“Steal a little and they throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king.” – Bob Dylan
“We got a lot of kings out here.” – TC Weber
I’ve spent a lot of time this week trying to wrap my head around the relationship between money and public education. On one hand, schools are perpetually underfunded. In Tennessee, state-level of funding is determined through a formula referred to as the BEP. If you watched any of the General Assembly’s sessions on education this year, you’ve heard the Governor’s minions at the TNDOE deliberately couch their answers to legislators’ questions on school funding by saying, we fully fund based on the formula. Whether the formula is adequate or not, is a question carefully avoided.
Governor Lee frequently brags about fully funding the BEP and gets away with it because, frankly, most of Tennessee’s citizens don’t understand that formula. unfortunately for Mr. lee that is a situation that is rapidly changing.
This year, the Nashville Public Education Foundation, an organization that is usually aligned with the agenda of the Chamber of Commerce and education reformers, has joined the choir. They’ve broken with tradition and produced a comprehensive report on the inadequacies of the BEP formula. Something they deserve huge props for, not just for the quality of the report, but also for CONTINUE READING: WHAT’S A SWEETHEART LIKE YOU, DOING IN A PLACE LIKE THIS? – Dad Gone Wild