Rev. Matt Steinhauer, one of the Interim Pastors of St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church in Franklin, said, “Our teachers here in Tennessee work hard to provide every child a life and skill-forming quality education, yet Governor Lee is determined to get in the way by denying adequate funding, supporting distractions such as banning books, and now working to pass his harmful voucher scheme that would take funds meant for our public schools and instead give them to private schools.”
The long game, then, is to dismantle public education, hand the profits to privateers, and restrict education resources such that the haves have more and the have-nots have never.
The privatization of Tennessee’s public schools has long been a goal of Gov. Lee:
The Tennessee PTA has joined the many voices expressing opposition to school vouchers.
In order to ensure that taxes support every child’s education, we must maintain our commitment to a free educational system while also ensuring those in charge of managing the funds are responsible and transparent in their actions.
The group adopted an official position opposing vouchers in 2022. That position reads in part:
The Tennessee PTA advocates that funds raised by general taxation for educational purposes should be administered by public officials and should not be used to support privately operated schools . . .
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
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
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.
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.
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.
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
Now, a former Assistant Commissioner in the DOE says an A-F school grading system, set to be implemented this school year, is designed to further erode public support for public schools.
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.
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
Tennessee’s new Education Commissioner will continue privatization push
There’s a new Commissioner of Education coming to Tennessee and Volunteer State residents will likely be unable to discern any policy differences when compared with outgoing Commissioner Penny Schwinn.
Jeb Bush – known for privatizing Florida public schools by way of both charters and vouchers – was quick to congratulate Lizzette Reynolds on her appointment as Tennessee’s next Education Commissioner.
Reynolds works for Bush’s pro-privatization issue advocacy group, ExcelinEd.
Congratulations to @GovBillLee and @ExcelinEd VP of Policy Lizzette Gonzalez Reynolds for her selection as the next K-12 schools chief in Tennessee! We are so proud of the work she’s done and what the future holds. https://t.co/UPLpGALYXz
While Gov. Bill Lee credited outgoing Commissioner Schwinn with leading the way for the state’s school voucher program, it seems likely Reynolds will continue pushing various methods of school privatization.
Tennessee lawmakers appear determined to expand vouchers to both Chattanooga and Knoxville this year. In fact, the Senate has already passed legislation expanding the state’s Education Savings Account (ESA) program to Chattanooga at the request of Hamilton County state Senator Todd Gardenhire. Now, the House may add Knox County to the voucher expansion and send the plan back to the Senate.
Meanwhile, Georgia lawmakers recently rejected a voucher plan.
Even as Hamilton County’s own Sen. Todd Gardenhire champions the expansion of the state’s school voucher program into Chattanooga, a local advocacy group is opposing the measure.
For its part, The Unity Group says there are still too many unanswered questions about the program.
Specifically, the group called out issues around accountability for funds spent and suggested that taxpayers would end up footing the bill for sub-par private education.
The potential for increased local tax burden combined with data the group says suggests students fail to benefit from voucher programs led the group to oppose expansion of ESAs into Chattanooga.
The group passed a resolution stating reasons for opposing the program’s expansion and called on lawmakers to heed their warning.
Specific reasons for opposing voucher expansion include:
“Research shows that school vouchers have not been effective at improving student achievement or closing the achievement gap, with the most credible research finding little or no difference in voucher and public school students’ performance.
The push to expand vouchers comes at the same time legislation that could dramatically increase the presence of charter schools is being introduced by the Speaker of the House and the Lt. Governor.
Just when you thought the Tennessee General Assembly couldn’t go any more “all-in” on the privatization of our state’s public schools, House Speaker Cameron Sexton files an amendment to a caption bill that would effectively create statewide charter schools.
