Florida’s “Schools of Hope” program offers a warning to other states about the rapid advancement of charter schools.
Schools of Hope co-location shifts costs, concentrates disruption in vulnerable communities, and strips local school boards of authority, all while insulating the neighborhoods and families with the most resources. That’s not innovation. It’s the extraction of resources from public schools for the benefit of charter corporations.
A group connected to some of Tennessee’s top Republican elected leaders says it wants 200,000 Tennessee students using private school coupons and 250,000 in charter schools by 2031.
Tennessee Leads appears to have been launched with the help of a group of political finance consultants tied to top GOP leaders in the state.
The address and Registered Agent of the group match that of Political Financial Management, a group that has helped the Tennessee Republican Caucus and Gov. Bill Lee.
The group says it is advocating to have 200,000 students using school vouchers and 250,000 students in charter schools by 2031.
The voucher plan would cost $1.5 billion.
A new issue advocacy nonprofit in Tennessee is fighting for goals that will effectively end public education in our state.
While state leaders consider expanding the state’s private school coupon program, a new nonprofit takes a bolder approach. A group calling itself Tennessee Leads registered with the Secretary of State as a 501(c)(4) issue advocacy organization with the goal of effectively ending public education in Tennessee by 2031.
The group’s goals: 200,000 voucher students (at a cost of more than $1.5 billion/year), 250,000 charter school students (there are 45,000 now), and the implementation of Direct Instruction.
It’s like every bad idea in education got together and formed a band.
So far, though, it’s not clear who the members are. Stay tuned . . .
Thanks to Bill Lee’s unabashed embrace of Christian Nationalism, charter schools affiliated with extremist Hillsdale College are a reality in Tennessee.
A key question – in TN and elsewhere – is can state funds be used to support explicitly religious charter schools?
In Kentucky, the Supreme Court ruled that charter schools are NOT public schools. Period. So, no state funds may be used to support them.
Now, the U.S. Supreme Court is taking up a case on state funding of religious charter schools. An analysis of the key issues includes:
The third issue that the U.S. Supreme Court must address is that it needs to determine whether those who run charter schools are state or private actors. This is because the vast majority of people who run charter schools are private groups. However, these charters are defined by law as public schools and are supported by tax-payer dollars. If the Court rules that those who operate the charter schools are state actors, then because they must be non-sectarian, religious charter schools will be ruled unconstitutional. However, if the Court rules that charter schools are private actors, then religious charter schools will be ruled constitutional.
In Kentucky, the Commonwealth’s highest court found that because charter schools are operated by private actors, they are essentially private schools. In other states, that has not been the case. It will be interesting to see how the U.S. Supreme Court sorts this out.
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Part of the supposed allure of charter schools is that they are held accountable. Some proponents even suggest they have more accountability than traditional public schools. After all, based on poor performance, a school board or charter authorizer can close a charter school.
Except that rarely happens.
Instead, as Peter Greene points out with an example from Pennsylvania, once opened, charter schools are rarely forced to close. And, even if an authorizer does take action to close the school, legal battles can keep a school open for years.
The charter system was sold with the idea that charters would be accountable to authorizers, that they would have to earn the right to operate and continue earning it to maintain that operation. The Franklin Towne situation shows a different framing, one that is too common in the charter world–once established, the charter doesn’t have to earn its continued existence. It doesn’t need authorization from anyone; instead, authorizers build a case to close down the charter. Authorization to operate, once given, can never be withdrawn without protracted legal battles.
Tennesseans have definitely seen this myth play out. In fact, the authorizing of charter schools at a local level has also been superseded by Gov. Bill Lee’s handpicked charter school commission.
The state commission can force districts to take charters that local elected officials don’t want. And that commission can then allow those charters to stay open – even if they aren’t meeting community needs. Even if they are actually harming the students they take in by way of poor performance.
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Tennessee has moved aggressively to privatize-by-charter since a state law allowing charter schools was first passed back in 2002.
The past decade has seen a particular focus on charter schools as a way to provide opportunities for students from low income backgrounds.
Kentucky, however, has zero charter schools and a judge there recently found that charter schools do not meet the definition of “public schools” for the purpose of state education funding.
The states have taken different approaches – and the results suggest that Tennessee just might be on the wrong track.
What’s happened in the intervening 10 years? Has Tennessee closed the gap with Kentucky when it comes to economically disadvantaged kids?
Actually, no.
In both 8th-grade math and reading, the gap with Kentucky has expanded. Tennessee trailed Kentucky by 2 points in 8th-grade math in 2013 but now trails by 7. In reading, Kentucky went from being 2 points ahead to being 6 points ahead.
In 4th grade in both math and reading, the gap between the states remained the same (+3 for Kentucky in math, +8 for Kentucky in reading).
Turns out, another decade of pushing for privatization has not helped those Tennessee kids most in need of help.
It seems American Classical Education, a charter school network affiliated with Hillsdale College, is not satisfied with having a charter school in just one Tennessee district.
Tennessee Lookout reports:
American Classical Education, a Hillsdale College-affiliated charter school network, resubmitted amended applications in two of four counties that denied it earlier this year.
School boards in Madison and Maury counties have until July 28 to review American Classical Education’s latest revision to its charter school applications.
The Maury County School board will vote on the new applications at July 18 meeting. While school officials with the Jackson-Madison County School System said, its board would hold a special-called meeting before the July deadline to deny or approve the resubmitted application.
The network won approval of a charter school to open in Rutherford County in 2024.
However, school boards in Madison, Maury, Montgomery, and Robertson rejected the Hillsdale applications.
In Maury County, the initial vote was 6-5 against Hillsdale. So, if the charter backers can simply switch one vote, they could see approval of a second Tennessee charter school.
Here’s what the Mayor of Maury County’s largest city has to say about Hillsdale:
Winning a second (and possibly third) charter school could put Hillsdale well on the way to the 50 charter schools Bill Lee promised in his 2022 State of the State Address.
And if the local school boards don’t approve the appeals, Hillsdale can still appeal to the State Charter Commission, whose members have all been appointed by Lee.
Why does Hillsdale want so desperately to operate charter schools in the Volunteer State? Money.
The charter network would be financed by state education funds and local property tax dollars – both enriching Hillsdale and driving up education costs for local school systems.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
Phil Williams of Nashville’s NewsChannel5 is one reporter who is not afraid of a tough story.
This time, he’s following the path of a nonprofit group that raises millions of dollars a year and is associated with former U.S. Senator Bill Frist.
The group: Tennessee SCORE – SCORE stands for Statewide Collaborative for Reforming Education.
Williams is on the story of how SCORE is aggressively promoting the expansion of charter schools as the panacea for the state’s education woes.
Never mind that SCORE has been driving the state’s education agenda for more than a decade.
Williams notes that education advocates are warning about SCORE’s plan – supported by Gov. Bill Lee – to bring at least 50 new charter schools to the state in the next 5 years.
And not just in Nashville and Memphis, where charters are already an alarming part of the landscape.
This plan would create charter schools in suburban and rural districts.
It’s similar to a scheme being advanced by Michigan-based Hillsdale College to open at least 50 Christian Nationalist charters in the state.
As Williams notes in a follow-up piece, charters don’t always have the best record of academic achievement. In fact, in many cases, charter schools perform worse than the district schools where they operate.
Maybe that’s why SCORE is moving quickly to help the privately run, publicly funded schools game the state’s new funding formula – TISA.
And just a reminder – SCORE takes in tons of money every year and advances an agenda that seeks to undermine the state’s public schools:
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
Pro-charter propaganda machine Tennessee Firefly is out with the story of a bevy of new charter school applications across the state.
The story that’s gotten the purveyors of privatization so excited is that as of now, there are 23 “letters of intent” from charter operators planning to open schools in districts across Tennessee.
As Firefly notes:
School districts across the state received 23 letters of intent this month for applications to open new public charter schools next year. That’s the first step potential charter operators must take before submitting their formal application by February 1, 2023.
The letters of intent include proposed schools in four counties that do not currently have public charter schools and they’re coming from both existing charter operators in Tennessee and those who were rejected this year.
The applications come from a range of operators, including Christian Nationalist Hillsdale College – a group out of Michigan seeking to open schools in five Tennessee counties – Madison, Rutherford, Montgomery, Maury, and Robertson.
Should these charter schools be approved, they will undoubtedly lead to local tax increases.
The move comes at the same time Gov. Bill Lee and his privatization allies are seeking to expand the state’s fledgling school voucher program.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
Gov. Bill Lee has been shocking policymakers and pundits for a long time now simply by telling the truth about his school privatization agenda.
At a recent legislative hearing, lawmakers – some of whom supported creating the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission – expressed surprise that the law they passed back in 2019 actually does what it says.
Gov. Lee has been saying this since BEFORE he was even a candidate for governor.
Now that his policies are potentially impacting their districts, policymakers are starting to pay attention. Still no indication they’ll actually do anything to stop it.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
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