Florida’s new Commissioner of Education is talking big about ending public schools and moving to a system where the state hands out the money and the parents choose from a range of private options.
The taxpayers would put up the money. The “market” would do all the rest. No need for pesky state standards or regulations on the qualifications of educators or rules about the treatment of students with disabilities.
One Trump Ed Department official said (in 2024 before she was with the Administration):
I’m optimistic that, you know, five years from now a majority of kids are going to be in a private school choice program.
The idea that government has an inherent interest in providing a free, public education for every child used to be sacrosanct, except among a small set of radical reformers like Milton Friedman. But a 40-year campaign for “school choice” has quietly gathered steam. Proponents of privatization are now openly acknowledging that their sights are set on eliminating public schools. They want to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education (founded to ensure the civil rights of children in schools) and offer no-strings-attached public dollars to private and religious schools. And now, a lawsuit filed in Nebraska just this month argues that the U.S. system of public schools violates the First Amendment and asks the state to declare public schools unconstitutional.
A recently-released analysis of teacher compensation relative to other professions shows that teachers in Tennessee face a nearly 30% pay gap compared to similarly-trained professionals.
In Tennessee, the story is particularly bleak.
The teacher pay penalty is nearly 30% – worse than the national average.
Tennessee is also now the state that invests the least in public education.
Tennessee’s numbers are worse than the national average – and America’s numbers are pretty sad, too:
Inflation-adjusted weekly wages for public school teachers fell 6.2% over the last three decades, while wages for other college graduates rose 28.8% over the same period.
After all, with the GOP in charge of all of TN government since 2011, the state is now last in the nation in investment in schools – $1.9 billion below our neighbors in Mississippi.
This means schools and the students in them are not provided the needed resources to achieve success.
And, there’s at least one area where the evidence suggests years of neglect are taking their toll: teacher retention.
Tennessee has the highest rate of teacher turnover in the nation.
And, well, while TSS has won a lot of fights, the results aren’t so good for Tennessee schools and communities:
In the decade+ that TSS has been seeking to influence Tennessee education policy, the state has seen the creation of a universal school voucher scheme that costs $300 million, including millions of dollars in payments to a private vendor to administer the program.
Tennessee now ranks last in the nation in investment in public education and would need $1.9 billion to catch up to our neighbors in Mississippi.
Thanks in part to the policies advanced by the lawmakers backed by TSS, Tennessee teachers are now making less (6.5% less) in inflation-adjusted dollars than they were when TSS was just starting.
In fact, the state’s investment in schools in real dollars has dropped by 10% over the past two budget cycles – budgets dominated by education policies championed by TSS.
WKRN reports that Clarksville’s city government is considering a measure that would reduce the city’s support of Montgomery County Schools.
The City of Clarksville needs more money to keep funding the city, but that could mean taking some tax revenue away from the school system.
Almost 50 years ago, voters approved an increase in the city’s local auction sales tax.
The city and Montgomery County entered into an agreement allowing the Clarksville-Montgomery County School System to keep an additional 20% of that increase.
If they revoke it, Clarksville Mayor Joe Pitts said the city would have $3.4 million per year, which would help offset the rising costs of doing business.
City leaders say Clarksville already spends millions of dollars in support of schools.
A new report ranks state public school systems by racial and economic segregation and finds Tennessee has the most racially segregated schools in the South.
Tennessee public schools are among the most racially segregated in the nation, according to a new study.
Researchers from Stanford and the University of California, Los Angeles, found that Tennessee has the most segregated schools in the South and ranks number six nationally, trailing behind New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Ohio.
The “States of Segregation” report uses data from the 2023-24 school year and measures the levels of racial segregation between white students and their Black, Hispanic, and Native American peers. Each state has an index number ranging between zero and one – with zero meaning no segregation and one indicating that the school is completely segregated, with all the students being the same race. Tennessee’s number is .46.
As Gov. Bill Lee’s 8 years in office come to an end, his legacy is clear: Support for public schools is near the bottom in the nation, while efforts to privatize get top billing.
While the most recent analysis of public school funding places Tennessee last in the nation, a report released this week by the Network for Public Education (NPE) gives the Volunteer State a grade of “F” for its support (lack of support?) for public schools.
In a press release, NPE says:
Only two states — Nebraska and Vermont — earned an A. Seventeen states received an F, failing to meet even 40% of the points allocated across NPE’s 39 standards. Florida ranked last, scoring 14 out of 102 possible points, with Arizona close behind. “The data confirm what we have long suspected: privatization and disinvestment go hand in hand,” said Carol Burris, Executive Director of NPE and the report’s author. “These are not states struggling with limited resources. They have made deliberate choices to abandon their public schools while directing billions in public dollars to private alternatives.”
Relative to Tennessee, the report notes:
Florida lost every possible point in our school funding category, ranking in the bottom decile for funding level, distribution, and effort, while also paying among the lowest teacher salaries in the country when adjusted for cost of living. Arizona, Idaho, North Carolina, and Tennessee each earned just two of sixteen possible funding points.
The 17 states that earned an F for their lack of support of public schools, students, and educators while embracing privatization were (lowest to highest) Florida, Arizona, North Carolina, Louisiana, Indiana, Oklahoma, Idaho, Arkansas, Alabama, Utah, Texas, Tennessee, Georgia, Ohio, Nevada, South Carolina, and Missouri.
About the report:
The report draws on original research in addition to research from other organizations — including the Education Law Center, the Learning Policy Institute, and EdChoice — to deliver a comprehensive assessment of public education and privatization across 39 distinct factors. These include teacher-to-student ratios, teacher satisfaction, school funding levels, and the degree to which laws governing vouchers, charter schools, and homeschools protect both taxpayers and students.
Nashville will host the Super Bowl in 2030, an event that promises to bring far smaller economic returns than the NFL or Lee suggests, based on results from cities that have actually held the Super Bowl.
Still, the state put up $500 million just to build a domed stadium for billionaires who couldn’t afford to spend their own money, while kids in DCS custody sleep on office floors because the state lacks adequate facilities to house them.
House Speaker Cameron Sexton appointed Dave Mansouri, President and CEO of the Statewide Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE), to a new board that will oversee Memphis schools.
House Speaker Cameron Sexton appointed Mansouri to the board on Tuesday, one of the speaker’s two appointees on the board. Sexton has not announced his final pick.
Mansouri will be the only member of the new board who is not a Shelby County resident after Sexton negotiated for the opportunity to appoint a non-resident when Republicans passed the takeover legislation earlier this spring.
Mansouri doesn’t live in Memphis and has zero ties to the district.
He is, however, the leader of the organization that has been driving Tennessee education policy for over a decade.
The state now has a private school discount coupon program (school vouchers) costing taxpayers $300 million a year – transferring wealth from rural and working class Tennesseans to wealthy families already sending kids to private schools.
Our state’s teachers are among the lowest-paid in the nation – lagging behind several of our Southeastern neighbors.
It’s not clear what positive impact SCORE has had for schools or Tennessee communities – except that its executives are handsomely paid. Mansouri earned nearly $400,000 in 2024 according to SCORE’s IRS 990 form. That same year, the group took in $17 million – ostensibly to advance meaningful education reform in Tennessee.
Perhaps Mansouri will actually visit Memphis now that he’s part of the group overseeing the city’s schools – and spend some of his and SCORE’s money there.
