government subsidies and the ZERO dollar price that the corporations paid for the Japanese rail assets.
And what educational deficit do you speak of? Never has college been so easily attainable for Tennesseans. We have an educated and hard working populace that is currently underemployed. Our cost of living is low. Combine those two and Tennessee becomes a great place to move an upstanding business.
Now if we could just throttle back on NAFTA…….
And just FYI, I never mentioned suspension of due process. The Feds can move quickly when they wish(take a look at CavArms or Sabre Defense).
Wow, B, usually your trolls aren’t so delusional.
What world are we living in where a 71% high school graduation rate is “well-educated”? Mind, that 71% is a bragging point…for years it was much much worse.
But what are students really getting when they get a high school diploma in Tennessee? If you look at the ACT data for 2008, you’ll see that Tennessee high school students are under-performing in every single disciplinary category when compared to the national average. They are particularly weak in math and science. Only 18% of them were deemed “college ready” in English, social studies, math, and science test performance. That means that students that do make it out of Tennessee high schools are not as well educated as those that get a high school diploma from Ohio, New York, or Iowa (for instance).
http://www.act.org/news/data/08/map/index.html
To look at workers as they get older, here’s some good data about Tennessee which offers a snapshot of the workforce future pipeline, or the educational data on potential new hires (25-34):
http://www.luminafoundation.org/research/state_data/tennessee.html
As you can see from the chart, about half of Tennesseans from age 25-34 have a high school diploma or less. Another fifth have a little community college work, but not enough to add up to a 2-year degree. A fifth have either a two-year or a four-year degree (which puts Tennessee in the not enviable company of such tertiary education powerhouses as Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi.) Very few Tennesseans have graduate degrees in anything.
Tennessee is way behind the curve educationally and without some dedicated effort, it’s going to stay there. The only person who doesn’t know this, apparently, is Frank. If I can look this up on the internet in five minutes, don’t you think that a multinational HR office can do the same?
And Frank? Newschannel Five is not a credible source for discussions of the state’s infrastructure. The Tennessee section of the American Society of Civil Engineers, however, issued an easily accessible 2009 report that starts with this gem:
“Tennessee’s infrastructure is deteriorating and is
in critical need of maintenance and improvement
to meet current and future demands.”
They gave the state an overall C rating — they gave rail transportation a C rating due to the lack of freight service to most rural areas, transit a D, navigable waterways a C- (with an alarming warning about the state of the state’s dam systems). Roads were given a B-, with the notation that vehicle miles were going up and spending going down, which was going to have bad effects unless more money was targeted towards road repair and construction. Parks got a D+. The Tennessee Infrastructure Alliance points out that Tennessee is currently budgeting only about half the amount necessary for needed maintenance, so conditions are going to get rapidly worse, one expects, as everything ages and falls apart.
But hell, Frank, keep on boosting…maybe you’ll hit some other Tennessee high-school dropout who doesn’t know how to use the Internet who will believe you.
Just as a coda, today’s Tennessean has an article noting that “Tennessee’s top education official predicts the majority of the state’s 1,700 schools will fail to meet standardized testing goals this spring because of the new, tougher public school curriculum introduced this school year.” Which is kind of horrifying. Because that “new, tougher public school curriculum” is still not as tough as most public school curricula nationally.
Yes, the “new, tougher” curriculum added just two credits to the degree, only one of which was academic (an unspecified math course). The other was half a credit of gym and half a credit of “personal finance” (basic life skills). Students not planning to go to college (because, you know, no one’s plans ever change after they are 15) can opt out of foreign language, art, and other humanities classes to concentrate on vo-tech. The science requirement has been changed to allow students to steer around Biology (where they might learn something about reproduction or evolution), though I think the new emphasis on lab science might, over time, have a good effect. Unfortunately, the “we’re going to put students on the dumbass track and keep them there” mentality insures that students who want to change their mind later and go to college once they realize it’s an economically good idea will not be prepared to succeed there.
Guys like Frank must not think that book larnin’ really matters…or think that somehow having shit in one’s craw is incompatible with being able to understand your own paystub or read the safety instructions on the machine you’re running. To complete any kind of college degree (especially if you’re not born into the class where the kids are just expected to go) takes guts, discipline, self-denial, ingenuity, the ability to work with other people, the development of institutional savvy…all the things a company would want in a worker that could build up their business. Unfortunately, adult Tennesseans don’t display that drive in any appreciable numbers and the state’s doing precious little to ready the kids for taking on the challenge.
We ain’t wantin none of them eleetists in this har stat.
Which brings me back to my first point on this thread, that my impression is that the lawmakers in TN (as in many other states) don’t think long-term about the consequences the laws they pass will have.
Aunt B,
Thanks for the honesty. I agree that we need more jobs, but the question is how we do it. I know that the question was not really the point your blog was to make.
NM,
I am a teacher. This years tests will probably be bad from what I have seen. Standards went from near the bottom to 2nd in the nation according to what I have seen.
Josh, someone gave you incorrect information. As you can see from the linked table, Tennessee’s revised ed standards are not nearly as stringent (either in the number of courses students have to take or in the type of mandated coursework) as most other states. We’ll have to see if the baby-step that TN department of ed has taken will have any efficacy, but if prior assessments are any indication, it’s not going to be pretty.
http://www.achieve.org/files/College&CareerReadyGradReqTable.pdf
Bridgett,
You are correct on virtually all counts. Tennessee’s infrastructure has been declining for a number of years. Part of this can be attributed to several years of transfers of road fund dollars to other parts of the budget. I forget the total figure but it is considerable.
Another part of the infrastructure problem is misplaced priorities. My favorite example is the racket around repaving (and repaving and repaving and repaving) roads whether they need it or not because repaving is lucrative for special interests. Another has been the use of road funds to open up suburban areas for new housing developments. Much of this road building should be paid for by developers. Yes, that would raise housing prices but the current system is a form of state subsidy for sprawl.
Tennessee’s infrastructure problems also relate to our political history. For years West Tennessee received disproportionately large percentages of state infrastructure funding even as the region’s population has declined relative to Middle and West. Anyone who has had the pleasure of traveling Hwy, 22 can attest to the excellence and the privacy offered by roads in the West. Not surprisingly, for over 30 years the Speakers in both Houses have been from West Tennessee.
Finally Bridgett’s point about education standards is crucial. Tennessee’s standards desperately need raising. In fact I am one Conservative who thinks that we need national standards rather than state ones.
Of course, all the educational standards in the world don’t matter if the state also mandates goofy content. Look at Texas, which is busy messing up the content of science and history courses. Tennessee doesn’t do that yet, so we’re one up on them.
Here’s the thorny problem: Tennessee students were not learning the materials they used to be taught (or at least, only 18% of them wound up being able to demonstrate that they were “college-ready”) with a weak curriculum. We all pretty much have conceded that they are going to tank their assessments on this very mildly improved curriculum. Isn’t the biggest problem to solve that the kids aren’t learning whatever is being presented? I face this problem myself — I can think I’ve taught the hell out of something and yet, if my students didn’t learn it, then we have a problem.
If the test results suggest that only 18% of TN’s students are graduating with proficiency in their academic subjects, a whole lot of people — kids, parents, teachers, admins, the whole crew of “stakeholders” — need to do some serious reexamination of content, methods and a culture that accepts educational mediocrity as good enough. Simply doing a little more of the same stuff isn’t going to help.
Mark, for what it’s worth, there is a set of national history standards. Many states use them to start building their state curricular requirements. In NY, our state social studies curricular requirements are so extensive and specific that they are (I suspect) roundly ignored by secondary educators. They stretch to nearly 80 pages of stuff the teacher is supposed to convey over the course of the four-year program. I’d be delighted if my incoming freshmen had a third of the knowledge they’re supposed to have exiting high school as measured by the state curriculum. Remember, I get the kids that LIKE history and want to study it some more; God knows what the ones who don’t like history wind up learning. Not much, I’m guessing.
I’m in the position where I have to certify that I am preparing students to teach literally hundreds of content objectives but they may really only get to take five history classes and only one US history class out of that five. In turn, they wind up going into school systems where they are handed twenty-year old textbooks and told that they shouldn’t bother with anything before 1960 because “the parents only want their kids to learn relevant things.” It’s a hot mess.
Bridgett,
Everything you say is an excellent argument for a national debate on what we want education to do and the responsibilities of everyone from the students themselves to their parents, the larger community, the states, employers and pretty much everyone else.
Talking about reforming one or two aspects of Education sounds good on the stump but I always tell candidates not to call themselves ‘education candidates’ unless they are willing to take a stand on something serious and pledge to fight for it. Voters always say education is their top issue but never vote that way.
It’s nice to know that there’s at least one general area where Mark and I are in general agreement. I just thought I’d mention that.
Bridgett, an even bigger problem than students who don’t learn (and one that I suspect underlies the horrifying test results from TN) is students who do learn something, or several things, but who have been given no context for it — or such a limited context that they can’t use it. There’s the learning-for-the-test-and-then-forgetting aspect of it (as when students who have theoretically done AP work in high school show up in college not knowing the material they got As and Bs on the year before), and there’s the remembering-the-information-blocks-but-not-being-able-to-put-them-together problem (as in students who do really well on objective tests but can’t analyze or even compare situations to save their lives). And the ones who can’t get their pretty decent ideas down on paper decently because they can’t write effectively. And … I hardly know what to do about any of this, except that in my own experience smaller class sizes, longer class hours (with a variety of teaching/learning approaches used in each class), and a lot of writing with feedback and follow-up seem to help. And how does one mandate any of that, exactly?
Bridgett, that .pdf file says basically nothing except Tennessee has elevated itself. Tennessee has made a move from the standards to grade level expectations. These new standards are in fact more difficult. I would not pay attention to what subjects states require as much as I would the expectations out of those subjects.
Sure people say I took ____ class. That doesn’t matter. What were the expectations. How difficult was it?
Obviously, a community (teachers, principals, students, parents, etc.) will decide how difficult the material is to pass a class, but the standards as proven by the TCAPs are more difficult.
Mark, I read your posts quite often at PostPolitics. I disagree with many of your points, and your idea of national standars is one I disagree with. I will spare you the talking points, but I urge you to actually look at the material as the students are now supposed learn it. I work in Title I (a federal program) and have had difficulty in getting material to match up with our standards. We have used the Orchard program and the A+ program. Both of these somewhat matchup with the standards as it does actually meet the standards, but they do not match the difficulty of what the students should know.
http://www.tennessee.gov/education/assessment/ach_samplers.shtml
Go to the above link and download some of the tests. I urge you to see how you would do on the 8th grade test, especially the math portion.
Also remember, this is the first year of the new standards. Teachers are learning how best to implement these. The students are virtually two years behind (ie what was being taught in the 6th grade last year is now 4th grade expectation in many instances). Test scores will be bad this year. You can’t cram and catch up students on 2-3 years material in a year (especially with all the snow days). Things may not be good next year. You will then see improvements.
Also, I just want to say that too many people try to blame teachers, but in fact, parent apathy is the major problem in student learning.
Joshua,
National standards are the only way to protect students from state legislatures that set standards so low that anyone can pass them. I do not favor a national curriculum but I do think that graduates in all 50 states should have comparable levels of literacy and knowledge or subjects like math, science, English and History.
nm,
Probably more than one although we probably get to similar points from very different directions.
Joshua, a number of the people commenting on this thread do teach. I don’t see a bunch of teacher-blaming going on, just a desire to look realistically at some of the challenges TN faces in getting its schools up to snuff.
Teachers and parents both have to take some responsibility in making those changes, as do students and administrators. And if we as members of the community could detach school funding from property values, that would be a major step in the right direction.
I wasn’t saying it was happening here. I was just making the statement to head it off before it started. Also, if anyone follows that link and takes the 8th math test, let us know how you did.
I’m just going to add a big ‘hell yeah’ to Mark’s comment above about the infrastructure in west TN. I worked west TN the first ten years of my career and they definitely have the shinyest bridges and roads.
But of course they also have bridges made by running a flat-bed trailer over the creek and leaving it in place as the bridge. Or culverts made by taking an old residential propane tank and chopping the ends off of it.
As Joshua asked, I took a look at the TCAP tests and shared them with my 5th grader. She thought the Reading/Language Arts and Social Studies part were “too easy.” She pointed out that they are doing substantially similar work in her class this year. The only part of the math test that looked unfamiliar to her was the f(x) =g(x) equations, which they don’t do in her school until seventh grade. That’s not to say that she would have gotten all the calculations correct, but she wasn’t blown away by the test’s difficulty level and she has already been exposed to the concepts, problem-solving processes, and disciplinary language that she’d need to get ‘er done…in a New York fifth grade classroom. Some of the stuff (probability, geometry, rational vs irrational numbers, graph interpretation) she thought should be on the 6th grade test instead because “anybody should know that by 6th grade.”
This leads me to suspect that TN is still more behinder than you think.
I looked at the math, which looked like any 8th grader ought to be able to deal with it. I can’t say I think it’s too easy, but it certainly isn’t tough. The social studies test, on the other hand … any 6th grader ought to be able to do well on it, IMO. Waaay too easy to be standard for 8th graders. (I have one quibble with it: one question presents an encyclopedia article as a secondary source, whereas it’s actually a tertiary source.) These aren’t bad standards, and they’re better than what’s in place now, but I hope to goodness things toughen up.