The legislative session is now two days old, and education figures to be a hot button issue for the next four months on capitol hill in Nashville. With that in mind, lets take a look at what we can expect.

What Bills Are Being Considered?

First, there will be lots of discussion on education. To get a better sense of what the discussion will center on, I decided to search on popular terms that might be included in Tennessee legislation to see how many pending bills are under considering using those words.

As a benchmark for how many bills are under consideration, I did a search in 2015-2016 for the word “tennessee,” figuring that would be a good barometer for the number of bills that have been filed. That search returns 316 individual bills.

As to education, a search on Legiscan of the words “education” in Tennessee yields 71 results (this includes both house and senate bills). The term “charte school” yields 71 results, the term “common core” 8 results, BEP 5 results and ‘”teacher pay” 0 results.

For the curious, here are some of the more notable/controversial bills being considered under the context of “education” and who’s sponsoring them:

• Companion bills by the Senate and house that would prohibit school systems performing at or above the base levels established by the state from being penalized.
• A new standards review committee targeted at developing new standards for Tennessee (read: repeal common core). Sponsored by Reps. Forgety, Lollar and Byrd in the assembly and Sen. Tracy, all republicans.
• Another commission to create new curriculum standards (again, repeal common core) sponsored by Sen. Dolores Gresham, Mike Bell, Mark Green and Janice Bowling, all republicans.
• A bill to enact the “Tennessee opportunity scholarship” (read: voucher bill) for students in the bottom 5 percent of schools. Sponsored by Sen. Brian Kelsey, republican.
• A bill to remove the requirement to use TCAP scores in a student’s final grade. Sponsored by Rep. Bill Dunn, republican.
• A bill requiring the BEP funding formula to provide funding for 12 months of local education employees’ medical insurance premiums. Sponsored by Rep. Bob Ramsey.
• A bill that would prohibit prone restraint when working with special education students. Sponsored by Rep. Bill Dunn.
• A bill requiring students to pass the United States Citizenship test with a  score of at least 60 percent to receive a regular high school diploma. Sponsored by Reps. McCormick, Parkinson, Lollar and Reedy (mix of republicans and democrats) in the house and Sen. Mark Norris in the Senate.
• A bill revising provisions governing how teacher evaluations are used. Sponsored by Sen. Mark Norris, republican. It would make changes such as reducing the percentage of school wide data from non-tested teachers in evaluations to 10 percent from its current level. It would also phase in growth data to teacher evaluations over the next three years as we roll out new tests.

Who’s Saying What?

For some punditry and news comments on the upcoming session, here are a few links:

Grace Tatter over at chalkbeat breaks down her five things to watch this legislative session.

Lt. Gov Ron Ramsey says he thinks Tennessee will vote to repeal common core, saying that it has been ‘co-opted’ by the federal government. You can watch his interview here.

Beth Harwell has stated her desire to streamline much of the education discussion by splitting up education committees into smaller ones. Read the story in the Tennessean.

WGNS in Rutherford County reports that teacher pay raises will also likely be on the table.

Nashville Public Radio reports that much of the teacher pay discussion will happen through the governor’s budget which has yet to be released. The TEA calls for a 6 percent increase.

My Two Cents

If I were a betting man, here’s where I predict things will stand at the end of April.

• The drama won’t start until mid February as the legislature will be occupied with the Governor’s proposed medicaid expansion. It will all come fast and furious between February and April.
• Common core effectively dead but we’ll see a commitment to creating Tennessee State Standards through the Governor’s review process which, ironically, will end up looking almost identical to common core when all is said and done.
• A small teacher raise as the Governor responds to teacher outcry. Still not the 6 percent requested by the TEA, but enough to back his goal of being the “fastest improving” when it comes to teacher salary.
• The voucher bill dies again in committee (because advocates have never found a way to get it through).
• Additional legislation will be introduced to stop the closure of low performing charter schools in Memphis. It won’t pass.
• At least one debate on the existence of the ASD. There’s been too much drama in Nashville and Memphis for a token bill or amendment regarding the district not to be introduced.
• BEP 2.0 still isn’t fully funded by the end of the session.

Those are my predictions. I’ll do a recap in April to see how right I was. Let me also close by saying: thank you to our state legislative officials for their services. I love state legislators more than any other group of elected officials because they render a vital and often thankless service, and have more impact than almost any other branch of government. Thanks for all you do, even when we disagree.

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