Tag Archives: School Vouchers in Tennessee

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Sometimes Led to Declines

School vouchers don’t help kids but Gov. Lee wants them anyway

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has long been a staunch supporter of using public money to support private schools.

SHOCKING!

It seems this legislative session, he may be on the verge of achieving his ultimate goal: privatizing public education in the Volunteer State by way of a school voucher scheme.

Chalkbeat has a timeline of the march toward vouchers, and the details are quite interesting.

Here’s the key takeaway:

Also, the research hasn’t supported the case for vouchers as a way to improve academic outcomes. Recent studies find little evidence that vouchers improve test scores. In fact, they’ve sometimes led to declines.

Even now, big questions loom about the cost, impact, and legal merits of a program that threatens to destabilize Tennessee’s public education system.

A program that’s very expensive, doesn’t improve academic outcomes, and has “sometimes led to declines” is Gov. Bill Lee’s signature policy initiative.

MORE TENNESSEE NEWS

School Board Candidates Unite Against Vouchers

Behn, Oliver Push Free Pre-K for All

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A Rally for Public Education

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.

Nashville’s WSMV:

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.

MORE TENNESSEE NEWS

Free Pre-K for All?

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Phil’s Got the Tapes

Pro-voucher group exposed

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.

That Hurt(s)
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Another Warning from Arizona

Bill Lee has a longstanding affinity for privatization Arizona-style

Back in 2017, I warned that plans to voucherize Tennessee’s public schools sounded eerily like the voucher scam in Arizona.

Vouchers: A Warning from Arizona

That scheme led Arizona to a huge budget hole created by vouchers. It only took seven years to get there.

A few years later, I noted that Lee’s charter commission plans also mimicked a scheme taking shape in Arizona.

Bill Lee’s Arizona Dream

Now, news out of Arizona regarding fraud in that state’s voucher program should give Tennessee policymakers pause.

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.

More Tennessee News

Exposing the Harms of School Vouchers

A Focus on Making Childcare Affordable

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School Voucher Folly

A disaster awaits as voucher vote looms

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.

Vouchers on Verge of Expansion 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.

The Verdict on Vouchers

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.

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Vouchers: “Ineffective, Inefficient, Inequitable”

Chattanooga Unity Group opposes Lee’s voucher scheme

The Unity Group of Chattanooga is opposed to Gov. Bill Lee’s proposal to expand a school voucher scheme and make vouchers universal in Tennessee.

The group points to Arizona as an example of a state where a once-small voucher program ballooned to create a significant budget shortfall.

After analyzing vouchers in other states in terms of costs and outcome, the Unity Group concluded that vouchers are:

“Ineffective, inefficient, and inequitable.”

Pastors Lament Lee’s Voucher Push
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Pastors Call for Investment in Public Schools

Southern Christian Coalition calls for rejection of voucher scheme

A group of Tennessee pastors is calling on the General Assembly to reject Gov. Bill Lee’s proposed expansion of the state’s school voucher program.

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:

Pastors Speak Out on Immorality of Vouchers
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Pay More, Get Less

Tennessee’s voucher scheme fails to deliver, Lee wants to expand it

Gov. Bill Lee is proposing a massive expansion of Tennessee’s fledgling school voucher scheme (ESA). This despite evidence that universal vouchers are both expensive and ineffective.

The Center Square reports that the state’s current ESA program gave out $9800 per participant – higher than original estimates and more than Lee plans for his separate universal voucher.

Tennessee students in a pilot educational savings account program in three counties are receiving $9,800 – the average statewide funding per public school student – this year.

That’s higher than the $7,075 first-year number in a proposed statewide ESA program and higher than what the funding was estimated to be heading into the approval of the pilot, which is currently taking place in Davidson, Shelby and Hamilton counties.

The state’s education commissioner admits that early results are not promising when it comes to student academic achievement:

“They are required to administer the TCAP,” Reynolds said. “The results aren’t anything to write home about, is my understanding.

Of Vouchers and Inequality
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An Agenda of Hope

Advocates hopeful Tennessee won’t adopt voucher expansion

Ahead of the start of Tennessee’s 2024 legislative session, a group of advocates gathered to express support for an “agenda of hope.”

Pratik Dash, from Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition Votes, said, “We are all here today on the first day of the 2024 legislative session – Black, Brown, White, younger and older, from different regions of the state because we love Tennessee. We’re here because we love our communities, our people, and our children enough to demand what we deserve. We deserve to live in a state where we can confidently say everyone – regardless of what we look like or where we come from, we are all safe from gun violence. Right now, all eyes are on Tennessee, but we know that our movement is bigger than this moment.”

The call for “love and hope” followed an earlier call for the rejection of school vouchers. Representatives of the Southern Christian Coalition noted that they believe vouchers are potentially harmful to Tennessee students and communities.

Pastors Speak Out on Immorality of Vouchers
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