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.
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.
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.
The Tennessee Education Association says in an email that the total estimated cost of school vouchers in Tennessee if Gov. Lee’s universal voucher scheme passes is $861 million over the next five years.
The group notes that not only will vouchers increase state costs, but local taxpayers will also be on the hook for the voucher scheme.
Today, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee announced that he will call for the Tennessee General Assembly to convene a special session on Monday, January 27, to pass the Education Freedom Act.
The session will also include a disaster relief package for areas impacted by Hurricane Helene.
Conservative groups are already speaking out against Lee’s voucher scam.
• With 10,000 scholarships initially available and expanding by 5,000 each year, the program’s long-term cost could strain Tennessee’s budget, leading to higher taxes for hardworking families.
• Public schools will retain their funding even when students leave, forcing taxpayers to fund both public schools and ESAs simultaneously. This double-dipping could bankrupt our state over time.
The math: TCN says the voucher scheme will cost $268 million in year one – and continue to be a drag on state and local budgets, likely resulting in tax increases:
Another conservative group, Tennessee Stands, says they oppose vouchers because:
Vouchers are wealth distribution. Vouchers are government funds that come with additional regulatory oversight. Vouchers are dangerous for home schools and private education.
Despite Gov. Bill Lee’s original promise that school vouchers would be confined to Memphis and Nashville for the first five years of the program, the Tennessee State Senate advanced a proposal that would expand the voucher program into Hamilton County and pave the way for further expansion of school vouchers.
The Tennessee Senate has approved legislation expanding the state’s education voucher program into Hamilton County, which would allow low-income families to use public tax dollars to send their children to private schools willing to accept the annual $8,100 vouchers.
Nineteen Republicans voted in favor of Senate Bill 12, and six Democrats voted no. Another eight Republicans either voted present or didn’t take part in Thursday’s vote. The measure now goes to the Republican-controlled House.
The move comes amid an aggressive privatization movement which is also seeing Hillsdale College push to open up to 50 charter schools in the state.
While Gov. Bill Lee’s school voucher scheme started this year in Memphis and Nashville, legal challenges to the plan continue. All of this while some lawmakers are seeking to expand the program to Chattanooga and possibly beyond.
Metropolitan Nashville and Shelby County governments, which jointly challenged the 2019 law that applies only to their counties, notified the Tennessee Court of Appeals late last month that they will appeal the latest ruling. Attorneys representing parents and taxpayers in a second lawsuit submitted a separate notice of appeal.
The appeals will extend the 3-year-old legal battle over Gov. Bill Lee’s controversial Education Savings Account program for at least several more months. The program provides taxpayer money for eligible families in Memphis and Nashville to help cover private school tuition for their children.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
Just days after it was revealed that Gov. Bill Lee’s privatizer of choice, Christian Nationalist Hillsdale College, will be again attempting to open publicly funded schools in the state, a move is underway to expand the state’s voucher program.
This despite Lee’s pledge when the program was approved in 2019 that it would be at least five years before vouchers moved beyond Memphis and Nashville.
Readers might well remember all the scandal surrounding that original voucher vote:
Now, Chalkbeatreports that Hamilton County state Senator Todd Gardenhire has introduced legislation that would expand the program to schools in Chattanooga.
Sen. Todd Gardenhire, a Chattanooga Republican, wants the legislature to expand the eligibility criteria for the education savings account program to include students in districts with at least five of the state’s lowest-performing schools, as identified in the last three “priority school” cycles since 2015.
Under those criteria, Hamilton County Schools, which is based in Chattanooga, would qualify
Make no mistake – the ultimate goal is full privatization of public education in Tennessee. It has been Gov. Lee’s goal all along:
In spite of years of evidence of where Bill Lee stands when it comes to supporting our public schools (he doesn’t), many school board members and county commissioners across the state supported his successful campaign. These local elected officials often touted his business acumen and support of vocational education as reasons to back him. However, it’s difficult to imagine these same officials just “didn’t know” Bill Lee backs a scheme to divert public money to private schools — a scheme that has failed miserably time and again in other states and localities.
More likely, they just didn’t care. Bill Lee was on the right team and spoke the right, religiously-tinged words and so earned the support of people who will look at you with a straight face and say they love Tennessee public schools.
Much the same can be said of 2022 – Lee spent four years assaulting public education and yet many local officials stood by him because he wears an “R” on his jersey and is affiliated with a familiar brand of Christianity.
Will these same elected officials be surprised when local taxes rise and public education is replaced by Hillsdale’s theocracy-promoting charters?
Or is this the future they’ve been waiting for?
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
Parents in Nashville and Memphis are asking a state court to end the state’s new voucher program in its infancy. The program began this year after a court lifted an injunction preventing it from going into effect.
A small number of students qualified this year, as the program was greenlighted just weeks before the start of school. The lifting of the injunction did not, however, stop the ongoing lawsuit from parents.
Here’s more from Public Funds for Public Schools:
Today, a panel of judges for the Davidson County Chancery Court heard arguments in two consolidated cases challenging the constitutionality of Tennessee’s private school voucher law, which the state began implementing in August.
The plaintiffs – Davidson and Shelby County parents and community members – argued that Tennessee’s voucher program illegally diverts taxpayer funds appropriated for public schools in those counties to private schools. They asserted that the program violates the Tennessee Constitution and state law, exacerbates underfunding of public schools, and treats Davidson and Shelby County students and taxpayers differently from their counterparts across the state.
“My daughter’s public school is wonderful. But it already struggles with funding for textbooks, technology, and enough teachers to keep class sizes down,” said plaintiff Roxanne McEwen,whose child is a student in Metro Nashville Public Schools. “It’s wrong to take money away from our public schools – which serve every child who walks through their doors – when they are already underfunded.”
Private schools participating in the taxpayer-funded voucher program are not obligated to comply with the academic, accountability, and governance standards that apply to public schools. Unlike public schools, private schools can discriminate against students on the basis of religion, LGBTQ status, and other characteristics, as well as refuse to provide services such as special education for students with disabilities. “The state and the other defendants want the court to throw out this case before the plaintiffs have even had a chance to fully air their claims,” said Chris Wood, partner at Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd. “Our clients have asserted multiple violations of the constitution and state law that the court has not yet heard or decided.”
Public school parents and community members in Shelby and Davidson Counties filed McEwen v. Lee in 2020. They are represented by the ACLU of Tennessee, Education Law Center, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP. The McEwen case has been consolidated with Metro Government v. Tennessee Department of Education, another case challenging the voucher law.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
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The dark money, pro-privatization group spent heavily to influence key races in the August primary. As Adam Friedman in the Tennesseannotes, Team Kid was joined by other privatization groups in spending that ultimately resulted in the defeat of Republican incumbent House member Terri Lynn Weaver and Senate member Bob Ramsey. Both have opposed using public money to fund private schools.
Some of education groups support charters and others vouchers. Some back both. They operate using the political actions committees of Team Kid PAC, Tennessee Federation for Children PAC and Tennesseans for Putting Students First.
Tennesseans For Student Success, the American Federation for Children Action Fund, 50Can and The Campaign for Great Public Schools are all national education groups with donors that are nearly impossible to track.
The Internal Revenue Service classifies these organizations as 501c4s. This means their donors are only available through nonprofit tax forms, but those forms don’t clearly show where the money comes from.
These groups are spending big to elect even more pro-privatization candidates and that spending is overwhelming the efforts of public education advocates.
Here’s more on the kinds of attacks used by Tennesseans for Student Success when lawmakers fall out of line with their privatization agenda:
Chalkbeatreports that lawyers for parents opposing the voucher plan had asked the court to halt implementation while their case against vouchers proceeds.
Specifically, lawyers noted that if implementation proceeds, Memphis and Nashville combined could lose up to $26 million in funding this year despite no attendant reduction in costs to operate.
“Nothing requires the state defendants to push this forward at a rocket’s pace after the injunction was lifted, just before the school year started,” said Allison Bussell, Metro Nashville’s associate law director, representing the two local governments.
She argued that allowing the program to start will cause irreparable harm to both districts, which she said stand to lose $26 million this school year if 3,000 students shift from public to private schools — while the districts must maintain and staff the same number of schools.
A recent article in The Hechinger Report noted that vouchers have not been shown to improve student achievement, and in fact, have in some cases been shown to actually be harmful.
Vouchers are dangerous to American education. They promise an all-too-simple solution to tough problems like unequal access to high-quality schools, segregation and even school safety. In small doses, years ago, vouchers seemed like they might work, but as more states have created more and larger voucher programs, experts like me have learned enough to say that these programs on balance can severely hinder academic growth — especially for vulnerable kids.
So, vouchers not only cost local districts significant money, but they also harm the very students they are intended to help. Nevertheless, Gov. Lee and his allies are persisting with this perilous plan.
For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport
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