Tag Archives: School Vouchers

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Chattanooga Private Schools Reap Voucher Rewards

NewsChannel9 reports on the Chattanooga-area private schools getting taxpayer dollars from Gov. Bill Lee’s school voucher scheme:

New data shows that just over 600 Hamilton County students are enrolled in private schools this school year through Tennessee’s Education Savings Account (ESA) program, also known as school vouchers.

Here’s the list of Hamilton County students using Education Savings Accounts (ESA) for the 2025–26 school year:

  • Annoor Academy of Chattanooga – 47
  • Avondale SDA School – 29
  • Beacon Academy – 26
  • Belvoir Christian Academy – 42
  • Berean Academy – 31
  • Bethel Christian Academy – (number not listed)
  • Brainerd Baptist School – 20
  • Chattanooga Christian School – 95
  • Dolphin STEM Academy – (number not listed)
  • Enlightium Academy – 10
  • Grace Baptist Academy – 95
  • Hamilton Heights Christian Academy – (number not listed)
  • Hickory Valley Christian School – (number not listed)
  • Imagine Learning Excellence Academy – (number not listed)
  • Notre Dame High School – 81
  • Our Lady of Perpetual Help School – 49
  • Silverdale Baptist Academy – 23
  • Skyuka Hall School – 15St. Jude School – 16
  • St. Nicholas School – (number not listed)
  • The Montessori School – (number not listed)
Gov. Bill Lee promoting school privatization

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What Happens When Republicans Stand Up for Schools?

Just ask State Rep. Jody Barrett

A Tennessee Republican who stood up for public education in the state legislature paid the price, as a conservative political action group backing Matt Van Epps attacked him with millions of dollars in advertising.

NewsChannel5 reports:

Barrett was attacked because he voted against Governor Bill Lee’s Education Freedom Act – also called vouchers.

State Representative Jody Barrett (R-Dickson) ran for the open congressional seat in Tennessee’s recent special election, but he finished second to Matt Van Epps in the Republican primary.

After the primary, the head of the conservative PAC, Club for Growth, took credit for Barrett’s loss and called it a warning to other candidates.

After the primary, the head of Club for Growth wrote, “I made it clear that any republican lawmaker who failed to support Governor Bill Lee’s Education Freedom Act … should expect to lose an expensive primary funded by Club for Growth.”

Lee’s so-called “Education Freedom Act” essentially provides discount coupons to private schools for use by wealthy families.

The plan is now in court, as a group of Tennessee parents is saying the voucher scheme threatens funding for local public schools.

On a related note, a new dark money group with ties to the state’s top Republicans has formed and announced plans to push for a rapid expansion of the voucher scheme – costing the state billions and taking nearly 500,000 students out of public schools.

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Dark Money, Dark Goals

A new issue advocacy group has a singular mission: Ending public education in Tennessee

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.

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The End of Public Education in Tennessee

TC Weber notes that a new nonprofit wants to essentially end public education in the Volunteer State.

But a new nonprofit, Tennessee Leads, has even bigger ambitions: 200,000 voucher students and 250,000 in charter schools by 2031.

If those goals are met, traditional public schools would serve just 550,000 students—a seismic shift.

Gov. Lee and Speaker Sexton want to double the number of voucher students in 2026 – from 20,000 to 40,000 – with a total of 100,000 by 2030. But, Tennessee Leads is pushing for more than that.

The result of meeting this goal would be a rise in unaccountable private education sources – and an end to traditional public education in our state.

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Vouchers Gone Wrong

A story out of Florida should give pause to those who think public money should just “follow the child” to whatever school or education experiment is out there:

The rapid expansion of the state’s School Choice scholarship program burrowed a $47 million hole in the Florida Department of Education’s budget and left public and private schools complaining they aren’t getting properly paid.

Money problems that arose during the 2024-2025 school year can largely be attributed to the mobility that students enjoy to shift from public to private or to home education freely, said Adam Emerson, director of the Department of Education Office of School Choice.

In short: Both public and private schools aren’t being paid in a timely fashion for the students in their care.

Voucher madness is unsustainable.

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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.

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Vouchers Destroy Local Schools

When we look at Arizona, we get a preview of what an ESA voucher scheme (like the one we have in Tennessee) does to local schools.

Instead of investing in local public schools to meet students’ needs and ward off school closures to ensure equal access to quality neighborhood schools, Republican state lawmakers voted to force through universal ESA vouchers, which are now draining a massive $1 billion a year to instead pay for private, for-profit models that pick and choose students.

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Arizona Voucher Vacations

As Tennessee embarks on a school voucher misadventure, it is important to look at other states with universal voucher schemes to see how they are (not) working.

Today, we turn to Arizona. There, voucher recipients are using tax dollars to fund family vacations – Disney, Sea World, etc. – there’s even a Facebook group where users discuss how to game the system to finance vacations.

As 12News points out, most tickets to San Diego attractions or others outside of Arizona are likely to get approved regardless of cost — at least up to $2,000. Why? Supt. Tom Horne’s ADE implemented a new policy in December that all expenses less than $2,000 are approved automatically, without any review, with the plan to audit later.

Will Tennessee taxpayers end up on the hook for trips to Dollywood or Panama City Beach?

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Tennessee, Indiana, and Voucher Math

An interesting tidbit from The Education Report about Indiana’s voucher program and the possible implications for Tennessee:

Tennessee starts a universal school voucher plan in the 2025-2026 school year. That program is already at capacity in terms of the number of applicants. All 20,000 slots will be taken.

If growth of the program tracks Indiana, that would mean that by 2035, Tennessee will be spending more than $1.4 billion on private school coupons.

Which brings us to the second big takeaway: These vouchers are just creating a discount for wealthy families – they are not a pathway for low- and middle-income families to gain access to private school education.

Gov. Bill Lee promoting school privatization

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Why Bother Tracking Vouchers?

The State of Tennessee has said it will not keep track of whether recipients of the state’s new, universal school vouchers are currently enrolled in private schools. In other states (like Arizona), as many as 75% of school voucher recipients were already enrolled in private schools BEFORE receiving a state-funded discount coupon.

These numbers would indicate that vouchers are not so much about school choice as they are about subsidizing private schools – and, ultimately, privatizing the delivery of public education.

More from Chalkbeat:

As Tennessee lawmakers debated a new universal voucher program earlier this year, one financial analysis projected that 65% of vouchers would go to students already enrolled in private schools.

Now, it will be impossible to determine whether that projection was accurate.

Tennessee families do not have to report their previous school enrollment in the new statewide voucher program application, a gap that will leave Tennesseans in the dark about whether the program will significantly expand private school access for public school students or send millions in public funds to students already enrolled in private schools.

The expected cost of the state’s voucher program at full implementation exceeds $1 billion. If fiscal analysts and trends in other states are an accurate predictor, Tennessee will essentially be funding an entirely separate school system – in addition to the woefully underfunded public K-12 system. Tennessee currently ranks last among Southeastern states in investment in public schools.

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