Biden Budget a Boon for Schools

Education advocates praise President’s investments in public school programs

The Network for Public Education (NPE) is praising President Biden’s proposed budget as a win for public schools.

NPE’s executive director, Carol Burris, said of the budget, “This budget is the mirror opposite of budget proposals by the present House leadership that slash funding to children served by critical programs like Title I while proposing an increase to the already bloated Federal Charter School Programs (CSP).”

The group noted the proposal includes $450 million of new money for key programs benefiting kids in schools across the country.

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More Tennessee News

Exposing the Harm of Vouchers

Ending the Grocery Tax

A Rally for Public Education

Coalition of groups asks lawmakers to reject Lee’s voucher scam

As Gov. Bill Lee’s proposal to expand the state’s failing voucher program to all 95 counties moves forward in legislative committees, a group of public education advocates is speaking out against the bill.

Nashville’s WSMV:

Teachers from across Tennessee will flock to the Tennessee State Capitol on Tuesday for a rally against Gov. Bill Lee’s school voucher expansion plans.

The teachers will arrive at the Capitol at 9 a.m. for a day of action before the rally begins at 1 p.m.

They said the voucher plan is a scam and it will further defund Tennessee’s public schools, which are already ranked sixth to last in education investment.

The teachers will be joined by parents and others advocating for full funding of the state’s public schools. The group is coming together under the banner of Tennessee For All.

MORE TENNESSEE NEWS

Free Pre-K for All?

Questions Arise Over Lee’s Tax Break Plan

A Policy Failure

State Board of Education moves to address failed third grade retention policy

One year into Tennessee’s third-grade retention policy and the predictably disastrous results are becoming apparent.

It seems the State Board of Education is aware of the failures of the policy and members are making some attempts to improve it or at least lessen the negative impacts.

“Failing a fourth-grader is not the answer,” said former fourth-grade teacher and current state Board of Education representative Krissi McInturff during the February meeting. While McInturff — who represents Tennessee’s 1st Congressional District on the board — voiced support for the intention of the law, she also listed negative effects associated with retaining students, including academic struggles, stress, increased dropout rates among students who have been retained and emotional impact. 

Lawmakers are also considering tweaks to the law following the first year of implementation.

Other states that have implemented similar laws have run into problems. Michigan ultimately repealed the retention element of the law and instead focused attention on providing support for reading in grades K-3.

Book Ban Backers Banished

Sumner County voters reject slate of school board candidates focused on banning books, firing director of schools

In the Republican primary last night, voters in Sumner County soundly rejected a slate of candidates focused on banning books in school libraries.

The Sumner County Constitutional Republicans (SCCR) fielded a slate of candidates in the GOP primary for School Board. All SCCR-backed candidates lost their races in a clean sweep for candidates supportive of investment in public schools.

The Tennessee Holler notes the defeat of the SCCR candidates

Among the group of SCCR candidates, there had been discussion of removing books from school libraries and mention of an effort to fire Director of Schools Scott Langford if the group gained a majority.

Instead, in a voter turnout that exceeded the county’s typical average turnout, Sumner Countians rejected SCCR in every district.

MORE TENNESSEE NEWS

Will TN Lawmakers Support Free Pre-K for All?

On the Harms of School Vouchers

Phil’s Got the Tapes

Pro-voucher group exposed

NewsChannel5’s Phil Williams has a recording of a prominent school voucher lobbyist calling for political punishment for Republican lawmakers who refuse to support Gov. Bill Lee’s voucher scheme.

“I don’t think anybody is going to get unseated without some substantial independent expenditures coming in there,” Gill says, acknowledging that wealthy special interests would need to spend a lot of money to knock off lawmakers who did not vote their way.

The point seems to be that privatizers (like Gill, affiliated with the Tennessee Federation for Children), are willing to spend what it takes to secure pro-voucher votes from lawmakers.

This is a familiar tactic. Tennesseans for Student Success employed similar methods when some GOP lawmakers refused to support a different privatization scheme.

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Pre-K for All

Behn, Oliver push expansion of state’s Pre-K program

Tennessee’s voluntary Pre-K program is great, but what if it were available to every family who wanted to participate?

The dream of providing high-quality early education for Tennessee families began with Gov. Phil Bredesen in 2007. The state provided money allowing every school district to offer at least one 20-seat Pre-K classroom for families meeting income eligibility criteria.

The program is voluntary.

Now, Rep. Aftyn Behn and Sen. Charlane Oliver are dreaming bigger – a Pre-K program for ALL.

Rep. Aftyn Behn and Sen. Charlane Oliver, both of Nashville, propose a significant expansion of the state’s voluntary Pre-K program for four-year-olds. The plan requires every school district in the state to establish a Pre-K program for all four-year-olds whose families wish to participate.

All districts in the state currently offer some Pre-K, but this bill would make the program universally available. Funding for the program would come from the state.

MORE TENNESSEE NEWS

Ghost Vouchers a Nightmare for TN Policymakers

Expanding Access to Healthcare for Kids

Another Warning from Arizona

Bill Lee has a longstanding affinity for privatization Arizona-style

Back in 2017, I warned that plans to voucherize Tennessee’s public schools sounded eerily like the voucher scam in Arizona.

That scheme led Arizona to a huge budget hole created by vouchers. It only took seven years to get there.

A few years later, I noted that Lee’s charter commission plans also mimicked a scheme taking shape in Arizona.

Now, news out of Arizona regarding fraud in that state’s voucher program should give Tennessee policymakers pause.

Three former Arizona Department of Education employees were indicted on conspiracy and money laundering charges in what prosecutors say was a scheme to defraud more than $600,000 from an education voucher program that has drawn criticism for its skyrocketing costs and lax regulation by the state.

The scheme saw employees create fake student profiles and approve the “ghost” students for vouchers – funds that were then paid to DOE employees.

Tennessee’s proposed school voucher scheme has come under fire for its lack of accountability. Without strict tracking of both expenditures and student performance, fraud along the lines of what has happened in Arizona is quite possible.

More Tennessee News

Exposing the Harms of School Vouchers

A Focus on Making Childcare Affordable

School Voucher Folly

A disaster awaits as voucher vote looms

Peter Greene writes about school voucher legislation on the verge of being debate in the Tennessee General Assembly.

He notes:

Tennessee SB 2787 (also, HB 2468) is one of those odd little legislative tricks beloved by both parties and mysterious to ordinary mortals. It started out as a bill requiring the department of education to study school choice in other states and then make a report. Except by the time it’s done it won’t be about that at all.

This bill will be the vehicle for delivering on Gov. Bill Lee’s promise to create a universal school voucher scheme in Tennessee.

Green goes on to note that based on Tennessee’s education track record, vouchers are likely to be a disaster in the state.

Choice fans talk about the needs of students and families, but Tennessee with its rich history of grift-centered education reformsterism seems poised to once again put the interests of profiteers ahead of protecting the rights of families. Heaven only knows what this bill is going to look like when it finally assumes its final form, but I’m not optimistic.

And Greene has this to say about the lack of accountability measures for the schools accepting vouchers:

It would be nice, in a choice marketplace, to have some basic guardrails in place. We mostly don’t depend on market forces to protect us from markets that sell poisonous food. One would think that the government could provide that basic level of oversight for a school choice system, but voucher fans are far more likely to explicitly forbid government oversight, and true to form, none of the discussion surrounding this bill seems to center on what requirements vendors would have to meet in order to get some of those taxpayer-funded voucher dollars.

Tennessee’s Dead Horse

It’s the lack of investment in public education

After years of running budget surpluses, Tennessee this year has a bit of a budget crunch. For the first time in a decade, revenue numbers are coming below projections.

This is all happening while state leaders are pitching a $1.6 billion corporate tax break.

I’ve been writing about Tennessee policymakers missing the mark on investment in education for years now as well.

Beating a dead horse, some might say.

Over at The Education Report, I wrote recently about missed opportunities in that decade of surplus revenue.

As recently as 2021, the state had a $3.1 billion revenue surplus.

The next year? $2 billion.

But these years of surplus were not met with attendant investment in public education.

Tennessee did not boost starting teacher pay to $60,000 or provide free meals to all kids at school.

Now, we’re in a time of less revenue collection and an apparent commitment to grant a corporate tax break well in excess of $1 billion.

What gets left behind, then?

School funding.

The same dead horse.

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Vouchers: “Ineffective, Inefficient, Inequitable”

Chattanooga Unity Group opposes Lee’s voucher scheme

The Unity Group of Chattanooga is opposed to Gov. Bill Lee’s proposal to expand a school voucher scheme and make vouchers universal in Tennessee.

The group points to Arizona as an example of a state where a once-small voucher program ballooned to create a significant budget shortfall.

After analyzing vouchers in other states in terms of costs and outcome, the Unity Group concluded that vouchers are:

“Ineffective, inefficient, and inequitable.”