Tag Archives: Bill Lee and Vouchers

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Voucher Supporters are Like Toddlers

Vouchers lost big on Election Day, but voucher supporters keep insisting they should get their way

Even though voucher supporters thought they could win by putting vouchers to a vote in three states (Kentucky, Colorado, and Nebraska), and even though they were soundly defeated in all three cases, and even though vouchers have never won when put to a vote of the people, voucher supporters are still trying.

They know best, after all. And even though the votes weren’t close, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do vouchers anyway.

Peter Greene sums it up nicely – essentially, voucher supporters are like toddlers:

So perhaps the more complete version of the argument is this– nobody should be able to make me do things I don’t want to do, but I should be able to make them do things they don’t want to do. And if I want their money to help me do the things I want to do, they should be made to give it to me. Or maybe it’s “if I’m going to be forced to so something I don’t want to do, then other people should be forced to do something I do want to do.” Or maybe just “Other people shouldn’t be able to make rules that bind me.”

And then, Greene gets to the heart of the reality of vouchers:

Private schools are a way for those with might and money to escape the democratically-operated system. Vouchers are a way to funnel public tax dollars into that system while pretending that we’ll open great private school doors to one and all. But that pretense is just that– a pretense. Voucher laws deliberately protect the ability of private schools to discriminate while also protecting their right to avoid any accountability to the taxpayers.

boy running in the hallway
Photo by Caleb Oquendo on Pexels.com

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Faith Leaders Express Opposition to Lee’s Voucher Scam

Southern Christian Coalition calls for fully funded public schools

Gov. Bill Lee announced a massive expansion of a voucher scheme yesterday and faith leaders immediately spoke out in opposition.

Delivering on a Promise

Advocates with the Southern Christian Coalition noted that Lee’s plan would harm the state’s public school system and leave students behind. Representatives of the group said the plan is out of alignment with Lee’s proclaimed Christian faith.

Rev. Brandon Berg, Pastor of Norris and Sinking Springs United Methodist Churches in the Knoxville area, said:

“If Governor Lee claims the Christian faith, and we know he does, then he must change course and start to prioritize the education of every Tennessee child by fully funding our public schools and end this voucher scheme that would create even more inequity in Tennessee schools.”

For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport

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Delivering on a Promise

Lee moves forward with planned privatization of state’s public schools

Despite mounting evidence suggesting that universal school voucher programs are both expensive and ineffective, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee seems determined to deliver on a promise from his 2018 campaign. That promise? Privatizing public schools.

NewsChannel5 reports:

Gov. Bill Lee is preparing to announce a plan to dramatically expand Tennessee’s controversial school voucher program, allowing K-12 students to receive taxpayer funding for private school regardless of need, according to talking points obtained by NewsChannel 5 Investigates.

Lee has long been an advocate of using tax dollars to fund unaccountable private schools.

SHOCKING!

Even though as early as 2016, Bill Lee was extolling the virtues of school voucher schemes and even though he’s a long-time supporter of Betsy DeVos’s pro-voucher Tennessee Federation for Children and even though he has appointed not one, but two voucher vultures to high level posts in his Administration, it is somehow treated as “news” that Bill Lee plans to move forward with a voucher scheme agenda in 2019.

Lee has continued his steady march toward full privatization of schools since 2019. Securing passage of his voucher scheme, advancing legislation that created a charter school commission, inviting Hillsdale to hijack our schools.

He even made a successful push to change the state’s school funding formula to make it more appealing for private schools to accept vouchers.

Now, he’s going for the final blow: A universal school voucher plan.

This plan will be expensive and is not likely to have a positive impact on academic achievement.

The Voucher School District

In the above article, written in 2017, I noted:

Nearly 15,000 students who never attended public school suddenly receiving vouchers would mean a state cost of $98 million. That’s $98 million in new money. Of course, those funds would either be new money (which is not currently contemplated) or would take from the state’s BEP allocations in the districts where the students receive the vouchers.

Since then, two things have happened.

Lee’s plan envisions 20,000 students AND the guaranteed minimum voucher amount has increased.

The cost now would be $141 million. That doesn’t include any local offset for lost local funding (estimated to be about $8 million in Davidson County alone back in 2017).

If the state absorbs the cost, rather than passing it on to local taxpayers, there would need to be a fund of at least $100 million to cover those costs.

So, at minimum, Lee’s plan creates a voucher school district costing an additional $250 million a year.

All while our state remains in the bottom 10 in school funding.

Oh, and if the state does not create an offset fund, local taxpayers would be footing the bill – which would mean either local property tax increases (as happened in Indiana) OR a decrease in services offered in traditional public schools.

Lee is delivering on his promise, even though it’s expensive and even though data from other states and early data from Tennessee suggests it won’t improve student achievement.

For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport

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Lee Brings School Privatization to Chattanooga

Vouchers will be available for Hamilton County students in the 2023-24 school year

Gov. Bill Lee today signed a law expanding his school voucher scheme to Chattanooga.

More from NewsBreak:

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.

Chattanooga Activists Oppose Voucher Expansion

Research has consistently shown that vouchers do not improve student outcomes:

The Verdict on Vouchers

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

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Privatization Efforts Deferred – But Not Denied

Efforts to privatize Tennessee’s public schools were deferred today in a key House Committee.

The privatization push includes potential expansion of school vouchers into Knoxville and the other would open the doors for charter schools to operate in districts without first being subject to local review.

More from The Education Report:

This bill (HB433), as currently written, would expand the state’s school voucher program (known as Education Savings Accounts, or ESAs) to Chattanooga. Currently, the voucher scheme only applies to students in Memphis and Nashville.

It’s bad enough that some policymakers are ready to expand this privatization program to another Tennessee school district. However, what’s even more alarming is that Education Administration Committee Chair Mark White has filed an amendment to expand the program even further – this time into Knoxville.

As you might recall, I wrote about an amendment to the charter legislation that would:

  1. Create a scheme for allowing charter schools that serve homeschooled students
  2. Allow for the creation of residential/boarding schools that are charter schools

These new charters would also be able to bypass local school boards and apply directly to Bill Lee’s State Charter Commission for approval.

That would mean zero local input and zero local accountability – even though millions of local tax dollars would be spent supporting these charter schools.

It’s important to look at these pieces of legislation for what they are: A clear agenda.

Gov. Lee and his legislative allies want to privatize our public schools.

For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport

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Senate Advances Voucher Expansion

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 Chattanooga Times-Free Press reports:

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.

Charters All Around

For more on Tennessee education politics and policy, follow @TNEdReport

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What’s the Rush?

Gov. Bill Lee has moved quickly to implement his school voucher scheme as courts have cleared the way for it to start this school year.

So far, though, not many families are expressing serious interest.

The Tennessean reports that as of the first day of school in Memphis and Nashville (the only two districts eligible for vouchers), only 30 applications had been submitted for approval.

As of Monday morning, only 30 families had submitted an actual application, according to information from Department of Education spokesperson Brian Blackley. The department received applications from 40 schools, he said, noting that application process has closed.

While Lee has claimed that several thousand families want the vouchers, that has not yet been borne out in the application process.

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$26 Million Harm

Voucher case proceeds despite imminent harm to Memphis, Nashville

A three-judge panel on Friday declined to stop Gov. Bill Lee’s rushed implementation of a school voucher scheme in Memphis and Nashville.

Disproportionate Harm

Chalkbeat reports that lawyers for parents opposing the voucher plan had asked the court to halt implementation while their case against vouchers proceeds.

Specifically, lawyers noted that if implementation proceeds, Memphis and Nashville combined could lose up to $26 million in funding this year despite no attendant reduction in costs to operate.

“Nothing requires the state defendants to push this forward at a rocket’s pace after the injunction was lifted, just before the school year started,” said Allison Bussell, Metro Nashville’s associate law director, representing the two local governments.

She argued that allowing the program to start will cause irreparable harm to both districts, which she said stand to lose $26 million this school year if 3,000 students shift from public to private schools — while the districts must maintain and staff the same number of schools. 

A recent article in The Hechinger Report noted that vouchers have not been shown to improve student achievement, and in fact, have in some cases been shown to actually be harmful.

Vouchers are dangerous to American education. They promise an all-too-simple solution to tough problems like unequal access to high-quality schools, segregation and even school safety. In small doses, years ago, vouchers seemed like they might work, but as more states have created more and larger voucher programs, experts like me have learned enough to say that these programs on balance can severely hinder academic growth — especially for vulnerable kids.

So, vouchers not only cost local districts significant money, but they also harm the very students they are intended to help. Nevertheless, Gov. Lee and his allies are persisting with this perilous plan.

For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport

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Voucher Case Gets New Court Hearing

Chalkbeat reports that a case against Gov. Bill Lee’s school voucher scheme will receive another hearing before the Tennessee Supreme Court as that body attempts to assess the constitutionality of the program.

The Tennessee Supreme Court will rehear arguments in the case of educational savings accounts, also known as vouchers. The court’s announcement on Tuesday comes in the wake of the death of Justice Cornelia Clark who was on the bench in June to hear the arguments, but died of cancer in September before the court was able to issue a ruling.

In the brief order, court members said that “in light of the untimely death of Clark, this court has concluded that re-argument will aid the resolution of this appeal.”

At stake in the case is the future of school vouchers in Tennessee. Republican Gov. Bill Lee pushed the educational savings accounts, or school voucher law, in 2019, as a way for students in Nashville and Memphis to use public funds to pay for private education, supplies, and tutoring. The program was to begin with 5,000 students and grow to 15,000 by the fifth year, but the program never got off the ground as multiple courts blocked it.

For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport

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The BEP Voucher Plan

Tennessee teacher and education blogger Mike Stein offers his take on Gov. Bill Lee’s latest run at school vouchers. This time, Lee’s plan appears to be to use the state’s school funding formula (BEP) to create a voucher scheme.

Here are some highlights from Stein’s piece, written after he’d been to one of TN DOE’s BEP Town Hall events:

I had so much to say! I wanted to mention how atrocious it is that in 2021 teachers in this state are still limited on how many copies they can make for their classrooms. I wanted to go into how students’ mental health is poor. That fights during school are on the rise because they don’t know how to properly deal with their emotions and the need for school counselors, psychologists, and social workers is at a critical point. I wanted to mention my idea for attacking the substitute teacher crisis in Tennessee, which is to include substitute teacher pay as a component in the BEP. Rural systems like mine can not afford to pay them a decent wage (they can literally make more money at any fast food establishment), so if TDOE creates a baseline pay of $120 per day for non-licensed substitute teachers that is reimbursed to districts, then we will be much more likely to attract and keep quality substitute teachers. The $120 figure comes from paying them the equivalent of $15 an hour for the length of the school day. If the substitute is a certified teacher, then I believe that amount should equal $160 per day. I wanted to raise these points–and more–but the two minute time limit had me rethinking what I was going to say.

Is the answer already decided?

. . . because in January they plan on presenting their new BEP formula to the state legislature. 

Stop and reflect on that last sentence. If their timeline is to present their plan in January then it can only mean one thing–it’s either already written or close to it. This means that TDOE’s public town halls and their funding review committees are either entirely or mostly a farce. They’re going through the motions of eliciting public feedback because to redo the BEP formula without attempting to do so would mean their suggestion in January would most assuredly be D.O.A.

The tea leaves are not difficult to read here. The new BEP formula will include some form of vouchers (they, of course, won’t be called that) and because the BEP funds public schools across the state, then it will not violate the “Home Rule” provision. State legislators will be put in a position to either vote in favor of the new BEP formula (which will undoubtedly include actual needed improvements that will be popular with their constituents) or reject it. It’s a lose-lose situation for them. Either support the new BEP formula that will actually privatize public schools or be accused of being against public education. 

Stein then does a great job of breaking down the members of the Fiscal Responsibility Committee – noting that many of them are decidedly pro-voucher.

Check out his post for more on Bill Lee’s continued effort to send public money to private schools.

For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport

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