Here is NAEP data on Tennessee. Looks like we've made gains in Math at grades 4 & 8 but pretty flat in reading and science. If you compare the two pieces of data... you get an overall flat trend.

Doesn't speak very well of Tennessee's record.

2000: 41.6%

2001: 42.9%

2002: 43.9%

2003: 42.4%

2004: 49.9%

2005: 52.1%

2006: 52.9%

2007: 54.7%

2008: 54.5%

2009: 57.8%

2010: 60.2%

Knox County's Free and Reduced Meal Student Population has grown from 27.4% in 2000 to 47.5% in 2010.

Out here in the "wealthy" suburbs where my children attended school, Powell Elementary's Free and Reduced Meal Student Population has grown from 24.8% in 2000 to 50.5% in 2010.

You will note that the percentage of enrollment growth in the program has been greater in my "wealthy" suburban school community than in Knox County or the State of Tennessee on average, either one.

You will also note that the raw percentage of enrollees in the program is now greater in my "wealthy" suburban school community than for Knox County on average, 50.5% versus 47.5%.

This was a circumstance I was unable to effectively communicate to school board members at the time of the contentious 2007 systemwide rezoning of high schools, intended to effect better socio-economic balance among high school communities.

The problems of the kids they wanted to (and did) rezone into our community's high school were identical to the problems of the kids already en route there from within our community's school feeder pattern.

Since the school board adopted a "grandfather" clause to allow certain students who were previously zoned for our community's high school and who were in grade six or higher at the time of the spring 2007 rezoning to complete high school here, and since the last of these will not graduate from our high school until the spring of 2013, we will not see the full effect of the "double whammy" the school board imposed on our community until the fall of 2014...but the trend in progress is alarming.

For years, Powell High School was one of just 3 or 4 high schools systemwide deemed to be in "Good Standing" under NCLB, but not anymore.

Insidious poverty marches on.

Chattanooga, 2010: 60.7%

Nashville, 2010: 72.1%

Memphis, 2010: 87.2%

It isn't just lunch money kids are lacking these days...

Back when one or more of my own kids was elementary-aged, I used to drop off at their school at the start of each school year a big box of color-coordinated, thematic packages of school supplies (Nascar, Hello Kitty, Go Vols, Barbie, etc.).

Some kids always arrived empty-handed on that first day and it seemed important not only to help these feel less "different" from the kids proudly showing off their own new school supply "rigs," but to ensure that all of them were genuinely excited to be back in the classroom, too.

That first year, I donated supply "kits" for just three or four kids, each packaged in a jumbo Zip Lock bag so as to keep them sorted by color/theme and in that way make for each being a more dazzling display for its recipient. I placed my box behind the counter in the front office for secretarial staff to route on to any teachers who might need a "kit" for one of their kids.

Over the next few years, my personal observations were that I needed to donate an increasing number of "kits" each year. I began parking in the fire lane, then, to unload my multiple boxes from the car, and I began storing the boxes in the teacher workroom, because I was unloading too many bulky boxes to place behind that counter in the front office anymore.

The last year I did this was in 2006, when I donated 20 such "kits" packed into a number of boxes filling my trunk and spilling over into the back seat. By then, I was including backpacks in each, too, scavenged from clearance tables months earlier or else culled from second hand shops and cleaned up to look new again. I recall that Target on Clinton Highway donated about as many as I had.

Still, I received a phone call from the principal asking me if I could solicit a few more donations of backpacks and supplies, as there remained too many students who were without.

"Solicit?" I hadn't "solicited" anything over those years, but had undertaken the purchases out of my own family's modest household budget. I couldn't afford to donate more than I was (and probably couldn't afford that much).

I distinctly recall that the year was 2006 when I stopped because it was the year I parked my husband on the sofa to show him records documenting three years of our checking account deposits, 2003 through 2006. I had to prove to him that during that period his increased payroll deductions for group health insurance had consumed virtually all of his payraises, resulting in a net increase to his take home pay over the three year period of just $3 per week. And the cost of school lunch money had risen more than that much over the same time.

The increase in our Free and Reduced Meal Student Population (and the volume of kids lacking school supplies) is related to the decrease in standardized test scores.

The increase in health care costs (and stagnant incomes and the country's growing rate of income disparity more generally) is related to the increase in our Free and Reduced Meal Student Population.

Throw in soaring divorce rates, teen pregnancy rates, births to unmarried couples of any age, and so forth and so on, to see why it is that "insidious poverty marches on."

Some of the broad cultural changes required to align us behind our youth must necessarily rise from within our own hearts and minds. I allude to the conservative mantra for "increased personal responsibility."

But there's a helluva lot more we need to be doing for the "huddled masses" in this country that can boost student achievement, too.

And our beating up on over wrought, underpaid teachers in the name of "education reform" is not a strategy that will prove to be at all effective.

ACT scores slide for Tennessee students | timesfreepress.com

Jamie Woodson, president and CEO of Tennessee's State Collaborative on Reforming Education, said the data show the urgency and importance of newly enacted education reform efforts.

"Unfortunately, this data isn't totally unexpected. But it is an ever-present reminder and a sobering reminder of how much work we have to do," she said. "It is absolutely a moment for us as a state to have a real gut check and recommit to the reforms we have taken on."

As an aside, Amy Broyles is being bashed by KNS commenters because she's trying to get together 26 backpacks for kids at Beaumont who cannot afford them.

Is there a backpack/school supplies giveaway program in Knoxville? Faith-based organizations in Orlando and Peoria, and probably many other places, have giveaways for those in need right before school opens.

(Sorry to be tardy responding, Biz, but I was moving my daughter back into her Chattanooga dorm yesterday.)

Yes, I know many local church groups and civic organizations undertake efforts of this sort, as does our regional Mission of Hope organization, and many individuals, too.

Like I say, it sure looks like more and more of our help--and help from folks like Amy, Bean--is needed.

Based on my three years volunteering at Maynard Elementary some years back, though, it appears that schools' manner of distributing our donations varies from neighborhood to neighborhood.

As I indicated, at Powell Elementary I packaged my donations as "kits" for a single child--each containing a backpack, a binder, dividers, filler paper, spiral-bound theme books, pocket portfolios, pens and pencils, crayons/markers/ruler/glue and such--and each "kit" was always distributed that way, intact, to be used by a single child.

At Maynard Elementary, though, I learned that so extremely few children brought supplies from home, all such supplies to arrive to the classroom were considered "communal" supplies. In each classroom, then, all filler paper went into a single stack, all crayons went into a single large bowl, and so forth, to be shared by all children.

In recent years, I have redirected my gift giving from our community's elementary school to our community's Cub Scout pack, in particular to each year's first grade Tiger Cub den.

Enthusiasm for the program is especially high among this age group, with each year's new den often numbering 12 or 15 boys. Unfortunately, though, each year's recruitment effort--called the "round up"--takes place in late September, after all those one cent and five cent sales on crayons and glue and such are past. Since leaders for these youngest boys are invariably recruited "new" from among their parents, the "new" leaders must then shop for program materials, including supplies of this sort, at up to "100 times" the prices they might have paid a month earlier, had they known then they would need such supplies.

I continue to hoard school supplies every August, then, avoiding those "limit 3" caps on the number of one cent or five cent items I may buy by dragging my teenagers along with me when I shop, or by occassionally pressing some other fellow shoppers to make purchases for me and just offering them my nickle or a dime in payment! You'll see many classroom teachers in the office supply stores, doing the same thing.

Anyway, it's a small gesture I continue to make, five years after my own Cub Scout went on to become a Boy Scout, but it allows me to turn my modest $20 donation into one worth $200 in supplies to the newly registered Cub Scout group--and both their available grant monies and their fundraising proceeds are down in recent years.

(Stick, I didn't mean to hijack your thread with all this, but possibly the somewhat off-topic conversation will inform someone, somewhere of the "small gestures" they may make to better support young people's achievement in multiple arenas, too?)

P.S.--

Just two last thoughts, if I may:

First, I neglected to mention that we may also drop off our bargain school supplies at Knox County's Teacher Supply Depot, operated by the Knox County Council PTA. As you may know, it's an organization that sponsors several "shopping days" each school year on which teachers may drop by and pick up donated items for free. The Depot is a terrific program (on which I also worked for a number of years) that saves teachers from having to spend quite so much out of their own pockets.

Second, I failed to say as specifically as I'd like to that I have only high praise for Amy Broyles' gesture to find donations of backpacks for students in need.

Pardon that last interruption and please carry on.

Since I kinda steered this conversation away from Stick's original focus on slumping test scores and toward a focus on the concurrent growth in poverty among our youth...

I thought some of you who may not have school-aged children might be interested in knowing this school year's income guidelines WRT qualifying for Knox County's Free and Reduced Meal program.

This is the information that came home with all local students last week:

Household size 1 / Yearly income $20,147

2 / $27,214

3 / $34,281

4 / $41,348

5 / $48,415

6 / $55,482

7 / $62,549

8 / $69,616

Each addl person / $7,067

And again, 47.5% of all Knox County students qualified for the program last school year (50.5% in my neighborhood's elementary school).

I've wondered to what extent the incidence of single-parent households boosts the number of qualifying students--and I've wondered what that rate runs locally, too.

When I served as one of two parent representatives for Powell Elementary's annual School Improvement Plan around 2002-ish, I learned that the rate of single-parent households in our school then ran exactly 50%.