Bill Lee’s legacy will be the undoing of Tennessee’s public education system. First, through the ill-designed TISA formula and then by way of a universal school voucher scheme.
In submitting her updated budget proposal in March, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs lamented the rising costs of the state’s school vouchers program that directs public dollars to pay private school tuition.
Characterizing vouchers as an “entitlement program,” Hobbs said the state could spend more than $1 billion subsidizing private education in the upcoming fiscal year. The Democratic governor said those expenses could crowd out other budget priorities, including disability programs and pay raises for firefighters and state troopers.
Tennessee’s voucher scheme will cost nearly $150 million in year one – and the cost of the private school coupon plan could balloon quickly.
Of course, by the time the voucher plan eats so many state dollars that other programs are cut, Lee will no longer be governor.
Still, when public education in the state suffocates under the weight of school vouchers, there is one man who should bear the brunt of the blame: Bill Lee.
Objections to the new bill that lawmakers must ponder this year were presented in a recent talk by Marsha Livingston, a retired teacher from Anderson County Schools.
Based on valid data comparing the educational outcomes of public and private school students in Tennessee the last two years and in other states with large rural populations, she said, student academic achievement based on test scores in public schools generally surpasses that of students in private schools supported by public money.
She quoted Andy Spears, publisher of the Tennessee Education Report, who wrote, “With little data showing any significant positive gains, and new data suggesting possible harms, it’s difficult to understand why policymakers would adopt a voucher system in Tennessee.”
Today, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee announced that he will call for the Tennessee General Assembly to convene a special session on Monday, January 27, to pass the Education Freedom Act.
The session will also include a disaster relief package for areas impacted by Hurricane Helene.
Conservative groups are already speaking out against Lee’s voucher scam.
• With 10,000 scholarships initially available and expanding by 5,000 each year, the program’s long-term cost could strain Tennessee’s budget, leading to higher taxes for hardworking families.
• Public schools will retain their funding even when students leave, forcing taxpayers to fund both public schools and ESAs simultaneously. This double-dipping could bankrupt our state over time.
The math: TCN says the voucher scheme will cost $268 million in year one – and continue to be a drag on state and local budgets, likely resulting in tax increases:
Another conservative group, Tennessee Stands, says they oppose vouchers because:
Vouchers are wealth distribution. Vouchers are government funds that come with additional regulatory oversight. Vouchers are dangerous for home schools and private education.
Vouchers lost big on Election Day, but voucher supporters keep insisting they should get their way
Even though voucher supporters thought they could win by putting vouchers to a vote in three states (Kentucky, Colorado, and Nebraska), and even though they were soundly defeated in all three cases, and even though vouchers have never won when put to a vote of the people, voucher supporters are still trying.
They know best, after all. And even though the votes weren’t close, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do vouchers anyway.
So perhaps the more complete version of the argument is this– nobody should be able to make me do things I don’t want to do, but I should be able to make them do things they don’t want to do. And if I want their money to help me do the things I want to do, they should be made to give it to me. Or maybe it’s “if I’m going to be forced to so something I don’t want to do, then other people should be forced to do something I do want to do.” Or maybe just “Other people shouldn’t be able to make rules that bind me.”
And then, Greene gets to the heart of the reality of vouchers:
Private schools are a way for those with might and money to escape the democratically-operated system. Vouchers are a way to funnel public tax dollars into that system while pretending that we’ll open great private school doors to one and all. But that pretense is just that– a pretense. Voucher laws deliberately protect the ability of private schools to discriminate while also protecting their right to avoid any accountability to the taxpayers.
Advocates with the Southern Christian Coalition noted that Lee’s plan would harm the state’s public school system and leave students behind. Representatives of the group said the plan is out of alignment with Lee’s proclaimed Christian faith.
Rev. Brandon Berg, Pastor of Norris and Sinking Springs United Methodist Churches in the Knoxville area, said:
“If Governor Lee claims the Christian faith, and we know he does, then he must change course and start to prioritize the education of every Tennessee child by fully funding our public schools and end this voucher scheme that would create even more inequity in Tennessee schools.”
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
Lee moves forward with planned privatization of state’s public schools
Despite mounting evidence suggesting that universal school voucher programs are both expensive and ineffective, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee seems determined to deliver on a promise from his 2018 campaign. That promise? Privatizing public schools.
Gov. Bill Lee is preparing to announce a plan to dramatically expand Tennessee’s controversial school voucher program, allowing K-12 students to receive taxpayer funding for private school regardless of need, according to talking points obtained by NewsChannel 5 Investigates.
Lee has long been an advocate of using tax dollars to fund unaccountable private schools.
Even though as early as 2016, Bill Lee was extolling the virtues of school voucher schemes and even though he’s a long-time supporter of Betsy DeVos’s pro-voucher Tennessee Federation for Children and even though he has appointed not one, but two voucher vultures to high level posts in his Administration, it is somehow treated as “news” that Bill Lee plans to move forward with a voucher scheme agenda in 2019.
Lee has continued his steady march toward full privatization of schools since 2019. Securing passage of his voucher scheme, advancing legislation that created a charter school commission, inviting Hillsdale to hijack our schools.
He even made a successful push to change the state’s school funding formula to make it more appealing for private schools to accept vouchers.
Now, he’s going for the final blow: A universal school voucher plan.
This plan will be expensive and is not likely to have a positive impact on academic achievement.
Nearly 15,000 students who never attended public school suddenly receiving vouchers would mean a state cost of $98 million. That’s $98 million in new money. Of course, those funds would either be new money (which is not currently contemplated) or would take from the state’s BEP allocations in the districts where the students receive the vouchers.
Since then, two things have happened.
Lee’s plan envisions 20,000 students AND the guaranteed minimum voucher amount has increased.
The cost now would be $141 million. That doesn’t include any local offset for lost local funding (estimated to be about $8 million in Davidson County alone back in 2017).
If the state absorbs the cost, rather than passing it on to local taxpayers, there would need to be a fund of at least $100 million to cover those costs.
So, at minimum, Lee’s plan creates a voucher school district costing an additional $250 million a year.
All while our state remains in the bottom 10 in school funding.
Oh, and if the state does not create an offset fund, local taxpayers would be footing the bill – which would mean either local property tax increases (as happened in Indiana) OR a decrease in services offered in traditional public schools.
Lee is delivering on his promise, even though it’s expensive and even though data from other states and early data from Tennessee suggests it won’t improve student achievement.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
Students in these districts (Memphis, Nashville, and Chattanooga) may receive a voucher in an amount equivalent to the state-generated funding provided to their home district for the student. Under the state’s new school funding formula (TISA), each student generates a specific dollar amount based on a range of factors. The vouchers should range from about $8,000 to around $15,000 depending on where a student lives, family income, and a series of other factors included in the TISA calculation.
In addition to vouchers, Lee is attempting to privatize the state’s public schools through a network of charter schools affiliated with extremist Hillsdale College.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
Efforts to privatize Tennessee’s public schools were deferred today in a key House Committee.
The privatization push includes potential expansion of school vouchers into Knoxville and the other would open the doors for charter schools to operate in districts without first being subject to local review.
This bill (HB433), as currently written, would expand the state’s school voucher program (known as Education Savings Accounts, or ESAs) to Chattanooga. Currently, the voucher scheme only applies to students in Memphis and Nashville.
It’s bad enough that some policymakers are ready to expand this privatization program to another Tennessee school district. However, what’s even more alarming is that Education Administration Committee Chair Mark White has filed an amendment to expand the program even further – this time into Knoxville.
As you might recall, I wrote about an amendment to the charter legislation that would:
Create a scheme for allowing charter schools that serve homeschooled students
Allow for the creation of residential/boarding schools that are charter schools
These new charters would also be able to bypass local school boards and apply directly to Bill Lee’s State Charter Commission for approval.
That would mean zero local input and zero local accountability – even though millions of local tax dollars would be spent supporting these charter schools.
It’s important to look at these pieces of legislation for what they are: A clear agenda.
Gov. Lee and his legislative allies want to privatize our public schools.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
Despite Gov. Bill Lee’s original promise that school vouchers would be confined to Memphis and Nashville for the first five years of the program, the Tennessee State Senate advanced a proposal that would expand the voucher program into Hamilton County and pave the way for further expansion of school vouchers.
The Tennessee Senate has approved legislation expanding the state’s education voucher program into Hamilton County, which would allow low-income families to use public tax dollars to send their children to private schools willing to accept the annual $8,100 vouchers.
Nineteen Republicans voted in favor of Senate Bill 12, and six Democrats voted no. Another eight Republicans either voted present or didn’t take part in Thursday’s vote. The measure now goes to the Republican-controlled House.
The move comes amid an aggressive privatization movement which is also seeing Hillsdale College push to open up to 50 charter schools in the state.
