Tennessee’s prospects to overcome its low national educational rankings surfaced as one of the hot topics at the Blount Education Initiative’s (BEI) gubernatorial forum on education Oct. 26, at William Blount High School in Maryville, Tenn.
Candidates participating in the forum included Nashville businessman Ward Cammack (Democrat); Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam (Republican); former Tennessee House of Representatives Majority Leader Kim McMillan (Democrat); and U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp (Republican).
Among a host of issues posed to the candidates, the economic impact of Tennessee’s long-time public education standing arose as a key point of concern. Several candidates cited the competitive difficulty of recruiting desirable business and industry to Tennessee, given the state’s national reputation for having a lower-educated workforce.
The candidates also spoke to the recent release of the Tennessee State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE) report on raising Tennessee’s educational standing to first place among Southeastern states. Various candidates voiced either optimism or guardedness about the state’s realistic ability to achieve such an aggressive improvement within five years, as called upon by SCORE.
The purpose of the BEI forum was to explore the topic of “Making Education Tennessee’s Top Priority: The Roles of State Government, Local Governments and all Tennessee Citizens” among gubernatorial candidates.
BEI’s leadership cited the success of the event in bringing educational issues to the forefront of the community – not just in Blount County but also throughout East Tennessee and hopefully statewide.
“With more than 250 people attending the event and many more viewing it via Knoxville’s WBIR-10News2 live broadcast, the forum successfully brought educational issues to the forefront throughout our regional community,” said BEI Executive Director Bonny Millard.