That’s what’s changed under Bill Lee’s approach to education
When Gov. Bill Lee came into office in 2018, Tennessee school funding system was broken.
The state lagged behind our neighbors in terms of support for schools by all measures. Billions in unfunded infrastructure needs. Teachers paid well below their peers in Southeastern states. Total investment in students ranked in the bottom 5 in the nation.
Bill Lee’s solution to all of this was to propose a school voucher scheme.
While it passed by a single vote in the House, the fallout is still being felt – one House Speaker lost his job over it. Staffers were indicted. And it seems the saga is not over.
Bill Lee’s “new frontier” looks a lot like Tennessee’s old frontier of school funding failure
Remember how Gov. Lee pushed a new school funding formula – TISA – to replace the state’s highly equitable but woefully inadequate BEP?
Remember how Lee promised TISA would usher in a bold new era of investment in Tennessee’s public schools?
Well, as it turns out, Lee’s rhetoric failed to match the reality. Or, those who warned about TISA were right – the new formula still provides inadequate funding to Tennessee’s public schools.
While in 2018, Tennessee ranked 42nd in the nation in school funding effort, today we rank 47th. On overall funding level, there has been no change since 2018 – that is, we’re still at 43rd.
So much for that new frontier Gov. Lee promised. Seems like the same old frontier of inadequate funding combined with the newness of even LESS effort to actually fund schools.
All of this continued lack of investment in school happened while the state enjoyed multiple years with huge (multi-billion dollar) budget surpluses. Rather than invest those funds in schools, Lee and his legislative allies gave out $1.6 billion in corporate tax breaks and $500 million to the Tennessee Titans to build a new stadium.
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Education blogger TC Weber joined the Tennessee Department of Education’s update to the State Board of Education on the state’s new funding formula (TISA). He filed this report with the Tennessee Star.
Here’s the part I found quite interesting:
Department data indicates that 648,000 students attend a school where 40 percent or more live in poverty.
That’s roughly 2/3 of all students.
The good news: The districts responsible for educating those students will receive a bump in funding under TISA.
The challenge: Tennessee has known about the high concentration of poverty for decades now.
It’s nice to see some bonus funding going to these districts (although BEP also had an input for poverty).
What’s not clear is what’s changing to address the systemic poverty that persists.
Tennessee policymakers could take action to address the challenges posed by entrenched poverty.
For example, the state could provide free breakfast and lunch to ALL students in the state for about $700 million.
Given that we continue to have annual budget surpluses topping $2 billion, this seems like an easy ask.
Feed all kids who come to school, no questions asked.
The state could also expand Medicaid to ensure that more families have access to healthcare.
In terms of education dollars, perhaps instead of investing $132 million in Pearson’s standardized tests, we could allocate those dollars to students in high poverty schools.
For the two thirds of students attending high poverty schools, the state must look like the banker from Monopoly – consistently collecting excess revenue while those students and their families have to wait for crumbs from the table.
Tennessee continues to find new ways to measure and assess the fact that our students face challenges from poverty and then consistently finds ways to offer solutions that do nothing to change that fact.
Tennessee continues to experience record revenue surpluses while also continuing a trend of badly underfunding public schools. Based on projections, it seems the state invested around one fourth of this year’s surplus toward public education as part of the TISA school funding overhaul.
That’s nice, sure. But TISA is deeply flawed AND the state is underfunding schools by around $2 billion a year. Gov. Lee’s plan barely makes up half of that shortfall.
The Sycamore Institute has an update today on the current state of Tennessee’s revenue picture. In an email, they note:
With two months left to count, Tennessee collected about $3.7 billion (28%) more tax revenue than lawmakers initially budgeted for this point in the fiscal year.
That’s remarkable. Perhaps even more remarkable is the lack of commitment to use these funds to dramatically improve school funding in a state that ranks among the lowest in the nation in school funding. In fact, even after TISA, projections suggest Tennessee will still be in the bottom 10 nationally when it comes to K-12 school funding.
Of course, this lack of commitment to school funding is nothing new:
The Nashville Public Education Foundation (NPEF) announced the addition of three new board members today. Here’s more from the press release:
The Nashville Public Education Foundation (NPEF) has appointed three new members to its Board of Directors, including Michelle Gaskin Brown, manager at Amazon; Kate Chinn, former vice president at AllianceBernstein; and Dr. L. Gregory Jones, president of Belmont University. Additionally, Meg Harris, the current board vice-chair and vice president of people at Ancestry, will take over as the foundation’s board chair on July 1, 2022. Harris succeeds Tony Heard, a partner at InfoWorks.
Readers may recall that NPEF first warned about the dangers of Bill Lee’s new school funding formula (TISA) and then ended up backing the plan that, by their own admission, would mean less funding for Nashville’s schools.
TISA is a timely and needed update to school funding. Here's why NPEF supports TISA while continuing to push for improvements: https://t.co/8PjU9nXqdk
It’s interesting that NPEF noted that the BEP created an “unattainable burden” for districts like Nashville and then supported a funding scheme that actually leaves Nashville worse off than before the BEP.
The Tennessee General Assembly passed Gov. Bill Lee’s school funding reform plan this past legislative session. The new scheme, TISA, will take effect in the 2023-24 school year.
What does TISA mean for local school districts? How will it impact the schools in your district?
A group known as “Tennessee for All” is holding a virtual forum on June 16th to explore these questions.
Here’s what they have to say about TISA:
Whether we’re from Nashville or Kingsport, we all want our kids to have a great education. And yet, while our state government hands out millions of dollars to corporations and sits on billions in reserves, this new education plan locks in underfunding for nearly every school. It picks winners and losers, forcing some counties to pay higher property taxes to close the funding gap.
In short, they’re not fans. However, the forum will be a great opportunity to learn more about just how TISA impacts funding.
Gov. Bill Lee’s signature education funding reform initiative passed today even as concerns have been raised that the plan will do little to fundamentally alter the status quo for school districts in a state consistently ranked 45th in the nation in school funding.
In response to the legislation, advocates with the Southern Christian Coalition suggested the plan does not meet its stated goals and even noted analysis suggesting the formula will mean a smaller percentage of state funds for 91 school districts (roughly 2/3).
“I call on our Legislature to adequately fund our public schools, and to invest in and care for the children of Tennessee, knowing that they are each made in the image of God,” said Rev. Laura Becker, Pastor of Northminster Presbyterian Church in Chattanooga, and mother of one current student and one graduate of Hamilton County Schools. “All Tennessee students deserve the right to high quality and fully funded education that prepares them to achieve their full potential and successfully contribute to our communities and to our state. Unfortunately, Governor Lee’s proposed education funding plan called TISA doesn’t provide the funding necessary to address our teacher shortage, ensure students with special needs get the care they need, or ensure that every school has the resources they need to provide every child a quality education, so I call for a more just and equitable funding program.”
An in-depth analysis of the reality of TISA funding also shows the plan comes up short in key areas – most notably hiring teachers and teacher compensation. Without significant investment on both fronts, it is unlikely the plan will move the needle relative to the stated goal of improved student achievement outcomes.
A group of Tennessee parents and public school students gathered at the Tennessee State Capitol this morning to express opposition to legislation that would effectively ban books from public school libraries by creating an “approved book list” developed by the Tennessee Textbook Commission.
At the event, Williamson County High School student Lindsay Hornick spoke about the importance of having a wide range of books in public school libraries.
Hornick said, ” Books allow us to learn about the world through a variety of lenses and create our own opinions on controversial topics. They teach us about the past in ways that explore the truth. No matter how difficult it may be to hear, the documented past allows us to learn and grow. It allows us to prevent tragedies from repeating.”
State Rep. Mark White is tweeting out misleading information about Gov. Lee’s school funding overhaul (TISA) in an attempt to build support for the effort as the legislature enters its final weeks.
Lately on the Hill, we’ve been talking a lot about TISA (Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement). TISA is going to improve how Tennessee determines school funding, and we will be able to pour billions into our schools and provide better opportunities for our students.
— Representative Mark White (@RepMarkWhiteTN) April 18, 2022
So, this is just flat out wrong. First, as currently envisioned, there’s less than $1 billion in “new” money for schools. Oh, and White has been a leader on the House Education Committee for years – why is he just NOW doing any of this?
White is among the legislative leaders who routinely ignore the BEP Review Committee:
He’s also ignored the TACIR recommendations to add $1.7 billion to K-12 funding to address the underfunding of teachers and staff. By the way, TISA does NOT address this shortfall.
This is the same Mark White who carried the water for Lee’s state charter authorizer scheme – you know, the plan to remove local authority from charter school decisions:
Here’s what Nashville education blogger TC Weber had to say about White back in 2020:
Well, he supported an unconstitutional voucher bill in spite of purportedly, “not liking it”. He failed to increase funding for Tennessee school districts despite the state sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars in surplus money. He supported a literacy bill that robbed LEA’s of power to choose materials and curriculum, increased testing, and called for the retention of third-graders – luckily despite his support, the bill failed to pass. He failed to substantially raise teacher salaries. Salaries have been stagnating for years.
But sure, we should totally trust Mark White to tell the truth about TISA.
In a media event, a group of pastors and parents affiliated with the Southern Christian Coalition said Gov. Bill Lee’s school funding formula proposal, known as TISA, fails to provide adequate funding for all Tennessee schools.
Rev. Laura Becker, Pastor of Northminster Presbyterian Church in Chattanooga, opened the virtual press conference sharing that her children have been in the Hamilton Public School system since 2008. “We are here today as pastors in the state of Tennessee, calling on our legislature to adequately fund our public schools, and invest and care for the children of Tennessee, knowing that they are each made in the image of God. All Tennessee students deserve the right to high quality and fully funded education that prepares them to achieve their full potential and successfully contribute to our communities and to our state. Unfortunately, from threats to dissolve school boards, to corporate private charter schools that make money from public schools, Tennessee’s Supermajority Republicans are doing everything to avoid dealing with the fact that Tennessee provides less in state funding per student than almost any other state in the country.
Becker specifically addressed the TISA school funding overhaul being advanced by Lee:
“I’ve been following some of Governor Lee’s new school funding plan usually called TISA, and unfortunately, it just isn’t enough and it isn’t right. Instead of addressing the issue at the root by funding our public schools as much as every other state, this new funding plan would still require too much funding from local governments.
“This so-called ‘student centered funding approach’ shows a clear motive of Gov. Lee and the Supermajority Republicans that they have of privatizing our public schools and turning our tax dollars over to private schools and corporate funded charter schools.”
Rev. Dr. Donna Whitney also shared why public school funding is a priority to her as her daughters graduated from Metro Nashville Public Schools.
“The goal of our school funding system should be to ensure that all children, all children, no matter where they live, or the challenges they face, have the opportunity for a public education that prepares them to be responsible and productive citizens. The purpose of funding public education is to ensure that there are adequate resources to serve the educational requirements of all children. And that funding is distributed equitably, so that all children can access equal educational opportunities.
“Unfortunately, Governor Lee’s TISA funding plan is neither adequate nor equitable, while claiming to be student centered, the TISA plan now before our legislature is anything but truly student centered. TISA is actually corporate centered, using students as vehicles to escort dollars, our public tax dollars out of public schools and into corporate treasuries.”
