TN Legislators To Propose Mandatory Math Interventions For Non-Proficient Students
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The Tennessee Conservative Staff –
Legislators are preparing to push a bill in the next regular session that would create intervention requirements for students who are not meeting grade-level math standards.
The bill, which was created by State Representative Scott Cepicky (R-Culleoka-District 64), would be similar to the recent third-grade retention law that was put into place last year, but it would not involve retaining students.
“This bill, this proposal we’re coming up with has nothing to do with retention,” Cepicky said. “There’s no retention in the bill at all.”
The bill would instead make summer school or tutoring mandatory for students who fall below the benchmark on the TCAP test or a universal screener. It would be in effect for all students in grades K-8, not just third graders.
Cepicky says that the previous legislation honed in on reading benchmarks, but math should be considered as well. Last year’s test scores showed that only about 34% of Tennessee students come in at grade level in math.
“You have to know how to read by third grade. But after third grade, once you know how to read, reading is repetitive. Once you know how to read, you know how to read,” Cepicky said. “With mathematics, it’s building: addition, then subtraction, then division, then multiplication.”
Opponents of the proposal argue that this is another ploy to push families towards private education, thus taking more funding away from public schools.
“It’s as if they want our public schools to fail, so that they can then take them over or channel more students into private schools, strengthen their voucher program, give them another reason to use vouchers or to create more charter schools, like Hillsdale College,” House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Ray Clemmons said.
Cepicky says that is not the goal at all: “We’re trying to make our public schools as competitive as possible with our private schools so that parents really have to decide is the education in the private sector better?”
Clemmons says, however, that mandating interventions based on test scores is not the way to do it, arguing that the third-grade retention law “did nothing to achieve its stated purpose.”
Schooling Problems start with Teacher Education. Nothing much changes until that is corrected. IMO.
Does anyone see the irony in what Cepicky is saying? He says we want our public schools to be as competitive as our private schools. He thinks it’s the students fault that he or she is not proficient in math. It’s no wonder our public schools are such a mess when a lawmaker can come out with such pap. In the first place all students will never be proficient in math. There will be those with different aptitudes and those need to be addressed. Force a child lacking the ability to do trig to go to summer school is a certain recipe for creating another dropout. Have any of you considered that the reason so many applications for creation of a charter school is denied? Public schools can’t face the competition.
Wonder where our students would be if they hadn’t been required to try to deal with that ridiculous Common Core math. What a mess was CREATED with that!!!!