Bill's daughter-in-law works for Knox County Schools (I believe) at Lonsdale. He launched Project GRAD before he ever ran for any office. Public schools won't have a stronger advocate than Bill Haslam. -- s.

I was wondering why the real GOP Haslam had not appeared so far. Now we are getting a peek at the real GOP agenda hidden behind the "but Haslam has done so much for Knoxville" bull. Someone needs to look up where he and his siblings went to school, and certainly where his children are going.

And this rigid stance belies the fact that the Haslam/Pilot Oil family has given millions to UT Knoxville, which is a PUBLIC UNIVERSITY. Wonder what his daddy thinks about this idiocy.

When our public schools are struggling, and Knox County and Tennessee is being forced to lay off good teachers and staff, which serve well the vast majority of kids in this State of GOP delusion, Haslam needs to support the PUBLIC schools here and across the State! Heck, Loudon County Board of ED had to decide whether to buy textbooks or build a new school!
My children have always gone to public schools and they have succeeded, whether in the hills of KY, urban WV, and/or here. My family could never have afforded Charter schools because of the tuition! Most public school children can not afford this expensive approach, even with those Bush vouchers. And 'parental choice' just means the parents choose to take their children and their tax dollars out of the public schools; not all parents can AFFORD this 'choice'.

Now we know. Haslam is just another GOP wolf...in sheep's clothing.

It's sad that you have to say stupid things to win over a sizable portion of the Republican Party. Mass home-schooling would be a disaster for the state and a large number of charter schools would promote more "white flight" than already exists. Vouchers would be/are nothing more than disguised welfare payments to the wealthy. Think you can send your kid to Webb School on a $5,000 voucher?

I have hope that Haslam says these stupid things simply to get elected, but it would be refreshing to see a republican stand up and call these nut-job ideas what they really are - STUPID!

FWIW, Haslam went to Webb. It's a pretty safe bet his kids did as well.

Since somebody asked. Not sure it's particularly germane to the debate. I'm a bit troubled by the non-emphasis on improving public schools, but I'm chalking some of it off as pandering to you-know-who.

I'm not sure whether this idea is good or bad for public schools, but it seems to me that variety and options would be good for the kids being educated.

Poor kids deserve the best teachers ... and that doesn't happen in a system where tenured teachers negotiate for building seniority ... so inner city schools are taught by the very newest teachers and those who have been passed around and basically dumped there.

Project GRAD is not perfect, but it raised expectations for inner city kids. I'm glad that Bill Haslam cared enough to get involved.

I believe it was Nixon's AG John Mitchell who said, "Look at what we do, not what we say." -- s.

What John Mitchell did put him in prison.

I don't think there is anything at all Nixonian about Bill Haslem.

Bill's a straight shootin',honest guy & an outstanding public servant & Bill's work on Project GRAD is just one exampe.

One could argue that what Nixon did put John Mitchell in prison.

Look, I'm sorry that people have to say stupid stuff to win Republican primaries -- one big reason I'm not running in Republican primaries.

I am not sure what all the changes are needed to improve the public education system, but one thing I do know is that public education benefits everyone. I get extremely frustrated when people who are not currently using the system do not see how it benefits them.

Public education is the training ground that fuels our economy. If we do not prepare everyone for a future living, we all suffer. For example, social security is based on future workers. If we underemploy them, we will not have the funding for that program. So Senior Citizens who don't support public education, because they don't have kids in school miss the point that their social security checks are coming from those kids earnings.

Business owners who put their own kids in private schools and forget about public schools will suffer later when they have to employ undereducated children.

Everyone will suffer when we have to spend tax dollars to help support adults who could have been better educated to be self supporting members of the community.

It all starts and ends with education.

I think the idea of charter schools and vouchers is to promote change and shake it up a bit. Is it the answer? Maybe its just one piece of the puzzle.

Project Grad is a commendable program started by the Haslams. But let's consider 4 points:
First, children from inner city schools need to have some hope that education will lead to a prosperous future. In reality, when they leave the school building, their communities have nothing to offer in the way of employment. Their economic mobility is severely limited by business practices that refuse to pay wages that would lift people above the poverty level. Fact: Poverty is the single, most significant predictor of school success.

Second, business, (including the sacrosanct Pilot Oil corp), needs to take some responsibility for the poverty in communities. They lobby against tax increase, leverage their influence to eliminate workers protections, refuse to pay pensions or health insurance to part time and low wage earners. Their practices created the very impoverished conditions in communities that contribute to student school failure.

Third. When business donates money to schools for project grad, computers, etc. that donation is tax deductible. Thus draining the needed money from the communities that need it just to pay the electric bill or buy paper.

Fourth. Charter schools are not the "magic bullet" that will save needy children. They don't even teach all needy children. They will not serve students with moderate to severe special education needs. Some students with severe disabilities cost up to $50,000/per student to educate. How can charters justify receiving tax dollars, exclude these students, yet claim to serve the neediest students?

Finally, Haslam's empty rhetoric is unserious and silly. He knows little to nothing about education. He is targeting the ideologues who think they do, to drain votes from the Wamp and Ramsey camps.

Huh?
It has been well-publicized that Barack Obama's family sent him to a private high school with high academic standards.

(link...)

"It was the 1970s and Obama was one of the few black students on campus. The son of a white mother and black father, he attended Punahou on a scholarship starting in the fifth grade.

Obama's parents were divorced. He barely knew his father and spent most of his time living with his grandparents.

"For my grandparents, my admission into Punahou Academy heralded the start of something grand, an elevation in the family status that they took great pains to let everyone know," Obama writes in "Dreams From My Father," his memoir of those years."

The New York Times weighed in on charter schools today. Read the article here.

But for all their support and cultural cachet, the majority of the 5,000 or so charter schools nationwide appear to be no better, and in many cases worse, than local public schools when measured by achievement on standardized tests, according to experts citing years of research. Last year one of the most comprehensive studies, by researchers from Stanford University, found that fewer than one-fifth of charter schools nationally offered a better education than comparable local schools, almost half offered an equivalent education and more than a third, 37 percent, were “significantly worse.”

they remain the most viable way to allow for experimentation and innovation under the public school umbrella

How so?

What is being done in charter schools that can't be done in public schools?

Why can't public schools experiment and innovate? (Other than mainstreaming violently disruptive students and teaching to tests.)

I'm way late chiming in here, but a friend who was Webb Class of '75 writes off-list to report that Bill Haslam was a year or two behind him there, likely '76 or '77. He says Jimmy Haslam and a sister whose name he can't recall also attended.

(And jcgrim, I like the way you talk!)

Here's a segment of Ravitch's article in the Wall Street Journal on Mar 11, 2010:

"NAEP compared charter schools and regular public schools in 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2009. Sometimes one sector or the other had a small advantage. But on the whole, there is very little performance difference between them.

Given the weight of studies, evaluations and federal test data, I concluded that deregulation and privately managed charter schools were not the answer to the deep-seated problems of American education. If anything, they represent tinkering around the edges of the system. They affect the lives of tiny numbers of students but do nothing to improve the system that enrolls the other 97%.

The current emphasis on accountability has created a punitive atmosphere in the schools. The Obama administration seems to think that schools will improve if we fire teachers and close schools. They do not recognize that schools are often the anchor of their communities, representing values, traditions and ideals that have persevered across decades. They also fail to recognize that the best predictor of low academic performance is poverty—not bad teachers.

What we need is not a marketplace, but a coherent curriculum that prepares all students. And our government should commit to providing a good school in every neighborhood in the nation, just as we strive to provide a good fire company in every community.

On our present course, we are disrupting communities, dumbing down our schools, giving students false reports of their progress, and creating a private sector that will undermine public education without improving it. Most significantly, we are not producing a generation of students who are more knowledgable, and better prepared for the responsibilities of citizenship. That is why I changed my mind about the current direction of school reform."

Read it all at: (link...)

I'm waiting for a response to this question:

Do you think that corporate structures are less or non-authoritarian? (metulj)

The point of this "thread" was Haslam's pledge to "emphasize charter schools, home schooling, and parental choice [i.e. vouchers] as key components of his education policy."

That's a package of "reforms" aimed at shifting resources away from public education (money, teachers, students and as you note, taxpayer and voter control). Maybe that doesn't "weaken" public schools, but I'm not clear on how it helps improve them.