The Unity Group of Chattanooga says in an email that the rapid expansion of school vouchers in Tennessee will lead to a dual system of education – a resegregation of schools.
Here’s what they have to say:
The Unity Group of Chattanooga remains firmly opposed to the expansion of school voucher programs in Tennessee, including Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) and the newly created “Education Freedom Scholarships.”
In the most recent actions of the Tennessee General Assembly, lawmakers have advanced and enacted sweeping voucher expansion through legislation including Senate Bill 1585 / House Bill 1881, as well as House Bill 2532 / Senate Bill 2453. Together, these measures significantly expand the state’s voucher system, increasing the number of publicly funded scholarships and further diverting taxpayer dollars from public schools into private education.
House Bill 2532 / Senate Bill 2453 in particular demonstrates the scale and direction of this effort, expanding the number of scholarships available statewide and tying state funding to student movement out of public schools. These actions make clear that Tennessee is not simply experimenting with vouchers, but actively building and growing a parallel, publicly funded private education system.
We have said before, and we will continue to say, that these programs are ineffective, inefficient, and inequitable. That conclusion is grounded in what we’ve seen in other states and in Tennessee itself: declining academic outcomes; rising costs to taxpayers, and programs that too often benefit those already positioned and affluent enough to access private education.
But for us, the issue runs deeper than cost or performance.
What we are witnessing is the State of Tennessee moving back toward a dual system of education, one public system that remains accountable to all, and another publicly funded but privately controlled system operating under a different set of rules.
That reality stands in direct conflict with the principles established under Brown v. Board of Education and reinforced through decades of court decisions requiring states to dismantle segregated systems and achieve unitary status.
When public funds are redirected to private institutions that are not bound by the same transparency, admissions standards, or civil rights obligations as public schools, we risk recreating conditions that those rulings were meant to eliminate.
We have seen this before. Following Brown, similar mechanisms were used to avoid integration and maintain separation under a different name.
We cannot ignore that history.
At a minimum, these policies raise serious questions about whether Tennessee can still be identified as a state that has achieved and maintained unitary status. From our perspective, this is a step backward, toward separation, toward inequality, and away from the shared responsibility of providing a strong public education for every child.
The Unity Group of Chattanooga will continue to speak clearly on this issue. We believe in one system of public education that is fully funded, fully accountable, and open to all, not a divided system that leaves too many behind.
