TN legislature kills bill to close failed online charter that told teachers to delete bad grades. [View all]

[madfloridian]

They refused to allow discussion at all.

Since charter school expansion is apparently going to continue during these next 3 years, I wonder if some accountability could be in order. I doubt it.

Tennessee legislative committee kills bill to close Tennessee Virtual Academy

A state legislative committee blocked discussion Tuesday of leaked internal e-mail from the only taxpayer-funded, for-profit online school operating in Tennessee that told its teachers to delete students' bad grades.

The committee then killed a bill that would have closed the two-year-old Tennessee Virtual Academy, operated by Virginia-based K-12 Inc., at the end of the school year. Moments earlier, the panel approved a Haslam administration bill that is the state's first attempt to reign in the virtual school — but only after stripping out of the bill a proposed enrollment cap in the school.

....On Tuesday, Rep. Gloria Johnson, D-Knoxville, released internal TnVA e-mails leaked to her that in December instructed its teachers to quickly delete students' progress reports for September and October, delete the grades of students on an assignment that a majority had failed, and to "please consider" counting only the final grade of a student whose earlier unit average was an F.

But when Rep. Mike Stewart, D-Nashville, tried to present the e-mails to the House Education Subcommittee, the panel's top two officers — Reps. Mark White, R-Memphis, and Harry Brooks, R-Knoxville — immediately cut off the discussion and called the vote that killed the bill.

Here is more about the emails. They really did tell the teachers to delete the bad grades from two years and keep the good ones. The head of that school actually blamed it on the difficulty of handling student differences.

Tennessee Virtual Academy emails teachers to delete bad grades. For-profit online school.

...The email -- labeled "important -- was written in December by the Tennessee Virtual Academy's vice principal to middle school teachers.

"After ... looking at so many failing grades, we need to make some changes before the holidays," the email begins.

Among the changes: Each teacher "needs to take out the October and September progress reports; delete it so that all that is showing is November progress."

...Josh Williams, head of schools for the Tennessee Virtual Academy, pointed to the challenge of teaching all types of children when repeatedly pressed on the school’s poor math scores: “Each one of our students comes in with a different, unique need,” he said, adding that the school is seeking to “work as a team” and to make better use of data to address the needs.