MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Gov. Bill Lee is calling lawmakers back into session. With students falling further behind in reading and math, he says it’s time for targeted intervention.
The governor’s plans include a mandate to not pass students to the third grade unless they are ready. And beginning this summer, full-time tutoring, afterschool camps, learning loss bridge camps and summer learning camps.
Lee also says it’s time to go back to the basics for reading.
“We need to teach our kids to read with phonics,” he said. “It’s the way we learned to read, it’s the way we taught our kids to read. And with this proposal kindergarteners to third grade will be taught phonics as the primary form of reading instruction”
The Shelby County Education Association said teaching reading via computer just isn’t working.
“We didn’t have all of these programs and all of this stuff that we had to use to screen and to determine, it was actually taught from sight, phonics, and first, good teaching, and that’s what worked, and I believe it will work today.”
Lee also wants a pay raise for teachers. The union wants to make sure it gets to teachers.
“If the state does not direct the district to actually put the money in the salary schedule in Shelby County, it doesn’t get there, because they say they have the opportunity to use it as they will,” Williams said.
While the governor pushes for students to return to school and state testing to resume, he says the test outcomes won’t have negative consequences.
State Rep. Antonio Parkinson (D-Memphis) wants to make sure there is flexibility.
“The TNReady testing that they are proposing, it doesn’t count,” Parkinson said. “So, why would we force the children back into the classroom, especially with the numbers being as high as they are, only to test, when the test actually does not count?”
