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.
Chalkbeat reports:
David Mansouri, president and chief executive at Tennessee SCORE, has been appointed to the new nine-person oversight board that will seize control of Memphis-Shelby County Schools in a state-led takeover.
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.
Since SCORE’s founding, it has had the ear of Tennessee’s two GOP Governors – Bill Haslam and Bill Lee.
In that time, Tennessee has sunk to the bottom in the nation in investment in schools.
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.
