Is McIntyre held accountable for ANY of this?

Or is he working on the next 5-year plan?

Talk about putting the cart before the horse; here we have a cart and NO horse.

That may be the case, but Vine is not in the bottom 5% of state schools, as defined by the state Department of Education. Haslam's legislation, as currently written, would only apply to those schools, most of which are in Shelby County. You can read the full list here.

Beverly Bickford, who has a seventh-grader in Davis' class, said she didn't altogether agree with the idea of a reconstruction — a "radical reset" of the school that would mean all teachers and leadership would have to reapply for their jobs — because her experience with teachers has been a good one.

But she likes the ideas of turning Vine into a community school — a hub designed to help meet the out-of-classroom needs of students and residents.

"That in so many other ways addresses some of the concerns of what the parent is saying," she said. "It can be a bright spot in the community."

Eighth-grader Ja'Mesha Teresa said as a student the perception of the school has an affect on students.

"We all have trouble on our tests but it's because we have so many people coming to us telling us that Vine is so bad and putting us down," said the 13-year-old.

"We start to believe it. Stop taking us down; build us up."

Essentially an underperforming school is being rebuilt from the bottom up while still remaining open and teaching children during the restructuring they appear to be going through on a regular cyclical basis. It is hard on the kids, teachers and parents, particularly when, in Vines case for instance, the driving complaint is that, "You're not getting better fast enough." The political sleight of hand will involve reducing resources for other community and state schools to reduce the overall budget, through both charter schools and privatizing extracurricular activities. It's a quandary not likely to be solved without total commitment from the community at large, politicians, teachers, parents, administrators, taxpayers and the press. We're at a crossroads in America.

But I don't think I'm wrong to say that is exactly the intended result. The "good" kids will escape, and the "bad" kids, well, screw them and their lazy, ne'er do well parents.

In order to qualify for this voucher a student must first be eligible for free or reduced lunches. Students eligible for free or reduced lunches are the best and easiest to educate?

Thanks, I knew there was a trick to the skimming and sorting I was missing.