Senate committee surprisingly takes House Speaker Cameron Sexton’s education bills off notice for the year

Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton’s proposals to create home school charter schools and to study the potential impact of opting to decline federal education funding appear to be dead for the year.Wednesday night the Senate Education Committee sent both bills to the General Subcommittee of the Senate Education Committee, which essentially takes the legislation off notice this year unless Senate Education Committee Chair Jon Lundberg decides to bring the it back.  Senator Lundberg gave no explanation why the move was made.The home school charter school legislation would have created a charter system for home school students to take part in part-time and allow existing public charter schools the ability to create boarding schools to serve at risk students.Speaker Sexton’s other legislation would have created a task force to study the feasibility of Tennessee rejecting U.S. education dollars to free its schools from federal rules and regulations.

Data Deficiency Legislation Advances

Committee members also voted unanimously to advance legislation to reimagine how the state uses data to connect workers with jobs.Senator Bo Watson’s legislation would make education and workforce data available to the public by establishing an Education and Workforce Data Advisory Committee.The committee would be made up of commissioners of education and workforce-focused agencies that contribute data into the P20 Connect TN longitudinal system. The P20 Connect TN is the state’s longitudinal data system that monitors progress over time and includes information about K-12, higher education, and the workforce.“Tennessee has some of the largest repository of educational data and we do very little with the data. This is an attempt to create the connection between education and workforce,” said Senator Watson.The idea behind the legislation is to ensure businesses moving to Tennessee have the data they need to assess the talent pipeline and to provide the public with access to information showing how well schools and higher education programs are preparing students for jobs.The House Education Administration Committee will vote on the legislation next week.