November 22, 2023
Troy D. Smith
“Tennessee Wants to Reject $1.8 Billion of Education Funding”
Tennessee -where we’re always the first to jump out of the plane, because
we skip the line where they’re handing out parachutes. This time we are -once
again -in the news because of education. Our legislature has spent two weeks
discussing the possibility of rejecting almost 2 billion dollars of federal education
funding, which would make us the first state to ever do so -because federal money
comes with “burdensome stipulations” such as paperwork. When educators brought
before the panel were questioned about which stipulations felt burdensome to
them, they couldn’t think of any. They did say that education needs more money,
not less. About ten percent of students are directly affected by the federal funds
under discussion, mostly low-income kids and students with disabilities. It is
worth noting that no parents or local advocacy groups were allowed to speak…
but two out-of-state conservative groups were.
One argument is that Tennessee has a pretty sizable
treasury surplus, and could make up the difference in much of the federal
funding lost if this goes through. This raises the question: what could the
state accomplish if they used part of that surplus on top of the federal
funding to improve education? They could pay teachers more, provide incentives
for people to become teachers in the first place (which is increasingly hard to
convince people in red states to do nowadays, as teachers are treated like
third-class citizens), replace some of the state funding withdrawn from higher education
over the last couple of decades, or maybe even replace some of the classroom
libraries our laws have bullied and intimidated teachers into removing. I don’t
know about you, but if I were a public-school teacher I would feel far more
burdened by the oppressive and ridiculous education laws passed by our state
legislature the last few years than I would by any federal mandates. Public
school teachers I’ve talked to are terrified to breathe funny for fear it might
hurt someone’s feelings and get them fired.
Could it be that the “burdensome stipulations” of the
federal government includes things like diversity programs, academic freedom,
and education standards that reflect the truth of our history (and our present)
and recognizes that there are a lot of different kinds of people in America and
that’s all right, rather than the politicized, propagandistic, majority wishful
thinking that our Republican legislators prefer? Could it be that many
Republican politicians would like to have even more power to control what
teachers teach and how they teach it, and what kinds of people are benefited by
various educational programs, without the federal government being able to
interfere -and they’re willing to shoot themselves (and all of us, and our
kids) in the foot to do so? And what happens when there is an economic downturn
in Tennessee (no bubble lasts forever) and all that surplus disappears? That is
a second barrel waiting to shoot their (and our) other foot.
Notice that it is not educators asking for this to be
done. Educators’ voices, in fact, are being ignored -as they always are. I’ll
keep saying it as long as I have breath left in my lungs: leave teachers alone
and let them to their jobs, which they are trained to do (and you are not), and
give them all the financial support they need to do that job effectively.
Because it is the single most important job in this country -our whole future
depends on it. For all the folks out there who want one political party to have
absolute control of what your kids are exposed to, for fear it may be something
you don’t like, consider this: one day those kids will be applying to colleges,
grad schools, or jobs in other states with more opportunities… and they’ll be
woefully unprepared to compete against kids from states where the teachers are
supported and students are allowed to learn.
--Troy D.
Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at
Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic
Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.
Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE
You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE
A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE
Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com
The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE
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