Nashville mayoral candidates debate their plans to improve student test scores

The candidates vying to become Nashville’s next mayor finally answered a question about how they plan to improve education.During Monday’s televised debate, Fox-17 anchor Scott Couch asked candidates how they’d approach struggling test scores if elected.“Metro Schools get the lion’s share of every dollar in the Metro budget, yet our students continue to score below the state average on standardized tests. What do you think the answer is to improve student performance?” asked Couch.Previous televised debates have largely ignored school issues despite independent polling that found more than 21% of likely voters consider candidate’s positions on education to be the most important quality they’re looking for.

Accountability

Multiple candidates responded to Couch’s question by discussing accountability.Property Assessor and former Metro Council member Vivian Wilhoite said she intends to work with Director of Schools Adrienne Battle to make the system accountable and provide for the different learning needs of students.“You asked the question ‘why our students are not excelling?’ The answer is that every child does not learn the same way. We must support Dr. Battle, and the plan she has to get Nashville students back on track. We will continue to fully fund the schools, and provide her with the resources that she needs, that our teachers need, in order to be able to help our students be successful. A mayor’s job is to fund the budget, but we also need to make sure that we are making the system be accountable,” said Wilhoite.Business leader Jim Gingrich said the city can improve the struggles economically disadvantaged students face in Nashville by making education a priority. Gingrich’s stance includes a five-year plan to improve student outcomes that he promises to hold himself and education leaders accountable for.“If you’re born poor in Nashville, you’re more likely to remain poor than in 80% of the large cities in the United States. And the way to begin to change that is through our education system. I would focus on three things. One, we will have to start to talk about outcomes and I will challenge our superintendent and our board, and I will work with them to build a comprehensive five-year plan to improve outcomes. Second, I will fund that plan, and third, I’m gonna hold people accountable, starting with myself, to execute,” said Gingrich.Former public-school teacher and Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development Assistant Commissioner Alice Rolli says she’s running because mothers are worried that only a quarter of MNPS students can read on grade level. Rolli says government and administrators aren’t holding themselves accountable, and that they need to follow the leads of parents.“Well, I started my career as a public-school teacher because I believe that in education, that is the single most important thing we have to get right as government. It is this single, unifying place that can take families from the back of the line to the front. But right now, kids in our city are not getting the maximum wage jobs coming here because we are not holding ourselves in our schools accountable. We’ve got to follow parents who are choosing our 37 top-rated schools, our choice schools. Let parents choose,” said Rolli.

Funding and Teacher Salaries

One area that drew the biggest point of agreement for candidates is the need to improve funding for schools and improve teacher salaries.Senator Heidi Campbell (D-Nashville) says Nashville is taking the hit from Tennessee’s failure to provide adequate education funding. Campbell says the city needs to combat the educational inequities that arose because of those funding challenges.“The State of Tennessee is not going to be funding public education fully in this state anytime soon, and Nashville has borne the brunt of that, even though we produce over half the revenue, and we also have incredible inequity in our schools. We need to triage that inequity by putting community school coordinators in the schools that are struggling the most,” said Campbell.Affordable housing and economic development leader Matt Wiltshire also talked about challenges Nashville is facing with education funding. He says the city can’t expect teachers to solve problems in the classroom without more support.“I’m a proud graduate of Metro Nashville Public Schools. My wife, Chrissy and I, our five older kids, each attended Metro Nashville Public Schools and our daughter will start there in August. The reality, Scott, is that the funding going from Metro’s budget to public education has actually fallen from 42% of the budget several years ago, to 37%. The reality is we are asking our teachers to solve all of society’s problems and we’re not giving them the support, and the students, the services that they need to solve that,” said Wiltshire.Senator Jeff Yarbro (D-Nashville) takes the stance on teacher salaries further, by saying that the district needs to pay teachers enough that they can afford to live in Nashville.“As the parent of a rising second grader and ninth grader in Metro Schools, nothing matters more to me than getting this right. And I think if we’re being honest, we know that we’re not doing right by every child in our city and none of us should rest until we do. You can’t be a great public-school city unless you’re making it a great place to be a public-school teacher and we are raising salaries, but teachers still have trouble living here, affording to live here. We also have to do a lot better job at early childhood education, so we’re starting earlier, and students are getting further ahead,” said Yarbro.Metro Council member Freddie O’Connell also talked about teacher pay and the district’s current work to raise staff salaries.  O’Connell says it’s also important to have high expectations.“Our two daughters attend public schools and they have what is the simplest reforms available to them: great teachers in their classrooms. I applaud Mayor Cooper on his decision to make our teachers the best paid in the state of Tennessee and that’s a high watermark we should not only back off of, we should continue to expand. Proud to be a part of a council that increase support staff pay as well. One of the most important programs we have in our most challenging schools is Community Achieves which expanded to dozens more schools, I’m expecting to see the outcome of that start to improve student performance as well and I think we should all have high expectations for the district,” said O’Connell.

Literacy and Third-Grade Retention

Other candidates addressed Couch’s question by discussing the need to improve literacy and early foundational learning.Metro Council member Sharon Hurt says she wants to restore prosperity by focusing on first-grade literacy.“I think that reading is fundamental. In the formative years, our kids learn to read, thereafter they read to learn. We’re missing that point. I will initiate a reading literacy program to ensure that all first graders are reading on their grade level and beyond. I will make sure that they have a pipeline to prosperity, as opposed to a pipeline to prison. We want to restore the families, and hope, and prosperity,” said Hurt.Homeowners Association president and former Metro Council member Fran Bush says that the reason for the current literacy struggles is because of the setback caused by the pandemic and the transition to virtual learning. Bush says she was very intentional in getting students back in the classroom during her time as a council member.“Well you know, that’s something I worked on while I was on the school board and I will continue to work on, making sure that all students are proficient in grade level. One of the things we have to do, and it’s no secret, the reason why we’re in this situation is because we had students out of school for a whole entire year. And I was the only board member, candidate up here, that was very intentional about getting our students back into the classroom. Our teachers, they knew that the virtual space was not helping our students, and this is the reason why we have Third-Grade Retention and things like that, that’s happening,” said Bush.Early voting in the mayor’s race begins next month.