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
Tennessee’s new Education Commissioner will continue privatization push
There’s a new Commissioner of Education coming to Tennessee and Volunteer State residents will likely be unable to discern any policy differences when compared with outgoing Commissioner Penny Schwinn.
Jeb Bush – known for privatizing Florida public schools by way of both charters and vouchers – was quick to congratulate Lizzette Reynolds on her appointment as Tennessee’s next Education Commissioner.
Reynolds works for Bush’s pro-privatization issue advocacy group, ExcelinEd.
Congratulations to @GovBillLee and @ExcelinEd VP of Policy Lizzette Gonzalez Reynolds for her selection as the next K-12 schools chief in Tennessee! We are so proud of the work she’s done and what the future holds. https://t.co/UPLpGALYXz
While Gov. Bill Lee credited outgoing Commissioner Schwinn with leading the way for the state’s school voucher program, it seems likely Reynolds will continue pushing various methods of school privatization.
Tennessee lawmakers appear determined to expand vouchers to both Chattanooga and Knoxville this year. In fact, the Senate has already passed legislation expanding the state’s Education Savings Account (ESA) program to Chattanooga at the request of Hamilton County state Senator Todd Gardenhire. Now, the House may add Knox County to the voucher expansion and send the plan back to the Senate.
Meanwhile, Georgia lawmakers recently rejected a voucher plan.
Even as Hamilton County’s own Sen. Todd Gardenhire champions the expansion of the state’s school voucher program into Chattanooga, a local advocacy group is opposing the measure.
For its part, The Unity Group says there are still too many unanswered questions about the program.
Specifically, the group called out issues around accountability for funds spent and suggested that taxpayers would end up footing the bill for sub-par private education.
The potential for increased local tax burden combined with data the group says suggests students fail to benefit from voucher programs led the group to oppose expansion of ESAs into Chattanooga.
The group passed a resolution stating reasons for opposing the program’s expansion and called on lawmakers to heed their warning.
Specific reasons for opposing voucher expansion include:
“Research shows that school vouchers have not been effective at improving student achievement or closing the achievement gap, with the most credible research finding little or no difference in voucher and public school students’ performance.
The push to expand vouchers comes at the same time legislation that could dramatically increase the presence of charter schools is being introduced by the Speaker of the House and the Lt. Governor.
Just when you thought the Tennessee General Assembly couldn’t go any more “all-in” on the privatization of our state’s public schools, House Speaker Cameron Sexton files an amendment to a caption bill that would effectively create statewide charter schools.
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.
The plaintiffs in one of the lawsuits against the State of Tennessee and Gov. Bill Lee regarding Lee’s school voucher scheme are again asking the courts to grant an injunction and prevent implementation of the plan.
A previous injunction was lifted and Lee announced his Department of Education would move quickly to usher vouchers in to Memphis and Nashville this school year.
Here’s more from Public Funds for Public Schools via a press release:
Following Tennessee Governor Bill Lee’s announcement that the state immediately will begin implementing its controversial private school voucher program for the school year starting in just a few weeks, public school parents and community members in the targeted counties are going back to court to stop this sudden and unprecedented rollout.
The plaintiffs in McEwen v. Lee, a pending 2020 lawsuit filed by Shelby and Davidson County residents that challenges the constitutionality of Tennessee’s Education Savings Account (ESA) voucher law, filed an urgent motion Friday asking the Davidson County Chancery Court to block the state from rolling out vouchers for the 2022-2023 school year.
“This unconstitutional program will drain resources from our public schools, and our lawsuit challenging it has not yet been decided,” said plaintiff Roxanne McEwen, whose child is a student in Metro Nashville Public Schools. “Rushing to implement the voucher program before the court has spoken will only create needless chaos for our public schools and for Tennessee families.”
Friday’s motion explains the immediate and irreparable harm that would result from the state’s extremely rushed plan to hand out vouchers for the coming school year. Disbursing those funds, which are drawn from public school district budgets, would throw public schools into chaos weeks before the school year begins. And handing out vouchers that could be declared unconstitutional shortly thereafter would leave families that used them to enroll in private schools mired in uncertainty.
“The state cannot be permitted to recklessly barrel ahead with an unconstitutional program at the expense of Nashville and Memphis public schools that desperately need more, not less, funding and resources,” said Chris Wood, partner at Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP. “We are again asking the court to enjoin the voucher program while the judges rule on the numerous constitutional and statutory violations asserted by the plaintiffs.”
This is the second time the McEwen plaintiffs have called on the chancery court to halt implementation of the voucher program before the state diverts taxpayer funds to unaccountable private schools. In 2020, the chancery court ruled in a companion case challenging the voucher law, Metro Government v. Tennessee Department of Education, that it violated the Home Rule provision of the Tennessee Constitution by targeting only Shelby and Davidson Counties without their local approval and prohibited the state from starting the program.
The Tennessee Court of Appeals upheld that ruling, but the state Supreme Court reversed it earlier this year in a split decision, sending the case back to the chancery court. The chancery court lifted its 2020 injunction of the voucher law on July 13 as a result of the Supreme Court decision. The state initially told the court that it had not decided on a course of action, but Governor Lee released a statement just hours later declaring that implementation would proceed immediately.
The plaintiffs in McEwen v. Lee are represented by the law firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP, the ACLU of Tennessee, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Education Law Center. The Southern Poverty Law Center and Education Law Center collaborate on the national Public Funds Public Schools (PFPS) campaign.
“There are numerous unresolved legal claims in both the McEwen and Metro Government lawsuits,” said Jessica Levin, senior attorney at Education Law Center and director of PFPS. “The temporary injunction motion filed by the McEwen plaintiffs on Friday focuses on their claim that the voucher law violates the Education Clause of the Tennessee Constitution – which requires the state to provide education solely through a system of public schools – by funding private schools outside that system.”
Private schools participating in the voucher program are not obligated to comply with the academic, accountability, and governance standards that apply to public schools. And unlike public schools, they can discriminate against students on the basis of religion, LGBTQ+ status, and other characteristics, as well as refuse to provide services such as special education for students with disabilities.
“Defunding public schools through voucher schemes like this one also disproportionately harms Black and brown children and children experiencing poverty, who have been overrepresented in public schools since private segregation academies were first funded by segregationist lawmakers across the South,” explained Bacardi Jackson, interim deputy legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Center. “Children with the greatest needs, who are welcomed and served by our public schools, are left with fewer resources when the state acts to deplete the funds intended to educate all children. So not only is this law unconstitutional, it funds discrimination, and it is racially and economically unjust.”
“Taking money away from already underfunded public school districts and sending taxpayer dollars to private schools, many of which are religious, hurts Tennessee students,” said Lindsay Kee, interim director of the ACLU of Tennessee. “We will continue to stand with public school parents and students to fight this unconstitutional program until it is struck down for good.”
More information about McEwen v. Lee is available here.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
That’s how Bruce VanWyngarden describes Gov. Bill Lee’s school voucher scheme. Yes, the very same scheme Lee is rushing to get up and running THIS school year.
Which is why every human being in Tennessee should be absolutely outraged at Governor Bill Lee, who is relentlessly fostering the destruction of our public schools via a voucher system in which parents play the middleman between our state treasury and private schools to the tune of $7,000 per family. It’s flat-out wrong, and it’s using money that rightfully should be going to public schools. If people want to send their children to private schools, let them have at it, just don’t ask the taxpayers to cover the note.
He then goes on to detail the current Hillsdale controversy and note that Lee is selling our public schools to private entities with a very clear agenda.
Unable to convince federal lawmakers to pass a voucher scheme despite the persuasive talents of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, President Trump today issued an Executive Order calling on the Department of Health and Human Services to create a school voucher program from CARES Act funds.
Peter Greene writes about this and provides the reassuring analysis that President-elect Biden can simply reverse this Executive Order on January 20th when he becomes President Biden (yes, despite Gov. Bill Lee’s reticence to acknowledge it, Joe Biden will be the President on January 20th).
The argument in favor of this is that January 20th is coming and the administration wants their damn vouchers now, dammit. Okay, not really. The argument for this is
1) We totally identified effective measures for resuming face-to-face and we gave you $13 billion whole dollars to do it (never mind the part where we tried to divert a bunch of that to private schools)
2) Continued distance learning is bad. Here are a few statistics we found.
3) Building closures are extra hard on students with special needs, because they cut off not only education but support services. They’re not wrong on this one. Of course, another solution would be to give public schools the resources they need to fix this. In fact, that would be the solution that would make sense, since the public system already knows who and where the students are and what they need. Bringing in another batch of service providers means that they should be done with needs assessments right around June.
I’m eagerly awaiting the press release from Gov. Lee’s office enthusiastically supporting this ridiculous effort. Next, Tennesseans for Student Success will chime in to support the Gov.
Today, Shelby County Director of Schools Joris Ray announced new additions to his leadership team. Among them, Amity Schuyler, previously the Tennessee Department of Education’s point person on school vouchers. Gov. Bill Lee and his team have been counting on Schuyler to fast-track the state’s voucher scheme.
Here’s the announcement via tweet:
I’m continuing to build a team of SERVANT LEADERS who must be bold and courageous. Today, I announced three cabinet additions: Amity Schuyler, Kenneth Walker and Jerica Phillips. They each bring savvy leadership skills as we change the landscape at SCS. https://t.co/ybfUiaHR0Fpic.twitter.com/5NKHKaTfMl
It’s unclear what this means for the future of a voucher program that Lee chose to fund in his emergency budget while cutting a planned investment in public schools.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
On Monday, I noted that shadowy “non-profit issue advocacy group” Tennesseans for Student Success was on the attack, placing online ads against Republicans who opposed Governor Bill Lee’s destructive state charter authorizer legislation in the House Education Committee.
Today, it appears the attacks worked, at least in the case of Rep. Chris Hurt. The House Education Committee heard and ultimately approved Governor Lee’s school voucher plan. While one victim of the TSS attacks, Mark Cochran, stood strong in defense of public schools, Hurt caved to the pressure of being labeled a defender of “Hillary Clinton’s NEA.”
On the other hand, despite speculation that he might now support vouchers in exchange for cover from Bill Lee, embattled Rep. David Byrd (an admitted sex offender), also voted against school vouchers.
Still, the lesson for dark money groups like Tennesseans for Student Success is clear: Your attacks get the attention of key decision-makers. Forget facts, just bring up Hillary Clinton and socialism, and the weak among the legislative branch will do your bidding.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
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