The move to expand vouchers is being pushed by Williamson County’s State Senator, Jack Johnson, and Gov. Bill Lee, a Williamson County native.
In a joint statement announcing their opposition, the candidates said:
We are united in opposing vouchers because we’re listening to our neighbors, members of our communities and parents of students in Williamson County who are overwhelmingly against using taxpayer dollars to fund private schools.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Southern Christian Coalition expresses concerns about Lee’s voucher plan
The Southern Christian Coalition is speaking out against Gov. Bill Lee’s school voucher expansion plan. Lee gave additional details about the plan in his State of the State address last night. The scheme, as announced, would cost a projected $141 million in the first year of operation.
McIntyre said Gov. Lee’s voucher plan would harm our state’s public schools.
“Instead of trying to make the situation better and choosing to fully fund our public schools, Governor Lee is publicly promoting his voucher scheme, which we only take funds from school districts the state doesn’t already adequately fund, and instead funnel money to his friends and donors in the private school sphere.”
In remarks delivered Friday, Senate Democratic Caucus Chair London Lamar challenged Gov. Bill Lee to lead on issues that make a difference for working families.
Among the topics addressed by Lamar was school vouchers. Here’s what she had to say:
Once again, Tennesseans are going to be told they should support a scam that defunds our neighborhood schools to subsidize private school tuition for wealthy families.
Lamar’s description of the impact of vouchers is especially salient in light of mounting evidence that school vouchers not only fail to improve student achievement but also exacerbate inequality.
Rev. Brandon Berg of Anderson County and a member of the Southern Christian Coalition said Lee’s plan does not reflect support for public education and instead could lead to using public funds for schools with zero accountability.
Instead, in spite of his constituents’ concerns, he insists on pushing his voucher plan that will bleed funding from our already underfunded, hyperscrutinized public schools and divert it to private schools with far weaker accountability. In fact, Lee and the other supporters of vouchers refuse to answer questions about accountability for those schools.
The group has previously spoken out against the voucher scheme:
