Tag Archives: Bill Lee and School Vouchers

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How Big Will TN’s Voucher Program Get in 2026?

Tennessee’s private school coupon scheme already has 20,000 takers. It will grow to 25,000 in 2026-27 unless the legislature intervenes to expand the program further.

And, that’s just what Gov. Bill Lee and House Speaker Cameron Sexton plan to do – with some suggesting a doubling of the program to 40,000 students next year.

Chalkbeat reports:

A mechanism in the state law will allow lawmakers to easily expand the program for 5,000 new students since the state received more than 40,000 applications, well above the expansion threshold set by state law. But Gov. Bill Lee and other Republican lawmakers say they want to expand the program even further.

But it’s unlikely the number of new seats will be decided on by the time applications close on Jan. 30, just days into the 2026 legislative session.

At least one issue advocacy group is calling for the state to rapidly expand the voucher program and other school privatization efforts – calling for 200,000 students to be using vouchers by 2031.

Gov. Bill Lee promoting school privatization

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Lawsuit Challenges Tennessee’s School Voucher Scheme

Advocates say Gov. Lee’s voucher plan violates the state’s Constitution

Tennessee’s expanded, universal school voucher scheme violates a state requirement to maintain a system of free public schools, a new lawsuit says.

The Education Law Center, on behalf of a group of Tennessee parents, filed the suit in Davidson County Chancery Court.

“I taught for 12 years, and I fought to get my children into Rutherford County Schools because I knew the quality of education here,” said Jill Smiley, Rutherford County parent and former teacher. “Now the state is systematically defunding the very schools families like mine depend on. You can’t expect excellent schools on a shrinking budget.” 

The suit cites the requirement in the Tennessee Constitution that the state establish and support a system of free public schools.

According to the plaintiffs:

The lawsuit argues the voucher law violates the Education Clause of the Tennessee Constitution in two ways: 

  • The Education Clause’s adequacy requirement: By diverting public funds away from already underfunded public schools, the law prevents Tennessee from providing students with the adequate education guaranteed by the state constitution. 
  • The Education Clause’s mandate of a single system of public schools: By funding schools outside the system of free public schools, the voucher law violates this Education Clause mandate. 

Estimates by state analysts suggest the program will cost more than $140 million this year alone and may cost over $1 billion a year within 5 years.

Additionally, an issue advocacy group calling itself Tennessee Leads says it will fight to expand the school voucher program as well as the state’s charter schools so that as many as 450,000 students are removed from the state’s public school system by 2031.

Gov. Bill Lee promoting school privatization

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Doubling Down on a Bad Idea

Lee, Sexton want to expand state’s private school coupon scheme

Tennessee’s school voucher program is already taking a $144 million chunk out of the state budget. When fully implemented, the cost is expected to exceed $1 billion annually.

Vouchers are expensive – and undermine local public schools. Research consistently suggests vouchers do not improve student outcomes – and, sometimes, actually lead to a decline.

Expensive. Hurting local communities. Failing to help students.

That’s the program Gov. Lee wants to expand. And House Speaker Cameron Sexton is cheering him on, calling for at least a doubling of the voucher scheme in the upcoming legislative session.

The governor added that because of the large number of applications, he hopes to persuade the legislature to “provide more scholarships to Tennessee families” when lawmakers return for the 2026 session.

Lee, whose term runs out in January 2027, wasn’t specific about how much he would like to see the program expand. But Sexton’s spokesperson, Connor Grady, said the speaker is committed to “at least doubling” the number of available vouchers to meet student demand, Chalkbeat reported.

Gov. Bill Lee promoting school privatization

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Vouchers Hurt Kids

Ohio data shows school voucher schemes lead to academic harms for students

Gov. Bill Lee’s top legislative priority since his election in 2018 has been a statewide school voucher scheme.

During a special legislative session in January, Lee’s dream was realized. While existing evidence suggested this plan would be both bad for taxpayers and harmful to kids, Lee persisted. Now, new data out of Ohio confirms that those warning of the harms of vouchers were onto something.

Let’s be clear: The data over more than a decade shows that vouchers are both very expensive and ineffective at improving academic achievement.

On all proficiency tests, students getting a voucher for one year or less overall are about 75% proficient. Three years later, they’re 54% proficient.

That’s a drop of nearly 1/3!

The Ohio numbers show that students did not improve in any subject – in fact, their scores declined!

Vouchers are bad.

They hurt kids.

And taxpayers will be on the hook for a program that doesn’t just “not work” it actually has negative impacts.

Bill Lee’s signature legislative achievement is a multi-billion dollar program that will hurt Tennessee kids.

Gov. Bill Lee promoting school privatization

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Here’s How the Voucher Story Goes

It’s not a happy ending

A look at the voucher scheme in Florida offers a preview of where Tennessee is heading – and it’s not good.

An analyst in the state notes:

Peter Greene explores the Florida situation further, digging in with information from a professor from Florida State:

Cottle also wants to point out another factor. Florida used to run a huge budget surplus, but now it’s running a deficit. Cottle and others are trying to raise an alarm about math instruction and the need to improve math instruction, particularly by recruiting and retaining high-quality teachers. But the “still-growing budget for school choice vouchers is surely competing for money with ideas for initiatives to improve student learning, and the voucher budget is winning.”

In Tennessee, we should be alarmed:

Over the course of the next five years, as state funding is gobbled up by a privatization scheme and local taxes increase even as services offered remain the same or decrease, we can look back on this moment as the nail in the coffin of Tennessee public education.

Gov. Bill Lee won – and a generation of Tennessee students will lose as a result.

Gov. Bill Lee promoting school privatization

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A Warning on Vouchers

They’re expensive and don’t work for kids

A national expert on education policy warned Tennessee lawmakers to proceed with caution when it comes to Gov. Bill Lee’s voucher scam.

Professor Josh Cowen of Michigan State University spoke at a forum hosted by Sen. Heidi Campbell and Rep. Caleb Hemmer. In his presentation, Cowen discussed his research into voucher programs across the country. Cowen said his findings suggest policymakers should be wary of school vouchers as a policy solution.

“These voucher schemes devastate student learning. The bigger and more recent the voucher system, the worse the results are for kids,” Cowen said. “Over the last decade, we see some of the largest test score drops for kids who transfer from public to private school using a voucher that we’ve seen on any question in the history of education research.”

Gov. Bill Lee promoting school privatization

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Voters Don’t Like Vouchers

But Bill Lee does

The top priority of Gov. Lee and his legislative allies in the 2025 General Assembly is passing a universal school voucher scheme.

It was the first bill filed for the upcoming session.

For the entirety of his time in office – since 2018 – Lee has been pushing to privatize the state’s public schools. And, it seems he just won’t stop.

Interestingly, anytime vouchers are put to a public vote, they fail. It happened in Kentucky, a state that voted 65-35 for Trump – and 65-35 against school vouchers.

In 2018, Arizona voters overwhelmingly rejected school vouchers. On the ballot that year was a measure that would have allowed all parents — even the wealthiest ones — to receive taxpayer money to send their kids to private, typically religious schools.

Arizonans voted no, and it wasn’t close. Even in a right-leaning state, with powerful Republican leaders supporting the initiative, the vote against it was 65% to 35%.

This year, voters in Colorado, Nebraska, and Kentucky rejected vouchers. In Kentucky, the margin was 2-1 against vouchers – and all 120 counties in Kentucky opposed a ballot initiative that would have allowed vouchers.

While the results of last week’s election indicate a closely divided nation on many issues, support for public schools is a consistent winner. And, when asked – in blue states and red states and in rural and urban areas – voters reject school vouchers.

Still, Bill Lee persists.

SHOCKING!
Gov. Bill Lee promoting school privatization
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Reasons to Reject Vouchers

A Kentucky student highlights problems created by school voucher schemes

As Kentucky voters consider a an amendment to the state’s Constitution that would allow the use of public funds to support private K-12 schools, one private school student is speaking out on why that’s a very bad idea.

One of the scariest things about Amendment 2 is that it basically serves as a blank check for vouchers to non-public schools with no clear place for the funding to come from other than public schools.

Tennessee policymakers should remember, too, that just as in Kentucky, the school voucher scheme is likely to funnel tax dollars from rural districts and send them to urban and suburban private schools.

Of course, that won’t stop Gov. Lee from trying again to pass a universal school voucher bill.

SHOCKING!
Gov. Bill Lee promoting school privatization

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A Map to Vouchers

The right-wing plot to privatize public schools runs through Tennessee

Peter Greene reports on efforts by right-wing bill mill ALEC – American Legislative Exchange Council – to implement vouchers in 25 states by 2025.

No surprise, Tennessee is on the map.

ALEC’s map of school privatization targets

As Greene notes:

ALEC has set a new goal– 25 by 2025. That means having 25 states adopt school voucher programs by the end of next year. To push that goal, ALEC has a new initiative called the Education Freedom Alliance, and it is a scary crew.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee pushed an effort for universal vouchers this past legislative session – despite his past promises that he wanted to see results from the state’s pilot program before making the scheme universal.

Freedom from Vouchers

The effort failed in 2024, but as you can see, Tennessee is a 2025 target. Lee and his legislative allies have pledged to push vouchers again next session.

Of course, Lee has long sought to extract public funds for the benefit of school privatizers.

SHOCKING!
Gov. Bill Lee promoting school privatization

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The Voucher Tax

Will Tennessee lawmakers pass a new tax next year?

A recent analysis of the potential cost of school vouchers in Kentucky shows that Bluegrass State taxpayers could be on the hook for $199 million in year one – with those costs expected to balloon in subsequent years.

Which reminds me that the year one cost of Gov. Bill Lee’s universal voucher scam would cost TN taxpayers $140 million with estimates suggesting the cost of the program at full operation would be above $700 million.

Vouchers vs. Teachers

Lee is actively campaigning for Republicans in primaries who support his new voucher tax. He’s also said he plans to try again next year to pass a universal voucher scheme.

In state after state, budget analysis demonstrates that vouchers essentially amount to a new tax – straining local budgets and draining state revenue previously directed toward public schools and other programs.

Arizona is one example – lawmakers there are struggling to patch a giant budget hole due to the budget drain that is vouchers.

Let’s be clear: School vouchers essentially create two school systems. Taxpayers are on the hook for both.

The public spends more, but gets less.

In the above example, Kentuckians would pay nearly $200 million more to educate the exact same number of students.

Lee’s plan would tax Tennesseans $140 million more in its first year and provide no improvement in service.

In Tennessee’s pilot voucher program – where students are required to take state tests – kids who used the vouchers LOST ground.

We’re paying more to lose.

Oh, and after nearly a decade of budget surpluses, Lee’s tax giveaways to the rich have begun to create a budget hole – some $500 million short this year.

Less state revenue, higher local taxes, and kids losing ground academically – that’s the result of the Bill Lee agenda.

Gov. Bill Lee promoting school privatization