Chalkbeat

Memphis-Shelby County Schools sue Tennessee over state takeover

2026-06-19T13:05:57+00:00

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Memphis-Shelby County school leaders are suing top Tennessee Republicans in an effort to stop a new takeover law from diverting power away from the locally elected school board to a new board of political appointees.

The district, alongside the Shelby County Commission and all nine individual MSCS board members, filed a lawsuit in federal court late Thursday night – hours after the Republican-appointed oversight board met for the first time in Nashville.

Gov. Bill Lee, who’s named directly in the lawsuit, signed the takeover legislation into law in late May.

“Every child deserves the opportunity to succeed, and throughout the Lee Administration, we’ve made significant investments to ensure students in Shelby County receive a quality education,” a Lee spokesperson said Friday. “Gov. Lee remains committed to strengthening outcomes and expanding pathways to success for students and families.”

With the law in effect, top Republican lawmakers appointed a nine-member oversight board that will seize control of key district decisions. That intervention “dismantles” local education systems and strips the county government of its authority to approve school budgets, MSCS argues in the lawsuit.

It also violates the Fourteenth Amendment and the Tennessee Constitution, according to the new filing. Local leaders are seeking a preliminary injunction to stop the takeover board from making any decisions once their term starts in less than two weeks.

“Once the Oversight Board is constituted and acts, the consequences cannot be undone,” the lawsuit says. “The democratic right of Shelby County’s voters to elect representatives who actually govern cannot be restored through damages or retrospective relief.”

House Speaker Cameron Sexton and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, who chose the other four oversight board members, are also named in the lawsuit, alongside the state education commissioner.

Board members and local residents have criticized the MSCS takeover for usurping power from the local school board elected by Memphis voters. The new oversight board will have final say over superintendent and staff contracts, along with MSCS’ annual budget.

The local board approved a $1.7 billion budget draft in late May, but it’s unclear whether that will be subjected to the oversight board’s intervention. The new oversight board plans to meet again in less than three weeks, and they’re waiting for full results from a billion-dollar forensic audit that may guide their initial decisions in the district.

Not all Memphians are opposed to the state takeover. Intervention advocates cite years of academic underperformance and leadership instability in the district, which some say came to head after the local school board suddenly fired former Superintendent Marie Feagins in January 2025.

MSCS has had four superintendents in the past five years. And while the district has earned the highest score in state measures of student growth for the past four years, over 75% of Memphis students failed to achieve proficiency in reading and math last year.

Some community members told Chalkbeat they are doubtful a lawsuit will succeed in reversing the takeover legislation, a sentiment echoed by GOP lawmakers who sponsored the effort. The Shelby County Commission will front the cost of the lawsuit because of a law passed in late April that prevents the school district from funding a lawsuit against state accountability measures.

Bri Hatch covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Bri at bhatch@chalkbeat.org.

Federal lawsuit over Tennessee religious charter school ban will move forward

2026-06-11T19:33:07+00:00

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A Tennessee lawsuit challenging the Knox County Board of Education over the state’s religious charter school ban is heading to trial after a federal judge denied the board’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

The Wilberforce Academy of Knoxville sued the school board last year after the local district asked it to affirm it planned to open a non-religious school, per state law.

In federal court filings, the school board argued Wilberforce never actually submitted a charter school application, nor has it targeted state officials in its lawsuit, despite the school board following state law enforced by the Tennessee Department of Education. The board had asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit entirely.

But U.S. District Judge Charles E. Atchley, Jr. in late May ruled Wilberforce didn’t have to submit an actual application to challenge an “allegedly unconstitutional barrier” to applying.

Neither party has commented on the lawsuit.

Tennessee officials have left the Knox County board on its own to defend the state law, which Atchley noted in his May opinion.

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti declined to intervene in the lawsuit earlier this year, months after he published a legal opinion that argued there was “no compelling interest” in excluding religious charter schools from participating in a “public benefit.”

Skrmetti’s office is also currently paying Wilberforce’s main attorney $400 per hour in a separate case to help Tennessee defend its criminal abortion ban against ongoing legal challenges.

The legal fight over religious charter schools in Tennessee – and the lack thereof from state officials – signal major changes may be on the horizon for the state’s charter landscape.

This spring, lawmakers signed off on a new state law that now allows religious colleges and universities to operate public charter schools. Though the new law currently blocks those institutions from providing religious curriculum in their charter schools, it opens the door to a new class of charter operators in the state that could quickly stand up religious charters if the state’s religious charter ban law were to fall.

And now public dollars are flowing to private religious schools through Tennessee’s voucher program, which is paying millions in private school tuition.

In its lawsuit, Wilberforce focuses in part on this program, arguing the public education funds now funding private religious tuition support the case that religious charters should be included in public funding.

“This enshrined hostility to religious charter schools stands in marked contrast to Tennessee’s recent support of religious schools through its Education Freedom Scholarship Program,” a Wilberforce attorney argued in court documents last year.

A full trial on the lawsuit is scheduled for January 2027, and a group of Tennessee parents and non-religious charter school officials have also intervened in the lawsuit to oppose Wilberforce’s claims.

They have argued opening the door to religious charter schools will result in charter schools being “classified and treated as private schools,” which could effect on things like Tennessee’s public school funding formula and disability protections.

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee SCORE president to join Memphis schools oversight board

2026-05-26T20:48:19+00:00

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The Nashville-based leader of one of Tennessee’s most influential education advocacy organizations will soon have a significant role in guiding the state’s largest school district.

David Mansouri, president and chief executive at Tennessee SCORE, has been appointed to the new nine-person oversight board that will seize control of Memphis-Shelby County Schools in a state-led takeover.

House Speaker Cameron Sexton appointed Mansouri to the board on Tuesday, one of the speaker’s two appointees on the board. Sexton has not announced his final pick.

Mansouri will be the only member of the new board who is not a Shelby County resident after Sexton negotiated for the opportunity to appoint a non-resident when Republicans passed the takeover legislation earlier this spring.

“This is an opportunity to take a comprehensive look at the public education system and make certain it delivers what every student and family in Memphis deserves: a world-class education, strong outcomes, and a clear path to success,” Mansouri said in a statement to Chalkbeat.

He joined SCORE soon after it was founded by former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist in 2009. The organization has significant influence with policy makers and is often credited for producing a roadmap for school improvement when Tennessee schools ranked among the worst in the nation.

The top elected Republicans in the state are appointing the new oversight board, which will control key district decisions for the next four years. Both Gov. Bill Lee and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally announced their appointments in recent days.

The oversight board also includes:

Billy Orgel, a local developer and former Memphis-Shelby County school board member.
Dedrick Brittenum Jr., a Memphis lawyer and former councilman.
Shanea McKinney of Cigna, who is a member of the University of Tennessee’s board of trustees.
Nisha Powers, who leads a Memphis civil engineering firm and has served on the Tennessee board of regents.
Beverly Robertson, a marketing executive and former president and CEO of the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce.
Tyrone Burroughs, a Memphis CEO who sits on the Tennessee Lottery Commission and the Youth Villages board of directors.

Under the state takeover bill signed into law last week by Lee, the GOP-appointed board will have final say over MSCS’ budget and contracts over $50,000, as well as the hiring and firing of the superintendent.

The school board has signaled it may sue over the politically appointed takeover board, which will significantly dilute the authority of the locally elected board.

Republican lawmakers have argued the oversight board does not amount to a state takeover of Tennessee’s largest school district, because the majority of the board will be local residents. However, the political appointees will serve at-will terms and can be removed and replaced at any time, for any reason.

Lawmakers frequently pointed to a state takeover of Houston schools as a model for Memphis success.

Bill sponsors hope to solve Memphis’ low academic achievement with the takeover. Last year, over 75% of Memphis students failed to achieve proficiency in reading and math.

Still, the district earned the highest possible score in academic growth, or student improvement on state tests, for the fourth year in a row.

One of the first responsibilities of the oversight board will be to conduct a comprehensive assessment of MSCS staff, students, and buildings to make a “transformation plan.” It’s unclear whether the new board will have any control over the 2026-27 budget, which is set for a final vote from the elected school board on Tuesday night.

The oversight board can direct or prohibit the superintendent to take any action and can fire the school leader with cause if they refuse. It can require the same of local board members and act on behalf of the MSCS board if they refuse to follow instructions.

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis leaders decide to keep Ida B. Wells open despite school closure vote in February

2026-05-20T21:53:14+00:00

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District officials will delay closing one Memphis school for at least a year despite the school board voting to shut it down in February.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools officials confirmed Wednesday that students and teachers from Ida B. Wells Academy will be moved into the Norris Achievement Academy building next year, and the original location will close. Chief Academic Officer Angela Whitelaw said that decision was motivated by an outpouring of community support for the K-8 alternative school during closure meetings this winter.

“The conversation was around (Ida B. Wells) being a level five school, and working with a very small student population,” Whitelaw said during an interview Wednesday. “Hearing that feedback and listening at both meetings, we wanted to lift up the programming that the school had.”

District officials provided more details of the now-altered closure plan on Wednesday following Chalkbeat Tennessee reporting that raised questions about how the school transfer would affect students and staff.

It’s a departure from the plan for four other schools that will close this year, where students will be dispersed into nearby schools and teachers relocated throughout the district. Director of Alternative Education Melita Thomas said Wells’ class sizes won’t be changed, and students won’t mix with Norris attendees. Principal Tarcia Gilliam-Parish will also join the transition to Norris, as will some teachers.

Superintendent Roderick Richmond originally said MSCS was considering a temporary transfer in February. After months of workshopping the plan, Whitelaw said the district told Ida B. Wells leaders and teachers about the relocation in April.

MSCS leaders decided to close the Ida B. Wells building in February because it was severely underenrolled, with more than 400 open seats, and needed almost $6 million worth of facility repairs. It’s part of Richmond’s plan to close up to 10 more schools by 2028 in an effort to combat those district-wide issues.

And at a graduation ceremony Tuesday, Ida B. Wells’ parents and staff said the district hadn’t given many details about what that move would look like. Some families have already made the decision to send their children to other schools next year.

Whitelaw said they’re planning as if all current Wells students will make the move to Norris. It’s unclear how many educators will follow, she said, because positions change significantly throughout the summer.

“Some teachers may not want to go in a building where there are two schools,” she said. “And we will be sharing an art teacher, music, PE, whatever exploratory classes that they have, that’s just efficient and maximizing staff.”

Whitelaw said Ida B. Wells will stay open in Norris for at least one year, but she’s not guaranteeing any longer.

“We want to make sure that we get in there and see, to give the programming some additional time, as well as the students to transition,” she said.

Bri Hatch covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Bri at bhatch@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis students are graduating from closing schools. But one beloved program could be revived.

2026-05-20T16:39:35+00:00

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Shouts and cheers reached around a South Memphis block Tuesday morning from families at Ida B. Wells Academy, a K-8 school that Memphis-Shelby County board members voted to close at the end of this year.

As the school days dwindle, 84 students and a small team of staff are trying to suck every last drop of joy out of the building the school has called home for decades. There was an eighth-grade student awards ceremony last week. Friday was field day. And Tuesday was graduation.

At 10 a.m., students sat in dark blue caps and gowns near the cafeteria stage waiting for their name to be called. Family members burst into applause so loud the emcee had to cover his ears as each student collected their certificate.

There was an air of sadness as the new graduates passed out yellow roses to their teary-eyed parents, and uncertainty about what’s coming next.

In February, the Memphis-Shelby County school board voted to shut down Ida B. Wells Academy in a slate of school closures aimed at reducing chronic underenrollment and high facility costs. But while Wells will no longer be in the same building, school staff and families say the district made a last-minute decision to transfer the program to Norris Achievement Academy, another alternative school four miles south.

A flyer passed out at graduation reads, “We are moving!” promising the “same dedicated teachers & students” at Norris next year. But it’s unclear whether that’s different from plans for other school closures, which will disperse students into nearby schools and relocate teachers throughout the district.

In an emailed statement Tuesday night, MSCS said leaders decided to integrate the Ida B. Wells program into Norris “following valuable feedback received during community engagement meetings,” which happened this winter.

“The district will continue to ensure compliance with all state class size requirements and remains committed to supporting students through a smooth transition process,” the statement said.

The district did not respond to questions about whether Wells and Norris students will be in classes together or how the building will be staffed.

Superintendent Roderick Richmond said the district was considering the integration in February. But some parents then expressed concern about sending their children to Norris, which only enrolls students that have been expelled from other schools.

“We know a lot of you all have chosen other [school] options because of the late change in keeping Ida B. Wells open,” Principal Tarcia Gilliam-Parish said during Tuesday’s ceremony. “But we are glad, thankful, and grateful that we are going to be here.”

School staff and family members said Tuesday that only current Ida B. Wells students would be able to transfer to the new location. Lois Eldridge, whose eighth-grade grandson graduated Tuesday, praised the school’s dedicated teachers and safe environment. She wanted her granddaughter to start there next year.

“I just hate that my other grandkids couldn’t get to go here,” Eldridge said.

Some parents have already made the decision to move their children to different schools next year. Erica Smith told Chalkbeat in March that she’s sending one child to the Soulsville Charter School and another to arts-focused magnet school Rozelle Elementary.

For months, Ida B. Wells’ parents questioned why a school with high student test scores and academic growth should be closed. But MSCS leaders said the building is severely underenrolled, with more than 400 open seats, and needs almost $6 million worth of facility repairs. It’s part of Richmond’s plan to close up to 10 more schools by 2028.

Carla James has a granddaughter in third grade at Ida B. Wells this year. She said the family is planning to send her to Norris Academy next year to be with her teachers and maintain longstanding school ties.

“I used to go here when I was younger,” James said. “We’re going to be really sad without it.”

This story has been updated to include a response from MSCS.

Bri Hatch covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Bri at bhatch@chalkbeat.org.

Majority of new Tennessee vouchers awarded to higher-income families

2026-05-12T13:39:26+00:00

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The majority of Tennessee’s new vouchers for the upcoming school year were awarded to higher-income families, despite new income rankings meant to prioritize lower-income families.

In February, the Tennessee Department of Education said nearly 17,500 new families applied for income-based Education Freedom Scholarship vouchers for private schools for the upcoming school year. New data shows that only 3,970 vouchers — just one-quarter of newly available vouchers — were awarded to those in the lowest income category, indicating that relatively few lower-income families applied or were eligible to participate in the program.

Republican Gov. Bill Lee quietly signed the expansion of the Education Freedom Scholarship into law on May 7, adding 15,000 seats to the program that started with 20,000 students this school year.

New income categories kicked in for the 2026-27 school year when applications opened up earlier this year. Lawmakers said the new categories would prioritize families with the highest financial needs.

But the latest data on new voucher recipients could fuel ongoing debates about the extent to which vouchers should help relatively well-off families, including those who’ve already sent their children to private schools without vouchers. The General Assembly this spring passed a law requiring the Tennessee Department of Education to provide lawmakers with more data about families in the program in the coming months.

Using 2024 federal data to determine student eligibility for free and reduced-price lunch, the state said that families of four earning less than $57,720 could apply for the vouchers under the lower-income category.

The new categories from highest to lowest priority for 2026-27 EFS vouchers were:

Priority 1 - Renewal applicants.
Priority 2 - Students whose family income does not exceed 100% of the free or reduced-price lunch income level, and students eligible for Tennessee’s other small voucher programs.
Priority 3 - Students whose family income does not exceed 300% of the free or reduced-price lunch income level.
Priority 4 - Current Tennessee public school students or incoming kindergarteners.
Priority 5 - All other eligible students.

The majority of the new vouchers – 9,360 – went to students in the Priority 3 category, where a family of four could earn up to $173,160 and still qualify to receive a voucher, which is valued at more than $7,500 for the upcoming school year.

Tennessee awarded the final 3,117 vouchers to Priority 4 applicants, which means at least 18% of newly available vouchers will be going to either first-time kindergartners or students leaving public schools.

Education officials announced 18,553 vouchers for the 2026-2027 school year will go to returning EFS students.

Previous school enrollment has been a major question mark in the universal voucher program’s first year. Education officials did not explicitly ask first-year applicants if they were switching from public to private schools or had previously attended a private school.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle previously criticized the lack of transparency in the program about students’ previous enrollment. They said it left taxpayers in the dark about whether the program significantly expanded private school access for public school students, or sent millions to students already enrolled in private schools.

But due to changes state lawmakers made to the program this year, the education department is now required to annually report the number of applications received from each county, the number of eligible applicants who were enrolled in public school, and details about applicants’ annual household income.

The department is required to submit its first annual Education Freedom Scholarships report by June 1 including student data from the 2025-26 school year. It will submit another report on Oct. 1 with data for the 2026-2027 school year. It’s not yet clear if the department, which denied multiple media requests last year for 2025-26 school year data on EFS students’ previous school enrollment, will now produce that data to state lawmakers.

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

As Memphis schools takeover looms, city faces further voting power struggle

2026-05-08T21:52:33+00:00

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The Tennessee supermajority’s redrawing of its Congressional districts to siphon Memphis Democrats into Republican seats came days before the Memphis-Shelby County school system takeover is expected to be signed into law. It’s an unprecedented confluence that could dilute the voting power of Tennessee’s largest majority-Black city.

This week, Memphis Democrats decried an onslaught of Republican measures they say are aimed at Black Memphians, who will see their locally elected school board neutered by GOP political appointees just as they lose a Memphis-centered Congressional district aimed at protecting minority voting power.

Senate Democratic Caucus Chair London Lamar, a Memphis Democrat, called the sweeping effort “an absolute power grab.”

“You didn’t like our school board, you took that over,” Lamar said Thursday prior to the redistricting vote. “You didn’t like our airport authority. You took that over. And now, you don’t like the way Memphis votes. You’re going to take that away from us, too. You cannot claim local control while stripping Memphis voters from meaningful representation. You cannot claim to respect democracy while changing the rules.”

Now, one of the main architects of the Memphis-Shelby County schools takeover wants to capitalize on the redistricting effort.

Sen. Brent Taylor, the Memphis Republican who sponsored the Senate version of the takeover, announced Thursday he would run in the redrawn 9th Congressional District just minutes after the redistricting effort was signed into law. Taylor and other Republicans have denied the effort was tied to Memphis’ racial makeup but say they’re now able to further consolidate Republican power in Tennessee due to a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

“This is about allowing Tennessee to maximize its partisan advantage,” said Sen. John Stevens, a Republican from Huntingdon, in a Senate debate this week.

Taylor’s partner in the schools takeover, Memphis Republican Rep. Mark White, was one of the few Republicans who did not support the redistricting effort. White opted to not cast a vote in favor or against the measure alongside a handful of other Republicans who serve in more competitive districts in Shelby and Knox counties.

The state takeover legislation awaits Gov. Bill Lee’s signature to become law.

The law would shift control of the state’s largest public school district to a nine-person oversight board appointed by Tennessee’s top three Republicans, including the governor. The new board will diminish the authority of the local school board, which is in the middle of an election cycle that drew the largest voter turnout in over two decades for county-wide May 5 primary elections.

Takeover advocates argue years of academic underperformance and district management drama necessitated the intervention, which accelerated after the school board in 2025 quickly fired a new superintendent.

It also follows years of rising tensions between Tennessee Republicans, a majority-white party with supermajority power, and local leaders in Memphis, a longtime Democratic stronghold with a majority-Black population. Last year, Republicans imposed a state and federal law enforcement surge because of immigration and crime concerns.

A Memphis school board member in April called the oversight law “racist” as Tennessee Republicans, all of whom are white, will seize control from the locally elected school board, the majority of whom are Black. Memphis parents have expressed concern about funding and support for a predominantly Black school district.

The Republican supermajority has given the oversight board nearly unlimited power to dive into district records, from teacher evaluations to curriculum reviews, and control the district’s largest financial decisions.

It will also have final say over the district’s operating budget and superintendent contract. Its power even extends in part to the Shelby County Commission, the county’s local governing body, which will be blocked from signing off on the MSCS annual budget until the oversight board gives its approval.

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee rolls back testing requirements in early voucher program

2026-04-23T18:09:24+00:00

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Tennessee Republicans have rolled back testing accountability measures in the state’s initial voucher program but backed down on a House plan to significantly expand the program to thousands of new students.

House Bill 1881, which passed both the Senate and House on Thursday, allows private schools receiving Education Savings Accounts funds to offer students the nationally normed reference test of their choosing instead of the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program.

Private schools can still offer the TCAP if they wish, though state testing requirements have for years been resisted by many private schools considering participating in Tennessee’s growing voucher programs.

Now, ESA accountability measures are aligned with the Education Freedom Scholarships program. While private schools will be required to submit some anonymized testing results, it will be difficult to determine an apples-to-apples comparison of student educational outcomes for the more than 40,000 Tennessee students using public funds to attend private schools.

Republicans pushing the legislation argue schools should be allowed to choose a test that aligns with their curriculum, which can vary widely by schools. Rep. William Slater, a Republican from Gallatin, said Thursday some ESA students are being tested twice to meet both the school’s and state’s requirements and deserve to have a streamlined process.

Slater acknowledged the state “can’t compare apples to oranges,” and public testing won’t be able to be compared to private testing. But Slater said private school student achievement can be measured against a cohort of students taking the same test in the state.

“This is not a public versus private, not a TCAP versus a nationally normed reference test. This is not rich versus poor,” Slater said. “This is simply fairness for these students whose parents have applied for the ESA and sent their children to these chosen schools.”

Democrats sharply criticized the measure. House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Ray Clemmons of Nashville said Thursday that lawmakers promised comparable accountability when the ESA program was pushed to lawmakers years ago.

A Tennessee Comptroller report from last winter that found ESA recipients continue to trail their public school peers in academic achievement, with exceptions in Memphis-Shelby County schools. Some Democrats have suggested Republicans are trying to sidestep similar reports in the future.

“You’re scared. You’re scared that this experiment is failing,” Rep. Sam McKenzie, a Knoxville Democrat, said. “Experiments are great. You get your hypothesis, and you perform your experiments. That’s a good thing, that’s the scientific way. But sometimes the measurement does not align with your hypothesis.”

Republicans tabled a last-minute amendment to use the bill to drastically expand the ESA program that appeared this week in an attempt to relieve the waitlist for students in the Education Freedom Scholarships program. The ESA program has been historically underutilized, in part because fewer private schools participate due to the testing requirements.

The amendment, which would have dropped all enrollment caps and expanded to Knox County, appeared to spook some in the GOP caucus as it circulated the Capitol. The Senate bill failed to pass on Wednesday as news spread of the expansion effort.

The legislation moved forward on Thursday after both the Senate and House sponsors repeatedly assured their colleagues that the bill would not expand the ESA program in any way.

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee Republicans push for significant last-minute ESA voucher expansion

2026-04-21T17:07:57+00:00

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Tennessee Republicans want to drop all enrollment caps and expand eligibility to the state’s initial voucher program, effectively merging Tennessee’s two voucher programs as Gov. Bill Lee pushes lawmakers to provide state dollars to all families who applied to the Education Freedom Scholarships program this year.

A last-minute amendment tacked on to House Bill 1881 would substantially alter the Education Savings Account program, the state’s initial voucher program that is currently available to 12,500 income-capped families in Davidson, Shelby, and Hamilton counties.

House lawmakers are expected to consider the new amendment on Tuesday. If a majority approves the new language, it will mark the second time in two weeks that the Republican majority has made major last-minute changes to Tennessee’s voucher programs.

The House floor amendments have allowed voucher-friendly Republicans to push forward significant changes in tight votes while bypassing a thornier committee process, where amendments are debated at length and require multiple voting rounds to advance.

If finalized, the ESA bill changes would usher in a monumental shift to Tennessee’s school choice policies. Last year, lawmakers were assured the state’s universal EFS program was tightly controlled from expansion, limited to just 5,000 new students a year.

Now, voucher proponents in the Republican supermajority have blown past that cap to expand the EFS program to 35,000 students and are attempting to drop all enrollment caps to the ESA program in Tennessee’s most populous counties.

House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Ray Clemmons criticized the last-minute amendment Tuesday morning.

“At the eleventh hour, Gov. Bill Lee and Republicans are attempting to put the final dagger in our public schools and blow up our state budget by eliminating all caps on the voucher scams and removing any accountability whatsoever,” Clemmons said.

The new amendment would include Knox County in the ESA program, opening it up to as many eligible students in the four counties as possible. The bill would also significantly roll back accountability measures and testing requirements on the ESA program.

Republicans also look to expand eligibility by increasing the income eligibility cap from 200% of the federal free and reduced price lunch threshold to 400%. This would be about $171,600 for a family of four, under the federal guidelines for the upcoming school year, well above Tennessee’s median family income.

The ESA program provides up to $9,787 per student this school year, nearly $2,000 more than the EFS voucher.

The ESA program has been historically underused, in part due to its testing requirements that require participating private schools to administer Tennessee state tests to ESA students.The testing requirement was a crucial reason the program passed the legislature by a single vote in 2018, as many lawmakers argued an apples-to-apples comparison was needed to determine student academic progress. But many private schools do not want to offer the state tests.

Now, some Republicans want to drop those testing requirements, which would likely encourage more private schools to participate in the ESA. Participating schools could either offer a “nationally norm-referenced” test, which can vary widely in their content, or offer the state standardized tests.

The new amendment also aims to stop requiring annual audits of the ESA program and drops the requirement that the state measure academic growth in the program with the same TVAAS scoring metrics public schools are held to.

Republicans backing the measure say ESA testing requirements need to be aligned with the EFS, and that private schools should have the flexibility to choose a test that aligns with their curriculum.

But the effort follows a Tennessee Comptroller report from last winter that found ESA recipients continue to trail their public school peers in academic achievement, with some exceptions in Memphis-Shelby County schools.

With the testing changes, it will not be possible to accurately compare and contrast academic progress among Tennessee students, Democrats opposed to the measure argue.

The House is expected to vote on the amendment on Tuesday, April 21, though schedules are shifting quickly as the General Assembly looks to wrap up its session this week. The Senate could take up its version at any time.

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee to expand voucher program to 35,000 students in second year

2026-04-16T16:59:02+00:00

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Tennessee will expand its universal voucher program to 35,000 students next school year despite bipartisan opposition to the program over its growing price tag and changes to the funding assurances made to public school districts last year.

A slim majority of Tennessee Senate Republicans signed off on the legislation on Thursday. The bill will go to Gov. Bill Lee to be signed into law.

While the Senate initially sought to expand the program to 40,000 seats, the chamber agreed to move forward with a House version for 35,000 students.

Last year, Lee pushed lawmakers to pass his signature voucher program, and lawmakers included an annual growth cap of 5,000 seats and a “hold harmless” clause that would maintain public school funding if local districts lose students. That clause was pivotal in passing the Education Freedom Scholarships program in 2025 because it reassured lawmakers concerned about their local school districts.

Now, both of those provisions have been significantly altered.

Republican lawmakers eager to begin tracking immigrant students in Tennessee public schools also added a last-minute amendment that would require public schools to collect student Social Security numbers to maintain their hold harmless funding over the next several years.

Schools cannot legally require students to provide their Social Security numbers, and some lawmakers argued the measure is an effort to phase out the hold harmless funding more quickly.

“The term for that is bait and switch. And we’re in the switch part,” Sen. Jeff Yarbro, a Nashville Democrat, said Thursday. “We need to do what’s right for our districts. We need to be responsible. We should not be doing this to create administrative burdens, divert resources, and expand a program that on its best day helps about 1% of families. Families, frankly, that need less help.”

Senators voted 18-14 on Thursday to pass the program, a smaller majority than what supported the original EFS passage in 2025.

“The people depend on us doing what we say we’re going to do,” said Sen. Joey Hensley, a Hohenwald Republican who voted for the program last year but voted against the expansion.

Majority Leader Jack Johnson, a Republican from Franklin sponsoring the legislation, pointed to interest in the Education Freedom Scholarships program as the reason to expand it. More than 54,000 students have applied for the 2026-27 voucher, which will be worth more than $7,500 for private school tuition and other educational expenses.

Sen. Adam Lowe, a Republican from Calhoun, said spending on the program is a “small fraction” of overall public funding going towards education in Tennessee. Around $7.9 billion is earmarked in next year’s budget for overall funding for public schools, which serves around 1 million students.

“At the back end of it are real families looking for alternatives that, despite the investments we provided for public education, we’ve yet to be able to provide for them,” Lowe said. “It’s unreasonable for us to continue to expect public education to be everything to everybody.”

Sen. Richard Briggs, a Republican from Knoxville, argued against the program on Thursday. Briggs indicated the arguments for the program have shifted over time, from initial pushes that emphasized failing public schools and children in the poorest neighborhoods.

Now, Briggs said, two-thirds of the money in the program has gone to the six wealthiest counties in the state.

Briggs also criticized Lee’s administration for the lack of transparency around the program, particularly regarding data on how many children have exited failing public schools or any public schools to attend private schools.

“I don’t know what the numbers are because, quite frankly, the numbers have not been available. If anything, they have been concealed by the administration,” Briggs said.

Briggs said he was concerned Tennessee may “have a day of reckoning” with the state budget eventually that might cause the state to retract the program in future years.

Tennessee education officials will be required to be more transparent about the program in future years, including collecting more household income data on families and tracking how many new vouchers go to public school students. Some House lawmakers pushed to include more data reporting requirements after the Tennessee Department of Education and governor’s office balked at tracking certain student data, such as how many initial vouchers benefits public schools students and students already enrolled in private schools.

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee House passes voucher expansion plan in tight vote

2026-04-14T00:59:34+00:00

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The Tennessee House passed legislation to expand the state’s voucher program to 35,000 seats next fall despite rare bipartisan opposition from Democrats and a significant group of Republicans.

House Bill 2532 passed on a 52-43 vote on Monday night, barely clearing the majority vote needed to pass.

The House version now alters the funding floor provision of the Education Freedom Scholarships program passed last year, a “hold harmless” clause promised last year to maintain current levels of public school funding even if local districts saw enrollment decreases.

House leadership also quietly slipped in a new amendment that could help state officials track the immigration or citizenship status of public school students. High-ranking Republicans have for two years attempted to count the number of undocumented students in Tennessee public schools, but the effort has run aground in various bills amid bipartisan pushback.

EFS supporters last year passed the universal voucher program, pushed by Gov. Bill Lee, with clear parameters like a 5,000-seat growth cap and funding promises to local public school districts.

A year later, those parameters have been swept aside, which opponents from both sides of the political aisle criticized in a lengthy House floor debate on Monday.

The new House bill will track students withdrawing from public schools to participate in the EFS program. Starting in 2028, public schools would still receive “hold harmless” funding for those students, but not for students withdrawing for other reasons. The original voucher program maintained funding for all disenrollment, regardless of the reason a student is leaving the school.

“We’re not telling the truth. That’s what we told everybody we were doing last year,” said Republican Rep. Jody Barrett, a longtime voucher opponent who criticized the funding floor changes. “That’s what got us the 53 votes to get this thing passed, and now 15 months later we’re completely renegotiating the deal.”

A majority of Republicans shot down proposed amendments from Barrett and Republican Rep. Charlie Baum, who tried to reset the funding floor provision.

“It wouldn’t be fair to change that level of financial support at this time,” Baum said.

Under the new House version, public schools could only qualify for hold harmless funding for the 2026 and 2027 school years if they can prove a student with a Social Security number disenrolled from their school to take an EFS scholarship. Schools would have to collect Social Security numbers of all students enrolling in public schools to achieve this.

Tying the hold harmless funding to Social Security numbers appeared to be a last-minute maneuver by House leadership to begin tracking the immigration status of public school students. House Republicans have argued an unknown number of undocumented children may be draining financial resources from local school districts, even though all immigrants fund Tennessee schools through local sales tax purchases.

Some Republicans have sought to challenge a longstanding U.S. Supreme Court precedent that guarantees the right to a public education to all children in the country, regardless of immigration status.

Social Security numbers are provided to U.S. citizens and some documented immigrants, but not all immigrants with current visas are issued Social Security numbers, nor are they required to register for schools or receive certain benefits like school lunch programs.

Jenny Mills McFerron, director of Policy and Research at EdTrust-Tennessee, criticized the voucher expansion on Monday night for “diverting even more public funds to private schools that lack accountability and transparency that we require of public institutions.”

“Equally troubling is the amendment requiring Social Security number tracking, a backdoor attempt to track students’ immigration status,” Mills McFerron said. “Lawmakers have repeatedly invoked accountability and transparency as core values, but have chosen to wield it selectively to protect the wealthy and target the most vulnerable students in our state.”

The House and Senate are now at odds on significant details of the program, most notably the size of the program next year. The Senate version, which is up for a final vote on Wednesday, calls for 40,000 total seats in the program next year.

If the two chambers can’t agree on a version, lawmakers would have to go to a conference committee and hash out a compromise bill, which could be an uphill battle to pass in the House after such a close initial vote.

The Senate could avoid a conference committee by aligning with the House version on Wednesday, which would position the bill to be signed into law by the governor.

Lee and Republican leadership have for months called for the program to be at least doubled in size next year, pointing solely to the number of applications Tennessee have received for the program.

More than 56,000 students applied for next year’s EFS program, including nearly 19,000 renewals from this year.

Lee has already earmarked more than $303 million in public dollars next fiscal year to help send 40,000 students to private schools across the state. It’s one of his largest new spending priorities in his final year as governor. Each student will receive more than $7,500 for next school year.

Supporters of the program argue these funds enable families to make educational decisions for their children regardless of costs.

“Parents, not the government, know what’s best for their child’s needs,” said Rep. Aron Maberry, a Republican who also sits on the Clarksville-Montgomery County school board. “These scholarships are about empowering families with real choice.”

Some lawmakers who voted against the expansion this year have argued there is not yet evidence that program is improving student outcomes, nor is it clear who exactly is benefiting from the program.

The new House version of the bill does impart new transparency requirements on the Tennessee Department of Education, including how many students already enrolled in private schools benefit from the program.

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

Will TN voucher program expand by 15,000 or 20,000 seats? House and Senate are at odds on details.

2026-04-07T23:51:48+00:00

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The Tennessee General Assembly could vote on a proposal to expand the state’s school voucher program within days, though Republican lawmakers in the Senate and House are at odds on how large the program’s second-year expansion should be.

The legislation cleared its final House committee on Tuesday. Committee members voted to simplify the House bill just days after Republicans inserted a controversial student immigration tracking requirement into the bill.

The House version no longer includes any reference to immigration status tracking.

The Senate proposal, which could be scheduled for a Senate floor vote at any time, would expand the Education Freedom Scholarships program by 15,000 seats. With an existing 5,000-seat expansion already baked into the program for next school year, the Senate bill would increase it to 40,000 seats for the 2026-2027 school year.

In the House, where the legislation has moved more slowly, the bill would cap next year’s expansion at 10,000 seats plus the 5,000-seat expansion, for a total of 35,000 seats.

Republican leadership in the House and Senate have just a few weeks to align on the details if they want to significantly expand Gov. Bill Lee’s school choice program in its second school year. Lee has already carved out more than $303 million in public dollars next fiscal year to help send 40,000 students to private schools across the state. It’s one of his largest new spending priorities in his final year as governor.

Pulling back on Lee’s proposal would leave lawmakers more money to fund other legislation.

The House version also tweaks the “hold harmless” provision of the original EFS bill, which was created to provide stable funding to public schools if they experience disenrollment. Previously, public schools were able to maintain their funding floor for any disenrollment.

The new House bill would track students withdrawing from public schools to participate in the EFS program. Public schools would still receive hold harmless funding for those students, but not for students withdrawing for other reasons.

The House version also includes a transparency provision that the Senate bill does not have. Under the House bill, the Tennessee Department of Education would have to publish an annual report on the number of applications received from each county, the number of applicants enrolled in a public school, and data on applicants’ household income.

The Tennessee Department of Education last year faced criticism from voucher opponents and some lawmakers for its lack of timely data on who exactly is benefiting from the public program. The department has said the law establishing the program did not require them to track or report certain information, such as how many public school students were benefiting from it.

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

House Republicans tie immigrant student tracking to Tennessee voucher expansion bill

2026-04-01T18:49:25+00:00

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Tennessee House Republicans have inserted a student immigration tracking requirement into a pending voucher program expansion bill, linking two of the most controversial policies affecting state public schools in recent years.

House Bill 2532, which passed a key House subcommittee on Wednesday with a new amendment that took many by surprise, would add public school administrative requirements while also funneling more public dollars for 35,000 students attending private schools.

The new version of the bill ties student immigration status to the voucher program’s hold harmless clause, which maintains current levels of public school funding even if there is disenrollment when students switch to private schools.

The clause essentially established a funding floor for Tennessee public schools, a key point that helped pass Gov. Bill Lee’s initial Education Freedom Scholarships program last year.

Under the newly amended House bill, public schools would only maintain their funding floor for disenrolled students they could prove held legal citizenship or immigration status.

“To comply with it, districts would have to collect immigration status on all students. That creates a really troubling challenge for districts from an administrative perspective. More importantly, it will have a chilling effect on immigrant students,” said Jenny Mills McFerron, an assistant director at EdTrust Tennessee.

“This bill will modify the floor and create transparency as it relates to those currently being funded in our TISA school systems,” said Chairman Ryan Williams, who sponsored the amendment.

Republicans’ goal this session of forcing schools to collect data on all public school students has otherwise failed or hit serious roadblocks with other pieces of legislation.

The immigrant student tracking issue has drawn heated pushback from education and immigrant advocates, as well as hesitancy from some Republicans wary of drawing children into an increasingly politicized debate over immigration issues.

Republicans in favor of tracking student status argue the data is needed to better understand how many undocumented students are attending state public schools, framing it as a resource scarcity issue. However, Tennessee schools are largely funded through local sales taxes, meaning any resident of a community is paying into the school system when buying groceries or gas.

“It is interesting that at the same time we’re passing this massive expansion of public funding for private schools, and continuing to invest even more dollars in that program beyond what was originally projected last year, we’re now tying it to this issue that has been focused on resource scarcity,” Mills McFerron said.

Another legislative effort underway for more than a year sought to challenge Plyler v. Doe, the longstanding U.S. Supreme Court decision guaranteeing a right to a public education to all children in the country. That effort may have permanently stalled, though, over disagreements between Senate and House Republicans about the best path forward.

Tying the documentation mechanism to the voucher expansion bill could also further complicate the governor’s plan to double the voucher program in its second year from 20,000 seats to 40,000.

The new House version passed on Wednesday dials back Lee’s plan slightly, offering up a total of 35,000 seats for next year’s expansion.

With the new House amendment, the lower chamber’s voucher expansion plan differs significantly from the Senate version, which is slated for a full floor vote any day.

The new version also includes a new reporting clause requiring the Tennessee Department of Education to collect data on students applying for the program, including whether they were previously enrolled in a public or private school. The department has said it didn’t collect this data in the first year because it wasn’t explicitly required to.

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa atmbrown@chalkbeat.org.

Proposal to relax voucher program’s testing mandate advances in Tennessee House

2026-03-24T23:19:41+00:00

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Tennessee may soon relax state testing requirements for its Education Savings Account voucher program under new legislation that advanced in the House on Tuesday.

Private schools accepting public dollars under the ESA program have been required to administer the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP, since the voucher program began in 2022.

Now, some Republicans want to drop that requirement through House Bill 1881, which would allow participating private schools the choice to give the TCAP or a “nationally standardized achievement test.” The move would align the ESA voucher program with the state’s broader Education Freedom Scholarships program, which lawmakers are currently trying to expand.

The bill passed out of the House Education Committee’s K-12 subcommittee on Tuesday on a party line vote. It now heads to the full committee. The legislation has already passed the Senate.

The legislation follows a Tennessee Comptroller report from last winter that found ESA recipients continue to trail their public school peers in academic achievement, with some exceptions in Memphis-Shelby County schools.

Republicans backing the bill argue the change is needed to align a school’s standardized test with its curriculum and textbook choices, which can vary widely in private school settings.

House Education Committee Chairman Mark White, a Republican from Memphis who is also on the K-12 subcommittee, said Tuesday he fought to mandate the state test for the ESA program when it began, and that he “can see both sides of the argument very clearly.” But White ultimately voted on Tuesday to advance the bill relaxing testing requirements.

White said the ESA program has some non-testing accountability measures baked in by only allowing Tier 1, 2, or 3 schools to participate in the program. These schools meet certain accreditation requirements approved by the state.

Democrats in the General Assembly, who lack the legislative power to stop the bill, have sharply criticized relaxing testing requirements.

Rep. Sam McKenzie, a Knoxville Democrat, noted the current ESA requirement is the one data point that provides a “side-by-side comparison” of student achievement for kids receiving a publicly funded education.

“We talk about kids needing a choice, we talk ad nauseum about parents needing a choice. Ok, you’ve been given a choice. Now, let’s test you. Let’s train you up in the private school environment and let’s test you,” Mckenzie said, arguing “being able to read on grade level is not different from a public school to private school.”

However, Rep. William Slater, a Republican from Gallatin who is sponsoring the House legislation, said lawmakers and state officials worked “very hard” to align the TCAP with public school standards and textbooks.

“When students are in a different school, a different system, the standards can be different,” Slater said. “The textbooks can be different. That’s what it means to be in a private school.”

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee Republicans advance bill to relax voucher testing rules

2026-03-19T00:07:19+00:00

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Tennessee Senate Republicans advanced legislation to relax testing requirements for the state’s older of its two voucher programs on Wednesday.

Under Senate Bill 1585, schools that participate in the Education Scholarships Accounts program could choose to give students in the program a “nationally standardized achievement test” instead of the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP. Private schools that accept program funding have been required to administer TCAP to participating students since the program’s implementation in 2022.

The looser academic accountability measures for the program included in the bill come after state testing results showed ESA participants underperformed their peers from traditional public schools.

The effort to relax accountability for private schools accepting public money also comes amid a broader Republican push to expand access to vouchers in the state. Tennessee private schools have for years resisted uniform testing requirements, a position that has stirred controversy as state lawmakers have created more avenues to use public dollars for private school tuition.

Tennessee voucher opponents have argued inconsistent testing metrics will complicate efforts to study the effectiveness of school choice initiatives without an apples-to-apples comparison to measure student success.

Majority Leader Jack Johnson, a Republican senator from Franklin, said the legislation is necessary to prevent confusion among families by aligning the ESA program requirements with the Education Freedom Scholarships program, the state’s newer universal voucher program.

Johnson’s bill comes just months after a state audit of the ESA program found that while overall testing outcomes are improving, most students receiving ESA money performed worse on the state’s standardized tests than students in public schools. ESA students did outperform their peers in Memphis-Shelby County schools — the state’s largest district — last year.

The state audit also found that Tennessee public school students who use the ESA program aren’t leaving low-performing public schools, despite voucher supporters initially arguing that families needed such school choice measures to choose higher-performing schools.

The push to relax ESA accountability measures also comes as Republican Gov. Bill Lee’s administration has increased the stakes for public schools when it comes to testing. The administration implemented a new school grading system with higher emphasis on academic outcomes on state tests than on student academic growth over time.

Now, poor testing outcomes can lead to significant consequences for under-performing public schools. Next week, the Tennessee Board of Education will hold accountability hearings for public schools with repeated D and F grades.

Though private schools participating in the ESA program are currently required to take the TCAP, they are not held to the same school grading system.

And even with the TCAP test requirement, the state audit found the Tennessee Department of Education had few plans in place for measuring private school performance or removing private schools with years of low academic performance.

The Senate Education Committee on Wednesday advanced Johnson’s legislation with limited debate. Its House companion bill has languished in subcommittee for weeks, with another hearing planned for March 24.

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis families grapple with where to send students after approved school closures

2026-03-02T22:59:27+00:00

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Memphis-Shelby County Schools is extending its priority deadline for school choice transfers to next Friday, March 13 following a vote last week to close five schools.

Students displaced by this year’s closures won’t automatically be at the top of the transfer list, MSCS said in an emailed statement. Applications that allow students to attend a different school than their zoned one are reviewed each year on a first-come, first-served basis.

But families from Lucy Elementary, Frayser-Corning Elementary, Georgian Hills Elementary, Ida B. Wells Academy, and Chickasaw Middle only found out last week that their schools will close in June, leaving less than a week to fill out the transfer application before the original March 2 deadline. Priority applications are reviewed by the district first, maximizing a student’s chance of getting into the school of their choice before spots fill up.

Those closures are part of a larger district plan to shutter up to 15 schools in the next three years. How the district manages the impact to over 1,200 displaced students and around 57 displaced staff will likely set the model for those future closure decisions.

“We understand that transitions can raise questions, and our goal is to partner closely with families throughout this process,” MSCS said in its statement to Chalkbeat.

Most displaced students are being rezoned to attend a nearby MSCS school. But that’s raised safety concerns from some parents who don’t want their younger children put in the same building as older students, like K-8 or 6-12 schools. Others question whether the new schools will offer better academics or programming.

Erica Smith has two children who currently attend Ida B. Wells Academy. She praises the school for its small class sizes and individual attention – attributes MSCS leaders said won’t be exactly replicated in other district schools.

“The staff to student ratio as it is now, it’s just not sustainable nor is it cost effective,” Superintendent Roderick Richmond said during the closure vote last Tuesday.

Richmond said the district is exploring moving the Ida B. Wells program into Norris Achievement Academy, another alternative school further south.

But Smith said she’s never heard of that school, which only enrolls previously expelled students. Instead, she’s sending one of her kids to The Soulsville Charter School, a music-focused program in South Memphis; the other will be attending Rozelle Elementary, a magnet school for performing arts.

“I’m trying to put them somewhere where they’ll get the proper learning and education,” she said.

A quarter of Ida B. Wells students tested as proficient on last year’s state reading tests, and over 27% did the same for math. That’s higher than the district average. Rozelle, where Smith is sending her youngest child, surpassed the state average in reading but not math. Soulsville fell behind in both, with only a 13.8% proficiency rate on reading and 16.6% on math.

Smith said the school counselor at Ida B. Wells helped her and other parents fill out the transfer application quickly, so she already received those other school acceptances for her children. MSCS says families can apply to change schools up until the first week of classes in August. They get their final decisions back within four to six weeks.

“Families therefore have ample time to apply, and there is no immediate deadline concern at this time,” the district said.

Smith said she never received any communication from MSCS following Tuesday’s vote. But district leaders said they sent emails to both staff and parents last week.

Bri Hatch covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Bri at bhatch@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee AG won’t intervene for Knox County school board in religious charter lawsuit

2026-02-27T12:00:01+00:00

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Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti will not intervene in an ongoing lawsuit over the state’s religious charter school ban, leaving the Knox County Board of Education to defend a state policy against claims of religious discrimination.

The Wilberforce Academy of Knoxville, represented by an attorney currently working for Skrmetti’s office in a different case, sued the school district late last year in federal court.

The case could bring a fresh challenge to the religious charter issue that deadlocked the U.S. Supreme Court in 2025.

Though Wilberforce is not suing the state of Tennessee, it is challenging the constitutionality of Tennessee’s longstanding charter school law. Under federal regulations, state attorneys general must be notified and given the option to intervene in lawsuits with constitutional challenges.

Skrmetti declined to intervene earlier this month, according to court filings. His office did not comment on the filing but pointed to a November legal opinion Skrmetti wrote that questioned the constitutionality of Tennessee’s own law.

Skrmetti argued there was “no compelling interest” in excluding religious charter schools from participating in a “public benefit.”

In its lawsuit, Wilberforce focuses in part on Tennessee’s new voucher program, essentially arguing that the public education funds now flowing to private religious schools support the case that religious charters should be included in public funding.

Gov. Bill Lee, who pushed for the voucher program to allow private religious schools to receive public dollars, demurred on Thursday when asked if he believes state law should be changed to allow religious charters.

“The Attorney General has the role in determining what’s constitutional, what should be law in the state,” Lee said. “I’d defer to him on that.”

Nonprofit sued days after registering with the state

Days after Skrmetti’s November legal opinion was published, Wilberforce sued the Knox County Board of Education in federal court, alleging explicit religious discrimination over local and state rules banning religious charter schools.

On Nov. 25, just four days after it registered as a nonprofit with the state, Wilberforce submitted a letter of intent to the Knox County Board of Education to indicate interest in opening an “explicitly Christian school” in 2027.

The board would not accept the letter, according to court documents, because Wilberforce would not affirm the state requirement that it be a nonsectarian and non-religious school.

Knox County attorneys say Wilberforce never completed a charter application, and therefore they haven’t been denied anything.

Last week, a federal judge denied Wilberforce’s request for a ruling that would immediately block the Knox County board from enforcing the state ban on religious charters. A trial on the issue is scheduled for January 2027.

Despite Skrmetti’s hands-off approach to the lawsuit, an attorney working with the attorney general’s office is currently representing Wilberforce in its lawsuit against the Tennessee school district.

In 2023, Lee appointed Cameron Norris, a Virginia-based attorney with the conservative law firm Consovoy McCarthy, to help defend Tennessee in a lawsuit over the state law banning gender transition treatments for minors.

Skrmetti’s office has continued to hire Norris as outside counsel in two cases since, according to records reviewed by Chalkbeat Tennessee. Norris currently earns $400 per hour, paid by public funds, to help Tennessee defend its criminal abortion ban against ongoing legal challenges.

A group of Knox County parents have joined the Knox County board to oppose Wilberforce’s lawsuit.

“I believe that public education is part of the common good and that maintaining the integrity of public education ensures that public schools remain appropriate for and welcoming to students of all faiths and backgrounds,” said Amanda Collins, a retired school psychologist whose three children either attend or attended Knox County public schools. “These fundamental tenets are at odds with a religious school.”

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis board votes to close five schools at the end of school year

2026-02-25T02:18:04+00:00

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Five Memphis-Shelby County schools will close at the end of this school year, forcing more than 1,200 students to attend new schools starting in August.

Memphis board members unanimously voted Tuesday to shut down Georgian Hills Elementary, Lucy Elementary, and Chickasaw Middle without discussion. Frayser-Corning Elementary and Ida B. Wells Academy will close by a split vote of 7-2 and 5-3 respectively.

Michelle McKissack, who represents Ida B. Wells, abstained from voting. Several board members recognized that the alternative school was the only recommended closure that received significant pushback, including during the Tuesday meeting.

“Your passion, we all heard it,” McKissack said to school advocates. “Not a single board member up here wants to do this, but we are charged with making difficult decisions and being fiscally responsible.”

This is the first round of recommended closures in the district’s plan to close up to 15 schools by 2028 because of chronic underenrollment and increasing building maintenance costs. Those are growing problems throughout the district, with enrollment dropping quicker than the state average and building upkeep costs totaling around $1.6 billion over the next decade.

Chickasaw Middle, for example, would need $3.4 million invested in building repairs or upgrades in the next two years, including complete replacements of the HVAC and plumbing systems. Frayser-Corning Elementary would need $2.6 million for improvements such as a new electrical system.

Superintendent Roderick Richmond, who was recently promoted from his interim role, recommended the first four schools for closure in September. Lucy Elementary will be taken over by Millington Municipal Schools, a suburban district, as part of a state mandated transfer agreement.

In a series of community hearings held throughout the winter, parents fought back against closure recommendations. Some questioned why a high-performing school would be shuttered. Others raised safety concerns about proposals to merge schools with different grade levels to absorb displaced students.

It’s unclear what will happen to affected teachers and school staff. District leaders have said they plan to keep as many employees in MSCS as possible. That was a point of contention during the vote on Frayser-Corning Elementary school.

“We have to figure out where our teachers are going to go before we close a school,” said board member Towanna Murphy, who voted against closing both Frayser-Corning and Ida B. Wells.

Board member Stephanie Love, who represents the Frayser elementary school, also voted against its closure Tuesday. Love and vice chair Joyce Dorse-Coleman joined Murphy in opposing Ida B. Wells’ closure.

During Tuesday’s meeting, a number of parents and alumni from Ida B. Wells made a last-ditch effort to convince board members to keep their school open. The speakers questioned why the school, which is exceeding state expectations for improving student test scores, is being closed.

Deja Bowen attended Ida B. Wells from fourth through eighth grade and graduated in 2019. She now attends University of Memphis and is planning to join the Air Force as a nurse.

“I never thought that I’d go to college,” Bowen said. “Like more than half of the students who completed (Ida B. Wells) with me, we all were in unusual circumstances. And without the teachers, who are more than likely the only constants in our lives, I don’t know where I would be.”

Several rows of audience members wearing the school colors of blue and yellow stood in support of Ida B. Wells during public comment.

Bri Hatch covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Bri at bhatch@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis leaders want to close Ida B Wells. Parents say there’s no school like it.

2026-02-17T23:20:28+00:00

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Memphis mom Erica Smith vividly remembers the day two years ago that her phone wouldn’t stop ringing while she was at work.

On the other end of the line were four different teachers from Ida B. Wells Academy. Her fourth grade daughter, they said, had fallen asleep and wouldn’t wake up.

The school’s teachers showed up then, when her daughter was diagnosed with a sleep disorder and needed assistance getting back on track academically. They showed up again when she struggled to cover her daughter’s basketball fee, and when some families in the South Memphis neighborhood needed help putting food on the table.

They showed up again just last week, when the school attendance specialist picked her daughters up and drove them to school when Smith had a transportation issue.

“It’s more than teaching with that school,” she said. “They really have wholehearted care about our children.”

But now, the close-knit school may be shuttered. Ida B. Wells is one of the five district schools that has been targeted for closure in a larger Memphis-Shelby County Schools facilities plan.

Smith and other parents credit the small classes for serving their children better than larger neighborhood public schools. But low student enrollment is one of the main reasons the district is considering closing Ida B. Wells, which opened in 1963, at the end of this year. Only 84 students currently attend the K-8 school, which is built to hold almost 500.

Memphis-Shelby County leaders plan to close up to 15 schools in the next three years because of rising facilities costs and chronic underenrollment. The school board is expected to vote on the first five closure recommendations — including Ida B. Wells, Georgian Hills Elementary, Frayser-Corning Elementary, Lucy Elementary, and Chickasaw Middle — next Tuesday.

At a January community hearing on the closure proposal, parents questioned why a higher performing MSCS school is being targeted. Ida B. Wells students earned the highest state score for academic growth last year and slightly outperformed the district-wide average on reading and math tests.

Smith worries those results can’t be replicated at other MSCS schools, especially for students with specific needs like her daughter.

“Another teacher is going to basically learn her all over again, and it’s going to be hard,” Smith said.

But MSCS leaders say chronic underenrollment is preventing students throughout the district from receiving the highest quality resources and staff. Higher building costs means less money for what goes in the schools, facilities director Michelle Stuart said.

“Nobody wants their school to close,” Stuart said recently. “But I have recognized that people are understanding the logic of not having half-empty buildings,” she said, because the district can add more staff and programming to full schools.

Parents, staff criticize district options for Ida B. Wells students

Ida B. Wells Academy is nestled in a quiet residential neighborhood with narrow streets south of East E.H. Crump Boulevard. On a school day afternoon, laughter and chatter can be heard from outside the school walls.

On one side of the building, there’s a vibrant mural featuring the school’s namesake, a dedicated investigative journalist and NAACP co-founder. Bright blue letters by the school’s front door spell out “vision, leadership, responsibility.”

Ida B. Wells is an open enrollment school, meaning any MSCS family can apply to attend regardless of their home address. Some current parents are wary of their neighborhood options, which is where they say their children would likely end up if the school closes.

Linda Farmer is the grandparent of a Wells sixth grader. If MSCS closes the school, her grandchild will attend Booker T. Washington next year. But she said she’s wary of moving her grandchild to a school with a larger population that combines grades 6-12.

“They never should have put the youth in there alongside the teenagers, because it made it more dangerous,” Farmer said.

Ida B. Wells has a multicolored mural featuring the school namesake, a dedicated journalist and NAACP cofounder.

MSCS parents raised similar safety concerns at the closure hearing for Chickasaw Middle School in December, as the district proposed a merger with nearby Westwood High School, and again at a hearing for closing Lucy Elementary.

In their long-term facilities plan, MSCS leaders say they want to lean more on those grade combination structures to boost building enrollment. Interim Superintendent Roderick Richmond argues that those models increase stability and continuity for students.

“I can enter school in the sixth grade, and I can establish relationships with my teachers and the leaders, so that for six years I can be in one feeder pattern and in one school,” he said. “We understand some of the parental concerns, but this is not a new way of looking at structuring schools.”

Opponents to the Ida B. Wells closure say the school has a unique culture that can’t be replicated elsewhere. Louis Morganfield has been the building engineer since June, but he’s worked in MSCS for the past six years.

“I walk those halls and I see the difference,” he said of the South Memphis school. “I haven’t seen one fight. I don’t hear any screaming and hollering at the kids. Teachers give them a look, and they get right in line.”

According to 2024-25 state education department data, fewer than 10 students were disciplined at Ida B. Wells Academy. Overall, close to 16,000 MSCS students were disciplined that year.

Morganfield is running for the District 9 seat on the local school board in May because he’s been frustrated with the closure process. And he feels more MSCS schools should be like Ida B. Wells: small and tightly run.

“It’s teaching [students] to stand up to Goliath with reading and writing,” Morganfield said. “The world is going to put obstacles in their way. But because of what they are learning at Ida B Wells, they’re going to be able to jump over, go around the obstacles, and they are going to do what they need to do to be successful.”

Farmer, the grandparent of an Ida B. Wells student, said she thinks the district hasn’t talked to families enough.

“The majority of the time they don’t listen because they already made their decision,” she said.

But district leaders say they’re taking feedback from families seriously. MSCS board members have been frequent attendees of the community listening sessions held in the past few months.

“Ida B. Wells is an amazing school,” board member Michelle McKissack said in a board meeting last week. “But there are 84 students across nine different grades. That is not serving the greater Memphis community.”

Smith says the Ida B. Wells teachers and staff are like extra parents to her two kids. And they’re reliable mentors and supporters for parents, too.

“They’ll tell me I’m doing a good job. They always stay to give me a hug,” she said. “I don’t want to lose that.”

Bri Hatch covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Bri at bhatch@chalkbeat.org.

Gov. Bill Lee wants $155 million to fund 20,000 new vouchers

2026-02-03T00:05:16+00:00

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Gov. Bill Lee wants Tennessee lawmakers to invest more than $155 million into the state’s voucher program, which would double the Education Freedom Scholarships pool from 20,000 to 40,000 private school vouchers.

Lee’s proposed budget also would more than double the costs of the program and blow past the expansion cap lawmakers voted on last year, growing the program beyond its original limits despite little data to indicate the program is impacting student achievement.

If Lee achieves his goal, Tennessee would spend more than $303 million in public dollars next fiscal year to help send 40,000 students to private schools across the state.

“Last year, we gave families school choice with the Education Freedom Scholarship program, because parents know best,” Lee said Monday night at his final State of the State address. “Clearly, Tennesseans like freedom. Last year, we received more than 40,000 applications, and this year, 54,000 applications so far for 20,000 spots. That means, right now, 34,000 students are still waiting for a shot at Education Freedom. We owe it to them.”

The proposed EFS program costs would be a fraction of the overall $7.9 billion proposed for the K-12 education budget. But the voucher expansion would account for one-third of the state’s total year-over-year increase in education funding.

In his budget proposal released on Monday, Lee called for nearly $380 million of new funds for K-12 education in the state. Though the total K-12 budget has grown, it is the lowest proposed new spending infusion for education in the last five years.

Lee on Monday indicated voucher expansion will be a major legislative goal in his final year in office. He introduced special guest Milton Nettles, who is the principal of Lighthouse Christian Academy in Antioch.

“Once a public school teacher himself, he believes parents know best, and he’s seen hundreds of students find their fit at Lighthouse and parents who have a choice, at last,” Lee said, noting 77% of Lighthouse’s students are using EFS vouchers. “Still, he says, it isn’t enough, and I agree. Growing the program would open the doors of opportunity for thousands more children statewide.”

Despite the governor’s push to solidify his voucher legacy before leaving office, it may be an uphill battle in the legislature to achieve his aggressive goal, even among school choice-friendly Republicans.

The General Assembly will have little wiggle room in the upcoming budget and fewer dollars to spend on new initiatives. Lee’s proposed overall state budget is nearly 10% smaller than the current fiscal year’s, which finance officials said is largely due to expiring federal funds but is also occurring amid a slowing Tennessee economy.

Lawmakers would also have to alter their original plans for the program. Republicans last year approved the program with an expansion cap that only allowed the state to add 5,000 vouchers this year if there was enough demand in applications.

Lee wants those 5,000 new vouchers plus an additional 15,000, which will require new legislation to enact.

House Republican Caucus Chair Jeremy Faison, R-Cosby, said in January he thinks there’s support for the expected 5,000 new vouchers but was skeptical about a more aggressive expansion.

“There will be some spirited debate about growing it from that,” Faison, who is not seeking reelection this year, said. “I would say that it’ll just be a debate. I don’t necessarily see that taking place other than just following the groundwork that we laid last year.”

Lee’s budget proposal will bump up Tennessee teacher pay, increasing the minimum annual teacher salary from $47,000 to $50,000. This would achieve a 2023 pledge to increase their base pay.

Other K-12 budget increases include a $170 million infusion to the public education funding formula, $40 million for the charter school facilities fund, and a $2.6 million increase to reimburse local districts for paid parental leave.

Lee’s budget is also rolling forward $80 million for the public education funding formula from this fiscal year, which finance officials said was left over after public school enrollment was lower than expected this year.

Sen. Jeff Yarbro, a Democrat from Nashville, said he was concerned the increases to the public education funding formula isn’t keeping up with inflation increases in recent years.

“It’s deeply troubling to me that we’re talking about doubling the size of a program that is brand new, and we’re not even keeping public school funding up to par with inflation,” Yarbro said during a Tuesday budget presentation.

Lee also wants $5 million to fund summer learning camps. In November, Tennessee Department of Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds asked the governor for $30 million for the program, pointing to measurable academic gains for the 90,000 students enrolled last year.

School-based summer learning camps are one of several promotion pathways rising fourth graders can use to move on from third grade if they don’t hit the benchmarks required by the state’s third grade reading law.

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis parents say district shouldn’t close school with strong academic growth, low enrollment

2026-01-15T02:18:14+00:00

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Memphis parents at Ida B. Wells Academy are questioning why district leaders would recommend closing a school that earned the highest possible state score for student growth last year.

The open-enrollment K-8 school in South Memphis is one of five the district is recommending for closure at the end of this school year. During the mandated community hearing Wednesday, parents said that Ida B. Wells’ academic growth and small class sizes should make it a model for Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

But MSCS leaders say the school’s declining enrollment and high facilities costs make it unsuitable to keep open. Only 84 students attend Ida B. Wells this year, leaving over 400 available spots unfilled. And the building needs $5.8 million in repairs over the next decade.

“There is nothing about this that feels right,” said Michelle McKissack, the MSCS board member who represents Ida B. Wells Academy. “It’s the hardest thing that a board member has to do.”

MSCS board members are expected to vote on the five proposed closures in February. That decision is part of a larger plan from Interim Superintendent Roderick Richmond to shut down up to 15 schools by 2028 due to facilities costs and chronic underenrollment.

Ida B. Wells Academy earned the highest state score, a 5, on the 2024-25 Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System, which measures for improvement in student academic performance. The school also slightly outperformed the district on state reading and math standardized tests, with 25% and 26.7% proficiency rates respectively

During Wednesday’s meeting, parents credited that success to the school’s dedicated teachers and small class sizes. Erica Smith has two children at Ida B. Wells, one of whom has a sleep condition.

“The teachers here are very good at helping her,” she told Chalkbeat. “She’s no longer behind.”

MSCS leaders said 21 teaching positions would be affected if Ida B. Wells is closed. Smith said she’s worried about transitioning to a bigger school, where teachers “might not know how to handle her [child’s] situation.”

Ida B. Wells is not a traditional neighborhood school; children apply to attend through the open enrollment process. That means displaced students would have the option to attend their zoned schools or choose another one.

“I heard many of you say you like the small environment here,” said MSCS Enrollment Advisor Stacey Davis. “We have many other schools that offer that small environment setting.”

But parents said Ida B. Wells is unlike any other school in its area. Some asked why MSCS doesn’t have a policy that prevents the highest-achieving schools from being recommended for closure.

“You’ve given us some more reasons and feedback that we can take back to the board to consider,” said Chief Academic Officer Angela Whitelaw. “Recommendations can change as we listen.”

Catch up on Chalkbeat Tennessee’s coverage of other Memphis school closure discussions at:

Bri Hatch covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Bri at bhatch@chalkbeat.org.

Most Tennessee students don’t use ESA vouchers to exit low-performing public schools: comptroller

2026-01-05T18:43:56+00:00

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Most Tennessee public school students who use Education Savings Account vouchers aren’t leaving low-performing public schools, while ESA students overall are underperforming their public school peers in both academic achievement and growth.

Tennessee Comptroller Jason E. Mumpower’s office released these findings Monday in the first comprehensive review of the program.

The comptroller’s report also found that the Tennessee Department of Education has not yet established parameters for removing private schools with repeated low academic performance, nor could it provide documentation “used to measure schools’ performance or counsel schools that have multiple years of low academic performance.”

Republican lawmakers passed the Education Savings Account program in 2019, though legal challenges delayed implementation until 2022. The program was the precursor to the 2025 universal voucher program, which GOP lawmakers are already looking to expand this year after 20,000 students were enrolled last fall.

The ESA program could be limited to 12,500 enrollees under state law this school year, with a cap of 15,000 set to kick in next year. But the program has never been fully utilized, with just 3,693 students enrolled in the current school year.

The ESA program was designed to benefit public school students: First-time ESA applicants in 2022 had to be moving from a public school, entering kindergarten, or transferring into Tennessee from another state.

In 2022, 66% of ESA students came from a public school, and 33% were entering public school.

By the next school year, lawmakers had made a change to “grandfather” some students into the program who had attended public school at least one year since 2019, the year the law was passed. Those students accounted for 31% of ESA students. Overall, 15% of 2023 ESA students were entering kindergarten, 38% were coming from public schools, and 14% had reenrolled in the program.

In 2024, nearly half of all ESA students had reenrolled in the program, 28% came from public schools and 14% were entering kindergarten.

The program was a signature issue for Gov. Bill Lee, who has supported additional school choice policies as a way for parents to choose higher-achieving schools.

The comptroller’s report indicates this is not necessarily happening. The program was targeted at districts with a relatively high number of Priority schools, a federal designation for schools that underperform in certain categories. In practice, that meant the ESA program could only be implemented in Shelby, Davidson, and Hamilton counties, large districts that often have as many high-ranking, or reward, schools as priority schools.

“Most schools that students are leaving to participate in the ESA program are neither reward nor priority schools, which would indicate their performance is neither among the highest or lowest of public schools in the state,” the comptroller’s report states. “When considering schools that have received state and federal designations, more ESA students are leaving reward schools than priority schools.”

This varies significantly by county, though. In Davidson County, 80% of ESA students who previously attended public schools attended schools with A, B, or C letter grades, and 18% of students came from schools that received a D or F letter grade. In Memphis, 58% of students previously attended A, B or C-graded schools.

In Hamilton County, 50% of ESA students previously attended public schools with D or F grades.

The comptroller’s report also found the state education department did not do enough to advertise the ESA program to low-income students, a requirement in state law.

Overall, students receiving ESA money performed worse on the state’s standardized tests than students in public schools, although ESA students outperformed their peers in Memphis-Shelby County schools last year. The comptroller’s report also notes that scores from students receiving ESAs have increased over time.

Meanwhile, virtual schools participating in the ESA program for the first time last year performed worse than both private schools with ESA students and local public schools. Just 20% of ESA students enrolled in virtual schools were proficient in English language arts, and just 17% were proficient in math.

Parent satisfaction with the program remains above 95%, but the comptroller notes only 15% of participating families actually provided feedback on the program last year.

There could be major changes to ESAs this year. The comptroller report suggests lawmakers reconsider eligibility requirements and where the program is targeting, noting other districts like Knox County Schools could be drawn in.

Meanwhile, House Speaker Cameron Sexton wants to eliminate the income limit and enrollment cap altogether for the program and open it up to all students in the current three counties.

This current income cap is 200% or less of the federal income eligibility to receive free school lunch, which would be $83,590 this year for a family of four. Around 76% of families in ESA-eligible counties are already eligible for the program, according to an EdChoice analysis.

The ESA this year provides around $9,747 per student, which fell below the average tuition cost by about $3,000 for participating private schools, the majority of which were religiously affiliated.

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

Top GOP lawmaker wants to drop income, enrollment caps in Tennessee’s early voucher program

2025-12-10T12:00:01+00:00

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A top Tennessee Republican lawmaker wants to drop the enrollment cap and income limit in the state’s Education Savings Account voucher program.

House Speaker Cameron Sexton’s proposal could significantly expand voucher access to families in three of Tennessee’s largest counties.

“Whether you’re making $30,000 or $140,000, you should have the opportunity” for school choice, Sexton said of removing what he called “arbitrary” income caps in the ESA program.

Sexton has already said he wants to at least double the capacity of the Education Freedom Scholarships program, which launched this year with 20,000 seats.

Dropping the enrollment cap on the ESA program — launched in 2022 after an extended court battle in Davidson, Shelby, and Hamilton counties — alongside EFS expansion could significantly expand Tennessee’s taxpayer-funded voucher offerings in two programs that have widely varying requirements and accountability measures.

The ESA program is limited to 12,500 enrollees under state law this school year, with a maximum cap of 15,000 set to kick in next year. But the program has never been fully utilized, with under 5,000 students enrolled in the current school year.

State Democrats, historically opposed to school voucher programs like the ESA and EFS, sharply criticized Sexton’s proposal.

“We cannot afford a more expensive voucher program that drains resources directly from classrooms that are stretched to the breaking point,” Senate Minority Leader Raumesh Akbari, a Memphis Democrat, said. “Removing income restrictions from the 2019 voucher law would divert even more taxpayer dollars away from neighborhood schools to subsidize tuition at private schools.”

It’s not clear if the speaker’s plan will gain traction with other Republicans amid what is expected to be a tight budget year. Majority Leader Jack Johnson, a Republican from Franklin, was noncommittal on the proposal, though he said he supported “empowering parents with more freedom and flexibility” while advancing “responsible, sustainable school choice policies.”

The ESA program was first opened in Shelby and Davidson counties and later grew to Hamilton County. It currently provides just under $9,800 to students this year from lower income families. This income cap is defined as 200% or less of the federal income eligibility to receive free school lunch, which would be $83,590 this year for a family of four. Around 76% of families in ESA-eligible counties are already eligible for the program, according to an EdChoice analysis.

In a Chalkbeat Tennessee interview this month, Sexton argued this income cap is arbitrary and could penalize families working overtime or two jobs to bring in more family income.

“I see it as their tax money, and they should have the opportunity to put it where they want to go, whether they want to send their kid to a public school or a public charter school or to a private school,” he said.

Increased enrollment in the education savings voucher program could lead to dueling voucher systems within Tennessee unless lawmakers realign enrollment and accountability measures between the two.

First-time ESA applicants must either be entering kindergarten or be moving from a public school to a private school. Students already enrolled at private schools aren’t eligible for the program, unlike the new EFS program, which isn’t tracking how many vouchers are going to previously enrolled private school students.

ESA participants are also required to take the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program tests for math and English language arts, aligning them with peers in the public school system. ESA students showed a slight gain in math and a slight loss in ELA proficiency per state data released this fall, though participating students still lag significantly behind statewide averages of public school students.

In Shelby County, math proficiency was slightly higher in ESA students compared to the overall public student population.

Republican voucher supporters balked at similar test requirements for the broader statewide EFS program, in part due to pushback from private school operators who did not want to change their testing standards.

EFS opponents have argued that without cohesive testing requirements, it will be impossible to measure achievement and student progress for accountability measures.

Sexton has not filed legislation to codify his proposal. Lawmakers return to the General Assembly on Jan. 12 for the 2026 session.

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis parents criticize proposed K-8 school merger due to safety concerns

2025-12-04T02:14:45+00:00

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Parents at a Memphis elementary school are concerned about student safety in a proposed K-8 merger next year that comes as part of a larger district school closure plan.

In September, interim Memphis-Shelby County Schools Superintendent Roderick Richmond recommended the transfer of the Lucy Elementary building to neighboring Millington Municipal School District at the end of this school year, in order to comply with a 2023 state law and address chronic underenrollment. Richmond also recommended closing four MSCS schools, a proposal that board members are expected to vote on in February.

But children currently attending Lucy would likely not be able to transfer to Millington, because they are still zoned for MSCS. District leaders say merging students with Woodstock Middle School would fill empty classroom seats and offer new amenities, like a renovated gym.

Right now, only around 30% of seats at Lucy Elementary and Woodstock Middle School are in use. Combining the two schools would boost that figure to over 70%.

“We have 12 K-8 grade structures, so we understand exactly what we need to do to make sure we get it right for your babies,” said MSCS Regional Superintendent Debra Fox-Stanford at a Wednesday hearing.

But some parents aren’t sold on that idea. Jeffery Porter has a daughter in second grade. He said last year, an older student gave her a THC-infused gummy candy while on the bus ride home.

“She had to go to the hospital; it was bad,” Porter told Chalkbeat Tennessee. “And now, she could be riding the bus with eighth graders. That’s bigger kids, they’re close to being grown. We’re really worried about that.”

Porter said he will likely try to send his daughter to a different elementary school through the district’s open enrollment process. But MSCS leaders said Wednesday that the process opens for applications on Jan. 27, before the school board is set to vote on Lucy Elementary’s transfer. Offers are given on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Lucy Elementary needs $2.5 million in maintenance upgrades in the next two years, according to an independent report released this spring. Stanford-Fox said transferring the building to Millington before the 2027 deadline set by state lawmakers will allow MSCS to funnel that money more directly to Memphis students.

“The proposal to transfer the school to Millington early will keep the district from investing any additional funds into a building that they will no longer operate,” she said. “We can continue to make Woodstock Middle School even better.”

MSCS leaders said Wednesday that they don’t know yet if Woodstock would be able to offer prekindergarten classes, which Lucy Elementary currently does. As for the seven staff affected by Lucy’s transfer, which parents raised concerns about in the district’s first closure hearing, there will be a “special transfer period” to apply to work at Woodstock.

Audrey Williams, director of transportation for MSCS, said bus monitors can be assigned if issues arise from students from different grade spans mixing. But Porter said he’s not convinced that will solve everything, especially because those same safety issues come with cafeterias and hallways.

“I understand if [merging the schools] is the best they can do for now,” he said. “But I just don’t think it’s a good idea to have that young of kids around that big of kids. Bullying’s a big issue, and that’s just like setting it up.”

MSCS will host another community meeting about the proposed transfer of Lucy Elementary Thursday at 5:30 p.m. at Woodstock Middle School.

Bri Hatch covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Bri at bhatch@chalkbeat.org.

Which students are eligible for Tennessee’s 2026 voucher program?

2025-11-25T21:21:36+00:00

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When new applications for Tennessee’s voucher program open in January, the state will change how it prioritizes applicants for next school year, though it’s not yet clear how many open seats will be available.

The Tennessee Department of Education announced last week that applications for the 2026-2027 Education Freedom Scholarships program will open on Jan. 13 and close on Jan. 20. Students currently enrolled in the program can renew beginning on Dec. 9.

Any student waitlisted for the 2025 school year must reapply, according to the department.

It’s also not clear how many new seats Tennessee will add to the program, which provided $7,295 in public tax dollars to 20,000 students this fall to use at private schools.

A mechanism in the state law will allow lawmakers to easily expand the program for 5,000 new students since the state received more than 40,000 applications, well above the expansion threshold set by state law. But Gov. Bill Lee and other Republican lawmakers say they want to expand the program even further.

But it’s unlikely the number of new seats will be decided on by the time applications close on Jan. 30, just days into the 2026 legislative session.

The state law outlines the order in which the education department must prioritize applications going forward. Previous recipients receive top billing and are almost guaranteed a spot in next year’s program.

In 2025, the 20,000 available spots were split between a universal category, open to any family of any income level, and an income-limited category open only to families who earned 300% or less of the federal free or reduced-price lunch guideline income, or around $173,000 for a family of four.

In 2026, that income limit will drop significantly.

After current EFS students, students whose household income equaled 100% or less of the federal guidelines will receive top priority, which is around $59,478 for a family of four.

Families earning 300% or less would be next on the prioritization list.

Fourth on the list would be public school students or rising kindergarteners. The state has courted criticism for not tracking how many first-year vouchers went to students previously enrolled in public schools, but it will now have to track this data to determine prioritization eligibility.

Any remaining spots in the program will go to eligible students on a first come, first served application basis.

Applications for the program will open as the state fights off a lawsuit over the program. A group of parents sued the governor and state education leaders last week over the new voucher law, alleging the program violates the state constitution by diverting public funds to private schools.

The governor’s office said Lee is “confident” the court will uphold the program that a “vast majority” of Tennesseans support.

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee parents sue to stop voucher program

2025-11-21T15:13:24+00:00

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A group of parents are suing Gov. Bill Lee and state education leaders over Tennessee’s new voucher law, alleging the program violates the state constitution by diverting public funds to private schools.

The lawsuit marks the first legal challenge to the Education Freedom Scholarship Act, a signature initiative pushed by Lee that provided $7,295 in public tax dollars to 20,000 students this fall. Lee and other Republican lawmakers hope to expand the program next year.

The lawsuit filed Thursday alleges the voucher program violates the Education Clause of the Tennessee Constitution, which gives the General Assembly a constitutional mandate to support and fund “a system of free public schools.” Diverting public funds away from this system violates the mandate, the lawsuit alleges.

“Tennessee’s Constitution is clear: the state must maintain and support a system of free public schools,” Lucas Cameron-Vaughn, senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Tennessee, said in a statement. “This voucher scheme does the opposite. It siphons desperately needed resources away from public schools that serve all students and hands that money to private schools with no accountability, no transparency, and no obligation to serve every child.”

Plaintiffs also argue the public school system is already chronically underfunded. They point to teacher shortages and educator feedback from a 2025 Tennessee Department of Education survey that found the majority of school district leaders say the state’s base funding level is inadequate.

Dustin Park, a Blount County parent whose child has Down syndrome, said the voucher program “fundamentally discriminates” against children with disabilities.

“Private schools can refuse to admit students like my son or fail to provide the accommodations he needs to succeed,” Park said, in contrast to Tennessee public schools that are required to accept all students.

Equitable access for students with disabilities has long been a major issue in the Tennessee voucher debate. The state Department of Education told Chalkbeat last month it was not tracking how many students with disabilities are benefiting from the voucher program, a transparency concern for disability rights advocates.

The lawsuit argues that because the voucher law allows private schools to deny enrollment to high-need students, “it will likely increase the concentration of higher need, more costly-to-educate students in public schools, which are already left with less money available to meet students’ educational needs.”

A Lee spokesperson said the governor is “confident” the court will uphold the program that a “vast majority” of Tennesseans support.

The ten parents who filed the lawsuit in Davidson County Chancery Court are backed by multiple legal and education organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Education Law Center.

The plaintiffs are seeking both permanent and preliminary injunctions against the voucher program. The state has not yet responded in court.

Shortly after the plaintiffs filed the lawsuit, the Department of Education announced it would open applications for next school year’s voucher program in January.

The Department of Education released important dates Thursday for families wanting to apply for the voucher for the 2026-27 school year.

Students currently enrolled in the program can begin the renewal process on Dec. 9, while new applications will open on Jan. 13.

A provision of the voucher law allows lawmakers to quickly expand the program by 5,000 seats during the 2026 legislative session, based on the number of applications the state received last summer. But Lee and other lawmakers want to go even further. House Speaker Cameron Sexton wants to at least double the program, which would cost the state more than $298 million to fund 40,000 seats.

Ahead of what is expected to be a tight budget year, the governor has not yet gone as far as backing Sexton’s proposal. But Lee has repeatedly said it is a top priority for him to expand the program beyond 5,000 new seats.

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee charter commission denies charter appeals from last Memphis ASD schools

2025-10-21T21:25:03+00:00

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The last two schools in Tennessee’s failed Achievement School District will return to local control next year after the Tennessee Public School Charter Commission upheld a Memphis-Shelby County school board decision to deny their applications to become district charter schools.

Now, Memphis-Shelby County leaders will have to decide whether to continue operating Kirby Middle School and Hillcrest High School as standard public schools or shutter the locations that serve more than 800 students when the district absorbs the schools in June 2026.

The district will make the decisions as discussions about other school closures continue in a plan to address longstanding facilities issues in the coming months. Though commission members indicated last week the district plans to keep Kirby open, the district said this week it has not made a decision.

“We are still in the preliminary stages following the charter commission’s decision,” a district spokesperson told Chalkbeat Tennessee this week. “Over the coming weeks, the district will begin gathering data and engaging the communities to determine our next steps for both locations. As always, our focus will remain on doing what’s best for students as we prepare to make a final decision.”

In July, the Memphis school board denied charter applications from IOTA Community Schools, the charter group currently running the two schools, ahead of the upcoming sunset of the ASD program. IOTA appealed to the state commission this fall, but on Oct. 17 commission members cited inconsistent enrollment and low academic performance when discussing their decision to uphold the district’s ruling.

IOTA will continue to manage former ASD school Wooddale Middle in Memphis as a charter school after the commission overturned a MSCS denial last year.

Tess Stovall, the commission’s executive director, noted both Kirby and Hillcrest scored the lowest possible score on Tennessee’s school scoring system for the past three years. Hillcrest also has a significantly lower graduate rate than the district and state average, and Stovall is concerned about an overreliance on virtual instructors at the school.

Stovall acknowledged that the majority of Hillcrest students came to the school already several grade levels behind, but she said charter agreements must end at some point if there are no academic gains.

“This is particularly challenging work; these are challenging recommendations because we know this is a school that is in operation. There are staff, there are students, there are families impacted by this decision,” Stovall said. “We know the staff of IOTA community schools, as with many other operators, have dedicated the last decade trying to turn around some of the most difficult school circumstances in Memphis.”

Commissioner Terence Patterson, who is also CEO of the Memphis Education Fund, called the ASD schools’ decision “really, really difficult. Patterson said he couldn’t overlook the “trend of underperformance” at Kirby, despite his concerns that existing Memphis schools in the neighborhood would not necessarily be a better option or are at capacity.

Tennessee took over Kirby and Hillcrest a decade ago due to low academic performance, assigning the schools to a charter operator that later became IOTA Community Schools. The goal of the Achievement School District was to improve academic performance through a turnaround plan that would allow schools to exit the ASD plan. But the two never met that goal.

At its peak, the ASD portfolio oversaw 33 schools, many of which were turned over to charter operators. The program cost taxpayers more than $1 billion and netted few results. The ASD saw high teacher turnover and did not lead to long-term improvements for students, research showed, while the takeover of schools in mostly low-income and communities of color sparked community backlash. MSCS in recent years has transitioned several schools back into the district.

“I’m incredibly troubled that we went through the legislature’s initiative to set up the ASD to try to address low-performing schools,” said Commission Chair Chris Richards, who represents west Tennessee. “We’ve been 10 years into this, and we continue to have this low-performing school. I can’t warrant a situation where I can support another 10 years.”

The Tennessee General Assembly this year passed legislation to sunset the existing ASD program, though it replaced it with a different intervention plan for low-performing schools that will start by the beginning of the next school year. The new plan will have escalating interventions for targeted schools and initially allow local districts to implement their own turnaround plan or work with an expert before moving toward a state takeover.

Bri Hatch contributed to this story.

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee won’t track how many students with disabilities benefit from new voucher program

2025-10-02T14:15:05+00:00

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Tennessee isn’t tracking how many students with disabilities enroll in its new statewide education voucher program, the latest concern for education advocates who say the program needs to be more transparent.

The Tennessee Department of Education said disability documentation is not required in the law establishing the Education Freedom Scholarship program earlier this year.

The department also isn’t tracking how many first-year vouchers went to students already enrolled in private schools. Some advocates and lawmakers argue robust data is needed to determine who is benefiting from the program.

Equitable access for students with disabilities has long been a major point of debate in the Tennessee voucher conversation, particularly around private schools’ right to refuse enrollment of students with disabilities. A Republican majority in the Tennessee House this January voted down a proposed amendment to the voucher program that provided some protections for students with disabilities in private school enrollment.

Jeff Strand, a former special education teacher and assistant director of government relations at EdTrust-Tennessee, said school choice has been billed by some state leaders as a “silver bullet” for families dissatisfied with their local public schools, but the lack of reporting requirements makes that hard to verify.

“It makes comparison or even evaluation of the success of this program impossible,” Strand said. “That has a double impact for marginalized student populations like students with disabilities.”

National data gathered before Tennessee launched its voucher program showed students with disabilities, along with low-income families and students of color, are frequently left out of school programs because they have fewer options to choose from, among other issues. Private schools with specific special education programs may also charge higher tuition prices.

Students with disabilities who move to a private school also waive certain civil rights, such as the right to a free appropriate public education guaranteed under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

“I’d go so far as to say it’s not going to equally serve students with disabilities,” Strand said of Tennessee’s new program. “But we’re not going to be able to know. There’s nothing for us to learn from this. It’s a blank check to cherry pick and handpick your student population as evidenced you’re doing a good job. But you can say, ‘We’re not going to take the toughest kids.’ You can take the kids you’re going to serve with minimal resources.”

The state’s lack of data on disability status stands in contrast to some major voucher programs around the country, such as Florida or Arizona, which uses paperwork from a student’s previous school and information on voucher spending on disability-related services to track how many students with disabilities are using state tax dollars to attend a private school.

Some Tennessee families might have submitted evidence of their student’s individualized education program if they were vying for a specifically allocated voucher.

The EFS program gave some priority to students who were previously accepted into the Individualized Education Account program, an early school choice program Tennessee adopted for students with disabilities in 2015. Tennessee does not allow simultaneous EFS and IEA enrollment.

But the Tennessee Department of Education said in a statement that documentation submitted by former IEA recipients couldn’t capture the full scope of disability status for all EFS enrollees.

“At this time, we do not have the ability to determine the number of scholarships awarded specifically to applicants with IEPs,” Maggie Hannan, the department’s director of communications, said. “While eligible EFS applicants were able to upload documentation under the IEA category, not all of the documentation confirmed eligibility, nor would this likely have been reflective of all possible applicants with IEPs.”

Chalkbeat Senior National Reporter Kalyn Belsha contributed to this story.

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee won’t say how many students are enrolled in new voucher program

2025-09-17T15:34:57+00:00

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Months after Tennessee launched its first statewide voucher program, the Tennessee Department of Education won’t say how many students are using it to attend private school.

The department has declined to release basic information on enrollment, delayed public records requests, and blocked attempts by at least one lawmaker to gather data on the program approved by Republican lawmakers in January.

The lack of information has shrouded the rollout of Gov. Bill Lee’s signature voucher program, which is expected to funnel more than $146 million of taxpayer money to private schools, and makes it difficult to determine whether the quick implementation of the program is working as intended.

It’s also the latest transparency issue for the department, which drew criticism earlier this summer after Chalkbeat Tennessee reporting revealed Tennessee would not explicitly track how many vouchers will go to students already attending private schools.

Tennessee launched the universal voucher program application in May with significant fanfare. Lee, in a joint statement with the department, touted a “remarkable response” to the program, citing more than 33,000 applications submitted within hours of launch.

But since May, the department has refused to release further data. The education department did not respond to multiple Chalkbeat Tennessee requests this summer for specific numbers regarding acceptances, denials, and applications submitted in the “income-limited” category of the program.

Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds told reporters in July that additional data on Education Freedom Scholarships enrollment would be released in August. None was published.

On Tuesday, the department again declined to answer specific Chalkbeat Tennessee questions, including how many students were enrolled in the program as of Sept. 1 and how many are currently waitlisted.

A department spokesperson said additional information would be provided in “the coming days” and again pointed to numbers on applications, rather than data on actual enrollment in the program.

“The department looks forward to sharing data from the Education Freedom Scholarship (EFS) program for the 2025-26 school year in the coming days,” said Maggie Hannan, communications director for the TDOE. “It’s important to note that with more than 42,000 applications, approximately 50 percent were submitted by families with a qualified income. This remarkably strong response demonstrates what Gov. Lee has known all along: Tennessee parents want choices when it comes to their child’s education, regardless of ZIP code or income level.”

The department has delayed fulfilling Chalkbeat Tennessee records requests filed in early August, which are still outstanding. It also knocked down data requests filed by Rep. Caleb Hemmer earlier this summer.

Hemmer, a Nashville Democrat, said last week he is considering filing a lawsuit against the department to push for more transparency.

“It’s a continual theme of not following the law and having to take extreme steps to correct that. It’s so frustrating,” Hemmer said. “Our kids deserve better, Tennesseans deserve better. It overshadows the good work that the department and department employees do for our kids.”

The department has denied Hemmer’s request for residency data of student applicants. Hemmer said he filed a records request after learning the department was not collecting data on whether applicants already attended a private school when applying for the voucher.

“After getting the application and looking at it, I was surprised to learn that they left out this key piece of information,” Hemmer said. “So, I wanted to see for myself what the data looked like. I wanted to see how many of my constituents applied.”

The department has cited student privacy laws, though Hemmer believes the data could be released as “directory” data.

“Our education attorney’s review found that they had a different opinion of what should and shouldn’t be public,” Hemmer said.

Deborah Fisher, executive director for the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, said that while it’s not unheard of for a state lawmaker to “tangle” with a state agency to get information, it is not often that a lawmaker sues for the information.

But Fisher said the months of silence from the education department is “unusual.”

“To get just radio silence on the governor’s signature program is unusual,” Fisher said. “You should be able to get basic government data. This is government money, this is taxpayer money. You should be able to get basic information.”

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis public school enrollment is dropping faster than the state. What’s fueling the decline?

2025-09-16T20:37:58+00:00

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Student enrollment in Memphis-Shelby County Schools has declined by over 9% in the past decade, far outpacing statewide and national trends.

MSCS lost more than 10,000 students in its traditional and charter schools between 2014 and 2024, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of data from the Tennessee Department of Education. Preliminary data provided by the district in August indicated further loss of nearly 2,000 students in the past two school years, but finalized numbers are not yet available from the state.

Throughout Tennessee, public school enrollment dropped by just under 2.5% in the 2014 to 2024 time frame, which mirrors national rates.

These declines exacerbate longstanding budget issues in the district and underscore in part why leaders are now considering school closures. The decline also indicates the district’s post-pandemic efforts to boost enrollment have not panned out at a time when Tennessee leaders are prioritizing access to private schools through a new state voucher program.

“We have to become competitive,” MSCS board member Natalie McKinney said, noting that enrollment numbers affect the amount of money given to the district through the state’s per-pupil funding model.

“We have to make sure that we have everything, the options and choices and opportunities that people want for their children,” she added. “But we also have to come to the realization that we’re underresourced and underfunded anyway.”

It’s not clear exactly where local students have gone in recent years, with total enrollment dropping from around 116,000 to 105,000 in the decade span. Some nearby suburban districts have grown since a controversial 2014 “de-merger” where six smaller independent school systems broke off from the county district.

Four of the six districts gained a total of around 3,000 students in the past decade, which does not fully account for MSCS’ decline. And two of those districts, Millington and Arlington, lost students at a similar rate to MSCS.

National and local experts say public school declines can be attributed to a variety of factors, including lower birth rates and general population changes. In 2024, Shelby County lost more residents than any city in the U.S.

Increased interest in other education options, such as homeschooling and private schools, is also contributing to a nationwide public exodus. Shelby County private school enrollment data is not available. But in Tennessee overall, private school enrollment jumped by over 23% from 2019 to 2021, compared to 4.3% for the country as a whole.

“We have the most charters in the state; we have in a county, the most school systems in the state; we have a lot of homeschoolers,” McKinney said. “Some people just don’t like the school system. They don’t feel like it will do what they need to do for their youth.”

The district also differs from national trends in its charter enrollment numbers. MSCS charter enrollment increased before 2020 but has since remained steady at around 20,000 students.

Terence Patterson, president of the Memphis Education Fund, said all of the “macro factors” affecting traditional public schools, including surges in private enrollment, likely contribute to recent MSCS charter stagnation, too. He also said the number of charter schools in MSCS has “plateaued” since 2017, with some opening and others being consolidated or closed down.

MSCS did not respond to multiple requests for comment. But district leaders, including McKinney, have said that student enrollment will be a factor considered in upcoming school closures, with recommendations expected from the new facilities committee this fall.

Patterson said around 30 schools in the district are overenrolled and outperforming schools under capacity.

“And so the question is, how can the district think about expanding seats in those higher performing schools, whether that means building additions or thinking about maintenance?” he said.

Meanwhile, more students are expected to flock to private schools in the coming years, said Tara Moon, a policy analyst at Georgetown thinktank Future Ed. The Trump administration’s new universal voucher program will drive further enrollment, Moon said, and Tennessee lawmakers implemented their own version of that policy this fall.

“It’s demonstrating a shift in family choices, and families are starting to consider other options outside of their traditional public school,” she said.

Moon also said that immigration “won’t play as large of a role in sustaining enrollment” as it has in the past, given more restrictive U.S. policies. That could hit higher poverty schools the hardest, she added.

“High poverty schools tend to have more homeless students or immigrant students, and those students tend to be more transient,” she said.

Correction: Sept. 19, 2025: A previous version of this story stated that MSCS charter school enrollment declined post-pandemic. That data was based on an outdated list of district schools. The story has been updated to show the correct enrollment numbers and trends.

Bri Hatch covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Bri at bhatch@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee to give more average per-pupil funding to voucher participants than public school students

2025-08-19T20:47:58+00:00

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Tennessee public school students this school year will receive less state per-pupil funding than private school students using the state’s new voucher program, drawing sharp criticism from public education advocates and Democrats who argue the state is prioritizing voucher participants at the expense of other students.

Tennessee will spend an average of $7,023 per public school student in the state’s education funding formula, compared to the $7,295 given to students participating in the new Education Freedom Scholarship program.

Public school students will still receive more public funds, though, due to local government contributions to the formula and separate federal funds.

The 2025-26 funding formula allocation numbers, presented in a state board of Education meeting last week, have drawn criticism from opponents of Gov. Bill Lee’s voucher plan that launched this summer.

Tennessee Education Association President Tanya Coats said Monday that vouchers “shortchange” public education and the TEA is “deeply concerned” the state is providing more per-pupil funding for vouchers than in per-pupil public education funding.

“This disparity makes clear that Tennessee’s leaders are prioritizing private school subsidies over strengthening the public schools that serve the overwhelming majority of children in every community,” Coats said. “Rather than closing resource gaps, the state is growing disparities by sending more money to private schools while public schools continue to struggle with overcrowded classrooms, outdated materials, and educator shortages.”

Tennessee law requires that public school students are funded at a higher amount than the voucher program.

The governor’s office and Tennessee Department of Education this week noted state and local governments must contribute to the formula, known as the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement (TISA).

With local contributions, the average per-pupil TISA allocation is $9,810, more than $2,000 higher than the voucher amount. TISA funding increased by about 3% this year.

“The EFS scholarship amount is $7,295 and is fully state funded, requiring no contribution from local governments,” said Maggie Hannan, communications director at TDOE. “Moreover, the state has made unprecedented investments in public education during the Lee administration, totaling over $2 billion since 2019.”

The financial responsibility of local governments vary, with economic drivers like Nashville funding proportionally more of their local formula while the state shoulders more of the burden for smaller, rural counties.

Public school enrollment still dwarfs voucher participation in Tennessee. Tennessee estimates more than 966,000 children will be enrolled in Tennessee public schools this year, amounting to nearly $6.8 billion in funding from the state and nearly $2.7 billion from local governments.

The education department has blocked data requests and declined to answer questions about how many and which students have been accepted into the voucher program, but the program is limited to 20,000 participants this year.

Still, mechanisms in the law mean Tennessee will likely expand the program every year going forward by up to 5,000 new students, a move an EdTrust analysis found could cost the state more than $892 million in the first five years alone.

House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Ray Clemmons on Tuesday criticized historic education funding levels in recent years and warned local governments would have to raise taxes to keep up with their local share.

“Bill Lee’s legacy will be destroying public education and undermining opportunity for every child in the state of Tennessee,” said Clemmons, a Nashville Democrat. “They have proven, time and again, to bend and stretch the law to fit their false narrative in support of these voucher scams to the detriment of public education across the state of Tennessee.”

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

Gov. Bill Lee downplays transparency concerns about Tennessee school voucher program

2025-07-01T23:54:58+00:00

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Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee defended the state’s new private-school voucher program amid questions about its application process, which does not require families to report where their students went to school before.

“It’s not required by the legislation, so it’s not necessary to have,” Lee said Tuesday, reaffirming comments his office made last week about the legislation that established the program. “What we hope for is universal school choice where every family, regardless of their child’s past education history, has access to a scholarship. Ultimately, that would be the goal.”

But it will be nearly impossible for Tennessee to determine whether the new program, a longtime passion project for Lee, is actually expanding access to private schools for all Tennesseans or providing taxpayer funds mainly to families whose children are already enrolled in private schools.

How Tennessee’s expansive, expensive school voucher law made it to the finish line

Chalkbeat Tennessee reported in late June that Tennessee is not asking families to report their student’s prior enrollment. This is a frequently asked question in other state voucher programs and was a required question on the application for Tennessee’s first voucher initiative, the Education Savings Account program.

Tennessee is also not collecting data on the household income of tens of thousands of applicants vying for a “universal” voucher, the vouchers open to any Tennessee resident, regardless of family income.

In the first year of the program, half of the state’s 20,000 vouchers are subject to income limits. They are reserved for families who make under 300% of the federal income threshold to qualify for free or reduced price lunch. A family of four, for example, would be eligible for the income-capped voucher if they made less than $173,160.

When asked how he would respond to criticism that a lack of data could hamper accountability and oversight measures of the program, Lee said he didn’t think it would be an issue. He also said he wasn’t concerned about tracking whether the program is indeed expanding access to private schools for families who had previously been enrolled in public schools, which has long been Lee’s stated goal for the program.

“With half of the families being low-income families, I think that problem is being solved,” Lee said.

Lawmakers who opposed Lee’s voucher plan have raised questions about the data collection. State Rep. Jody Barrett, a Republican from Dickson, has called for an independent board to oversee the program, according to a Tennessee Lookout report.

Meanwhile, Rep. Caleb Hemmer, a Nashville Democrat, has been seeking answers and data from the department about the program. Hemmer sharply criticized the department on Tuesday and said that the vouchers should be called “Education Fraud Accounts.”

“We are distributing over $125 million in taxpayer funds in $7,300 increments, yet there appears to be no meaningful oversight or basic data collection,” Hemmer said. “Common sense would dictate that we ask fundamental questions and track how this money is being used and who really is receiving it.”

Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds last week declined Hemmer’s request for demographic information on students who had applied for the program.

Though Lee on Wednesday said he was encouraged that “Tennesseans of multiple backgrounds and economic diversity” want to participate in the program, the department has released very limited information about the program so far.

It is not yet clear how many applicants have been accepted into the program. The TDOE has not responded to multiple Chalkbeat Tennessee requests this summer asking how many applicants have been accepted or provided specific information on whether the department has filled 11 positions the legislature funded to help administer the voucher program.

“We’ve already seen the consequences of unchecked voucher programs in other states — most recently in Florida, where funds were used to purchase more than 5,000 theme park tickets, including to Disney World,” Hemmer said. “I am currently working with the Legislative Attorney’s Office to explore all legal avenues to access this publicly available data and ensure this program is operating within the bounds of the law and in the best interest of taxpayers.

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

Applications for Tennessee’s first universal private school voucher program exceed spots

2025-05-16T19:24:18+00:00

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The volume of applications for the state’s new universal private school voucher program already outnumbers the total scholarships available.

Within hours of the launch of the Tennessee Education Freedom Scholarship program on May 15, the state received over 33,000 applications, according to a joint press release from Gov. Bill Lee and the state education department.

That’s for 20,000 total spots this upcoming school year. Parents can still submit applications for review. A waitlist will be established, according to the press release.

On social media, some parents expressed frustration over technical issues during the program’s rollout.

Lee called the wave of applications a success.

“This remarkable response demonstrates what we have known all along: Tennessee parents want choices when it comes to their child’s education,” Lee said in a statement.

The governor made enacting private school vouchers a key campaign promise since his first run in 2018. After years of legal challenges and controversy, legislators finally passed the universal program during a special legislative session in January.

This program is the first to apply across all counties and income levels.

Opponents of the voucher program expressed concern about using public funds to support private education.

“This program will function as it does in other states – the vast majority of the vouchers will be awarded to families already attending private schools with virtually no accountability or oversight available to the public,” said Tanya Coats, president of the Tennessee Education Association, the state’s largest professional organization for teachers.

How Tennessee’s private school vouchers work

The first 10,000 scholarships are set aside for families with incomes below 300% of the threshold for students to receive federally subsidized school meals, as well as students who already received vouchers under a previous program and students with certain disabilities.

The remaining vouchers are available to any Tennessee student who is entitled to attend public school and is “lawfully present” in the U.S. This year, state legislators failed to pass a bill that would charge undocumented students tuition to attend public school.

The income cap will drop after this school year. The law also allows the program to grow by 5,000 students annually, based on interest and funding.

Each scholarship amounts to $7,295. The average annual cost of private school tuition is $11,886 in Tennessee, according to an analysis by Private School Review.

So far, more than 200 schools have signaled they will accept vouchers, according to the Tennessee Department of Education. A list can be found at tn.gov/education/EFS under the “Registered EFS Schools” tab.

Will most vouchers fund students already in private school?

One major question is how many public school students will switch to private schools through this voucher program. The state projected that 65% of vouchers would go to students who already attend private schools.

Another question is the total cost. The program will cost at least $1.1 billion over the next five years, according to a state analysis.

Whether Tennesseans will view the program as a success or failure is also uncertain. Polls show voters have split opinions about vouchers.

Supporters and opponents will also watch closely for academic outcome data. After much debate over how the program should handle testing, scholarship recipients in grades 3-11 must take a nationally standardized achievement test or the TCAP test for math and language arts. Private schools must report this date to the Office of Research and Accountability.

Here are the charter operators applying to open or run schools in Tennessee in 2026-27

2025-02-25T23:05:58+00:00

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Charter school operators have applied to open or run 13 schools in five Tennessee school systems beginning in the fall of 2026 amid the state’s rapidly changing school-choice landscape.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools received five applications by this month’s deadline — the most by any school system statewide, according to the state education department.

They include two from IOTA Community Schools asking for new 10-year charters to continue operating schools in its network that are set to exit the state-run Achievement School District next year.

And two aspiring charter operators are interested in opening Tennessee’s first-ever “opportunity” charter schools in Memphis and Nashville under a 2024 state law aimed at creating learning options for youth considered at risk of becoming disconnected from traditional public schools.

School choice options are expanding rapidly under policies pushed by Gov. Bill Lee and panned by critics who say they are destabilizing traditional public schools. Traditional public schools serve most of the state’s nearly 1 million students, including historically underserved groups.

The state is preparing to launch a universal school voucher program this fall to give up to 20,000 students taxpayer funds to pay toward private school tuition.

And a new charter school proposal from Lee would create ways for operators to bypass their local elected school boards and apply directly to the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission for authorization to open more of the independently governed but publicly funded schools.

If that bill becomes law, some of its provisions could kick in with this year’s cohort of charter applicants.

The filings kick off application reviews by staff for each receiving school system, which will recommend to their school boards whether to approve or deny them this spring.

Based on that local feedback, rejected applicants can submit revised applications for another school board vote this summer. Applicants that are denied again can appeal that decision to the state commission to vote on this fall.

Last year, nine applicants met the state’s Feb. 1 deadline to submit proposals to open a charter school for 2025-26. Six were ultimately approved, including four on appeal.

In 2023, 14 operators applied, and six were ultimately approved, including four on appeal.

New legislation, new law could impact Tennessee’s charter sector

Under the governor’s new legislative proposal to revise charter school law, beginning this July 1, any school board whose decision to deny a charter application is overturned by the state three times within three years could be bypassed, allowing a charter operator to apply directly to the state charter commission for authorization during the next five years.

Also at play this year is the 2024 opportunity charter school law, pushed by House Speaker Cameron Sexton, to open new charter school campuses for middle or high school students who are considered at risk.

At least 75% of each school’s students would have to be documented as dealing with any of a range of challenges such as juvenile crime, substance abuse, chronic absenteeism, teen pregnancy, getting held back in several grades, dropping out of school, or experiencing abuse or neglect.

Opportunity charter schools would operate under different standards than traditional public schools or other public charter schools.

If their opportunity charter applications are approved, the Still I Rise Academy in Memphis and The Rock Academy in Nashville schools would not receive A-F letter grades in their first year of operation, based on rules approved in December by the state Board of Education.

After that, the state’s calculation to grade opportunity charter middle schools would place slightly more importance on academic growth than on student proficiency. And the state’s grades for opportunity charter high schools would emphasize college and career readiness.

Hillsdale-linked charter group didn’t apply again

Missing for a second straight year from the state’s list of charter applicants is American Classical Education, the group associated with Michigan’s Hillsdale College. Hillsdale made headlines in 2022 with Lee’s endorsement and invitation to its leaders to apply to open at least 50 charter schools across Tennessee that align with the governor’s conservative beliefs regarding civics and history.

American Classical withdrew its first three applications later that year amid public outrage over Hillsdale President Larry Arnn’s comment that teachers are “trained in the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country.”

In 2023, American Classical was approved to open two charter schools in Tennessee, one authorized locally in Rutherford County and the other approved by the state commission on appeal for Madison County.

Asked why the network didn’t seek new charters in 2025, board member Tricia Stickel told Chalkbeat that American Classical is focused on supporting its new Rutherford County school, which opened in La Vergne last August.

The Madison County charter, which in January received its second one-year delay to launch, is now scheduled to open for 2026-27 as American Classical seeks to hire a leader and secure a campus location.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Last schools in Tennessee’s shrinking Achievement School District seek to make their move

2025-02-21T00:33:23+00:00

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The operator of the last charter schools in Tennessee’s waning Achievement School District is seeking to continue managing them as part of their original school system in Memphis.

A decade ago, the State of Tennessee took over Kirby Middle and Hillcrest High schools due to low academic performance and assigned them to a charter management group called Green Dot Public Schools, now known as IOTA Community Schools.

The schools didn’t improve enough to exit the ASD on their own under a turnaround plan that was never meant to last more than a decade.

But now, with its 10-year contracts with the ASD soon to expire, IOTA has applied with Memphis-Shelby County Schools for new charter agreements to manage the two campuses in southeast Memphis beginning with the 2026-27 school year.

IOTA already is transitioning Wooddale Middle, the third and final Memphis school leaving the ASD, to reopen this fall under a new contract between IOTA and the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission.

Last fall, the commission authorized IOTA’s new charter after overturning the Memphis school board’s decision to deny its application to continue operating Wooddale.

Planning for the future of the Achievement School District’s last three schools — and its 1,352 students — foreshadows changes ahead for the state’s most ambitious and aggressive school turnaround model, which had 33 schools in its portfolio at its peak in 2016.

The initiative, created under a 2010 state law as part of Tennessee’s federal Race to the Top initiative, has been marred by painful takeovers of neighborhood schools, contentious handoffs to charter networks, and mostly abysmal student performance on state tests.

Last year, a proposal to eliminate the ASD passed the Tennessee Senate but a different version to revamp the program stalled in the House, even as several of the GOP-controlled legislature’s top Republican leaders acknowledged that the model has failed and should be replaced.

Gov. Bill Lee’s administration is expected to propose changes this year, but neither his office nor the state education department has said what that might look like.

Elizabeth Lane Johnson, the governor’s press secretary, confirmed Thursday that Lee’s administration was “working with stakeholders to consider legislation around the Achievement School District.”

A potential successor could be the likely expansion of a small pilot turnaround initiative that began in 2022 with five low-performing schools. It has received generally positive reviews.

The antithesis of the Achievement School District, the pilot model emphasizes collaboration over takeover and does not use charter management organizations to lead its turnaround work. Instead, low-performing schools partner with an independent turnaround expert and a locally appointed committee to create and implement an improvement plan emphasizing data, coaching, and making adjustments in real time.

In Memphis, Trezevant High School and Hawkins Mill Elementary have shown marked improvement under the pilot program with the aid of turnaround consultant Cognia.

Other schools still in the pilot are Jere Baxter Middle School in Nashville and Lincoln Elementary in Jackson-Madison County, both using Ed Direction as their turnaround consultant, with mixed results. Orchard Knob Middle, in Chattanooga, dropped out of the program before it started after Hamilton County school board members said an existing improvement plan was already working.

Fate of the last two ASD schools is uncertain

The future of the last two schools exiting the ASD will be decided this year after staff with Memphis-Shelby County Schools reviews IOTA’s applications and recommends whether to approve them.

Both campuses serve mostly students of color, more than half of whom are considered economically disadvantaged. According to the state’s most recent school report card, Kirby Middle made average progress for its students in 2023-24 and was graded an F by the state. Hillcrest High made below-average progress for its students and was graded a D.

If the Memphis school board denies IOTA’s applications, the network could appeal those decisions to the state commission, which has the power to transition more ASD schools from one state-run district to another state-run district — just as it’s in the process of doing with IOTA’s Wooddale Middle.

Adding to that discussion could be a new charter-friendly proposal from the governor to create ways for charter operators to bypass their local elected school boards and apply directly to the state commission for authorization.

If the legislature passes the governor’s bill, beginning July 1, any school board whose decision to deny a charter application is overturned by the state three times within three years could be bypassed, allowing a charter operator to apply directly to the state commission for authorization during the next five years.

Appealing to the commission isn’t a slam dunk, however. Since it began hearing appeals in 2021, the panel has sided with local school boards on half of their application denials.

State commission is familiar with ASD’s last charter operator

The commission already has one IOTA school in its portfolio.

Bluff City High School opened in Memphis in 2017 when IOTA was part of the Green Dot Public Schools network based in California. Last summer, the network’s charter schools in Memphis transitioned to IOTA, a new Tennessee-based network, after Green Dot ended its expansion efforts in Tennessee and Texas.

Asked Thursday whether she’d prefer to operate under the oversight of Memphis-Shelby County Schools or the state commission, IOTA Executive Director Jocquell Rodgers said she can’t compare them because the local district has never authorized one of the network’s schools.

Under Executive Director Tess Stovall, the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission has expanded its footprint and impact on Tennessee education.

“My goal has always been to forge a relationship with the local district because I believe we serve the same children,” Rodgers said. “But I will say that I’ve enjoyed working with the state charter commission. Their expectations are very clear, and our relationship has helped us build stronger processes as an organization and stronger academic outcomes for our students.”

For instance, when the commission put Bluff City High School on academic probation in 2022, the state was clear about necessary improvement steps, Rodgers said. Last month, in recognition of the school’s progress, the commission moved Bluff City off academic probation to a lesser intervention level.

The state Board of Education rated both the commission and Memphis-Shelby County Schools as “exemplary” in its most recent evaluations of charter authorizers in Tennessee.

The commission currently has six former ASD charter schools in its portfolio, most of which left the turnaround program under a 2021 state law letting higher-achieving ASD schools bypass their home districts to transition to the commission’s control:

Cornerstone Prep Denver
Cornerstone Prep Lester
Lester Prep
LEAD Neely’s Bend
Libertas School of Memphis
Promise Academy Spring Hill

All of those former ASD schools are in Memphis except LEAD Neely’s Bend, which is in Nashville.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Some Tennessee charter school applicants could bypass local districts under governor’s proposal

2025-02-13T23:52:04+00:00

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Gov. Bill Lee is pushing for a major revision to Tennessee charter school law to create ways for operators to bypass their local elected school boards and apply directly to a state commission for authorization.

The legislature’s Republican majority leaders have filed a bill on behalf of Lee’s administration to create three new pathways for charter school operators to seek approval from the state:

Beginning July 1, any school board whose decision to deny a charter application is overturned by the state three times within three years could be bypassed, allowing a charter operator to apply directly to the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission for authorization during the next five years.
Public colleges and universities could apply to the state commission to open a charter school for K-12 students.
An operator with at least one charter school that is authorized by a local school board or the state commission and that has been operational for at least one year could apply either to the local district or state commission to replicate its model to create one or more charter schools.

If the Republican governor’s bill passes the GOP-controlled legislature, the measure could further dilute local control over Tennessee’s charter sector, while giving the powerful 4-year-old commission even more authority to open and close publicly funded but independently controlled charter schools.

The commission, whose nine members are appointed by the governor, already has significantly expanded its footprint through an appellate process that allows the state to authorize and open charter schools when overturning a local board’s application denial. Another law allows better-performing charter schools in the state’s Achievement School District turnaround program to transfer to the state commission’s oversight, rather than returning to their home district.

The charter commission now oversees 25 charters, including seven that are scheduled to open in the next two years and one transferring from the ASD. Most are in urban Davidson and Shelby counties, but a few operate in suburban Madison and Rutherford counties.

Three of the schools were previously overseen by the state Board of Education before the state commission took over its charter responsibilities in 2021 under a 2019 law initiated by Lee.

The governor, who is one of the nation’s biggest charter advocates, pushed to create the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission to ensure that high-quality charter schools can open and ineffective ones are closed.

He initially wanted to give the new body the power to bypass local school boards altogether and open new charter schools directly. But he agreed to limit the commission’s authority after district leaders expressed outrage to their legislators about any measure that would circumvent local education control.

The commission has not been a rubber stamp for opening charter schools. Since it began hearing appeals in 2021, the panel has sided with local school boards on half of their application denials.

Gov. Bill Lee (center) poses in 2021 with original members whom he appointed to the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission. Commissioners represent all three of the state's grand divisions.

However, the latest legislative proposal, if approved, would move the state closer to Lee’s original vision for the commission.

The first proposed pathway — allowing operators to bypass local boards if their denials have been repeatedly overturned — is viewed by charter advocates as an incentive for school boards to take their charter authorization process seriously.

“This bill supports fairness, transparency, and high standards for Tennessee’s successful public charter school community, upholding local input while ensuring districts fulfill their responsibilities,” said Elizabeth Lane Johnson, the governor’s press secretary.

Charter critics, meanwhile, characterize it as a way to pressure school boards into approving charter applications.

While districts would begin with a clean slate on July 1, a review of the last three years of the commission’s appellate decisions shows that Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, in Davidson County, has had the most denials overturned by the state, followed by Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

Asked about the proposed changes to the state’s charter school law, a spokesman for Nashville’s school system said district officials do not typically comment publicly on pending legislation.

In Memphis, school board Chair Joyce Dorse Coleman told Chalkbeat that leaders of Memphis-Shelby County Schools are “carefully monitoring” the bill.

The Tennessee School Boards Association did not respond to Chalkbeat’s request for comment.

Tennessee charter growth has been nurtured by out-of-state groups

In all, Tennessee has about 115 charter schools, most authorized locally by the board for Memphis-Shelby County Schools, with a total statewide enrollment of about 44,000 students, according to the Tennessee Charter School Center. Under a 2002 state law, Tennessee’s first three charter schools opened in Chattanooga, Memphis, and Nashville in 2003.

Along with funding from several Tennessee-based foundations, the state has seen an influx of money from out-of-state philanthropic groups to promote and support the sector’s growth in Tennessee. They include Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Charter School Growth Fund, and the City Fund. (The City Fund’s partners include two prominent figures in Tennessee education: Chris Barbic, founding superintendent of the charter-centric Achievement School District, and Dorsey Hopson, founding superintendent of the merged Memphis-Shelby County Schools district.)

Much of the money is distributed through the State Collaborative on Reforming Education, or SCORE, a nonpartisan education advocacy and research organization founded by former U.S. Sen. Bill Frist in 2009. (Among SCORE’s grant recipients is the Memphis Education Fund, whose president and CEO, Terence Patterson, is a member of the state charter school commission.)

In its most recent report outlining SCORE’s goals for 2030, the organization listed three recommendations to bolster the state’s charter sector, including one to expand pathways for authorization to open new schools.

“The General Assembly should update state law to allow charter school operators to consolidate under a single authorizer when seeking renewal with schools under multiple authorizers,” the report said. “Further, the state should allow existing high-performing charter schools seeking to replicate and new charter schools seeking to meet a critical workforce need to choose their authorizer.”

The Tennessee Charter School Center also supports the governor’s legislative proposal, said CEO Elizabeth Fiveash.

“We appreciate the fact that the legislation continues to provide districts the first opportunity to review charter school applications,” Fiveash said, “but also provides increased accountability for districts that don’t meet their authorizing obligations.”

You can read the bill here and track its movement on the General Assembly’s website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee governor expects a quick launch after signing universal school voucher law

2025-02-13T01:32:25+00:00

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Gov. Bill Lee signed Tennessee’s universal school voucher bill into law Wednesday, officially kicking off the state’s push to roll out the program this year for up to 20,000 students.

With only about six months until the new school year, the state has a lot to do before eligible families can receive taxpayer funding to send their children to private schools.

The state Board of Education must develop and approve rules for Lee’s Education Freedom Scholarship Program. For instance, how can families appeal if the state denies them a voucher?

Tennessee’s education department will have to staff up — a projected 11 new positions — to oversee the program.

From bumpy road to fast track: How Tennessee’s universal school voucher law made it to the finish line

And perhaps most pressing, Lee’s administration must decide whether to seek a new vendor to automate application and payment processes for the statewide program, or use its current vendor, Indiana-based Student First Technologies, which manages the state’s two existing smaller school voucher programs.

Because the state’s 2023 contract with Student First requires the company to accommodate at least 20,000 users, the legislature’s financial analysts assumed the state would use Student First for the statewide program too.

But Lee said Wednesday that no decision has been made about a vendor, and he wouldn’t commit to ensuring that the state education department seeks competitive bids if it decides to pursue a new company.

“I’ll defer to the department on the procurement process,” he told reporters after signing the bill.

Last month, after the voucher bill passed during a special legislative session, the governor’s spokeswoman said the state was exploring its options.

“While we have had success with Student First Technologies, … our team has met with a number of experienced vendors to learn how other states have implemented universal school choice programs successfully,” said Elizabeth L. Johnson, Lee’s press secretary.

Tennessee bypassed the market leader when choosing its first voucher vendor

In 2023, Tennessee raised eyebrows by signing a $3.675 million, five-year contract with Student First, a young company with a small staff, modest cash flow, and no state-level experience managing education savings accounts.

The contract was signed after a competitive bid process, and after the state failed to reach terms with Florida-based ClassWallet, Tennessee’s first choice to run its education savings account program for Davidson, Hamilton, and Shelby counties, as well as a smaller voucher program for students with disabilities. Within a year, Student First launched its electronic platforms in Tennessee.

But several other states using Student First say the company has not kept up with demand as private school voucher programs have expanded nationally.

Last fall, Arkansas terminated its Student First contract after the company failed to meet deadlines and created faulty platforms, according to that state’s education department.

In West Virginia, which awarded Student First a $10 million contract to manage purchases and payments for its education savings accounts, the system struggled to keep up as enrollment climbed.

Tennessee’s education department has not fulfilled Chalkbeat’s public records request, submitted last June, to inspect correspondence and other documents that would show how Student First platforms have performed, including the thousands of transactions that the company manages on behalf of the state with ESA participants.

Mark Duran, the company’s founder and chief executive officer, did not respond Wednesday to Chalkbeat’s request for comment.

Meanwhile, other companies in the school-choice marketplace are interested in pursuing a new contract for Tennessee’s statewide program, including ClassWallet, which scored highest in the 2023 competitive bid process and currently has voucher contracts with 12 states.

“ClassWallet would welcome the opportunity to bring our mission to Tennessee and maximize the impact of school choice for families and students there,” Jamie Rosenberg, the company’s founder and CEO, told Chalkbeat.

He added that ClassWallet has experience and capacity to launch a state-level education savings account program in a matter of weeks.

“Families tell states that our software is straightforward and easy to use,” he said Wednesday.

Governor is confident of a 2025 launch

Voucher opponents criticized Lee for including his proposal in a special legislative session in late January that also addressed disaster aid and immigration policies. But Lee argued that passage in early 2025 would be necessary to launch the voucher program in time for the upcoming school year.

Gov. Bill Lee is surrounded by students as he signs the Education Freedom Scholarship Act on Wednesday.

After signing the bill Wednesday, Lee said he told Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds to “get started on implementation.”

He wouldn’t speak about the details of a rollout, but said he’s confident of a 2025 launch.

“You’ve got to remember, we already have an education savings account plan in place in this state for our three largest school districts, so we have some expertise within the department in how to implement this plan,” Lee told reporters.

While no timeline was immediately available, the department will have to open the application window soon to determine which private schools will participate. Then comes the application window for families who want access to the vouchers, which provide about $7,200 toward the cost of private education services.

“We will partner with the State Board of Education as they promulgate rules and are collaborating with the state’s Central Procurement Office to explore all options to implement the program in compliance with state procurement laws and rules,” said department spokesman Brian Blackley.

Also at issue: How will the state confirm legal residency for participating students?

While the initiative is touted as a “universal” program for anyone in Tennessee — the family income limits disappear after the first year — Republican leaders included a provision in the law saying the state education department “shall deny” any school voucher application from families that “cannot establish the eligible student’s lawful presence in the United States.”

The provision appears to conflict with a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that requires states to offer public education programs to all children, regardless of their immigration status. The Tennessee program pays for private-school education, but it uses public funds.

“What’s most important to know,” Lee told reporters, “is that this language doesn’t change anything about the state’s obligation as it currently stands to educate children.

“But for this scholarship,” he added, “it’s only available to Tennessee citizens.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

How Tennessee’s expansive, expensive school voucher law made it to the finish line

2025-01-31T21:15:03+00:00

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and fellow school voucher proponents have finally claimed their ultimate prize: a state law that will ultimately allow for families all over the state, rich and poor, to use taxpayer funds to send their children to private schools.

The Education Freedom Scholarship Act, approved by the legislature in a special session of the legislature Thursday, will launch this fall with up to 20,000 students statewide, and continue to grow each year, with income limits disappearing after the first year.

In the special session, the bill sailed through committees stacked with voucher supporters, and cleared the House and Senate with comfortable margins. Lawmakers batted away amendments seeking to strengthen the bill’s accountability provisions and protections for disabled people.

But Tennessee’s embrace of school vouchers for all was never a foregone conclusion. Slimmed-down versions of the idea died many times in the legislature before one finally squeaked through on a controversial vote in 2019. A group of parents and local governments sued to block it, and the courts initially declared the plan unconstitutional.

The detractors and skeptics continued to push back on the plan when Lee proposed the expansive program in 2024, with more than 50 school boards on record opposing it. That bill stalled last year in the Senate finance committee.

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. Polls show that public support for vouchers in Tennessee is generally split.

Even now, after its passage, big questions loom about the cost of the statewide program, and whether it meaningfully advances the cause of school choice. The Education Freedom Scholarship Act is projected to cost taxpayers more than $1 billion over the next five years. And because of the high income thresholds, 65% of the vouchers will end up going to students who already attend private schools, the state projects.

Meanwhile, students of color, kids from low-income families, and those with disabilities are often left out of school choice programs due to the locations and supply of private schools, transportation challenges, and the high cost of tuition, national data shows.

So how did vouchers take on an air of inevitability in Tennessee, just a few years after they were staring down defeat?

It was a combination of political swings, judicial shakeups that led to a string of court victories, and a pandemic that ignited culture wars and shook faith in public schools. Also, credit behind-the-scenes lobbying and political maneuvers and heavy influence from out-of-state groups with deep pockets.

In 2019, for example, a questionable parliamentary move led to the passage of the limited program, prompting several calls for a federal investigation. Two years later, the death of a Tennessee Supreme Court justice, just months after hearing arguments in the case, tipped the high court’s balance of power, likely contributing to the ruling that upheld the law.

At the center of the effort was Lee himself, who was determined to get universal vouchers across the finish line before the end of his second term in 2027. The governor used hardball tactics and welcomed spending from deep-pocketed out-of-state groups seeking to influence the outcome. He also loaded the bill with more spending to mollify public school advocates, and bundled funding for his plan with money for disaster relief and immigration in the wake of Hurricane Helene and President Donald Trump’s election.

Below is a closer look at where the march to universal vouchers began, and how it arrived at its destination in Tennessee:

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Thomas Wilburn is the senior data editor for Chalkbeat. Contact him at twilburn@chalkbeat.org.

Project credits:

Photography and illustrations: Elaine Cromie
Editing: Krishnan M. Anantharaman, Tonyaa Weathersbee

Editor’s note: This project has been updated with developments from the 2025 legislative session.

Universal school voucher plan passes in Tennessee legislature

2025-01-30T19:41:18+00:00

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Tennessee lawmakers on Thursday approved Gov. Bill Lee’s universal private school voucher bill, creating a new funding track for educating K-12 students statewide.

The 54-44 vote in the House, where Democrats and some rural Republicans joined to oppose the program, came after four hours of debate, including dozens of failed attempts to add amendments aimed at strengthening accountability and protections for students with disabilities, among other things.

The Senate later voted 20-13 to pass Lee’s Education Freedom Act.

The Republican governor called the bill’s passage “a milestone in advancing education in Tennessee.” He is expected to quickly sign his signature education plan into law.

“I’ve long believed we can have the best public schools and give parents a choice in their child’s education, regardless of income or ZIP code,” Lee said in a statement.

His victory culminates the drive from voucher advocates who for decades watched their policy dreams come up short in the battleground state of Tennessee.

Under Lee’s administration, they’ve racked up a string of remarkable victories. But voucher critics blame intimidation tactics, political maneuvering, and heavy influence from out-of-state pro-voucher groups with deep pockets.

“It’s the best scam that money can buy,” said House Minority Leader John Ray Clemmons, a Nashville Democrat, after the historic votes.

Americans for Prosperity credited grassroots campaigns by pro-voucher groups that have reached hundreds of thousands of Tennesseans.

“We’ve been entrenched in the fight for educational freedom here for many, many years,” said Tori Venable, the group’s state director. “Tennessee families won today.”

Tennessee now joins a dozen states that have adopted similar programs allowing families, regardless of their income, to use public tax dollars to pay for alternatives to public education for their children.

President Donald Trump this week signed an executive order that frees up federal funding and prioritizes spending on school choice programs.

Lee said he hasn’t analyzed the executive order to see how it might affect Tennessee’s new program, financially or otherwise.

“But I think there’s opportunity there,” Lee told reporters during a news conference after the bill’s passage.

“The president wants to support states like ours who are advocating for school choice,” he said.

The new voucher program is scheduled to launch in the upcoming school year with 20,000 “scholarships” of $7,075 each to aid families toward the cost of a private education. Half of them will be for students whose family income is below a certain threshold — $173,000 for a family of four. Those income restrictions will be removed during the program’s second year.

About 65% of the vouchers are expected to be awarded to students who already attend private schools, with 35% going to students switching out of public schools, according to the legislature’s analysis of the proposal.

Democrats slammed the plan as “government welfare for the wealthy,” especially since private schools ultimately decide who they enroll.

“The students and the parents don’t have choice; it’s the school’s choice,” said Rep. Sam McKenzie, of Knoxville.

Already, students of color, kids from low-income families, and those with disabilities are often left out of school choice programs due to the locations and supply of private schools, transportation challenges, confusing admission policies, and the high cost of tuition, national data shows.

But one Republican lawmaker from Memphis cited high leadership turnover in the state’s largest school district, which serves a high concentration of minority and disadvantaged students and recently fired its superintendent after nine months on the job, as an example of why Tennessee needs to expand voucher access.

“If (Memphis-Shelby County Schools) had competition, they would do a better job of hiring superintendents, and they would focus more on educating the kids than they are on the raw politics and the power play that’s played out,” Sen. Brent Taylor said during debate in his chamber.

The votes came on the final day of a four-day special legislative session called by the governor to take up school vouchers, disaster relief, and immigration.

GOP leaders, who are firmly in control of the General Assembly, fast-tracked all three legislative packages.

The packages will cost almost $1 billion this year in a state that has seen its revenues drop because of tax breaks for corporations and businesses enacted in 2024 under another initiative from the governor.

The Education Freedom Act itself will cost taxpayers at least $1.1 billion during its first five years, state analysts say. One provision allows the program to grow by 5,000 students annually.

In addition to providing some families with vouchers, the legislation will give one-time bonuses of $2,000 each to the state’s public school teachers; establish a public school infrastructure fund using tax revenues from the sports betting industry that currently contribute to college scholarships; and reimburse public school systems for any state funding lost if a student dis-enrolls to accept the new voucher.

But Sen. Jeff Yarbro, a Nashville Democrat, said the initiative can’t be sustained without public education taking a hit. The legislature’s latest fiscal analysis projects a $45 million decrease next year.

“They said that they can run this brand-new program without any school system in the state losing any of its funding. We need to hold them to that promise,” Yarbro said. “But right now, there’s not enough money in the budget to do that.”

Results released this week of a major national test show that Tennessee students held their ground in math and reading in a year when average student test scores declined nationwide.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee governor’s school voucher bill barrels toward final votes in special legislative session

2025-01-30T00:32:15+00:00

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Gov. Bill Lee’s private school voucher bill on Wednesday cleared the committee level in a special legislative session, setting the stage for votes this week by the full House and Senate.

As expected, the bill sailed Tuesday through education panels stacked with lawmakers who support policies that provide taxpayer funding to families to pay toward private education services.

The bigger test came later in finance committees, where a similar voucher bill bogged down last spring over disagreements within the Republican supermajority. It passed easily there too, with only a few GOP members from rural areas in opposition.

Lee’s Education Freedom Act, his signature education proposal, is scheduled to be debated Thursday by both full chambers, where the votes are expected to be tighter.

If it passes, the initiative would mark a major change in K-12 education in Tennessee. It would create a new statewide schooling track, starting with 20,000 “scholarships” of $7,075 each.

To draw support from lawmakers worried about the impact to their public schools, the measure also would give one-time bonuses of $2,000 to the state’s public school teachers; establish a public school infrastructure fund using tax revenues from the sports betting industry that currently contribute to college scholarships; and reimburse public school systems for any state funding lost if a student dis-enrolls to accept the new voucher.

Only 15 of the state’s 144 districts are expected to receive such reimbursements, according to the legislature’s latest fiscal analysis of the bill.

An amendment added on Tuesday requires that, for public school teachers to receive the bonus, their school boards must adopt a resolution saying that they want to participate in the bonus plan. Sponsors said the change was intended to give local boards more autonomy over the funds.

The action on Lee’s proposal came as President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday that frees up federal funding and prioritizes spending on school choice programs.

A day earlier, Trump applauded Tennessee’s Education Freedom Act.

“Congratulations to Tennessee Legislators who are working hard to pass School Choice this week, which I totally support,” the president said in his post.

Gov. Bill Lee and his wife, Maria, join Donald Trump to tour tornado damage in Middle Tennessee on March 6, 2020, during Trump's first term as president.

A subsidy or a civil right: Senators debate the bill’s purpose

The governor, who has framed school choice as “the civil rights issue of our time,” called lawmakers into the special session to take up vouchers, disaster relief, and immigration.

Republican leaders who control the General Assembly have signaled that they intend to wrap up that business in one week and pass three different legislative packages, as well as about $1 billion to pay for them.

The statewide voucher bill is the session’s most contentious issue, prompting philosophical debates Wednesday among members of the Senate Finance Committee about whom the proposed program is intended to help.

According to the state’s own analysis, about 65% of the new voucher recipients are expected to be students who are already in private schools, with the rest coming from public schools.

That projection may be low. In Arkansas, which approved universal vouchers in 2023 under Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, more than 80% of last year’s enrollees had not attended public schools the previous year.

Tennessee’s bill would remove any family income restrictions for eligibility in the program’s second year. For the upcoming 2025-26 academic year, half of the vouchers would be available to students whose family income is no more than three times the federal threshold for receiving a reduced-price lunch, or about $175,000 annually for a family of four.

“It’s essentially giving a scholarship to people who can already afford to go to private school anyway,” said Sen. London Lamar, a Memphis Democrat.

By contrast, the state’s smaller existing school voucher program, approved by the legislature in 2019, restricts eligibility to public school students living in Memphis, Nashville, and Chattanooga, and whose families have significantly lower incomes.

Defending the governor’s universal voucher plan, Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson challenged the suggestion that the measure amounts to a government-funded subsidy for affluent families.

Sen. Jack Johnson, a Republican from Franklin, is his chamber's majority leader and sponsor of Gov. Bill Lee's Education Freedom Act.

“We’re not going to penalize people who’ve been successful,” said Johnson, the bill’s Senate sponsor. “We’re not going to penalize people who work hard and might do a little better than someone else. We want these to be universal, and that’s the ultimate goal.”

Johnson added that he “has a problem with deciding who’s rich and who’s not.” It depends, he said, on their family’s location and circumstances.

“This program is going to help families across Tennessee — 20,000 kids — get into a school that their parents think is a better option,” he said. “And it shouldn’t be based on income. It should be universal.”

Early research shows that small voucher programs limited to low-income students are more likely to have positive outcomes, while recent national studies indicate that vouchers have mostly negative or insignificant impacts on academic outcomes.

Long-term costs worry critics

Sen. Jeff Yarbro, a Nashville Democrat, sought to pin down the proposed program’s cost as it grows, especially since the 74,000 students who attend private schools in Tennessee would be eligible to apply for a state-funded scholarship.

State analysts expect all 20,000 vouchers will be awarded in the first year, allowing the state to expand the program by 5,000 participants each year, potentially doubling the program’s size by the 2029-30 school year. In the first five years, the program could cost taxpayers at least $1.1 billion, the state’s analysts say.

“This is a long-term program, and we should think about the long-term costs,” Yarbro said.

He called out the explosive growth of Arizona’s voucher program, which became available to all students in 2022. The initiative has contributed to a $400 million shortfall in the state’s current budget.

Johnson said Yarbro’s concerns amounted to “scare tactics.”

Any growth in the program is “subject to appropriation” by the legislature, he said. “We’ll be back next year, and we’ll have a conversation about it.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee universal school vouchers would cost at least $1.1 billion in first 5 years, state projects

2025-01-27T19:50:26+00:00

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Gov. Bill Lee’s universal private school voucher plan, if approved by Tennessee lawmakers in a special session that begins Monday, would cost taxpayers at least $1.1 billion during the first five years, according to a state analysis.

During the program’s first year in 2025-26, the cost would be about $350 million, based on the analysis released ahead of the session by the legislature’s independent fiscal review staff.

Those costs would include:

Nearly $146 million to provide vouchers of $7,075 each for 20,000 recipients to use toward their private education costs;
$198 million to pay public-school teachers one-time bonuses of $2,000 each;
$3.3 million to reimburse public school systems for funding they are projected to lose if students disenroll to use a voucher; and
$2.7 million to administer and staff the program.

After the first year, the program would cost more than $191 million annually, the analysis says.

However, the governor and the legislature’s GOP leaders are seeking even more funding for the program’s first year than the legislative analysis identifies, even as state revenues are down due to corporate tax breaks enacted last year by Lee’s administration.

Appropriation bills filed ahead of the session by Sen. Jack Johnson and Rep. William Lamberth, the majority leaders in their respective chambers, seek $447 million to launch the Education Freedom Act, including $226 million in recurring funds and $198 million in nonrecurring funds. The recurring funds figure includes the $144 million in unused voucher funds that the legislature set aside for the program last year before the bill bogged down in finance committees.

Disaster relief and enforcement of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies are also on the agenda for the special session. Lee proposes to spend another $470 million on flood relief for northeast Tennessee, including $20 million to rebuild a high school in Carter County. Information released thus far does not specify funding for supporting the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

Here are other notable assumptions and projections about the statewide voucher plan based on the analysis released by legislature’s fiscal review staff:

Student eligibility: Income limits would end after first year

Each voucher would pay $7,075 during the first year to up to 20,000 eligible students. (That’s $4,597 less than the average annual cost of private schools in Tennessee, which is $11,672 annually, according to tuition information gathered by Private School Review.)

It’s expected that all vouchers will be awarded, allowing the state to expand the program by 5,000 participants each year, potentially doubling the program’s size by the 2029-30 school year.

During the first year, half of the vouchers would be reserved for students whose families fall below an income limit that is set at 300% of the amount required to qualify for free or reduced-price meals, or $173,160 for a family of four. The other half would have no income restrictions.

Because of the high income thresholds, it’s assumed that 65% of the vouchers would be awarded to students who already attend private schools, with 35% going to students switching out of public schools. The 65-35 split is expected to continue in subsequent years.

It’s assumed that no student who is currently receiving a voucher through the state’s smaller education savings account and individualized education account programs will opt to participate in the new statewide voucher program, since their current benefits are higher.

Accountability: A choice of tests

While private schools accepting the new vouchers would have to give voucher recipients national or state tests annually, those schools are likely to opt for using national tests that they currently use instead of using the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP, which is based on state academic standards.

Test results would be incorporated into an annual state report that the state comptroller’s Office of Research and Education Accountability would deliver to the legislature’s education committees.

Incentives for public schools: Teacher bonuses, district reimbursement

An estimated 86,000 public school teachers would be eligible to receive the one-time bonuses during the current school year.

A proposed school building improvement fund for public schools would receive over $77 million annually, or 80% of tax collections from the sports betting industry, which currently go to lottery-funded college scholarships.

In the first year, 12 public school systems are expected to meet the state’s criteria to receive reimbursements from the state for funding lost when students disenroll to participate in the voucher program. In the second year, 15 districts are expected to qualify for the reimbursements.

The reimbursements would be completely paid for by the state, not from local governments.

Program administration: Current vendor likely to continue

Student First Technologies, the current vendor for the state’s smaller voucher programs known as education savings accounts and individualized education accounts, likely would serve the statewide program, too. The Indiana-based company’s contract runs through May 2028 and requires it to be able to accommodate at least 20,000 users.

In addition, the state expects to hire 11 people to administer the statewide program. The current ESA program has 22 employees providing oversight.

You can read the bill and track its movement on the General Assembly’s website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee governor to call special legislative session on school vouchers, immigration policy

2025-01-15T16:01:43+00:00

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Gov. Bill Lee announced Wednesday that he’ll call Tennessee lawmakers into a special session this month to take up his statewide school voucher proposal, as well as “public safety measures” to prepare for immigration policies under President-elect Donald Trump’s administration.

He also wants the legislature to approve a $450 million disaster relief package for Hurricane Helene flooding last fall in northeast Tennessee, including $20 million to rebuild Hampton High School in Carter County.

The session will begin on Jan. 27.

Lee said he will issue his official call and provide more details in the coming days.

The announcement comes just days before Trump takes office on Jan. 20, and one day after the 114th General Assembly convened a new session headlined by Lee’s Education Freedom Act.

Lee hinted last week that he might use a special session to fast-track the voucher legislation: He told reporters that he wants the universal voucher bill approved in early 2025 in hopes of starting a statewide program this fall to let more Tennessee families use taxpayer funding to send their children to private schools.

Disaster relief was expected to be part of a potential special session. Lee’s office said Wednesday that he’ll propose “immediate and budgetary action to support ongoing recovery efforts and allow for proactive preparation for future emergencies.”

Inclusion of immigration policy was somewhat of a surprise, however, even as Trump has pledged to order mass deportation of immigrants who are not in the country legally. Reports indicate Trump may do away with the federal government’s sensitive-locations policy that limited immigration enforcement in schools, hospitals, and churches, leaving those institutions to plan for ways to protect students and families.

In December, the governor tweeted that he had directed key state agencies to be ready on Day One of the Trump administration.

This will be the sixth special session called by Lee since he took office in 2019.

The most recent one, in August 2023, spotlighted public safety after an intruder shot and killed three children and three adults at Nashville’s private Covenant School earlier in the year. In their six days of work, lawmakers approved three bills designed to speed up background checks for gun buyers, provide free gun locks to Tennessee residents, and require an annual state report on human trafficking, but none to restrict access to guns.

Just as the public safety session drew protests over the state’s lax gun laws, the upcoming special session is expected to draw demonstrators to the state Capitol, especially over the governor’s voucher plan.

Lee proposes to offer 20,000 private school vouchers of $7,075 each in the first year. Half of them would be for families whose income is below a certain threshold — $173,000 for a family of four. The rest would be for any student, regardless of family income. Most of the restrictions would be lifted in the program’s second year, with plans to expand the program by 5,000 students annually.

Three big issues that could determine if Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee gets his way on universal school vouchers

A similar plan collapsed in finance committees last spring over disagreements within the GOP supermajority, but this time, all of the legislature’s top Republicans are unified behind the governor’s plan.

“The majority of Tennesseans, regardless of political affiliation, have made it clear that they support empowering parents with school choice, and the best thing we can do for Tennessee students is deliver choices and public school resources without delay,” the governor said Wednesday in a joint statement with Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, House Speaker Cameron Sexton, and majority leaders Sen. Jack Johnson and Rep. William Lamberth.

They also supported a spotlight on public safety measures, calling Trump’s election a “mandate to enforce immigration laws.”

Democrats said the governor’s call for disaster relief is long overdue for helping flood-ravaged counties in the rural, mountainous counties of northeast Tennessee. However, they reiterated their opposition to a truncated debate on expanding vouchers statewide, especially when such programs in Arizona, Arkansas, and Indiana are putting a financial strain on state budgets without improving academic outcomes.

“When we open up this can, when we put this into law, it’s not something we can go back from,” Sen. Raumesh Akbari, of Memphis, said at an impromptu news conference at the Capitol.

House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Ray Clemmons, of Nashville, said school vouchers are a complex idea that should be thoroughly debated with public input.

“To try and rush this substantive and highly controversial policy through in a 3-day session, along with disaster relief and immigration policies, is an unconscionable attempt to keep the general public in the dark and prevent sunlight from shining on our legislative process,” Clemmons said.

The president of the state’s largest teachers organization agreed.

“While the General Assembly considers measures to support those recovering from a natural disaster, they should refrain from creating a man-made disaster,” said Tanya T. Coats, a Knox County educator who leads the Tennessee Education Association.

“Governor Lee should focus on helping our neighbors, not pushing his statewide voucher scheme backed by out-of-state special interests.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Three big issues that could determine if Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee gets his way on universal school vouchers

2025-01-10T23:23:48+00:00

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After the collapse of his statewide private school voucher proposal last year, Gov. Bill Lee is back with a similar plan to try to convince lawmakers that Tennessee students need another taxpayer-funded alternative to traditional public schools.

But while his new Education Freedom Act enjoys unified support among Republican leaders in both legislative chambers — a major difference from this time last year — it’s also generating many of the same concerns that contributed to the 2024 bill’s demise.

Complicating matters further are sagging tax collections that will make it harder to launch and sustain expensive new initiatives. Also, an existing smaller “pilot” voucher program remains under-enrolled in its third year, and the students in it are generally performing below their public school counterparts.

Lee, who is term-limited, has made the voucher policy one of his top objectives since taking office in 2019, and recently hinted that he may call a special legislative session to prioritize his proposal before lawmakers take up other business. The legislature would need to pass his bill in early 2025 to give his administration enough time to launch a universal program this summer, before the upcoming school year.

A recent poll conducted by Vanderbilt University shows Tennessee voters are mostly split over school vouchers.

Lee is trying to build public support, though, through statewide TV ads featuring him and paid for by the pro-voucher American Federation for Children, as well as radio ads paid for by Americans for Prosperity, a conservative political network founded by the billionaire Koch brothers of Kansas.

Standing between the governor and the realization of his universal voucher program in Tennessee are three big issues:

Long-term funding uncertainty for public schools

State officials have estimated that about half of voucher recipients in the program’s first year would come from public schools, with the rest already enrolled in private schools or new students entering kindergarten.

To quell anxiety about the financial impact on public schools, Lee’s legislation includes a “hold harmless” provision that essentially would reimburse school districts for any funding they stand to lose when a student leaves to take a voucher and go to a private school.

Also, voucher money would not come out of the state’s existing funding formula for public schools, but rather from a separate line item in the budget that already has $144 million in untapped funds appropriated by the legislature last year.

But laws — and budgets — can change from year to year, and put those pledges at risk.

Flanked by the General Assembly's Republican leaders, Gov. Bill Lee speaks with reporters at the close of the 2024 legislative session on April 25.

Under the legislation, it’s unclear how Lee intends to pay for reimbursements to public schools for the first year, and in future years, especially since participation is expected to grow.

A future governor and legislature could take away the reimbursements, particularly if overall tax collections continue to decline under Lee’s 2024 initiative to reduce corporate and business taxes in Tennessee.

At the same time, the state would be obligated to fund the new statewide education program for the foreseeable future. With Lee’s plan to add 5,000 vouchers each year, the program could direct up to $862 million in taxpayer funding toward private education costs during the first five years, according to an analysis by Ed Trust of Tennessee.

And because of the bill’s loose restrictions on who could receive the new vouchers, a large number of the program’s recipients are expected to come from families who already send, or plan to send, their children to private schools.

In Arkansas, which approved universal vouchers in 2023 under Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, more than 80% of last year’s enrollees had not attended public schools the previous year.

Gov. Bill Lee calls for a statewide education voucher program in Tennessee during a press conference in Nashville on Nov. 28, 2023, as Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders offers her support.

In an effort to garner more support for the Education Freedom Act, Tennessee’s bill includes several financial benefits for public schools.

One would redirect 80% of sports wagering tax revenue now going to pay for college scholarships to instead help fund school building and maintenance projects across the state, especially for emergencies and for rural districts in counties designated as distressed or at risk.

But that’s only about $70 million annually and wouldn’t go far toward addressing the state’s $9.8 billion backlog of school facility needs. (Building a single elementary school can cost up to $60 million these days, while a new high school can cost significantly more.)

A second enticement would give every public school teacher a one-time $2,000 bonus. Many teachers who would be eligible to receive the money dismiss that proposal as a diversion tactic and believe the larger goal of Republican leaders is to eventually defund public schools.

Uneven standards for testing and accountability

The bill would require the new voucher recipients in grades 3-11 to take annual state or national standardized achievement tests to track the program’s effectiveness.

That’s a departure from the state’s existing Education Savings Account program that requires recipients to take the same state tests as their public school counterparts in math and English language arts, which provides an apples-to-apples comparison of educational outcomes.

The testing issue creates a quandary for Republicans.

Holding government accountable for how it spends taxpayer money is a conservative principle. But private schools are less likely to participate in a voucher program if they’re required to administer any state tests that are based on state-approved academic standards.

With Lee’s new proposal, supporters now say that national tests are good enough to gauge how students who take voucher money are doing.

In Tennessee, public school students in grades 3-11 are required to take annual state tests in math, English language arts, social studies, and science under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program.

Detractors say that sets uneven standards of accountability for different groups of students whose education is being funded with the same taxpayer money.

To some extent, the existing pilot voucher program already has a differing measuring stick. Participating private schools aren’t evaluated like public schools are under the state’s new A-F school grading system to help parents gauge their effectiveness. Moreover, in issuing grades to public schools, Lee’s administration has elevated the importance of academic proficiency based on state test results. But for private schools receiving public funding through education savings accounts, it has mostly touted surveys showing high parental satisfaction in the program.

Lee has repeatedly said his priority is to give parents more choices and control over their children’s education.

Which students would be included, and excluded?

Voucher supporters use the language of “school choice” to promote the policy.

But private schools get to choose the students they enroll, not the other way around — potentially reinforcing discriminatory practices and widening educational disparities between affluent students and historically underserved groups.

Lee’s proposal, for example, includes no guarantees of services and accommodations for students with disabilities.

Unlike with public schools, students who attend private schools are not protected by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which guarantees children with disabilities access to a free and appropriate education. Essentially, the federal law requires public schools to give those students specialized support and services determined collaboratively by school leaders and parents.

Lee’s proposal has no anti-discrimination language that would prevent schools from selectively admitting, or expelling, students based on criteria that may include color, disability, test scores, family income, religious affiliation, national origin, or sexual orientation.

State laws typically include anti-discrimination language regarding eligibility for education programs. Even Lee’s 2019 Education Savings Account law, which created vouchers for some students in Memphis and Nashville, and later in Chattanooga, requires participating private schools to certify that they will “not discriminate against participating students or applicants on the basis of race, color, or national origin.”

The newest legislation isn’t so broad in its protections.

To satisfy far-right conservatives, for example, it specifically bars students who can’t show that they’re in the United States legally from participating in the proposed program. That would violate federal law and could set the stage for another protracted and expensive legal challenge to Tennessee voucher law.

Without the non-discrimination language, Lee’s voucher policy as proposed raises the risk not only that Tennessee’s schools will become more racially and economically segregated, but also that tens of millions of taxpayer dollars could flow to so-called segregation academies that were established in the 1960s and 1970s for white children during the desegregation movement.

Some of those schools still exist, although Chalkbeat has not analyzed which private schools in Tennessee fit that definition.

North Carolina built its school voucher program the same way that Lee has advocated for Tennessee. When it launched in 2014, the program was only for low-income families, but in 2023, state lawmakers expanded eligibility to students of all income levels and those already attending private school.

According to reporting by ProPublica, 39 schools that it identified as likely segregation academies have received taxpayer money from North Carolina’s voucher program.

You can read Tennessee’s voucher bill here and track its movement in the legislature here.

Correction: A previous version of this story said Americans for Prosperity paid for TV and radio ads promoting Gov. Lee’s Education Freedom Act. The radio ads were paid for by Americans for Prosperity, while the TV ad was paid for by American Federation for Children, another pro-voucher group.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee governor hints at special legislative session on school vouchers, flood relief

2025-01-08T23:04:44+00:00

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Gov. Bill Lee wants state lawmakers to take up his universal school voucher bill quickly in hopes of starting a statewide program this fall to let more Tennessee families use taxpayer funding to send their children to private schools.

And he may call a special legislative session this month to deal exclusively with his Education Freedom Act, plus emergency relief for flood-ravaged counties in northeast Tennessee.

“There’s nothing off the table,” Lee told reporters Wednesday in Nashville when asked about the likelihood of a special session.

The term-limited Republican governor said the two matters need to be addressed early this year and added that he is “finalizing a strategy and a plan.”

Lee is seeking to avoid a prolonged legislative battle like the one that led to the collapse of his 2024 universal voucher proposal in finance committees.

But he’ll need to act quickly.

The regular session of the 114th General Assembly is set to convene Jan. 14, with committee assignments and other organizational business first on the agenda. The legislature plans to pause its work for the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, which Lee and many members of Tennessee’s GOP-controlled legislature plan to attend.

The week of Jan. 27 is a possibility for a special session, according to several sources.

In a clause that implies a sense of urgency or emergency, the Tennessee Constitution says the governor may convene a special legislative session “on extraordinary occasions” to address specific matters.

There’s no disagreement that northeast Tennessee urgently needs more state assistance after Hurricane Helene caused hundreds of millions of dollars of damage to public infrastructure, including roads, bridges, and schools, in late September.

But Lee’s critics say his voucher proposal isn’t the kind of priority that warrants an urgent special session.

“Using storm relief as a pretext to promote a voucher scheme is a disservice to our families and undermines the real challenges we face,” said Sen. London Lamar, of Memphis, who chairs her chamber’s Democratic caucus.

Rep. John Ray Clemmons, of Nashville, said Lee should have called a special session months ago to help Tennessee’s inland mountain communities battered by Helene’s storms, which killed 18 people in the state.

Instead, he “clearly and purposefully waited almost four months until he thought he had enough votes to pass his voucher scam,” said Clemmons, who chairs the House Democratic caucus.

If Lee does call a special session, it’s likely that he believes he has the votes to pass a voucher policy that has been one of his top objectives since he took office in 2019.

Since recent legislative races delivered the governor a mix of wins and losses on the issues, his administration has been working to galvanize support for a revised plan.

The governor is touting his Education Freedom Act in 30-second ads paid for by the pro-voucher American Federation for Children and running in the state’s four largest TV markets before the legislature convenes.

Another group, Americans for Prosperity, which is affiliated with Kansas billionaire Charles Koch’s conservative advocacy network, announced Wednesday that it’s also starting to run radio ads supporting Lee’s proposal and featuring U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, of Tennessee, and Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs, a likely candidate for governor in 2026.

Meanwhile, a grassroots group of Tennesseans calling itself Public School Strong hosted a virtual town hall on Tuesday evening to rally opposition to the bill. The group plans to hold in-person forums and rallies Jan. 11-14 in Knoxville, Winchester, Memphis, Clarksville, Smyrna, and Chattanooga.

“It’s no surprise that everyday Tennesseans are not the ones asking for Lee’s entitlement program for the wealthy,” the group wrote in an organizational letter. “Instead, it’s out-of-state billionaire groups like Americans for Prosperity leading the charge by pouring millions upon millions of dollars into campaigns in our small towns and threatening our local elected leaders if they dare to side with their constituents.”

Lee’s latest proposal would provide of about $7,100 each to 20,000 students in the first year, half of which would be subject to income limits of three times the threshold to qualify for reduced price school meals, or about $173,000 for a family of four.

In 2019, the legislature passed Lee’s first voucher bill to create a smaller voucher program for students in Memphis and Nashville. At the time, the governor said vouchers were needed to give more educational choices to low-income students attending low-performing schools.

The new plan would eventually eliminate income limits and open up vouchers to students anywhere in the state.

You can read the new bill here and track its movement in the legislature here.

Correction: A previous version of this story said the American Federation for Children paid for radio ads supporting Gov. Lee’s Education Freedom Act. Those ads were paid for by Americans for Prosperity, another group, while the AFC paid for a TV ad featuring the governor.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

New Tennessee charter school law for at-risk students draws interest in Memphis and Nashville

2024-12-12T22:28:52+00:00

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Three aspiring charter operators are interested in opening schools in Memphis and Nashville under a new state law aimed at creating options for youth considered at risk of becoming disconnected from traditional public schools.

Labeled “opportunity” charter schools, the campuses would serve middle or high school students. At least 75% of each school’s students would have to be documented as dealing with any of a range of challenges such as juvenile crime, substance abuse, chronic absenteeism, teen pregnancy, getting held back in several grades, dropping out of school, or experiencing abuse or neglect.

The schools likely would put a greater emphasis on career and technical education and be built around trauma-informed and restorative practices and social and emotional learning.

They also would be held to different standards than other public charter schools in Tennessee that must show a certain level of achievement in order to remain open, as well as for traditional public schools that are evaluated under the state’s A-F grading system.

Next week, the state Board of Education is expected to decide exactly what those expectations will be. Tennessee’s education department has proposed exempting opportunity charter schools from receiving a letter grade during their first year of operation. In subsequent years, measurements of success would emphasize continuous enrollment and college and career readiness.

The aspiring operators — two in Memphis and one in Nashville — are among 17 groups that recently submitted letters to state and local education officials indicating their interest in applying by next Feb. 1 to open a charter school for the 2026-27 school year.

But it’s the opportunity charter school category that is new to the mix under the 2024 law sponsored by House Speaker Cameron Sexton of Crossville, a longtime charter advocate, and Sen. Ferrell Haile of Gallatin, both Republicans.

Interested operators for opportunity charter schools are:

An organization known as Memphis Mentors and led by teacher Carlos Shaw, which is exploring opening Memphis at Work Charter School to emphasize work-based learning in partnership with Memphis-Shelby County Schools;
A group led by businessman and attorney Anthony Canada that is interested in opening Legacy Day Academy in Memphis’ Frayser neighborhood, starting with grades 6-10, in partnership with Memphis-Shelby County Schools;
An organization formed by Middle Tennessee charter leader and school administrator Ahmed White that is interested in opening The Rock Academy of Nashville, starting with a ninth grade class and eventually serving as a full high school, in partnership with Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools

None of the three groups expressed interest in opening a residential school, which is allowable under the new law but would be costly to operate. During legislative debates this spring, some critics questioned the wisdom of putting a large number of at-risk students together in a residential setting.

In addition, the state received no interest this year in the possibility of converting an existing charter or traditional public school into an opportunity charter school.

Many of Tennessee’s at-risk youth who have been suspended or expelled from schools for disciplinary problems currently attend alternative education programs run by their local school systems. Those are short-term placements until the students can move back to their traditional public schools.

Opportunity charter schools would provide a long-term option that is designed specifically around the needs of at-risk students.

“The intent of the legislation was to open the door for expert educators and community leaders to find better solutions for kids who are struggling in traditional school models, and that’s what’s happening in both Memphis and Nashville,” said Greg Lippman, CEO of New York-based Groundswell Network, a nonprofit group supporting local work on alternative education models across the nation.

Educators and community leaders attend a meeting in Nashville on May 8, 2024, to learn about alternative education options under Tennessee's new opportunity charter school law. (Photo by Marta W. Aldrich / Chalkbeat)

Bobby White, the founder and CEO of Frayser Community Schools charter network and president of Leadership Memphis, expects wider interest in applying in 2026 to open opportunity charter schools in Memphis beginning with the 2027-28 school year. Educators and community leaders need more time, he said, to study the law and the state’s expectations, and to develop their plans.

Last month, White hosted a meeting at a church in the Raleigh-Frayser community as part of his work with Groundswell to identify potential charter leaders and neighborhoods in need in the Memphis area.

“I want people to dream it, vision it, then build it,” White told Chalkbeat on Thursday. “When our first opportunity charter schools open, they should be exemplars in our city. People should be wowed.”

He added: “There absolutely needs to be one school like this in every community that has high crime and high poverty.”

In all, Memphis-Shelby County Schools received the most letters of intent to open charter schools in the 2026-27 school year, followed by districts in Nashville, Hamilton County, Rutherford County, and Jackson.

Typically, about half of groups that submit letters of intent follow through and apply during the same charter cycle.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee teachers scoff at proposed bonuses linked to Gov. Lee’s school voucher plan

2024-11-13T11:00:00+00:00

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Gov. Bill Lee, who’s trying again to enact his statewide private school voucher plan, is hoping to win over critics and skeptics with a $2,000 bonus for public school teachers. But many educators who would be eligible for the extra cash are dismissing it as a diversion tactic.

Some are calling Lee’s bonus offer an attempted bribe, or “hush money,” as he seeks to expand policies that provide public funding for students to attend private schools. Others say it’s insulting to teaching professionals who have spent their careers advocating for their students, and for more funding to support them.

“It’s a one-time bonus that’s basically asking us to sell out our public schools,” said Liz Marable, a longtime Memphis educator who is currently president of the United Education Association of Shelby County. “But we are not for sale.”

Details of the latest universal voucher proposal, reached during months of negotiations between the governor’s office and legislative leaders, emerged last week after Election Day. House and Senate Republican sponsors filed identical bills in an effort to avoid disagreements between the two chambers that killed their first attempts this spring in committees, even though Republicans held a supermajority in the legislature.

Some concerns that critics raised about the earlier bills apply to the new package, too. Among them: The program could create long-term funding uncertainty for public schools and set uneven standards for accountability through testing. It wouldn’t guarantee accommodations and services for students with disabilities and would bar undocumented students from participating, in violation of federal law.

The one-time bonus for approximately 86,000 public school teachers is new to the mix. It would cost about $172 million, which could itself be a concern during a fiscal year when state economists project declining or stagnant revenues.

The bonuses, and other public school benefits in the legislation, aren’t intended specifically to win over teachers, of course; they won’t get to vote on it. Rather, they’re aimed at winning over Republican lawmakers, mostly in rural Tennessee, who are wary of vouchers’ impact on their public schools.

These lawmakers have to answer to constituents in areas where public schools are often the only educational option, the largest employer, and the hub of their communities. Lee and Republican legislative leaders are betting that the bonus will make a vote for vouchers more politically palatable.

Lee’s Education Freedom Act also proposes new money to help local districts pay for school maintenance and construction. And it includes “hold harmless” language that pledges the state will reimburse school systems for any lost funding tied to students who withdraw from public schools to accept vouchers and attend private schools.

Educators interviewed by Chalkbeat said that they believe the promised reimbursements would be short-lived, and that the funding would be eliminated from future state budgets, ultimately draining resources from their public schools.

“Teachers aren’t fooled by the promise of a small bonus in exchange for a bill that would lead to public schools closing across the state,” said Tanya T. Coats, a Knox County teacher who is president of the state’s largest teacher organization, the Tennessee Education Association.

The one-year bonus would barely address pay disparities between teachers in Tennessee and those in other states. The average teacher in Tennessee made below $58,000, compared with $69,597 nationally, during 2022-23, the latest year for which national data is available, according to an analysis by the National Education Association.

The governor is budgeting next year to increase the state’s minimum salary for teachers from $44,500 to $47,000, in accordance with his plan to get base pay to $50,000 by the time he leaves office in 2027.

But critics say those increases aren’t rewarding experienced teachers, keeping up with inflation, or attracting high-quality candidates to the teaching profession, which is suffering from sagging morale.

Kathryn Vaughn has been a full-time teacher in Tennessee for 20 years and works two other jobs to make ends meet. She’s unimpressed by the idea of a $2,000 bonus, which likely would be closer to $1,400 after taxes.

The underlying goal of Lee’s voucher plan, she believes, is to defund public education.

“If you’re really serious about helping teachers, why not make some sort of systemic change to teacher pay to alleviate the starvation funding we’re operating under?” said Vaughn, an elementary school art teacher in Tipton County, near Memphis.

Linking benefits for teachers to school choice agenda

It’s not the first time the governor has sought to package benefits for teachers with more controversial education proposals.

In 2023, Lee pressed for a bill to guarantee gradual minimum pay boosts for teachers during his second term in office — and also to ban school districts from making payroll deductions for employees’ professional association dues. Teacher groups and many lawmakers objected to the tactic, but the bill eventually passed.

Similarly, Lee’s bonus proposal is tied to the creation of a statewide program to give $7,075 each in public funding toward the cost of a private education for up to 20,000 Tennessee students, beginning next fall.

Lee has pushed for more education choices for families, while also investing hundreds of millions of dollars in public schools, since taking office in 2019. He remains adamant that both policies can complement each other.

“This piece of legislation represents a commitment to education for all children in the state, and that includes public funding, teacher funding, parental choice,” said Lee, when asked by reporters last week why the voucher and teacher bonus measures aren’t decoupled so lawmakers can vote on them separately.

Gov. Bill Lee calls for a statewide education voucher program in Tennessee during a press conference in Nashville on Nov. 28, 2023, as Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders offers her support.

Other governors, especially in predominantly Republican states, have used a similar playbook when pressing for vouchers.

In Arkansas, for instance, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a 2023 law to increase beginning public school teacher salaries from $36,000 to $50,000, while also creating a statewide voucher program to cover the costs of private school tuition, homeschooling expenses, and other educational expenses.

Teachers fear that vouchers will hurt their students

Many Tennessee teachers are skeptical about the new proposal to give them a bonus, viewing it as a ploy to push a policy agenda that they say will ultimately hurt their profession, public schools, and students in general.

“Teachers I am hearing from are very insulted that the sponsor of this bill thought any devoted Tennessee teacher would be willing to erode the future of public education for a one-time, taxed bonus of $2,000,” tweeted National Teacher of the Year Missy Testerman, who works for Rogersville City Schools in northeast Tennessee.

Like Testerman, Siema Swartzel teaches students who live mostly below the poverty level. More investments in public education would help, she said.

“I don’t see how creating a voucher program and adding $2,000 to my bank account is going to make sure my kids have all the things they need to be good learners,” said Swartzel, who teaches music at an elementary school in Cleveland, near Chattanooga. “They are our future, and I’m very afraid that vouchers will interfere with that.”

In Clarksville, near the Kentucky border, Karel Lea Biggs doesn’t think vouchers, as they’re proposed, would end up benefiting any of her middle schoolers, many of whom are considered economically disadvantaged.

Under Lee’s proposal, half of the first year’s vouchers would be subject to limits based on family income, but those limits would still be high: three times the threshold to qualify for free and reduced price school meals, or about $173,000 for a family of four. The remaining 10,000 slots would have no income restrictions.

Lee’s administration acknowledges that many enrollees would be the children of parents who intended to send their children to private schools anyway, and already had the resources to do so.

Meanwhile, Biggs says her public school desperately needs more resources to support students experiencing post-pandemic anxiety and other mental health issues.

“A teacher bonus and vouchers,” she said, “just aren’t going to help my kids.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee is gearing up for another private school voucher debate. Here’s what we know.

2024-10-22T22:02:30+00:00

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A new universal school voucher proposal will be the first bill filed for Tennessee’s upcoming legislative session, signaling that Gov. Bill Lee intends to make the plan his No. 1 education priority for a second straight year.

Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson said this week that he’ll file his chamber’s legislation on the morning of Nov. 6, the day after Election Day. He expects House Majority Leader William Lamberth will do the same.

The big question is whether House and Senate Republican leaders will be able to agree on the details in 2025. The 114th Tennessee General Assembly convenes on Jan. 14 as Lee begins his last two years in office.

During the 2024 session, the governor’s Education Freedom Scholarship proposal stalled in finance committees over disagreements about testing and funding, despite a GOP supermajority, and even as universal voucher programs sprang up in several other states.

Sponsors in the Tennessee House, where voucher programs have had a harder time getting support from rural Republicans and urban Democrats, attempted to woo votes with an omnibus-style bill that included benefits for public schools, too. But Senate Republican leaders balked at the scope and cost of the House version.

On Monday, Johnson gave a voucher update to school board members in Williamson County, which he represents, on the development of new legislation.

Tennessee Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson speaks with school board members in Williamson County, which he represents, on Oct. 21, 2024, in Franklin.

Similar to last year’s proposal, the new bill would provide about $7,000 in taxpayer funds to each of up to 20,000 students to attend a private school beginning next fall, with half of the slots going to students who are considered economically disadvantaged. By 2026, all of Tennessee’s K-12 students, regardless of family income, would be eligible for vouchers, though the number of recipients would depend on how much money is budgeted for the program.

“The bill is not finalized, but we’re all working together with the governor’s office to come up with a bill we all can support,” Johnson told Chalkbeat after the presentation.

Testing accountability is among chief issues to settle

Johnson said the Senate’s 2025 bill will again include some type of testing requirement for voucher recipients — either state assessments or state-approved national tests — to gauge whether the program is improving academic outcomes.

However, the Senate bill will eliminate a previous provision that might have allowed public school students to enroll in any district, even if they’re not zoned for it. That policy proposal had been included at the insistence of Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg, a Bristol Republican who lost his reelection bid in the August primary.

Lamberth, the House leader, did not respond this week to multiple requests for comment about his chamber’s plan, which in 2024 had no testing requirement for voucher recipients. Instead, the House version sought to dramatically reduce testing and accountability for public school students, including replacing high school end-of-course assessments with ACT college entrance exams.

The House bill also included numerous financial incentives to try to garner support from public school advocates. One idea was to increase the state’s contribution to pay for public school teachers’ medical insurance by redirecting $125 million the governor had earmarked for teacher salary increases.

Timeline: How private school voucher movement gained momentum in Tennessee before hitting a bump

Johnson told school board members the governor is planning a “substantial” increase for public education funding in 2025 but didn’t specify how much or for what.

“I think we’re going to have some things in there that will be great for all public education,” he said when asked later about including costly incentives such as teacher medical insurance funding. “Whether it’s in that (voucher) bill or if it’s in a separate bill is a great question. We will see. I don’t know the answer.”

Williamson County school board rescinds earlier anti-voucher resolution

Johnson told board members in his home district that he expects “nominal” impact to Williamson County’s two suburban school systems south of Nashville, if the bill passes the legislature in 2025. Most enrollees, he said, would be in urban areas that have more low-performing schools and private school options.

Later Monday, Williamson County’s board, including four newly elected members whose campaigns were supported by a conservative out-of-state political action committee, voted 10-2 to rescind a resolution passed by the previous board opposing Lee’s Education Freedom Scholarship Act.

The governor is from Williamson County and graduated from a public high school there in 1977. So it was significant when his local board voted in March to join more than 50 other school boards across Tennessee on record against his signature education proposal.

But Dennis Diggers, a new board member, argued that it was appropriate to revisit the issue given the recent election, and proposed rescinding the resolution.

“Four of the six candidates who won their election ran publicly for more than six months on this issue, so it was out there,” Diggers said. “I am not going to deny the parents in Williamson County the chance to help their kids.”

Meanwhile, a Tennessee policy organization that supports vouchers released a new poll showing 58% of the state’s voters are more inclined to support a candidate who supports letting parents collect public funding to choose where their child is educated, including public, private, charter, or home schools. The Beacon Center poll did not use the word “vouchers” in its question to voters, which tends to poll worse than language about “school choice.”

School voucher voter polls vary wildly in Tennessee

Universal vouchers would mark a major expansion of vouchers in Tennessee, where lawmakers voted in 2019 to create education savings account options for students in Memphis and Nashville. That targeted program, which has since expanded to the Chattanooga area, has 3,550 enrollees in its third year, still below the 5,000-student cap, according to data provided by the state education department.

A spokeswoman for the governor said his administration continues to work with both legislative chambers on a “unified” universal voucher bill to kick off discussions for the 2025 session. She also noted that $144 million remains in this year’s state budget for the program, even though lawmakers didn’t approve the bill.

“We remain grateful for the General Assembly’s continued commitment to deliver Education Freedom Scholarships to Tennessee families by keeping funding for last year’s proposal in the budget,” said Elizabeth Johnson, the governor’s press secretary.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

State renews charter for Wooddale Middle School, overturning Memphis board decision

2024-10-18T14:25:05+00:00

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The operator of Wooddale Middle School, a Memphis charter school exiting the state turnaround district, will continue managing it after a state panel overturned a decision by Memphis-Shelby County Schools to deny its application.

The Tennessee Public Charter School Commission followed the recommendation of its executive director, Tess Stovall, in approving the application by IOTA Community Schools, formerly known as Green Dot Public Schools.

The 7-1 vote on Thursday came despite a recommendation by the commission’s own review committee to deny the application based on shortcomings in IOTA’s plan for academics and operations, as well as the performance of other schools in the network’s charter portfolio.

Arlandra Parker, who oversees charter school development for Memphis-Shelby County Schools, also argued that Wooddale had shown “inconsistent academic performance” for nearly a decade under the management of Green Dot/IOTA during its time in the state’s Achievement School District turnaround program, or ASD.

But Stovall said her review of the record tells a bigger story.

While acknowledging Wooddale’s mixed academic performance, she said the school has shown improvement in the past two years and generally outperforms nearby middle schools operated by the local district.

“I do not have confidence that, if responsibility for operating the school is shifted to Memphis-Shelby County Schools, Wooddale students will perform any different than the students at the other zoned middle schools,” Stovall wrote in her analysis.

Commissioner Terence Patterson, who is also CEO of the charter-friendly Memphis Education Fund, said the dearth of high-quality middle school options around Wooddale should factor into the state panel’s decisions on charter appeals, especially for Memphis schools transitioning out of the ASD.

“To even consider giving the option of running the school back to a district that has four neighboring schools with single-digit proficiency, I would almost view as negligence,” he said, referring to proficiency rates on state standardized tests.

Chairperson Chris Richards, a retired FedEx executive who also represents West Tennessee on the commission, cited concerns that Memphis-Shelby County Schools recently shuttered its Innovation Zone, another school turnaround program that could have provided Wooddale with additional resources and support when returning to its home district.

“We’re facing great uncertainty (about) the support of the local district, and that bothers me a lot,” she said, adding “that kind of support makes the difference between whether kids can get to school or not.”

The vote was the clearest example so far that the commission is willing to look beyond the state’s established metrics for scoring a charter school application, leaning instead on members’ views of whether approving it is in a community’s best interest.

It was also the third time in seven appeals that the commission has overturned the Memphis school board’s denial of a charter application since the legislature created the appellate entity under a 2019 law.

Last year, the commission approved an application from Capstone Education Group to continue operating Cornerstone Prep Lester as it prepared to exit the ASD at the end of the 2023-24 school year.

The commission also sided last year with Empower Memphis Career and College Prep, which is planning to open a K-8 charter school in the fall of 2025 focused on career and technical education in the city’s Orange Mound community.

In her analysis, Stovall said approving IOTA‘s application was in the best interest of Wooddale’s 450 students, the local district, and community. But she also identified challenges.

Wooddale’s chronic absenteeism rate is significantly higher than nearby middle schools, and there’s no guarantee that Memphis-Shelby County Schools will lease or sell the campus in the city’s Parkway Village area to IOTA.

Bluff City High School, another IOTA Memphis school that is already under the commission’s oversight, has been on charter probation since 2022, based on its failure to meet academic performance standards. The school’s charter is up for renewal under the commission in 2026-27.

IOTA has two remaining ASD schools — Hillcrest High and Kirby Middle — whose charter agreements with the state will end after the 2025-26 school year, creating uncertainty for the network in the next few years.

“While I do have some concerns when reviewing the amended application for Wooddale, the evidence of the entire record demonstrates to me that Wooddale is offering a higher quality option to families in the Parkway Village area,” Stovall said.

The commission also voted this week to uphold Rutherford County Schools‘ denial of a charter to Novus Smart Academy, as well as Nashville school board’s denial of a charter to Nashville School of Excellence.

But it overturned the Nashville district on three applications and approved charters for LEAD Southeast Elementary, Nurses Middle College, and Encompass Community School.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools and Metro Nashville Public Schools now have 30 days to reach mutual agreements with the respective charter networks for authorization. If that doesn’t happen, the state commission becomes the default authorizer.

Visit here to see the outcomes of all charter appeals to the commission.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Editor‘s note: This story has been updated to include the commission’s decisions on more 2024 charter appeals.

Governor says Tennessee has money for both Hurricane Helene recovery and universal school vouchers

2024-10-11T19:24:00+00:00

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Gov. Bill Lee said Hurricane Helene’s massive destruction in northeast Tennessee, plus a growing backlog of public infrastructure needs statewide, won’t prevent his administration from pursuing a universal private school voucher program during his final two years in office.

He also suggested that there’s no need to tap into the $144 million set aside for his Education Freedom Scholarship Act to beef up the state’s disaster response. That money currently is not being used, because his proposal stalled in the legislature this year.

“We don’t have to choose one or the other,” Lee said Thursday during a media briefing about the state’s emergency response and recovery work.

Ongoing and potential new initiatives like statewide vouchers remain possible, he said, because of strong fiscal management by the state in the last 20 years.

“We have resources. We have an economy. We have the ability to invest in … infrastructure and education both,” Lee added.

The governor sought to quell suggestions from some lawmakers that state leaders rethink Tennessee’s budget priorities, not only to help northeast Tennessee recover from potentially $1 billion-plus in damage to its public infrastructure, but also to address a growing backlog of at least $68 billion needed statewide to improve roads, bridges, water systems, schools, firehouses, and more, according to the state’s latest assessment.

One of his administration’s top priorities is to give public funding to any family across Tennessee who wants to send their children to private school. This summer, Lee said his office was crafting a new bill after his 2024 proposal stumbled in legislative committees this spring due to disagreements among Republicans.

Last week, Rep. Mark White, a Memphis Republican and voucher supporter who chairs a House education committee, said the state’s new first priority should be “taking care of our neighbors in East Tennessee” and helping them recover from the deadly storm.

“Can we do universal vouchers, too? I don’t know,” White continued. “But East Tennessee has got to be our top focus.”

On Thursday, Lee said his administration is already prioritizing recovery and rebuilding for the region.

He announced a $100 million fund to help 13 hurricane-ravaged counties remove debris and repair water and wastewater systems immediately. Those counties eventually can seek reimbursements from the federal government to repay the fund, but need no-interest loans up front, Lee said.

On Friday, the chairperson of the House Democratic caucus issued a scathing critique of the governor’s plan to loan counties money, instead of providing state funding outright to supplement federal assistance. He also criticized Lee for tapping shared state-federal Medicaid funding to provide the loans.

“Gov. Lee has established a solid reputation for fiscal mismanagement and callous decision-making during his term, but this loan program beats anything I’ve ever seen,” said Rep. John Ray Clemmons, of Nashville.

Clemmons said the state should be pulling from its reserves, or the unused $144 million voucher allocation, to provide disaster assistance.

Schools have been closed since the storm flooded the rural, mountainous region in late September, washing out roads and bridges, damaging drinking water and wastewater systems, and battering school campuses.

In addition to overseeing repairs, school officials have been revamping bus routes for the return of students, many of whom already had fall breaks planned for October. Daily bus commutes likely will lengthen to more than an hour for many children. At a Carter County high school that’s expected to be declared a total loss, students will be relocated to a former school building that houses district offices.

Meanwhile, officials with the state education department said they are working with local school leaders to provide flexibility and assistance to school systems affected by Helene.

That may involve granting waivers so schools can provide more instruction remotely than normally allowed, or to reduce the required number of instructional days. The state also will work with districts as needed regarding fall high school and ACT testing, a spokesperson said.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include a response from House Democrats.

With all of Tennessee’s hurricane damage, will funding priorities change for schools, vouchers?

2024-10-08T20:07:39+00:00

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One high school took in 4 feet of water and is expected to be declared a total loss. Other campuses in northeast Tennessee sustained roof, water system, and other damage — including food that spoiled in refrigerators after the power went down. School bus routes have been thrown into disarray by mangled roads and bridges.

Officials across the region are still assessing Hurricane Helene’s damage to schools and their surrounding communities, but a few things are becoming clear: The already massive repair needs for Tennessee school buildings and other public infrastructure are about to grow. And with a long and costly recovery ahead, state leaders will need to rethink some of their top budget priorities — possibly including Gov. Bill Lee’s desire to extend private school vouchers statewide — to figure out how to pay for them.

“I’m not sure when we’ll be back in school,” said Mischelle Simcox, superintendent of Johnson County Schools.

Late last week, her team was trying to figure out how to revamp transportation in a district where 75% of its 2,000 students rely on buses to get to six rural schools.

“Many of our highways are just gone, and a lot of bridges are out,” she said. “We’ve been through blizzards. We’ve been through COVID. But in my 26 years as an educator, I’ve never seen anything like this.”

There is money available. Tennessee’s current spending plan, for instance, includes $144 million for Lee’s universal school voucher proposal — funding that’s sitting unused since the bill stalled in the legislature in April.

The state’s rainy day fund, now projected to reach a record-high $2.15 billion, is another potential source. That money is set aside in case of economic downturns or emergencies. But lawmakers have historically been protective of the pot because it contributes to Tennessee’s good bond rating, which also helps local governments get lower interest rates when borrowing money.

In addition, there may be unclaimed funding from $1.5 billion the legislature allocated this year to give certain tax refunds to businesses, which have until Nov. 30 to submit their claims.

Rep. Mark White, a Memphis Republican and voucher supporter who chairs a House education committee, is ambivalent about which source or sources to tap. But he is adamant that the state should reevaluate its priorities.

“Our first priority now has got to be taking care of our neighbors in East Tennessee and helping them recover from this storm damage,” White said.

“Can we do universal vouchers, too? I don’t know,” he continued. “But East Tennessee has got to be our top focus.”

Eight hard-hit counties due to receive federal aid

The hurricane blew ashore in Florida on Sept. 26, then dumped more than 40 trillion gallons of rain on the Southeast in less than a week, battering inland communities that typically are safe from tropical storms. At least 230 people have died, including 15 Tennesseans, with many people still missing.

Eight mostly rural, mountainous counties suffered the brunt of the record-setting rainfall in East Tennessee — Carter, Cocke, Greene, Hamblen, Hawkins, Johnson, Unicoi, and Washington. They’ve already been approved to receive federal disaster aid, with philanthropic help promised by entities ranging from nonprofit organizations to entertainer Dolly Parton, an East Tennessee native.

The ultimate cost of recovery to state government could exceed $1 billion.

Transportation officials project it will cost hundreds of millions of dollars just to repair state-owned bridges, and they expect months of road closures. For many students, bus detours could lengthen their daily commute by hours.

In Carter County, where Hampton High School flooded, the school board voted in an emergency meeting last week to relocate its 400 students to the district’s central office building, a former school. But with the abandoned campus located in a flood plain and help from insurance providers unlikely for a rebuild, school leaders were preparing for a long, arduous recovery.

Most schools in the region weathered the storms better, but still sustained damage, including roofs to repair, buckled parking lots, and lots of downed trees, debris, and mud to clean up.

Many campuses where electricity and water have been restored are serving as community resource centers, providing food, shelter, and laundry and showering services to displaced families, especially since some schools were already planning closures for fall break.

The cafeteria of Mountain City Elementary School is serving as a food and supply distribution center for families affected by Hurricane Helene flooding in Johnson County, Tennessee.

A group of education and philanthropic leaders have established the Northeast Tennessee School District Disaster Relief Fund, with 100% of the proceeds going to assist school districts hardest hit by Helene.

Tennessee was already behind on school building needs

Before the hurricane hit, Tennessee already had a statewide backlog of school building needs through 2027, estimated to cost nearly $10 billion. It’s part of a $68 billion inventory of public infrastructure needs that also include roads, bridges, utilities, and firehouses, according to the state’s latest assessment.

For local officials seeking to transform their communities through education, keeping up with school upgrades is especially important. A growing body of evidence asserts higher-quality facilities translate into better academic outcomes for vulnerable children, plus higher property values for communities that surround improved school buildings.

Rep. David Hawk, a Greeneville Republican whose district was affected by the floods, has tried for a decade to direct recurring state funds to brick-and-mortar education needs. Helene’s aftermath, he said, further highlights the challenges faced by city and county governments, which mostly use property and sales tax revenues to pay for school facilities.

“Right now in Upper East Tennessee, we’re focused on immediate needs, but our long-term needs will not be a quick fix,” Hawk said. “We’ll be coupling state and federal dollars to achieve what needs to be done. I hope one day we’ll be able to use recurring state dollars to fund the schools and roads and bridges and water and sewer infrastructures that need to be upgraded.

“The needs are everywhere,” Hawk said.

On Tuesday, Tennessee Democrats launched a previously planned“Rocky Top, Not Rocky Roads” campaign aimed at modernizing the state’s transportation systems and relieving traffic congestion amid climate change that’s fueling natural and environmental disasters.

“We have got to stop being so reactive in our state, “ said Sen. Heidi Campbell, of Nashville, while Rep. Ronnie Glynn, of Clarksville, called for “intelligent, sustainable solutions.”

How the storm could shift the voucher debate

Touring damage in Cocke County last week, the governor said his administration was working on a plan specifically to assist students.

“We’ve got to think outside the box,” Lee said, “not just respond in the way that we know how to respond, but go above and beyond that, recognizing that these kids need to be in school, and they need to be fed, and they need to be educated, and they need all the services that come with that.”

Gov. Bill Lee speaks with first responders in Cocke County on Oct. 3, 2024. The East Tennessee county was one of the state's hardest hit areas with flood damage caused by Hurricane Helene.

Voucher opponents say thinking outside of the box should include reallocating untapped voucher funding from the current state budget to help storm-ravaged schools.

The $144 million allocation was Lee’s consolation prize after Republican disagreements derailed his universal voucher proposal in legislative committees in April. The conflict stemmed partly from worries that offering school vouchers statewide, regardless of family income, could bust the state’s budget, similar to Arizona’s experience after it pioneered one of the nation’s largest school voucher programs in 2022.

But hours after Tennessee lawmakers adjourned this spring, Lee said money they budgeted for his proposed Education Freedom Scholarship Act showed their “clear intent” to pass universal vouchers next year when the General Assembly reconvenes.

JC Bowman, executive director of Professional Educators of Tennessee and a frequent voucher critic, said “the optics are horrible” to leave such funding in place as Tennesseans toil with a natural disaster. The state’s juvenile justice system, he noted, is also under intense statewide strain this fall because of hundreds of school threats, mostly on social media, with some local officials pleading for more juvenile detention space.

“We don’t have an obligation to fund private schools under our state constitution, but we do have an obligation to fund public schools,” Bowman said. “If the choice is between vouchers and rebuilding our state and keeping our kids safe, there’s no really no choice.”

“We’ve been through blizzards. We’ve been through COVID. But in my 26 years as an educator, I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Mischelle Simcox, superintendent, Johnson County Schools.

White, a longtime lawmaker from Memphis, agrees the legislature should revisit its financial priorities, though he’s not ready to identify what should stay and what should go.

His district is on the opposite end of the state from Helene’s destruction but lies along the New Madrid Fault seismic zone, a source of tremors and historic earthquakes affecting seven states.

“If Memphis had an earthquake, I would hope the state’s No. 1 priority would be helping Shelby County and any other counties affected in our region of the state,” he said.

“We’re all Tennesseans.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Amid big shifts, Memphis school district’s enrollment is up, but still short of projections

2024-08-28T22:09:59+00:00

Enrollment in Memphis-Shelby County Schools is ahead of what it was at this time last year, but lags projections for the school year amid significant changes in the composition of the district.

As of this week, 109,636 students were enrolled in Tennessee’s largest district, 1,446 more than a year ago, according to a presentation to the school board Tuesday from Superintendent Marie Feagins.

But that’s below the district’s projected enrollment of 111,983, which includes students in the district’s 54 charter schools.

More than 2,300 students who were expected to attend district schools haven’t shown up.

The enrollment update comes amid big changes in local education, including the shift of nearly a thousand students in three campus schools that were operated by the University of Memphis under a contract with the Memphis district. Under a new state law authorizing the creation of innovative school districts, those schools are now in their own university-run school system.

Meanwhile, the district expected to absorb students from five school buildings that moved this summer from charter operators back to the Memphis district’s control after 10 years with the state-run school turnaround program known as the Achievement School District.

Three of those ASD campuses — Humes Middle, MLK College Prep High, and Memphis Scholars — are now shuttered. MSCS officials have encouraged their students to attend other local schools.

School board member Kevin Woods said MSCS likely would have had fewer students enrolled this year without the ASD transitions.

“I think you’re sharing the narrative that the district has more students, the district is still trending in the right direction,” he told Feagins during his final meeting before departing the board after 13 years in office.

“But we do have students that simply are still not showing up,” he added.

Feagins has made enrollment and attendance two of the top priorities of her new administration after taking over as the district’s leader this spring.

Last week, through her initiative dubbed “Hey Neighbor!” she went door-to-door to track down students who have not shown up since the academic year began on Aug. 5.

“Come on and open the door for me. It’s your superintendent. I want to make sure you’re OK,” she said during one of her visits, shown on a video posted on social media.

Under the initiative, she said, her team has knocked on more than 600 doors in areas of Memphis with the most no-shows. The goal is to help families reconnect with their schools so their children are back in class.

Woods praised Feagins for knocking on doors, but reminded the community that “it’s everybody’s job” to get kids in school.

“Continue to lean in on friends, folks in churches. Somebody know where these kids are, right?” he said.

Board member Kevin Woods listens during a Memphis-Shelby County Schools board meeting on Oct. 24, 2023. Woods, who has served on the board since 2011, leaves his elected office this month.

Feagins’ presentation also showed an increase of more than 1,100 pre-K students over this time last year.

Charter school enrollment as of Tuesday was 19,624, nearly 900 students more than this time last year.

She reported that average daily attendance is 95% so far this year. But the district has historically struggled with chronic absenteeism, defined as a student who misses 10% or more instructional days in one school year, or about 18 days.

In the 2022-23 academic year, according to the most recent data released by the state, the Memphis district’s chronic absenteeism rate was 28%, equating to nearly 29,000 students.

That means significantly less learning time.

Research suggests that chronic absenteeism puts students at greater risk of negative outcomes that include dropping out or developing poorer reading skills.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

School voucher supporters get wins, losses from Tennessee’s Republican voters

2024-08-02T20:41:13+00:00

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In many ways, Tennessee’s fiercest GOP legislative primary races amounted to a referendum on Gov. Bill Lee’s school voucher proposal to provide public funding to any K-12 student toward a private education.

On Thursday, Republican voters delivered the governor a mix of wins and losses on the issue.

And the wins likely were aided by a slew of negative campaign ads targeting anti-voucher candidates and funded by millions of dollars from out-of-state groups supporting the policy.

The money, along with the governor’s endorsements of pro-voucher candidates, appeared to have paid off in two out of three open House seats in Montgomery and Williamson counties. Only in Blount County, near Knoxville, did Lee’s pick lose as retired Maryville teacher and football coach Tom Stinnett defeated attorney Jason Emert.

Numerous legislative incumbents who were considered Lee’s key voucher allies also won their primaries, but there were two big exceptions.

Sen. Jon Lundberg, who sponsored the Senate’s version of a statewide voucher bill this year, was defeated by Bobby Harshbarger, a pharmacist who is the son of U.S. Rep. Diana Harshbarger of Tennessee. And John Ragan, an Oak Ridge Republican and voucher supporter, lost his primary contest to former Clinton Police Chief Rick Scarbrough.

The governor had actively stumped in Upper East Tennessee for Lundberg, who chairs the powerful Senate Education Committee. Lundberg’s voucher bill would have required recipients to take some type of national test to track the program’s academic outcomes. It also would have allowed public school students to enroll in any district, even if they’re not zoned for it, provided there’s enough space and teaching staff.

In addition, Lundberg co-chaired a task force last fall looking into the feasibility of Tennessee rejecting federal education funding. He and other Senate members ultimately issued a report highlighting the risks of such an unprecedented move, effectively shutting down the discussion this year.

Ragan, who served on the House Education Committee, is known for sponsoring socially conservative education legislation, including the 2019 law restricting what teachers can say about race, gender, and bias, as well as numerous anti-LGBTQ bills.

Rep. John Ragan, a Republican from Oak Ridge, listens to Rep. David Hawk, a Republican from Greeneville, during a 2022 House education committee meeting.

This week’s election results come after school choice groups spent at least $4.5 million on primary contests to promote pro-voucher candidates, according to a tally by The Tennessee Lookout. The governor, who has vowed to bring his voucher bill back to the legislature, said he was OK with that infusion of outside cash into Tennessee politics.

Most of the money came from the School Freedom Fund, a super PAC tied to Club for Growth funder and New York-based investment billionaire Jeff Yass. The same group spent $8.8 million this year in Texas to defeat 10 incumbent Republican candidates who opposed Gov. Greg Abbott’s voucher plan.

Among Tennessee lawmakers toppled with the aid of negative campaign ads was three-term Republican Sen. Frank Niceley, of Strawberry Plains, who opposed the governor’s voucher plan. Also defeated was state Rep. Bryan Richey, of Maryville, who voted against the bill in committee and was running for the Senate seat of retiring Sen. Art Swann.

On Friday, School Freedom Fund President David McIntosh trumpeted those defeats and the PAC’s $3.6 million investment in five legislative races.

“Make no mistake,” McIntosh said in a statement. “If you call yourself a Republican and oppose school freedom, you should expect to lose your next primary.”

The stage is now set for another round of campaigning, this time for the Nov. 5 general election against Democratic candidates who are unified in their opposition to vouchers but have struggled to be heard since the GOP gained a supermajority in the Tennessee General Assembly in 2010.

Half of the legislature’s Senate seats and all 99 in the House will be on the next ballot. While some won’t be contested, Democrats view vouchers as an opportunity to turn several seats.

And every vote matters in the tight battle over vouchers.

The governor’s universal voucher proposal was stymied in the legislature this year, even with a Republican supermajority and Lee making it his No. 1 legislative priority. An unlikely coalition of Democrats and rural Republicans kept the bill from reaching either floor for a vote.

Hoping to change the calculus when the newly elected legislature convenes in January, Lee took the unusual step this summer of endorsing Republican candidates who support vouchers over others who don’t.

Here’s are the outcomes in some of the mostly closely watched legislative primary races related to education:

Senate

District 2: For the open seat vacated by Swann, Tom Hatcher, the Blount County court clerk, defeated Republican Rep. Richey.
District 4: Lundberg, the Senate Education Committee chair, lost to Harshbarger, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump. Harshbarger has expressed skepticism about Lee’s voucher plan.
District 8: New Tazewell businessman Jessie Seal defeated the incumbent, Niceley, a voucher opponent. He will face Democrat R.E. Ellison.
District 18: Incumbent Ferrell Haile, a Gallatin Republican who sits on the Senate Education Committee and serves as speaker pro tempore, easily defeated conservative activist Chris Spencer in another high-dollar Senate race. He will face Democrat Walter Chandler.

House of Representatives

District 13: Republican incumbent Robert Stevens, of Smyrna, a member of the House Education Committee, defeated Murfreesboro City Council member Jami Averwater. He will face Democrat Jonathan Yancey.
District 15: Democratic incumbent Sam McKenzie, who also serves on the education panel, defeated Knox County Commissioner Dasha Lundy. He will face Republican nominee Justin Hirst.
District 20: In the open Blount County seat vacated by Richey, Stinnett, the retired teacher, defeated Jason Emert, former chair of the Young Republican National Federation, and Nick Bright, a cattle farmer. He will face Democrat Karen Gertz.
District 24: Incumbent Kevin Raper, a retired educator from Cleveland, defeated Troy Weathers, a former Bradley County school board member. Both Republican candidates have spoken out against vouchers. Raper will face Democrat Andrea Chase.
District 33: Ragan, the incumbent, lost to Scarborough, the former Clinton police chief. Scarbrough will face Democrat Anne Backus, a retired project manager at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge.
District 60: In the open seat vacated by Democratic Rep. Darren Jernigan of Nashville, Democrat Shaundelle Brooks, who became a gun control activist after her son was killed in Nashville’s 2018 Waffle House shooting, defeated financial consultant Tyler Brasher. She will face pro-voucher Republican candidate Chad Bobo, who was endorsed by the governor and served as an aide to House Speaker Cameron Sexton. Bobo defeated Christopher Huff of Old Hickory.
District 64: Incumbent Rep. Scott Cepicky, a Culleoka Republican and a lead sponsor of this year’s House voucher bill, defeated Maury County Commissioner Ray Jeter, despite calling the governor’s original statewide voucher bill “terrible” during a candidate forum a week before the election. He will face Democrat Eileen Longstreet.
District 65: Candidate Lee Reeves, a real estate attorney and investor, narrowly defeated Williamson County Commissioner Brian Beathard, as well as Michelle Foreman, a former GOP state executive committee member. Reeves will face Democratic candidate LaRhonda Williams.
District 68: Candidate Aron Maberry, a Clarksville pastor and school board member endorsed by Lee, defeated retired Army pilot Greg Gilman, Montgomery County Commissioner Joe Smith, and former county Republican Party co-chair Carol Duffin. Maberry will face Democrat Garfield Scott.
District 73: Incumbent Rep. Chris Todd, of Humboldt, defeated former longtime Madison County Mayor Jimmy Harris, of Jackson. Todd was endorsed by the governor and favors vouchers, while Harris expressed concern about the policy’s financial impact on local public schools and also refused donations from special interest groups. There is no Democratic contender for the seat.
District 77: Republican incumbent Rusty Grills, of Newbern, defeated Dyer County Commissioner Bubba Cobb, a retired educator who is against vouchers. There is no Democratic contender for the seat.
District 83: Rep. Mark White, the longtime chairman of a House education committee, will face Democrat Noah Nordstrom, a teacher with Memphis-Shelby County Schools. Both ran unopposed in the primaries.
District 96: In the open seat vacated by Democrat Dwayne Thompson, Democrat Gabby Salinas narrowly defeated Telisa Franklin and three other challengers. A researcher at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Salinas faces no Republican opponent in November and will head to the statehouse in January.
District 97: Incumbent Rep. John Gillespie, of Memphis, defeated Christina Oppenhuizen, a small-business owner. He’ll face Democrat Jesse Huseth in what’s expected to be a tight race.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis school board approves 2 charter applications, denies 1

2024-07-31T02:27:50+00:00

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An all-girls charter school proposed for downtown Memphis and supported by the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies’ foundation can open for the 2025-26 school year, as can a K-8 charter school planned for Northeast Memphis.

But one other application from a newly rebranded charter operator didn’t fare so well with Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

The school board on Tuesday followed the recommendation of district staff and approved the application by Grizzlies Prep, which already operates an all-boys charter school downtown for 300 students in grades six through eight.

The Memphis Grizzlies Preparatory STEAM School for Girls will focus on science, technology, engineering, art, and math to try to address the underrepresentation of women — and particularly women of color — in those fields. It’s on track to become the city’s second all-girls charter school and the third one in Tennessee.

Without comment, the board ignored staff’s recommendation to reject the application of Journey Community Schools, formerly known as Aspire. The 5-1 vote means Journey Northeast Academy can open in the city’s Sycamore View area.

However, the board sided with staff by denying the bid of Green Dot Public Schools, which recently rebranded as IOTA Community Schools, to continue operating Wooddale Middle as it transitions back to Memphis-Shelby County Schools from the Achievement School District, a state-run turnaround program for low-performing schools.

IOTA has 10 days to appeal the decision to the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission.

If the decision stands, IOTA has one more year to operate Wooddale Middle. Superintendent Marie Feagins promised a “deep review” of how to strengthen the school.

It was an especially busy meeting for school board members ahead of Thursday’s elections to fill five of their nine seats — and the first day of school for Memphis students on Aug. 5.

Without discussion, the board voted to end its contract with the University of Memphis to run its Campus Schools program in partnership with the district. That paves the way for the university to form its own K-12 school system under a new state law that encourages the creation of innovative school districts.

The contract had been for the university to operate its three K-12 schools on the university’s campus through 2026. But the board opted to end that long partnership at the urging of several state lawmakers.

Backers say the new arrangement positions the program to open more university-run K-12 schools in Greater Memphis and leverage an academic model that has generated some of the best results in Tennessee.

Feasibility studies and community conversations are already under way to determine an expansion plan.

The board also approved plans to return two additional schools to Memphis-Shelby County Schools from the beleaguered ASD.

Caldwell-Guthrie Elementary will rejoin its home district as a pre-K-8 school emphasizing STEAM skills. Among those enrolled will be students from Humes Middle School, another state-run school that closed at the end of last school year after a decade in the ASD. It had a hundred-year track record of serving Memphis students, including a young Elvis Presley who graduated when it was Humes High School.

Another ASD campus, Florida Kansas, which previously was operated by Memphis Scholars under a charter agreement with the state, will return to the MSCS district but no longer educate students. Its enrollees are moving to Riverview K-8.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee governor OK with outside money for pro-voucher candidates

2024-07-30T01:11:20+00:00

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Gov. Bill Lee says he is OK with outside groups spending big on Tennessee legislative races featuring candidates who support his universal private school voucher plan.

Last month, the Republican governor took the unusual step of wading into local races and endorsing some Republican candidates in Thursday’s primary election based on their voucher positions.

“We have a really smart electorate, and I believe in the power of people to sort through the information, as long as it’s accurate,” Lee said on Friday after speaking at a workforce development event in rural Perry County, west of Nashville.

But some local officials say money from groups such as American Federation for Children, Americans for Prosperity, and the School Freedom Fund is bringing misinformation into several key races.

“The fact that out-of-state interest groups would spend that much money in a local House seat election should give us all concern,” says a July 23 letter to Williamson County voters from retiring Rep. Sam Whitson and four local city and county mayors.

The outside groups – which are not required to disclose their donors — are paying for mailers, television commercials, and other ads seeking to influence voters who will pick a successor for Whitson, a four-term Republican lawmaker who opposes vouchers. Similar special interest group activities seek to favor pro-voucher candidates in other parts of the state.

The tension comes as voters prepare to pick Republican and Democratic nominees to run for the statehouse on Nov. 5 before a critical legislative session for the future of Tennessee’s education system.

The governor, who wants to give public funding to any family statewide who wants to send their children to private school, says his administration is already crafting a new plan after his 2024 bill stumbled in committees during the recent legislative session.

“It’s a process that takes several months, but we’re working on it right now,” Lee told Chalkbeat in Perry County.

He did not provide details but promised “a commitment to universal school choice.”

Lee also pledged to “fully vet the program’s cost” when asked about recent comments by Rep. Scott Cepicky, a Republican voucher ally from Maury County, who called the governor’s education scholarship proposal a “terrible” plan that would have plunged Tennessee into dire financial straits.

“That’s a part of this process,” Lee said of studying the proposal’s financial feasibility.

Lee’s slate of preferred GOP candidates include Lee Reeves, a Williamson County real estate investor and attorney who supports private school vouchers, over fellow Republicans Brian Beathard and Michelle Foreman.

Beathard, who chairs the Williamson County Commission and opposes the governor’s plan, has been endorsed by most top locally elected leaders in the Republican enclave south of Nashville. Mailers and ads funded by outside groups have depicted him as anti-conservative and supportive of higher taxes and labor unions.

But Beathard’s supporters are pushing back.

“All of us are used to some ‘puffing’ and exaggerations when it comes to political mailers, but the negative messages aimed at Brian Beathard cross the line of decency,” says the letter to voters from Whitson, the outgoing Republican legislator, and other local officials.

They say some of the campaign materials include misleading policy statements, innuendo, and outright lies, as well as manipulating photos to distort Beathard’s appearance. The letter did not give specific examples.

Chalkbeat did not immediately receive responses from leaders with several organizations behind the ads. A spokesman for the School Freedom Fund, a pro-voucher group tied to Club for Growth and New York-based investment billionaire Jeff Yass, asked for specific examples but did not respond directly to the claims.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee governor’s comparison of school choice to civil rights ‘deeply offensive,’ Democrats say

2024-07-17T21:42:42+00:00

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In one of the battleground states of the Civil Rights Movement, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee is drawing heat for his description of school choice as “the civil rights issue of our time.”

Lee, who chairs the Republican Governors Association, made the comparison Tuesday during a four-minute speech to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee as he attacked the Biden administration’s record on education, border security, inflation, and farm policies.

“They attacked parental rights. Republican governors fought back for a parent’s right to choose their own child’s education,” Lee told delegates. “President Trump was right when he said that school choice is the civil rights issue of our time.”

Back in Tennessee on Wednesday, the state Senate’s Democratic Caucus issued a joint statement calling Lee’s assertion “not only misleading but deeply offensive.”

“Tennessee has a proud history of leading in the fight for civil rights — from the lunch counter sit-ins and Freedom Rides to school integration and labor rights,” the caucus said. “To label a policy that promotes segregation and inequality as a civil rights issue is a grave disservice to the legacy of those who fought for justice in our state.”

The verbal scuffle comes as Lee pushes for a universal school voucher bill, a key school choice policy, in Tennessee. It would provide taxpayer funding to pay toward private school tuition for any student who wants it, anywhere in the state, including those from middle-class and wealthy families.

Lee’s proposal collapsed in committees during the recent legislative session, but he’s vowed to bring it back in 2025. To try to change the outcome, he recently endorsed Republican legislative candidates who support vouchers in their primary races over fellow Republicans who oppose the policy.

With school choice as a pillar of his own campaign platform, Lee easily won two terms in office in a state that went from blue to deep red in recent decades. But the results of various voter polls on vouchers vary wildly in Tennessee, and opponents charge the policy amounts to social welfare for the wealthy.

“The true civil rights issues of our time are those that uplift and support all children, regardless of their background. Private school vouchers do the exact opposite,” the Senate Democratic caucus said.

But Republican voucher supporters say they’re needed to put parents in charge of their children’s education. Expanding parental rights and school choice is part of the Republican Party’s 2024 platform, which delegates approved on Monday.

Tennessee has a long and blemished record on civil rights issues.

In 1920, it became the 36th and final state needed to ratify the landmark 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gave millions of women the right to vote.

In 1960, at the height of the movement to abolish legalized racial segregation and discrimination, a group of college students including Diane Nash formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Nashville. The chairman was a young John Lewis, a student at Nashville’s Fisk University, who went on to become a civil rights icon and longtime congressman from Georgia before his death in 2020.

And the Rev. James Lawson Jr., who died last month at age 95, was the apostle of nonviolent protest who trained civil rights activists in Tennessee to withstand brutal responses from white authorities.

In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. arrived in Memphis to march with sanitation workers in their fight for equality, dignity, and respect. Instead, he was assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, which today is the site of the National Civil Rights Museum.

The Tennessee portion of the U.S. Civil Rights Trail spotlights 14 churches, schools and other landmarks that played an important role in the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-20th century, where many civil rights leaders and supporters were killed or targeted because of their struggle for freedom.

Lee’s office did not respond Wednesday when asked whether his comparison of school choice to civil rights was appropriate.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee governor bets big on school vouchers with primary endorsements. Will it work?

2024-07-11T11:00:00+00:00

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At the Halfway Market in Franklin, Tennessee, where locals come for a good hamburger and friendly conversation, Republican Brian Beathard works the crowd as a candidate for a high-profile legislative seat ahead of a pivotal session on the future of the state’s education system.

By most standards, Beathard should be a shoo-in to replace departing state Rep. Sam Whitson, a four-term Republican lawmaker who’s retiring this year.

Beathard (pronounced BETH-ard) has served on the Williamson County Commission since 2010 and, as its current chairman, has a record of advocating for government efficiency, competence, and conservatism in a predominantly Republican community.

He’s been endorsed by top local leaders, including Whitson, three mayors, and a retired sheriff.

And he’s the only one of three Republican candidates for the District 65 seat who has continuously lived and worked for more than 25 years in the affluent suburban county south of Nashville.

But when Republican Gov. Bill Lee handed out endorsements in key statehouse primary races last month, Beathard got bypassed because of his stance on a single issue: private school vouchers.

Lee is betting big on a policy in which he’s had major victories during his nearly six years in office, but has still fallen short of his ultimate goal: taxpayer funding for private school tuition for any Tennessee student who wants it — including those from middle-class and wealthy families — all under the banner of “school choice.”

The governor’s universal voucher proposal stalled in the legislature this spring, even with a GOP supermajority. Now, in anticipation of a do-over, Lee is taking the unusual step of using his bully pulpit to endorse certain Republican candidates over others.

A proponent of local control, Beathard — like Whitson — opposes the governor’s plan, especially for Williamson County, home to two of the state’s top-performing public school districts.

“Our schools are our oceanfront property, so we should take a hard pause on anything that could negatively affect our students, our schools, our property values, or our ability to attract business,” Beathard said of Williamson County, where such big companies as Nissan, Mitsubishi Motors, Mars Petcare, and Tractor Supply Co. have their U.S. headquarters.

From left, Brian Beathard, Michelle Foreman, and Lee Reeves appear at a candidate forum in Franklin on June 6, 2024, as they campaign to succeed state Rep. Sam Whitson, a retiring lawmaker who opposes private school vouchers.

The governor, who also is from Williamson County and graduated from a public high school in Franklin, instead is backing real estate investor and attorney Lee Reeves, who moved to Tennessee five years ago from Texas. Reeves, who serves on a local zoning appeals board, supports school vouchers, as does candidate Michelle Foreman, a former member of the state’s Republican executive committee.

Whoever wins the three-way Republican primary on Aug. 1 is likely to succeed Whitson.

And Lee is eager to replace voucher opponents like Whitson with supporters to achieve his top policy priority.

Governor is ‘taking a risk’ by wading into contested primaries

After his universal voucher proposal collapsed in committees over Republican disagreements about the specifics, the governor pledged to vet GOP legislative candidates this election year based on his school choice agenda.

“I’ve said a lot of times I get engaged in elections, and I get engaged in candidates,” he told reporters in May, promising to “understand who I can be most supportive and most helpful to.”

He’s following the playbook of Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who successfully used school choice as a litmus test to remove anti-voucher Republican candidates from races, enabling Iowa to pass universal vouchers in 2023 and positioning Texas for a potentially similar outcome next year.

“The governor already put his reputation on the line to get vouchers through this spring and it didn’t work, so now he’s playing hardball. But he’s also taking a risk.”
John Geer, political science professor, Vanderbilt University

But if Lee’s endorsees lose their primary races to candidates like Beathard, the governor may find it even harder to push his education agenda through the legislature in 2025 as he enters his last two years in office, accelerating his lame duck status.

“The governor already put his reputation on the line to get vouchers through this spring and it didn’t work, so now he’s playing hardball,” said John Geer, a political science professor at Vanderbilt University.

“But he’s also taking a risk,” Geer continued. “If some of these candidates who didn’t get his endorsement survive, they’ll be even more entrenched” against vouchers.

According to Beathard, Lee and members of his staff didn’t speak personally with him about his position before announcing which candidates he was backing.

A small-business owner who supported Lee’s campaign for governor, Beathard is not completely opposed to vouchers, but wants local officials to be able to make the final call — a deference that wasn’t part of Lee’s 2019 education savings account law that imposed vouchers on Memphis and Nashville over the opposition of most local officials.

“My ears are open if there were a local option so Williamson County can opt out and counties that need that policy can opt in,” Beathard said.

Brian Beathard, center, speaks with citizens following a candidate forum on June 6, 2024.

Pro-voucher interests have the governor’s ear

Lee’s endorsements in his home county, as well as a handful of other state legislative races, generally mirror those announced earlier by Americans for Prosperity, a pro-voucher group affiliated with Kansas billionaire Charles Koch’s conservative advocacy network.

“We plan to put the full weight of our grassroots efforts behind each of our policy champions,” said Tori Venable, the group’s Tennessee leader, when rolling out several slates of endorsements in May.

A large amount of money is also coming into the state from pro-voucher interests.

The American Federation for Children launched a Super PAC for the 2024 elections cycle with at least $10 million to support pro-voucher candidates in state legislative races nationwide.

“If you’re a candidate or lawmaker who opposes school choice and freedom in education, you’re a target. If you’re a champion for parents, we’ll be your shield,” said Tommy Schultz, the group’s national CEO and its former spokesperson in Tennessee.

That’s just one of the concerns of Whitson, the departing state representative.

“The governor’s endorsement in District 65 opens the door for dark money from out of state to get into this campaign, simply so our governor can try to secure one more vote for his voucher program,” Whitson said.

Another voucher vote likely would be close in Tennessee’s House

Lee, who cruised to victory in two elections after campaigning to give parents more education choices for their children, appeared to have enough Senate votes to pass a statewide voucher plan this year, but couldn’t rally the House’s GOP supermajority to do the same.

His 2019 proposal to create a voucher program for Tennessee’s two biggest urban areas squeaked through the legislature after then-House Speaker Glen Casada held the voting board open for 38 minutes to convince Rep. Jason Zachary, of Knoxville, to change from “no” to “yes.” That controversial parliamentary maneuver remains a source of bitterness on both sides of the aisle, according to Whitson.

“There’s still a lot of fallout from that vote,” Whitson said. “But ethically and morally, I consider my ‘no’ vote on that day to be the best vote I ever cast.”

Timeline: How private school voucher movement gained momentum in Tennessee before hitting a bump

Supporters say universal vouchers would put all Tennessee parents in charge of their children’s education by making private schools a more affordable option.

Critics like Whitson say the policy would destabilize public education, bust the state’s budget, and further segregate schools by race, income, and students with disabilities, setting the stage for discrimination lawsuits against the state and various participating private schools.

“A lot of Republicans feel like the governor is putting us in a bad position with his voucher plan,” Whitson said. “And many are also disappointed at his tactic of injecting himself in the primary races.”

With Senate leaders in the background, Gov. Bill Lee speaks with reporters on April 25, 2024, at the close of the legislative session. He vowed to bring his private school voucher proposal, which stalled in committees, back to the Tennessee General Assembly in 2025.

Scott Golden, who chairs the state Republican Party, said Lee has been talking about his passion for school choice since he first ran for governor eight years ago. Lee also has a right, he said, to campaign for issues that are important to him.

“We see it all the time on the national level. Elected officials are free to make their voices heard during an election cycle, just like anybody else,” Golden said.

Hendrell Remus, who chairs the Tennessee Democratic Party, has a different take.

“The governor is willing to tear his Republican caucus to shreds in order to pass one item on his agenda,” Remus said. “But I think voters will step up and reject the candidates who Gov. Lee is trying to prop up. It’s an opportunity for Democrats.”

It’s unclear how the governor’s endorsements will play out this election year. Results of voter polls on vouchers vary wildly in Tennessee.

But for Lucetta Mannion, a Republican voter in Williamson County, Lee’s backing of a pro-voucher candidate helped to bring the issue to her attention — and steered her toward Beathard’s camp.

“I’ve done my research,” said Mannion, whose five grandchildren have attended local public schools. “Our schools are excellent, and I see no reason to have a voucher system for our children. If Brian wins, it will be one more vote in the legislature against it.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

School voucher voter polls vary wildly in Tennessee as many legislative candidates skirt the issue

2024-06-13T11:00:00+00:00

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While Gov. Bill Lee’s universal school voucher proposal is clearly a key issue this election year, there is less agreement on where Tennessee voters stand on the contentious education policy, incentivizing many state legislative candidates to avoid discussing the matter.

Numerous voter polls have generated wildly different results this year, depending on which organization was behind the survey and how the questions were asked.

As a result, rural Republican candidates, whose legislative votes would be pivotal in deciding the issue, aren’t generally trumpeting their positions on what would amount to a major policy change.

And when they do comment, the candidates are choosing their words carefully by using the language of “school choice” over “vouchers,” even though they’re essentially the same thing when it comes to letting parents use taxpayer money to send their children to private schools.

The divergent poll results, based on representative samplings of voters, underscore that vouchers remain a hot-button education issue as Tennesseans try to understand a complex idea that was the most divisive of the recent legislative session.

Supporters say the statewide voucher proposal, which the governor vowed to bring back to lawmakers next year after it failed to reach the Senate and House floors in April, would put parents in charge of their children’s education by giving them more choices. Critics say it would destabilize public education, bust the state’s budget, and further segregate schools by race, income, and students with special needs.

Now in his second term, Lee has characterized GOP support across Tennessee as solidly favoring his proposal, which is especially important in a red state where the winner of the Republican primary typically wins the general election.

The Republican governor, who campaigned on the promise of giving parents more education choices for their children, recently told Fox News that school choice is “a very popular idea among Republican primary voters.” He added that voters support it “by an overwhelming margin.”

“Legislators understand that; they know their voters want this,” Lee said.

But while vouchers have steadily gained support through the years, surveys of voter attitudes don’t necessarily bear out Lee’s claim.

Three pro-voucher groups — The Beacon Center, Americans for Prosperity, and the American Federation for Children — released findings early this year declaring broad support for expanding school vouchers in Tennessee as they sought to build momentum ahead of critical voucher votes in the General Assembly.

During the same period, the Tennessee Education Association, the state’s largest teachers organization and a voucher opponent, released results of its own poll showing only 30% of Republican primary voters supported the governor’s plan.

Most recently, Vanderbilt University’s poll found Tennessee voters evenly split on the matter.

When asked if they approve of the policy, 45% were in favor of vouchers, 46% opposed them, and 9% said they neither supported nor opposed the idea.

“These results show that vouchers remain a controversial issue,” said John Geer, the Vanderbilt poll’s co-director and a distinguished professor of political science.

“It is a complex and complicated topic,” he added. “That makes the issue difficult to measure in a poll.”

The uneven findings of various polls stem, in part, from how the questions were framed.

For instance, Americans for Prosperity asked voters: “Governor Lee is proposing a school choice program that will enable parents to take back control over $7K of their education tax dollars to educate their child in a private or home school environment if they choose to, giving parents more control over how and where their children are educated. Do you agree with the program Governor Lee is proposing?”

More than 70% responded ‘yes.’

By contrast, the TEA’s survey asked a series of questions delving into the structural and financial impacts that universal vouchers would have on the state’s public education system.

Among them: “Other states that have enacted statewide vouchers saw that 95% of students who benefitted were from wealthy families who had the resources to send their children to private schools or already attended private schools, mostly in rural areas, instead of providing resources to middle-income families and students from across the state. Does knowing this make you more or less likely to support school vouchers?”

More than 70% responded that they were less inclined to support the policy.

The Vanderbilt poll, which also examined issues such as abortion, vaccines, and gun control, was conducted this spring, soon after the legislature adjourned.

On vouchers, Vanderbilt pollsters asked: “Do you support, neither support nor oppose, or oppose Tennessee giving all parents tax-funded vouchers they can use to help pay for tuition for their school-age children to attend private or religious schools of their choice, instead of attending local public schools?”

“We don’t have an ax to grind, so we tried to be as straightforward as we could,” said Geer.

John Geer

About 49% of responding voters also said they were likely to use vouchers if they became available, and 50% said they would not. By a wide margin, Republicans who support former President Donald Trump were the group most likely to use them, while only 26% of Democrats said they would take advantage of the option.

“The outcome of the poll on vouchers was very partisan in nature,” Geer said.

That partisan lens, he added, was more significant than whether the voter lived in a rural, urban, or suburban district, where access to private schools varies significantly.

“I think it’s another statement about our political climate and the polarization of our country. We really weren’t able to get past the partisanship,” he said.

This year’s uneven polling results may help explain why many rural Republican candidates aren’t discussing vouchers or promoting where they stand on the issue when seeking to secure their party’s nomination. In suburban and urban districts, which are home to more private schools, both Republican and Democratic candidates are more likely to weigh in or use vouchers as a campaign issue.

“Rural Republican legislators got some pushback over the governor’s voucher proposal, so I can understand why they would skirt the issue with primary voters,” Geer said. “I can understand why they would just say: ‘I’m for public education because that’s what’s important to my rural district.’”

Debby Gould, president of the League of Women Voters in Tennessee, said legislative candidates can easily cloak their voucher stance by saying they support public education, especially since the House’s 2024 voucher bill bundled the creation of a statewide voucher program with public school reforms.

“That muddied the waters a bit, but voters deserve a clear answer to whether they plan to vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on universal vouchers,” Gould said.

“Vouchers aren’t a secondary election issue,” she added. “Gov. Lee has said it’s a priority for his administration, so it will be front and center next legislative session.”

All 99 seats in the state House and half of the Senate’s 33 seats are on the ballot this year. Aug. 1 is Tennessee’s primary election day, with early voting July 12-24. The general election will be on Nov. 5.

You can find more voter information on the Secretary of State’s website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Where Tennessee lawmakers landed on vouchers, guns, AI, and other education issues in 2024

2024-04-29T10:00:00+00:00

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Tennessee’s legislature is done for the year after a session marked by political infighting over private school vouchers and emotional debates about whether teachers and staff should be able to carry a gun in public schools.

The statewide voucher proposal fizzled after the Senate and House couldn’t agree on the specifics. Gov. Bill Lee quickly pledged to come back next year with another plan.

The bill to arm some school employees easily passed, defying dramatic protests at the state Capitol, a year after a Nashville school shooting in which three children, three adults, and the intruder were killed.

“This was a session of good, bad, and ugly,” Senate Minority Leader Raumesh Akbari said after the legislature adjourned on Thursday.

“Unfortunately, some really really bad bills ended up passing,” the Memphis Democrat added.

Republican leaders hailed the four-month session as a success.

“We accomplished things that will benefit the people of this state,” the governor told reporters minutes after the gavel fell.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee speaks with reporters at the close of the 2024 legislative session on April 25. He's flanked by the General Assembly's Republican leaders.

He cited the passage of a “historically important budget” that includes a consolation prize of $144 million for his Education Freedom Scholarship Act, in case it passes in future years. The failed voucher proposal seeks to give taxpayer money to any family who wants to send their children to private schools, regardless of their income.

“That shows a clear intent that we believe in this concept and that we expect that to get done next year,” Lee said.

By the end of the week, the governor had signed the bill to let some school employees carry guns, which took effect immediately.

The new law marks the biggest expansion of gun access in Tennessee since the killings at The Covenant School. Last year, the legislature appropriated $140 million to help place an armed officer in every public school, but many districts, especially in rural areas, haven’t been able to hire an officer for every campus.

“Districts have the option to choose,” Lee said earlier, arguing that some school systems need to let some employees carry a concealed handgun.

Protesters stage a "die-in" on the rotunda floor at the Tennessee State Capitol outside of the House chambers on April 23, 2024, after state lawmakers passed a bill to let certain teachers and school staff carry handguns in schools.

Legislation at the intersection of schools and guns

Lawmakers sorted through some 230-plus education bills filed in time for this year’s session — about 300 if you count those left over from last year in the two-year General Assembly. They ultimately passed about 70 that directly affect K-12 education.

For the second straight year, they made tweaks to a 2021 reading and retention law to address what many called unintended effects for students in grades three and four. Under a compromise approved on the last day of session, parents and educators of fourth graders will now have input on whether their students get held back because of low reading scores on state tests.

The legislature rejected tighter gun laws sought by Democrats and gun control advocates, and continued instead to pass legislation aimed at fortifying campuses. Among the initiatives: new school fire alarm protocols to take into account active-shooter situations; a pilot program to give teachers wearable alarms; increased safety training for school bus drivers; and guidelines to digitize school maps so first responders can access school layouts quickly in an emergency.

A rare bipartisan bill increases the penalty for anyone who threatens to commit an act of mass violence on school property or at a school-related activity.

Another measure, which Lee has signed into law, requires public schools to teach children age-appropriate firearms safety concepts as early as pre-kindergarten. The video-based training is to begin in the 2025-26 school year and, among other things, will instruct students who find a firearm that they shouldn’t touch it and should notify an adult immediately. The bill bars parents from opting their children out of the training.

So-called culture war issues played prominently again

One new law requires public school students to watch a video on fetal development produced by an anti-abortion group, or something comparable. Another measure will require public school employees to out transgender students to their parents. But a bill designed to ban LGBTQ+ flags in schools failed in the Senate amid concerns of a legal challenge based on First Amendment rights.

Tennessee’s age-appropriate materials law, championed by Lee in 2022 to cull certain titles from school libraries, now includes a definition of “suitable” materials for certain ages and maturity levels. And if a local school board doesn’t address a book complaint within 60 days, the complainant can now take the issue straight to the state textbook commission.

Another GOP bill that passed seeks to make sure that material related to “sexual activity” is excluded from the state’s mandatory family life curriculum for students in kindergarten through the fifth grade.

Meanwhile, legislation sponsored by Democrats directs the state education department to develop a program that public schools can use to teach students the skills of nonviolent conflict resolution.

Lawmakers exit the House of Representatives at the Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville on April 25 after adjourning their two-year session.

Social media and technology also were on the minds of lawmakers.

They signed off on legislation requiring minors to have parental consent to create social media accounts.

In addition, school districts, charter schools, and higher-education institutions must develop and implement their own policies on the use of artificial intelligence in the classroom, if they haven’t already done so. Those policies could include restricting or outright prohibiting the use of AI.

Amid that discussion, one bill requires that Tennessee history be taught in fifth grade. Having that issue codified in state law settles, for now, a debate that erupts whenever the state revises its academic standards for social studies.

Memphis was the focus of more legislation

Rep. Mark White and Sen. Brent Taylor, both Memphis Republicans, drafted several proposals aimed at education in their community.

The legislature passed one bill allowing the University of Memphis to create its own K-12 school district and expand its innovative University Schools model beyond campus borders. University officials said they’ll launch the district this fall, even as they’re still in talks with Memphis-Shelby County Schools about their contract that runs through fall 2026.

Another proposal — giving the governor the power to appoint up to six new members to the board of Memphis-Shelby County Schools — was never heard in committees after White agreed to hold off and work with the existing board and the district’s new superintendent, Marie Feagins, on an improvement plan.

Rep. Antonio Parkinson D-Memphis, has sought for years to shut down the Achievement School District.

A Democratic-sponsored proposal to end the Tennessee Achievement School District, the state’s sputtering takeover and turnaround initiative, passed out of the Senate but not the House. Rep. Antonio Parkinson, the sponsor there, pulled the legislation on the last day of session when White sought to amend the bill. Still, the ASD continues to shrink on its own as its 10-year contracts with charter operators end.

An effort to expand a separate pilot school turnaround project — which started in 2021 in Memphis, Nashville, and Chattanooga — failed to clear budget committees.

Lawmakers passed House Speaker Cameron Sexton’s charter school proposal to create new alternative education options for Tennessee’s at-risk youth. The plan opens the door to residential charter schools, a concern of disability advocates who warned against any measure that could lead to the institutionalization of youth or commingling distinct student populations facing varying issues such as substance abuse, juvenile crime, chronic absenteeism, and teen pregnancy.

Sexton trumpeted his and other charter school legislation headed to the governor’s desk. One bill rewrites state law governing vacant and underutilized public school properties to give charter operators the “right of first refusal” to purchase those public assets.

“This session did more than it’s ever done in our history to continue to put (charter schools) on a path to give parents the choice and alternative to traditional schools,” Sexton said.

A tighter budget meant fewer education initiatives

Passing a budget for state government is the legislature’s only required constitutional duty, and the task was more challenging this year as tax revenues flattened and federal COVID relief funding ended.

Still, Republican lawmakers approved a $1.9 billion package of tax cuts and refunds to corporations and businesses.

Representatives on the floor of the Tennessee House in 2022

They ultimately approved a nearly $53 billion spending plan that allocates an additional $126 million to raise the annual minimum salary for public school teachers from $42,000 to $44,500. The goal is to get to $50,000 by the 2026-27 school year.

Also included is $8 million to hire more school-based behavioral health specialists amid record reports of students experiencing stress, depression, anxiety, and other mental health challenges exacerbated by the pandemic. Another $15 million in non-recurring funds will help charter school operators pay for school facilities and maintenance.

But the legislature killed efforts to hire more school-based nurses and counselors, reimburse teachers for some of their child care expenses, and provide free feminine hygiene products in high schools, as well as separate proposals by a Democrat and a Republican to make school meals free for all students. It also said no to a bill to use tax revenue from Tennessee’s growing sports betting industry to offer child care scholarships to low- and middle-income families.

When the 114th General Assembly convenes next year, it will look somewhat different after this year’s elections. All seats of the 99-member House of Representatives and half of the Senate’s 33 seats will be on the ballot.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee’s universal school voucher plan is dead for now, governor acknowledges

2024-04-22T16:34:26+00:00

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In the end, the gulf between competing school voucher bills in Tennessee’s legislature was just too wide to cross.

Gov. Bill Lee acknowledged Monday that his push to create a statewide program — which had been on the ropes for more than a month — was dead for the year after Republican leaders in the Tennessee House and Senate were unable to break through disagreements about testing and funding.

“While we made tremendous progress, unfortunately it has become clear that there is not a pathway for the bill during this legislative session,” Lee said in a statement Monday.

The Republican governor vowed to return with another plan next year and added that he’s disappointed for families “who will have to wait yet another year for the freedom to choose the right education for their child.”

The proposal’s failure hands Lee one of the biggest defeats of his administration, now in its second term.

It also signals that for all the momentum vouchers have in Tennessee — including a string of victories in the courts and legislature — Lee’s statewide proposal remains a divisive policy because of its potential to destabilize urban, suburban, and rural public school districts, and add a new burden on state and local finances.

For now, Tennessee has only its targeted voucher program in three urban counties, which provides taxpayer funding to 2,095 students to pay toward private school tuition, plus a smaller voucher program for students with certain disabilities.

As part of his broader school-choice agenda, the governor wanted his new voucher program to eventually become available to every K-12 student across Tennessee, regardless of their family income, and lawmakers took up two vastly different bills from the House and Senate.

But the chambers deadlocked on two issues, according to Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg, the Bristol Republican who worked with House Republican leaders for weeks to try to reach a compromise.

First, in addition to creating a new private school voucher program, the more expansive and expensive House version sought to dramatically reduce testing and accountability for public school students.

“We had worked really hard to get those measures into place,” Lundberg said, “and believe it would be a step backward for our state.”

Second, the House version proposed increasing the state’s contribution toward public school teachers’ medical insurance coverage from 45% to 60% — and paying for it with funding earmarked for teacher raises.

That funding pathway closed last week when the legislature approved a 2024-25 budget that retained the $125 million that Lee had set aside to increase the annual minimum salary for public school teachers from $42,000 to $44,500, as promised last year by the governor.

“Ultimately, the House and the Senate had looked at education freedom scholarships through two different lenses,” Lundberg told Chalkbeat on Monday. “We looked at it as school choice legislation. The House looked at it as a way to achieve both school choice and education reform.

“Our perspectives were just so different that we could not come together at the end,” he said.

Timing and cost were factors

As lawmakers entered what’s likely the final week of the 2024 session, they worried about the timing of creating an expensive new program in the midst of flattening revenues and during an election year in which most of their names will be on the ballot.

The voucher program would have been expected to grow over time, likely subsidizing tuition for families who would have chosen private schools anyway. In the program’s second year, according to financial analysts, the Senate version’s projected cost was $287 million, while the House version was projected to cost $384 million.

In addition, more than 50 Tennessee school boards were on record opposing the plan. And the research shows little recent evidence that vouchers improve test scores.

The hurdles were especially problematic in the House, where voucher proposals have historically been harder to pass. To win more votes in that chamber, GOP leaders added enticements aimed at public school supporters to reduce testing time for students, require fewer evaluations for high-performing teachers, and give districts extra money to help with their building costs, as well as more funding for teachers’ medical insurance costs.

On Monday, House Speaker Cameron Sexton framed the debate as helpful for future talks even though it didn’t produce a consensus this year.

“Universal school choice came closer to a full vote than it had ever been in the past,” Sexton said in a statement. “We will continue working until all parents have the same opportunity to use their tax dollars to choose the best school for their child.”

Democrats, who were united in their opposition to vouchers, said the governor’s proposal ultimately crumbled because many Tennesseans pushed back on a plan that generated more questions than answers.

“From the start, the governor’s proposal was heavy on talking points and light on the substance of how it would work and how much it actually would cost,” said Sen. Jeff Yarbro of Nashville.

“The funding and the accountability pieces were always going to be the sticking points,” he added, “because voucher proponents really want the funding without the accountability.”

Even as voucher supporters quickly promised to try again next year, groups representing the state’s teachers hailed the governor’s loss as a win for Tennesseans.

“Governor Lee’s proposal was poorly written, arriving late in session, and had zero accountability in the plan,” said JC Bowman, executive director of Professional Educators of Tennessee.

The leaders of Arlington Community Schools near Memphis, who issued a fiery statement in December denouncing Lee’s voucher plan as part of a systematic attack on public schools, said they were pleased by the legislation’s defeat — and troubled that the governor is already talking about next year.

“He hasn’t even taken a day to understand why his signature bill failed,” said Superintendent Jeff Mayo. “That tells me he doesn’t care to listen to our concerns. The end game is to ultimately usher vouchers into Tennessee to fund private schools, despite the lackluster evidence that it will actually help students.”

School voucher opponents were among protesters who rallied at the state Capitol in Nashville on April 17, 2024. By Marta W. Aldrich

Voucher policies have advanced under Lee

For years, school voucher advocates had watched their policy dream come up short in Tennessee before racking up a string of victories after Lee took office in 2019 amid significant turnover in the GOP-controlled legislature.

Lawmakers passed a bill on a narrow, controversial vote in the House of Representatives during Lee’s first year in office to help create an education savings account program.

The targeted program rolled out in 2022 in Memphis and Nashville for students from low-income families attending low-performing schools. Voucher opponents challenged the law in court and had some early legal wins, but the Tennessee Supreme Court declared the law constitutional in 2022.

After the program’s accelerated rollout and the addition of Hamilton County during its second year, the governor took another big step: proposing a separate statewide Education Freedom Scholarship program to launch this fall with up to 20,000 students, and eventually to eliminate all the geographic and family-income restrictions.

Dueling bills from the House and Senate easily advanced through education committees, but stalled for four weeks in finance committees before the governor accepted defeat.

In his statement Monday, Lee reiterated his reasons for pressing ahead, adding that he’s “never been more motivated.”

“It’s very simple,” he said. “This is about every Tennessee student having the opportunity to succeed, regardless of their ZIP code or income level, and without question, empowering parents is the best way to make sure that happens.”

Later Monday, he told reporters he will campaign for his voucher plan this year as he speaks with Tennessee voters and Republican lawmakers up for reelection.

“I won’t stop,” he said, “because I believe in kids, and I believe in their future and ... the freedom that families should have to make choices.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis reporter Laura Testino contributed to this report. Contact her at ltestino@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee budget keeps $144 million for statewide school voucher program that’s still in limbo

2024-04-19T01:03:18+00:00

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Tennessee lawmakers approved a state budget Thursday that includes $144 million to create a statewide school voucher program that Republican leaders say they’re still working to pass.

The money is in place in case the GOP-controlled House and Senate find a way to reconcile vastly different proposals for the voucher program, which would provide taxpayer funding toward private school tuition for up to 20,000 students. The universal voucher bill, called the Education Freedom Scholarship Act, is Republican Gov. Bill Lee’s top education priority.

But as lawmakers aim to wrap up their 2024 session by next week, the passage of the budget limits options for negotiators seeking to convince House members to compromise on their more expansive — and expensive — voucher bill.

To convince mostly rural representatives who are hesitant about taking funding away from their local school districts for private school vouchers, the House measure also seeks to give public schools $75 per student for building construction and maintenance, as well as money to increase the state’s contribution toward teachers’ medical insurance coverage from 45% to 60%, among other enticements for public school supporters.

Voucher bills stuck in finance committees

Meanwhile, the dueling voucher bills languished in finance committees for a fourth straight week without action, making the proposal’s chances for passage increasingly dim.

Still, Lt. Gov. Randy McNally said it was “premature” to declare the bill dead, as several news reports have done.

Until the legislature adjourns, “it’s still alive,” he told reporters.

McNally said the Senate is poised to approve its voucher bill, which unlike the House’s version requires recipients to take some type of annual test to show their academic progress. The measure, which is sponsored by Majority Leader Jack Johnson and has 17 Senate co-sponsors, also calls for open enrollment across public school systems.

House Speaker Cameron Sexton, whose chamber is more divided over the voucher plan, was reserved in his enthusiasm but pledged to keep working on a deal.

“At the end of the day, it’s an administration bill,” Sexton told reporters. “Until (Gov. Lee) tells us to stop negotiating and working with the Senate, then we’re going to continue to do that.”

Democratic lawmakers have been united in their opposition to either bill — and are staying vigilant as the legislative session enters its final week.

“I’ve seen legislation pass at 2 in the morning that we thought was dead for the year,” said Senate Minority Leader Raumesh Akbari of Memphis, who has served in the General Assembly since 2013.

“Anything can happen; anything has happened,” she added.

Base teacher pay will rise

State revenues are down, one-time federal COVID relief funding is running out, and money is tighter this year after years of budget surpluses.

Against that backdrop, the House and Senate voted along mostly partisan lines to approve a nearly $53 billion state government budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

The spending plan injects an extra $261 million in the state’s K-12 education system, almost half of which will go toward raising the annual minimum salary for public school teachers from $42,000 to $44,500.

“It keeps us on track to bring our base salary for our teachers to $50,000 a year by fiscal year ‘26-’27,” said House Finance Committee Chairperson Patsy Hazlewood, a Republican from Signal Mountain.

Nashville Democrats tried to add numerous budget amendments in both the House and Senate.

Rep. Aftyn Behn and Sen. Heidi Campbell sought to double the number of seats in the state’s pre-kindergarten program by reallocating the $144 million in voucher money. Rep. Bo Mitchell proposed scuttling $15 million in non-recurring funds set aside to help public charter school operators pay for school facilities and maintenance. And Rep. John Ray Clemmons proposed doing away with the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission and investing its funding instead in the state’s K-12 education funding formula.

The amendments were easily defeated.

Democrats also criticized a measure that includes up to $1.95 billion in tax breaks and refunds for businesses, but little tax relief for working families or new investments for impoverished Tennesseans.

“Because of the refusal of this body and our government to address poverty to help the poor and the marginalized, we are continuing to deal with a deficit, not only financially but morally in this institution,” said Rep. Justin Pearson, a Memphis Democrat who voted against the budget.

Hazlewood, the House finance chairperson, countered that the state’s poverty rate has gone down over the past decade. She characterized Tennessee as a “middle-class family” that has to spend its dollars carefully and is prioritizing programs that benefit education, families, safety, health, and social services.

House Finance Committee Chairperson Patsy Hazlewood, a Republican from Signal Mountain (center), discusses highlights of the state's 2024-25 spending plan on April 18, 2024, during a question-and-answer session with reporters. She is flanked by House Speaker Cameron Sexton (left) and House Finance Subcommittee Chairman Gary Hicks (right).

Peppered with questions about what would happen to the $144 million for vouchers if the new program isn’t approved, she said the money can’t be reallocated without the legislature’s approval.

“If there’s no bills (approved) that address that, any monies unspent remain in the budget. We may need those other monies when we come back in next year,” Hazlewood said, adding that the voucher funds also can’t be spent by the governor through an executive order.

Tennessee already has several smaller voucher initiatives. A program for students with disabilities launched in 2017, and the state education department rolled out a targeted pilot program for low-income students in Davidson and Shelby counties in the fall of 2022. It has since added Hamilton County and has 2,095 students enrolled in all three counties.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee statewide school voucher plan stalls as legislature enters final weeks

2024-04-12T00:11:45+00:00

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Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee’s push to create a statewide school voucher system is running out of time as Republican lawmakers work to reconcile significantly different proposals and iron out disagreements over student testing requirements.

After sailing through education committees and building early momentum, the bill has stalled for three weeks in finance committees — without public discussion.

GOP leaders hope to complete the 2024 session by April 26. That leaves two weeks to approve a state budget, decide on dozens more bills, and seek consensus on one of the biggest education proposals of Lee’s administration.

Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg of Bristol and House K-12 Subcommittee Chairman Kirk Haston of Lobelville have been key players during weeks of private negotiations.

“We’re still working on it,” Lundberg said Thursday as he emerged from the Senate chamber. He declined to take questions from reporters.

Privately, several Republican lawmakers have told Chalkbeat the governor’s statewide voucher plan is sputtering and may not have the votes needed to pass in their respective chambers, especially if negotiators tinker too much with the original proposals.

But publicly, the governor and GOP leadership sound hopeful.

“It feels like they’re close,” Lee told reporters after the legislature recessed for the week. “I’m very encouraged.”

Asked about sticking points, Lt. Gov. Randy McNally said the Senate wants to make sure voucher recipients take some type of annual state-approved test that can be used to compare and rank students in order to gauge the program’s academic effectiveness. The House version has no state testing requirements for students who accept vouchers.

House Speaker Cameron Sexton said his chamber is “adamant” that any school choice-related package includes a provision to reduce student testing in public schools. He also indicated that the State Collaborative on Reforming Education, an education research and advocacy group known as SCORE and founded by former U.S. Sen. Bill Frist, is being consulted as negotiations progress.

House Speaker Cameron Sexton and House Majority Leader William Lamberth speak with reporters as the legislative session enters its final weeks.

“We’ve had a lot of conversations this week,” Sexton said about talks between the House and Senate. “So we’re hopeful we can get there.”

Lee’s Education Freedom Scholarship Act, projected to cost $144 million in its first year, would provide taxpayer funding to up to 20,000 K-12 students to pay toward private school tuition. The governor has set aside that amount for the program in his proposed budget.

The Senate’s version also would allow public school students to enroll in any district, even if they’re not zoned for it, provided there’s enough space and teaching staff.

The House’s larger and more expensive version includes a long list of enticements aimed at public school supporters, including reducing testing time for students, increasing the state’s contribution toward health insurance costs for teachers, requiring fewer evaluations for high-performing teachers, and giving districts extra money to help with their building costs.

Democrats in the legislature oppose school vouchers, even while supporting many of the public school provisions in the House bill.

Caucus Chairman John Ray Clemmons said he’s glad to see the bill’s progress slow, but added that Democrats are staying vigilant as the two-year session moves toward adjournment.

“Deals get cut late at night,” said the Nashville lawmaker. “I would encourage citizens of Tennessee who truly value public schools to sleep with one eye open.”

Meanwhile, lawmakers are anxious to head home during an election year. All 99 seats in the House and half of the Senate’s 33 seats are on the ballot this year. Until the session ends, incumbents can’t begin accepting campaign contributions. And Republican members in both chambers don’t appear interested in taking a stance on the controversial voucher bill during an election year if the measure is unlikely to succeed.

More private talks by Republican leadership are planned for the weekend.

The bill is scheduled to be taken up Monday by the Senate Finance Committee and Tuesday by the House Finance Subcommittee. McNally, the Senate’s leader, said the outcomes there will signal the proposal’s chances.

“One of the keys will be as it moves through the finance committee in both houses,” McNally said. “I think if you see that, you probably know that things are going fairly well.”

You can track the legislation on the General Assembly’s website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee’s at-risk youth could see a new education option under charter school bill

2024-04-10T14:00:00+00:00

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A proposal to create new education options for at-risk youth in Tennessee is drawing interest from charter school networks, both inside and outside the state.

Labeled “opportunity” charter schools, the campuses would serve middle and high schoolers dealing with a range of challenges, such as substance abuse and juvenile crime, chronic absenteeism, teen pregnancy, getting held back in several grades, or being at risk of dropping out.

“We’re very interested in the proposal, because it’s directed at a lot of students we already serve,” said Jocquell Rodgers, executive director of Green Dot Public Schools in Memphis, which views the network’s Hillcrest High School campus as a good candidate to become an opportunity charter school. Green Dot’s charter contract to run Hillcrest ends in 2026 under the state’s Achievement School District, or ASD, which appears to be on its way out.

Rodgers likes that the Republican-sponsored bill calls for the state education department to develop different expectations for opportunity charter schools. Those measures likely would focus on college and career readiness instead of academic proficiency.

“It’s very hard to get some of our students to proficiency, which was the promise of the ASD. But we can give them job training and workforce development and make sure they’re on track to graduate, get a job, or go to college or a trade school,” Rodgers said.

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools views alternative education programs — for students who are struggling to attend and succeed in traditional public schools — as a growth area for the sector, especially if accountability expectations are adjusted. Nationally, charter schools already serve 42% of students who are enrolled in alternative education campuses.

Under the legislation by House Speaker Cameron Sexton and Sen. Ferrell Haile of Gallatin, enrolling in an opportunity charter school would be a matter of choice. At least 75% of the school’s students would have to be classified as at risk, and the school also could include a residential setting.

That would be significantly different from most of Tennessee’s current alternative education schools, which were created as mandatory short-term learning programs for students who were suspended or expelled from their traditional public school.

“It has worked in some other states,” Sexton told reporters recently about his charter school proposal. “We think it gives us another public option that could help kids in bad situations.”

Not everyone is on board with the idea.

Even some Republicans are wary of the prospect of opening the door to residential charter schools — a new type of publicly funded but independently run school of choice — or the potential of commingling at-risk student populations on one campus.

And leaders of traditional public schools say they’d prefer to meet the needs of at-risk students in existing local settings. They just need additional money to hire more teachers, counselors, behavior specialists, and social workers, they say, not new programs that divert funding from their school systems.

“We’ve said time and again that districts want to provide our students with more behavioral and mental health supports,” said Gary Lilly, executive director of the state superintendents organization.

Despite those tensions, the opportunity charter school legislation has advanced quickly since sponsors introduced it last month.

Last week, it passed the full Senate 19-7 along mostly partisan lines. It’s scheduled to be taken up Wednesday by the House’s finance subcommittee.

Sexton’s bill is narrower in scope than his 2023 charter proposal

A longtime charter school advocate, Sexton introduced a much broader charter bill last year that riled up the home school community and quickly stalled. That legislation proposed charter schools to serve home school students, in addition to a charter boarding school component.

Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton, a Republican from Crossville, answers reporters questions on April 4, 2024, at the state Capitol.

It also would have allowed operators to apply directly to the state-appointed charter commission without going through local school boards, prompting pushback from leaders of traditional public schools.

This year, Sexton’s proposal removed any reference to home schools. And operators would have to apply directly to the local district for authorization. As under current law, they could appeal to the state charter commission if their application is rejected locally.

“We’re hopeful,” Sexton said last week when asked about the prospects for this year’s bill. “We tried to pass it last year. We had some opposition. We worked through some issues, and I think now we’re in a pretty good place on the House side.”

Proposal goes beyond temporary placement

Tennessee already has hundreds of alternative education schools and programs, mostly through local public school systems.

State law requires at least one alternative school or program for grades 7-12 in each district to serve students who are suspended or expelled, until they can return to a regular school setting. School systems have the option of creating alternative programs for students in grades 1-6. And some districts also have choice-based schools or programs to provide an alternative path for students who, for whatever reason, don’t fit well into a traditional school environment.

Sexton’s opportunity school legislation takes cues from charter school laws in dozens of other states, including California, Florida, New York, and Texas.

“It’s not a temporary placement like under Tennessee law, where students are mandated to attend for a period of time. It’s a choice, where the school becomes a student’s new home school to try to go and learn,” said Greg Lippman, a former California charter leader who recently founded the New York-based Groundswell Network to support local work on alternative education models across the nation.

Last fall, Lippman was in Memphis to talk with educators and nonprofit and community groups during a gathering organized by Bobby White, founder and CEO of the Frayser Community Schools charter network.

And next month, Groundswell will convene a national conversation at Nashville’s Belmont University to discuss school models to serve youths who are overaged and undereducated, involved in the juvenile justice system, foster kids, or facing other educational barriers.

Lippman said that his group is not the source of Sexton’s legislation but that he supports it, as does the Tennessee Charter School Center.

“Many states have a more expansive definition of alternative schools than under Tennessee’s current model,” he said. “It’s not surprising that the speaker’s office would find interested partners with expertise in this area.”

Funding would come through TISA

Under the bill, opportunity charter schools would receive funding through Tennessee’s new K-12 education formula known as the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement, or TISA. The formula allocates more funding for students with higher needs, and the money follows the student to the school where they’re enrolled.

That’s a concern for the bill’s detractors, who say that dividing a finite amount of funding and resources for the same population of students won’t lead to better outcomes.

“Diverting funds to charter schools only rips funding from educational institutions that are constantly exploring ways to meet the needs of all students,” said Mary Jo Holmes, board president for the Tennessee Alternative Education Association.

“What will a charter school do that is better serving than current practices?” she asked, noting that Tennessee’s alternative education approach is based on collaboration among parents, educators, and disciplinarians.

“It is a team decision, not a menu item,” Holmes said.

Connor Grady, a spokesman for Sexton, said that, in addition to TISA funding, opportunity charter operators could partner with philanthropists or apply for federal grants, just as traditional schools and districts can.

Asked for examples of potential opportunity charter operators, Grady listed Goodwill’s Excel Center and groups in Colorado and Massachusetts.

Haile, the bill’s sponsor in the Senate, has said he doesn’t expect many opportunity charter operators to create residential schools due to the cost of such an endeavor. But it’s an option under the bill.

For Rodgers, the Green Dot charter operator in Memphis, the goal is to continue to do “transformation work” in a city with a large number of at-risk youth.

“Memphis-Shelby County Schools doesn’t have enough alternative schools to serve its own population, so maybe this could be a win-win,” Rodgers said. “It’s an opportunity for us to work together to address a big challenge in our community.”

You can track the bill’s status on the General Assembly’s website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

University of Memphis could become its own K-12 school district under new legislation

2024-03-11T23:26:06+00:00

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The University of Memphis, which operates three high-performing schools for K-12 students on its campus, could become its own school district under new legislation from two Republican lawmakers from Memphis.

Rep. Mark White and Sen. Brent Taylor want the elementary, middle, and high schools on the college campus to come under the supervision of a university-led district and shift out of the purview of Memphis-Shelby County Schools, the state’s largest school system.

Under their proposal, the university also could create more schools, including using charter operators, without having to go through MSCS, with which the university has a contractual arrangement. Those new schools could be located throughout Greater Memphis.

White, who plans to introduce the proposal Tuesday in the House K-12 education subcommittee, said he wants to give the university authority to replicate school models that are generating some of the best academic results in Tennessee. While none of the schools have an academic requirement for entry, all three recently received A grades and reward-school designations from the state for student growth.

But a statement Monday from Memphis-Shelby County Schools suggested the district wants to keep its current arrangement.

“We value our longstanding partnership with the University of Memphis and believe Campus School, University Middle School, and University High School are important parts of the district’s educational options,” the statement said. “We look forward to continuing our partnership.”

Proposal envisions a new university-led governance system

The legislation, called the Innovative School District Act, seeks to introduce a new school governance model using public universities to scale up proven innovations in K-12 teaching and learning. The new pathway would remove oversight by traditionally elected school board members who represent the community’s voice in public education. The measure could have statewide implications if other universities pursue the same track.

Under the legislation, Tennessee’s education commissioner could approve a university-based K-12 school system. School governance would be handled by the university’s board of trustees, which also could appoint several of its members as a committee to perform the functions of a school board.

Not just any higher education institution could seek to become a school district, though. The university would be required to have a comprehensive doctoral program and operate a collection of training schools that offer clinical teaching experiences and mentoring for future educators beginning with pre-kindergarten. Such institutions also typically conduct and publish research on effective teaching techniques.

Currently, the University of Memphis, which serves students from pre-K through high school, is the state’s only public university that meets that standard. In addition to its three campus schools, the university partners with Porter-Leath, one of the city’s largest providers of preschool services, to operate an early childhood academy in the city’s Orange Mound neighborhood. Several other Tennessee universities operate training or laboratory schools, but do not serve the full continuum of students from pre-K through graduation.

White, who chairs the House Education Administration Committee, has talked for years with leaders at the University of Memphis about ways to expand its K-12 work. After opening a high school in the fall of 2022, the university warmed to the idea.

“We did not pursue this legislation,” said Sally Parish, the university’s associate vice president for educational initiatives. “Chairman White approached us about scaling our academic model and our academic success to serve more children. We now have a full compendium of pre-K through 12th grade, and the timing feels right.”

Students concentrate on their classwork at Campus Elementary School, one of three schools operated by the University of Memphis on its campus near midtown Memphis.

Why the shift would matter for MSCS

If the legislation becomes law, the shift to a university-based school system would not be immediately noticeable. While Memphis-Shelby County Schools is their district of record, campus schools already contractually operate under the oversight of the university’s board of trustees. The university has its own policies and procedures, employs all of the schools’ teachers and staff, and provides classroom facilities.

But Memphis-Shelby County Schools, one of Tennessee’s lower-performing districts, would not be able to report the high-achieving campus schools’ scores as part of its own academic data.

Eventually, the university wants to expand beyond its ZIP code.

“One of our challenges is that we have more children on our waitlist than we have in our schools,” said Parish, who oversees the university’s campus schools. “We know there’s a local demand; we just haven’t been allowed to meet it. Our contract with the district caps enrollment at 1,050 students.”

The enrollment cap was part of the contract approved by Memphis’ school board in 2021 to allow the university to open a high school recently on campus to prepare students for college and career. The university’s elementary school opened in 1912 and serves over 400 students. University Middle was founded in 2019 as a project-based STEAM school and serves about 270 students.

School leader sees a chance to diversify enrollment

Campus school programs have faced criticism for not reflecting the diversity of Memphis, where 64% of residents are Black, and nearly a fourth are deemed impoverished. The student population of Memphis-Shelby County Schools is 93% Black and 57% economically disadvantaged.

According to the latest state data, Campus Elementary School’s student population is 24% Black and 7% economically disadvantaged, while students at University Middle School are 48% Black and 10% economically disadvantaged. The state’s demographic data is not yet available for University High School.

Parish believes that with more autonomy and the ability to recruit charter operators to open schools in other parts of the city, the university can diversify its K-12 population and create academic tracks that are more responsive to local workforce needs.

Currently, she said, about 20% of the schools’ students are the children of university faculty and staff; 30% are from families who live within a 2-mile radius of the university; and the rest from the larger Memphis community.

“We’re not shying away from serving a diverse community,” Parish said. “We serve children in every single local ZIP code, but we don’t provide transportation to get to the university, and that’s a barrier that we want to eliminate. Currently, we’re limited in how we can serve students based on what the district allows.”

Having the ability to authorize charter schools would help the university expand to other parts of Greater Memphis, she added.

Tennessee now has 141 traditional school systems operated as city, county, or special school districts. Any of them can authorize a charter school under a 2019 law that created the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission.

The Tennessee Charter School Center, which advocates for charters, is not the driving force behind the new legislation but is consulting with its sponsors.

“What’s most important to TCSC is ensuring that any authorizer in Tennessee is high quality, follows national best practices, and is evaluated by the Tennessee State Board of Education,” said Elizabeth Fiveash, the group’s chief policy officer. “We are working with the sponsors to make sure that is reflected in their proposed language.”

You can track the legislation on the General Assembly’s website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee universal school voucher bill clears two more legislative hurdles after contentious debate

2024-03-07T03:30:14+00:00

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Gov. Bill Lee’s proposal to create a statewide school voucher program easily cleared its first Senate hurdle Wednesday, but took a split vote and five-plus hours of often contentious debate to pass out of a House committee.

The legislation — the most ambitious and controversial education plan of Lee’s five-plus years in office — passed 7-1 out of the Senate Education Committee, with the panel’s lone Democrat casting the dissenting vote.

In the House Education Administration Committee, the measure advanced 12-7, including four Republicans voting against it in the GOP-controlled legislature. Passage came even as Maryville City Schools Director Mike Winstead, a 2018 finalist for National Superintendent of the Year, called vouchers “a bitter pill, maybe some would say a poison pill” that he believes will destabilize K-12 education across Tennessee in the long run.

“You can coat that with a lot of good things and make it go down a little easier,” Winstead testified before the panel. “But in the end, we’re being asked to ingest a poison pill.”

Meanwhile, supporters pounded on the theme of parental choice.

“This is about parents finding the best learning environment for their students,” said Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds.

Lee’s Education Freedom Scholarship Act must clear more committees in each chamber before it can be voted on by the full House and Senate. The House bill now heads to that chamber’s government operations committee, while the Senate bill will be heard next by its finance panel.

Both proposals would start a new voucher program this fall with up to 20,000 students who could use taxpayer funding to attend private schools. Lee wants the program opened up eventually for any K-12 student, regardless of their family income.

The pieces of legislation remain vastly different, however, both in cost and scope.

The Senate bill, starting this year at $95 million and jumping to $333 million in the program’s second year, requires voucher recipients to take some type of tests that can be used to compare and rank students, but not the same rigorous standards-based tests that public school students have to take under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, known as TCAP. The legislation also would allow public school students to enroll in any district, even if they’re not zoned for it, provided there’s enough space and teaching staff.

The House version, starting at $398 million and growing to $425 million in the program’s second year, has no testing requirement for voucher recipients. It includes a long list of enticements aimed at public school supporters, including reducing testing time for students, increasing the state’s contribution toward health insurance costs for teachers, requiring fewer evaluations for high-performing teachers, and giving districts an extra $75 per student — or about $73 million in all in the first year — to help with building costs.

Rep. Chris Hurt, a Halls Republican who voted against the bill, expressed concern that the public school measures could get “stripped out” of the final legislation if Senate and House negotiators head to a conference committee to work out their differences.

And Rep. Charlie Baum, a Murfreesboro Republican who sits on the House Finance Committee, worried about the proposal’s high cost. He noted that Tennessee’s government faces a $400 million shortfall in its current budget.

Rep. Charlie Baum, a Murfreesboro Republican, flagged the high cost of the House voucher bill during a committee meeting but eventually voted for the measure.

“I understand that we’re adding the additional sections to make the bill more enticing, maybe to sweeten the pot,” said Baum, who later voted for the measure. “But it seems like in order to pass a $140 million freedom accounts [voucher] bill, we’re spending an additional $350 million” for public schools.

Baum asked sponsors to consider separate bills to vote on the private school voucher and public school provisions based on their costs and merits. But Rep. Scott Cepicky, a Maury County Republican who is carrying the bill for House Majority Leader William Lamberth, declined.

The voucher proposal, Cepicky said, was the right “vehicle” to address long-standing challenges for public educators.

Rep. Antonio Parkinson balked at that statement though. The Memphis Democrat said lawmakers have the power any time to create legislation to address matters related to public education.

“For some reason, we’ve chosen to create a lemon,” said Parkinson, seizing on the same automotive analogy. “And that vehicle now has all of these great options that are in it, but is tied to four flat tires.”

The House debate waded into the potential for voucher money going to undocumented students or to private schools teaching atheist, Satanic, or Muslim curriculum.

Questions also were raised about whether federally required services for students with special needs would lead to new federal regulations on private schools that accept vouchers. There was little discussion, however, about whether voucher recipients with special needs would receive adequate services from private schools.

Chairman Mark White, a Republican from Memphis, also received complaints from several people who weren’t allowed to testify.

While two people each spoke for and against vouchers, pro-voucher voices included Robby Starbuck, a video director and conservative political activist, and Walter Blanks Jr., a spokesperson for the American Federation for Children advocacy group. White declined to hear testimony from voucher opponents Eric Welch, an elected school board member from Williamson County, and Matt Steinhauer, a Franklin pastor and parent.

In the other chamber, Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Democrat from Memphis, questioned why the Senate bill doesn’t require voucher schools to be held to the same accountability standards as public schools, including TCAP tests, Tennessee’s third grade retention law, and the state’s new A-F designations for schools.

“If the majority of students in that [private] school who are taking these public dollars are performing poorly, will the school face any action based on what’s written in this legislation, where they can no longer accept students who have these vouchers?” Akbari asked.

Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg, who drafted the Senate’s version, responded no.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee contributed to this report.

Tennessee GOP leaders optimistic about universal school voucher prospects after first week of debate

2024-03-01T21:40:10+00:00

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Republican leaders sounded optimistic about the prospect of passing some kind of expanded school voucher program, even as they stared at three markedly different proposals during the first week of public debate in Tennessee’s legislature.

All three pieces of legislation — one from Gov. Bill Lee, one from the Senate, and one from the House — have two things in common.

First, they aim to start a statewide voucher program with 20,000 students and eventually allow any K-12 student to use taxpayer funding to attend a private school.

Second, they’re expensive: Lee’s proposal would cost an estimated $144 million in its first year, while the projected price tag for the Senate’s version is $333 million and the House’s is $425 million, according to the first reports by the legislature’s financial analysts.

Beyond that, there are big differences in scope and approach.

The governor’s seven-page plan, called the Education Freedom Scholarship Act, does not require participating students to take annual tests to measure whether the plan leads to better academic outcomes.

The Senate’s 17-page version, from Majority Leader Jack Johnson, requires voucher recipients to take some type of tests, approved by the state Board of Education, that can be used to compare and rank students. It also would allow public school students to enroll in any district, even if they’re not zoned for it, provided there’s enough space and teaching staff.

The House’s 39-page proposal, filed Monday by Majority Leader William Lamberth, has no testing requirement for voucher recipients. The omnibus-style package also includes a slew of enticements for supporters of public schools, such as reducing testing time for their students, increasing the state’s contribution toward health insurance costs for teachers, requiring fewer evaluations for high-performing teachers, and giving districts an extra $75 per student — or about $73 million in all in the first year — to help with building costs.

Even with numerous legislative hurdles to clear before pivotal votes could happen on the House and Senate floors, the leaders of both chambers talked Thursday about the possibility of letting negotiators resolve their differences in a conference committee.

“Most of the time, the conference committee can work things out,” Lt. Gov. Randy McNally told reporters Thursday after the legislature had finished its business for the week.

“I don’t think either side is just locked in stone,” Lamberth added later.

Meanwhile, the governor told reporters he wasn’t worried that the Senate and House were starting out with very different approaches. He characterized his own proposal as simply a “framework” to get the discussion rolling.

“The encouraging part for me is there is an agreement that everyone wants to get school choice done,” Lee said. “The core tenets are the same. That’s how the legislative process works.”

House Republican leaders angered some within their own party by bringing their measure up for its first vote on the day after filing the massive package.

“This bill was dropped in our lap last night at 5 o’clock,” Rep. Todd Warner, a Chapel Hill Republican, said Tuesday as the measure was debated in the K-12 subcommittee. " We have not had the proper time to vet this bill, to go through it. There are lots of unanswered questions.”

But after two-plus hours of discussion, with representatives from the governor’s office in the room and a designee from House Speaker Cameron Sexton’s office available to break a tie vote, if necessary, the bill cleared its first legislative hurdle 6-2. Warner and Rep. Sam McKenzie of Knoxville voted no, and two other members did not vote. Rep. Kirk Haston, a Republican and public school official from Perry County who chairs the subcommittee, voted yes.

Lamberth, the majority leader from Portland who is sponsoring the House bill, said members were given ample time to review and discuss the bill.

“We will also have at least six or seven weeks before it will be on the House floor,” he said. “Nobody’s rushing any of this.”.

The next votes are expected on March 6 in the House and Senate education committees. If the measures clear those panels, they would head to the chambers’ finance committees and face a tougher audience because of their cost, especially in future years as the program grows.

Tennessee already has a nearly $378 million budget shortfall through the first six months of the current fiscal year, and Lee’s proposed budget would slash corporate business property taxes by hundreds of millions of dollars.

The state’s largest teacher organization also charged that the House bill aims to use money allocated for teacher raises to pay for other parts of the bill.

“The harm this voucher proposal would cause every district in the state cannot be offset by the other components included in the legislation,” Tanya T. Coats, president of the Tennessee Education Association, said in a statement on Friday.

Another financial concern is that the program would increasingly take on the cost of educating students who would have gone to private schools anyway.

Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds, while answering questions this week before the House panel, said more than half of the students enrolled in Tennessee’s current voucher pilot program in Davidson, Hamilton, and Shelby counties had never previously attended public schools. That’s because they enrolled as kindergartners, moved in from out of state, or took advantage of a revision in the 2019 law that opened up applications to families who might have been eligible while Lee’s Education Savings Account program was being challenged in court.

You can track the legislation and view a summary of differences in various proposals in an analysis by The Education Trust of Tennessee.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Massive House proposal is third universal school voucher bill before Tennessee lawmakers

2024-02-27T03:18:19+00:00

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Three school voucher proposals now before Tennessee lawmakers would create a new statewide program that eventually could open eligibility to all K-12 students, regardless of family income.

But the similarities end there.

The latest version, filed Monday by House Majority Leader William Lamberth, of Portland, has no testing requirements for students who accept public funding to attend private schools. Gov. Bill Lee’s version doesn’t either, but Senate leaders say that approach is a non-starter.

The House plan also would make it easier for middle-class families to access the program during its first year than under the two versions filed last week.

Proposals by the governor and the Senate would reserve the first 10,000 slots for families who are at or below 300% of the federal poverty level. But the House version would bump that to 400% of the poverty level, which equates to $124,800 for a family of four — a departure from Lee’s 2019 Education Savings Account law aimed at low-income families who attend low-performing schools in three urban areas.

The biggest difference, however, is in the House’s sweeping attempt to address a plethora of long-standing concerns by public school officials in a bill purportedly about school choice.

From complaints about overtesting of students to the cost of health care insurance for public school teachers, the 39-page proposal devotes far more pages to existing public school policies than new ones for vouchers.

Last week, House Speaker Cameron Sexton called the upcoming omnibus-style bill an “all-encompassing approach” that’s based on feedback from public school leaders during recent months.

“It’s not just about choice; it is about K-12 education,” Sexton said.

But Democratic leaders vowed that no members of their outnumbered party will support any of the voucher proposals, even if some include policies that they’ve fought for in the past for public schools.

“They’re trying to buy votes,” said Democratic Caucus Chair John Ray Clemmons, of Nashville. “They’re just throwing in everything they can to try to get enough votes to pass this voucher scam.”

Meanwhile, Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, who leads the Senate, said he’d “probably rather stick with the issues at hand” instead of expanding the bill’s scope beyond vouchers.

The legislation could be taken up Tuesday by a House subcommittee and Wednesday in the Senate Education Committee. But GOP leaders say it will be weeks before any votes are held.

Non-voucher proposals for public schools under the House bill include:

Reducing testing time and possibly pivoting from the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program to a different “statewide standardized assessment.”
Increasing the state’s coverage of the cost of medical insurance for teachers and staff from 45% to 60%.
Phasing out the Achievement School District, the state’s turnaround district for low-performing schools, on July 1, 2026.
Adding several pathways beyond those outlined in a 2021 literacy law for fourth graders to get promoted if they don’t score proficient on this year’s TCAP in English language arts.
Reducing the number of required evaluations for higher-performing teachers.
Extending to eight years the validity of practitioner and professional teacher licenses.
Allowing high school students to take career readiness assessments instead of retaking the ACT exam.
Increasing the funding weight for small school systems from 5% to 8% under the state’s new K-12 funding structure known as the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement Act.
Reducing the frequency of student screenings through the state’s learning intervention program known as RTI.

Much of the disagreement over universal vouchers centers on the voucher program’s cost and how much private schools should be held accountable for results if they accept taxpayer money.

All three pieces of legislation would offer 20,000 vouchers this fall. But the House legislation stipulates that the program would increase by 20% annually if funding is available, while Lee wants to open it up to any student in the second year.

The governor proposes to give each recipient $7,075 this fall, which would cover about 62% of the average $11,344 cost of attending a private school in Tennessee, according to Private School Review.

Legislative staff released an initial financial analysis Monday showing the governor’s program would cost $144 million next fiscal year, which Lee has included in his proposed budget; $346 million the following year for an estimated 47,000 participants; and then exceeding that amount in subsequent years when “the liability to the state could significantly grow.”

Fiscal agents said over 1.12 million students would eventually be eligible to participate, including 155,650 students currently attending nonpublic schools.

“Due to the universal nature of the program, it is assumed that students already attending private school will seek the additional funding through the EFS Program,” the analysts wrote.

The analysts also noted that none of the legislative proposals include a plan to help offset an anticipated decrease in local revenue for public schools as students pivot to private schools.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Whether to test private school students is key difference in dueling voucher proposals in Tennessee

2024-02-21T23:41:17+00:00

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Gov. Bill Lee and Senate leaders unveiled dueling proposals Wednesday to bring universal school vouchers to Tennessee. House leaders are expected to release a third version later this week.

Testing accountability stands out as a key difference in multiple amendments filed as part of a Republican campaign to eventually give all Tennessee families the option to use public money to pay for private schools for their children. The Senate plan also calls for open enrollment across public school systems.

Lee’s seven-page plan does not require participating students to take annual tests to measure whether his Education Freedom Scholarship Act leads to better academic outcomes. The governor has said that parental choice provides ultimate accountability.

The Senate’s 17-page proposal requires recipients in grades three-11 to take some type of norm-referenced tests approved by the state Board of Education, which could include state tests that public school students take under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP.

Assessments must include a third-grade test in English language arts and an eighth-grade test in math; the grades are considered benchmark years for learning those skills. Eleventh-grade recipients would also have to take the ACT, SAT, or a similar exam to assess their readiness for continuing their education after high school.

“The testing component is critical,” Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg told Chalkbeat. “We have a responsibility to share with Tennesseans how this is working.”

The developments show divisions at the state Capitol, despite a GOP supermajority, about key details of the biggest education proposal of Lee’s tenure, even before legislative debate begins in public. Lundberg’s committee is scheduled to take up the issue next week.

The governor wants to start with up to 20,000 students statewide this fall and eventually open up the program so any K-12 student can use a $7,075 annual voucher, regardless of family income. His earlier Education Savings Account law, which squeaked through the legislature with a historic and controversial House vote in 2019, targeted students from low-income families in low-performing schools in Memphis and Nashville but remains underenrolled, even with the addition of Hamilton County last fall.

Cost is expected to be a major hurdle for Lee’s voucher expansion plan in a state that prides itself on being fiscally conservative.

Tennessee government has a nearly $378 million budget shortfall through the first six months of its current fiscal year, according to a revenue report released last week.

Even so, Lee’s proposed $52.6 billion spending plan for the next fiscal year includes $144 million annually for vouchers and $200 million to grow state parks and natural areas, all while slashing corporate business property taxes by hundreds of millions of dollars.

Over the weekend, Republican Rep. Bryan Richey, of Maryville, told a local town hall that, although he supports statewide vouchers, he expects to vote against this year’s proposal over budget concerns and the lack of accountability provisions.

The Daily Times reported that Richey compared the upcoming legislative process to baking a cake as he urged his constituents to engage early with lawmakers while the proposals are in committees.

“Once the ingredients are in the batter and it’s all mixed up, we’re not going to be able to go in there and pull the egg back out or get the oil out,” he said.

Lee’s proposal did not look markedly different from draft legislation that was inadvertently filed in the Senate in late January due to a miscommunication, then pulled a short time later. Vouchers would be funded through a separate scholarship account, not the funding structure currently in place for public schools.

RELATED: Tennessee’s universal school voucher bill draft drops. Here are 5 things that stand out.

But the Senate version aligns funding with the state’s new public school formula known as Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement, or TISA. And it would allow students to enroll in any school system, even if they’re not zoned for it.

“We want open enrollment so you can transfer anywhere,” Lundberg said. “It’s not just for private schools. The funding follows the student.”

House leaders have been huddling for weeks with key stakeholders to get their feedback for an omnibus-style amendment that’s expected to come out on Thursday.

“I look forward to reading the House proposal, but there are obviously already major discrepancies,” said JC Bowman, executive director of Professional Educators of Tennessee, who has been in some of those meetings.

“I really don’t see how these versions can be reconciled this year,” added Bowman, a voucher critic. “If they’re hell-bent on doing this, they need to at least take the time to get it right.”

But a statement from the governor’s office said the various proposals show “an encouraging amount of engagement in this process.”

“The governor has repeatedly emphasized that the Education Freedom Scholarship Act is a framework, built upon the foundation that parents should have choices when it comes to their child’s education, regardless of income or ZIP code,” the statement said.

The bills are sponsored by Senate and House majority leaders Jack Johnson of Franklin and William Lamberth of Portland. You can track the legislation through the General Assembly’s website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

For the first time in three years, Hillsdale group didn’t apply to open a charter school in Tennessee

2024-02-12T23:08:15+00:00

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After gaining approval last year to open two charter schools in Tennessee in 2024, the group associated with Michigan’s conservative Hillsdale College did not apply to open another one in 2025.

Nine applicants met the state’s Feb. 1 deadline to submit proposals to open a charter school for the 2025-26 school year.

Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools received six applications, the most of any district, while Memphis-Shelby County Schools received two, and Rutherford County Schools got one.

But for the first time in three years, Hillsdale-related American Classical Education was not among the applicants.

Dolores Gresham, a former state senator who chairs the group’s board, said Monday that American Classical is focused on opening its first two schools in Madison and Rutherford counties. Both were approved last year in contentious votes.

The pause slows the once-aggressive growth plan of American Classical, which last year identified five growing suburban communities as a potential home to one of its schools. The network is seeking to change the face of Tennessee’s 100-plus charter school sector by introducing a different kind of teaching model and targeting different student demographics.

The group drew national attention in 2022 after Gov. Bill Lee endorsed Hillsdale College’s approach to K-12 education and invited its leaders to apply to open at least 50 charter schools across Tennessee that align with his conservative beliefs regarding civics and history.

But the Hillsdale-related network, American Classical Education, withdrew its first three applications later that year amid public outrage over Hillsdale President Larry Arnn’s comment that teachers are “trained in the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country.”

In 2023, American Classical applied again, this time to open schools in Madison, Maury, Montgomery, Robertson, and Rutherford counties.

Rutherford County’s school board was the only one to approve the network’s application, and that campus is on track to open this fall.

American Classical appealed the denials from Madison and Maury counties to the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission, which overturned the Madison County decision and authorized the Madison Classical Academy after the network failed to come to terms with Jackson-Madison County Schools.

Madison Classical officials have since “exercised their option to delay opening for one year to the fall of 2025,” said Hayden Pendergrass, a commission spokesman, on Monday.

A network spokesman said the delay was appropriate, since the appeals process for the West Tennessee school consumed most of 2023.

According to the state education department, the nine applications received by this month’s deadline to open a charter school in 2025, as well as the districts they’re seeking to partner with, are:

Novus SMART Academy (K-8) — Rutherford County Schools
Encompass Community School — Metro Nashville Public Schools
Journey Northeast Academy — Metro Nashville Public Schools
Nashville School of Excellence — Metro Nashville Public Schools
LEAD Cameron Elementary — Metro Nashville Public Schools
LEAD Southeast Elementary School — Metro Nashville Public Schools
Nurses Middle College Nashville (9-12) — Metro Nashville Public Schools
Memphis Grizzlies Prep STEAM School For Girls — Memphis-Shelby County Schools
Blueprint College and Career Prep — Memphis-Shelby County Schools

In addition, the charter operator for an existing state-run school applied to return to Memphis-Shelby County Schools next year as it exits the Achievement School District. Wooddale Middle Schools has been managed by Green Dot Public Schools as part of Tennessee’s ASD, but the group’s 10-year charter is set to expire.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee governor’s universal school voucher details are being heavily debated — but not in public

2024-02-02T22:33:45+00:00

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Tennessee Republicans are using a legislative maneuver to meet behind closed doors while crafting a statewide expansion of private school vouchers, putting into question whether the public will get ample time to review the legislation and weigh in.

To meet this week’s deadline to file legislation, Senate and House majority leaders Jack Johnson and William Lamberth submitted so-called caption bills that gave a brief description of the intentions of the full legislation that they’ll file later through amendments.

On Friday, neither legislative leader, nor the governor’ office, would say when they expect to unveil the full detailed proposal that’s been anticipated since November. That’s when Lee announced he would push to create a universal voucher program to offer public funding to families who choose to send their children to private schools or some home schools, regardless of family income or what county they live in.

The policy would mark a major change in Tennessee’s K-12 education structure, affecting students, parents, taxpayers, schools, districts, and communities across the state. Currently, vouchers are offered in three counties — Davidson, Hamilton, and Shelby — and only to low-income families.

But the lack of details for the proposed program — ranging from whether participating private schools must be state-accredited to whether participating students have to take the same state tests as public school students — worries some public education advocates. They are concerned the administration is focused on drafting language that will line up the most legislative votes, instead of crafting a research-based policy for release in time to fully study and vet the plan in public forums.

“This debate deserves to be held sooner than later and conducted in the light of day — not in back rooms at the Capitol,” said Gini Pupo-Walker, director of The Education Trust in Tennessee.

When the voucher amendment is introduced, public debate can kick off in legislative committees, and lawmakers can hear directly from their constituents about what parts of the proposal they like and don’t like.

But under House rules, for instance, a vote in a subcommittee can happen the day after an amendment is introduced.

Some voucher critics fear the legislative process could get rushed if the specifics are delayed for weeks, especially since the 2024 session was already expected to be shorter than last year’s session that ended on April 21. That’s because it’s an election year, when the seats of all 99 House members and half the Senate are up for grabs. Legislators can’t accept campaign contributions until they adjourn for the year.

It’s uncertain how much the bill will be amended from draft legislation that Johnson’s office said it accidentally filed earlier in the week, then quickly retracted.

RELATED: Tennessee universal school voucher bill draft drops. Here are 5 things that stand out

In a statement Friday, Johnson, the Senate majority leader from Franklin, said “it is important we get it right.”

Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson speaks at a 2021 news conference at the Tennessee State Capitol. Photo courtesy of State of Tennessee.

“The governor has gone to great lengths to meet with stakeholders and experts to ensure the language is solid, reasonable, and consistent with Tennessee’s outstanding record of fiscal responsibility,” he said. “I look forward to presenting the proposal to my colleagues in the Senate soon.”

But House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Ray Clemmons, whose party opposes vouchers, offered a different explanation.

“They clearly don’t have the votes to pass this voucher scam, and they don’t want to file a bill until they have the votes to get it through the committee process,” said the Nashville lawmaker.

Governor’s proposal generates more questions than answers

Lee has shared his vision in broad terms for his Education Freedom Scholarship Act. The program would start with up to 20,000 students statewide who would get $7,075 next school year for private education services, with eligibility restrictions for half of those. Beginning with the 2025-26 school year, he wants all K-12 students to be eligible, with no eligibility restrictions.

But dozens of unanswered questions remain. Among them:

Will private schools that accept vouchers have to require state licensure for its teachers, in addition to a background screening, to ensure a certain level of professional qualifications and safety?

Will the governor seek to place stipulations on tuition costs and who can use vouchers at participating private schools? (There’s evidence that private schools have exploited similar programs in Arizona and Ohio by raising tuition rates or encouraging students already enrolled in private schools to apply for a government-paid voucher.)

Will the legislation mandate fiscal audits of the program?

Will the program be evaluated to gauge whether it’s leading to better academic outcomes than public schools?

Given the numerous restrictions lawmakers have placed on public school instruction and curriculum in Tennessee over the last decade, will participating private or home schools be allowed to teach anything they want?

Will language be included in the legislation to ensure private schools can’t discriminate against certain applicants, such as students with disabilities, or based on race, religion, or sexual orientation?

Will the legislation attempt to exclude undocumented students from eligibility, as Tennessee’s 2019 education savings account law did?

Caption bills can be helpful, or not

None of those questions are answered in the voucher bills filed on Jan. 31 in the House and Feb. 1 in the Senate.

Broadly written caption bills are an increasingly common tool used by Tennessee lawmakers and lobbyists.

Deborah Fisher, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, said caption bills can be useful — for instance, to address a sudden need such as in the middle of last year’s session, when changes to bolster school safety took on urgency after six people died in a mass school shooting in Nashville.

But caption bills can be abused, by not revealing a bill’s true purpose until it’s too late for the public to notice. They also can become a delaying tactic, allowing legislators to push through legislation in a session’s waning days before constituents can ask questions or opponents can mobilize against it.

In 2019, during Lee’s first year in office, his administration used a caption bill to introduce his education savings account proposal. The amendment that presented the details was filed in mid-March and, in an historic and controversial vote, a further amended version passed the full House less than six weeks later during a season when most school communities are consumed with state testing.

Fisher said there’s adequate time for a full and robust debate on Lee’s newest voucher proposal, “but not if it’s held back too many weeks.”

It takes time for information to filter out to citizens, Fisher added, especially for an issue as contentious and complex as vouchers.

“I think this governor would look better and serve our state better if he showed his hand and let people know the nuts and bolts,” she said.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee private school voucher law hits new obstacle in court

2024-01-11T21:20:49+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Sign up for our free Tennessee newsletter to keep up with state education policy and the Shelby County public school system.

A legal challenge to Tennessee’s private school voucher law is back on track after a state appeals court ruled that a lower court erred in dismissing the case.

The three-judge Court of Appeals said Wednesday that a trial-level judicial panel acted prematurely in 2022 when it declared that Davidson and Shelby county governments, along with a group of parents, had no legal standing to challenge the 2019 Education Savings Account law, which provides families with taxpayer money to pay toward private school tuition.

The appellate court, in sending the case back to the trial court, also said the case’s remaining legal claims are “ripe for judicial review.”

The unanimous decision breaks a string of legal victories for voucher backers in Tennessee, where Gov. Bill Lee’s administration is proposing an expansive new program that would ultimately make vouchers accessible to all students in all 95 Tennessee counties, without the family income limits that are part of the current program.

Lee, who has campaigned on a pledge to expand alternatives to traditional public schools, has sought to capitalize on parent anger over pandemic-era school closures and disagreements over what kids are taught.

Gov. Bill Lee calls for a statewide education voucher program in Tennessee during a press conference in Nashville on November 28, 2023, as Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders offers her support.

First-year test scores were disappointing

Meanwhile, Tennessee Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds told lawmakers Wednesday that the first state test scores of students using vouchers to attend private schools in Shelby and Davidson counties were lackluster.

“The results aren’t anything to write home about,” Reynolds told the Senate Education Committee. “But at the end of the day, the parents are happy with this new learning environment for their students.”

The first results came out of Davidson and Shelby counties in 2022-23, before the legislature added Hamilton County to the program this school year. According to data from the state education department, most of those 452 students performed worse than their peers in public schools after the program’s swift rollout early that school year.

Reynolds told lawmakers she’s hopeful for better scores this spring from participants in all three counties.

“We are only technically a year and a half into implementation,” she said.

Sen. Raumesh Akbari of Memphis, the panel’s lone Democrat, said the early results from the Education Savings Account pilot program should give state leaders pause about rapidly expanding access to vouchers.

“It says ‘pilot’ because we want to see how it works,” Akbari said during Wednesday’s hearing. “And we only have a year and a half of data, and we’re already talking about expanding the program.”

The expectation, Akbari added, was that students using vouchers would perform as well as or better than students in public schools.

Legal challenge enters its fifth year

The legal dispute over Tennessee’s voucher law began a year after the legislature narrowly approved Lee’s ESA bill in 2019, via a controversial House vote. A Nashville judge soon declared the law unconstitutional because it affected only the state’s two largest cities, Memphis and Nashville, without giving them a say. That judge said that legislative approach violated the state constitution’s “home rule” provision.

But a split Tennessee Supreme Court overturned the decision in 2022, clearing the way for the program to launch that fall. Now with three counties participating, the program remains under-enrolled with 2,134 students, significantly below this year’s 5,000-seat cap, according to the state’s latest count.

The case is now being tried on several remaining legal issues, including a constitutional clause that requires the state to maintain a system of “free public schools,” with no mention of private schools.

However, Metro Nashville and Shelby County governments are no longer involved in the case. They withdrew as plaintiffs last year and declined to comment on their retreat.

Plaintiffs behind a second lawsuit, which was filed in 2020 on behalf of 11 public school parents and community members in Memphis and Nashville, are continuing to fight the law in court.

Called McEwen v. Lee, the complaint was filed by the Education Law Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center, collaborators in a national campaign that opposes vouchers and wants public funds used exclusively to support and strengthen public schools. The plaintiffs are also represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee and the Nashville law firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP.

“We are gratified by this Court of Appeals opinion and look forward to pursuing these claims in chancery court,” Chris Wood, a Nashville lawyer helping to litigate the remaining lawsuit, told Chalkbeat on Thursday.

Officials with Nashville’s legal department, which took the lead in litigating the case for Davidson and Shelby counties, said they expected the appellate court’s ruling, but that the favorable opinion does not affect its decision to pull out of the dispute.

A spokesman for the attorney general’s office said the state is reviewing the appellate decision, while a spokesperson for the governor declined to comment on the court case.

“Gov. Lee’s Education Freedom Scholarship Act is an entirely separate legislative proposal, and we look forward to working with the General Assembly to ensure Tennessee parents have choices,” said Elizabeth Johnson, Lee’s press secretary.

You can read the 29-page ruling on the state court website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Vouchers, school safety, retention: Key education issues to watch as Tennessee lawmakers return

2024-01-08T11:00:00+00:00

Five years after a bruising legislative battle opened the door to private school vouchers in parts of Tennessee, lawmakers are preparing to take up a controversial bill to create a similar program statewide.

Gov. Bill Lee’s universal voucher proposal, which eventually would make all K-12 students eligible to use public funding to attend a private or home school, is expected to dominate debate after the 113th General Assembly reconvenes on Tuesday.

But other issues affecting students and educators are sure to emerge in a state where education reform has been front and center since 2010, when Tennessee won $500 million in the federal Race to the Top competition to jumpstart changes.

And if the last few years are any indication, a few surprises may surface in the months ahead. Politics and tragedy have shaken up the education priorities of several recent sessions, from an 11th-hour Republican drive in 2021 to restrict classroom discussions about racism and bias to last year’s deadly Nashville school shooting that led to new investments in campus safety and dramatic protests over Tennessee’s lax gun laws.

With the GOP supermajority setting the agenda again this year, here’s a look at some big issues to watch as the opening gavel falls.

School vouchers: Lee’s expansion plan renews long-running debate

In November, the governor said he’ll introduce a new Education Freedom Scholarship Act to offer $7,075 in taxpayer money for each of up to 20,000 students statewide next school year to attend a private or home school, with eligibility restrictions for half of them. In 2025, eligibility would open up to all students, regardless of their family’s income.

The proposal would mark a massive expansion of Tennessee’s voucher program, which is now limited to three urban counties and still under-enrolled. But more than a month after Lee’s announcement, few details have been released.

“I have yet to understand where the financing is coming from,” said Sen. Page Walley, a Republican whose district includes eight rural counties in West Tennessee.

“If we jump to statewide vouchers, I don’t see how we fund it without robbing Peter to pay Paul,” he added.

School safety: Renewed discussion, but no gun laws (it’s an election year)

Tennesseans were unnerved when an armed intruder shot and killed three children and three adults at a private Christian school in Nashville on March 27, in the middle of last year’s legislative session. And the growing impact of gun violence on kids across the state is undeniable.

But Republican lawmakers’ response last year was to further harden schools rather than entertain any proposals to restrict gun access — not even for people who are deemed at risk of hurting themselves or others, as the Nashville shooter had been.

“We’ll be back in January,” parents wanting stricter gun laws vowed in August after a special session on public safety yielded little action on guns.

Spectators watch the Tennessee Senate doing business at the State Capitol during a special legislative session on public safety in August 2023. Lawmakers were called back by Gov. Bill Lee after a mass school shooting in Nashville in March.

Some of them have organized news conferences and rallies at the Capitol this week for students, educators, and others to voice their concerns. Meanwhile, a group of parents from The Covenant School in Nashville, where the tragedy took place, say they’ll continue to advocate for changes to “ensure responsible firearm ownership, safe schools, and accessible adequate mental health care for all individuals across Tennessee.”

GOP leaders anticipate the legislature will revisit many of the proposals left on the table.

They include several measures to let certain citizens or school employees carry handguns in schools, and a bill to require all public and private schools to create alarm policies that differentiate emergencies for fire, weather, or an active shooter.

A new bill, from Republican Sen. Mark Pody of Lebanon and Rep. Susan Lynn of Mount Juliet, would let schools purchase lanyards equipped with emergency alert buttons for school staff to wear around their necks.

But don’t expect the legislature to look seriously at bills to restrict gun access in an election year, according to several key Republicans.

“I do not believe there’s an appetite or pathway to success for any legislation that might be introduced that is going to infringe on constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens,” said Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson, of Franklin.

With the latest State of the Child report ranking Tennessee near the bottom nationally for access to mental health resources, Johnson sees more room for discussion on that topic.

“I think a big conversation in the coming session will be how we strengthen our mental health safety net,” Johnson said, “as well as general access to mental health treatment in Tennessee.”

Third-grade reading law: Lawmakers may revisit retention provision — again

Last year, the legislature widened the criteria, beginning this school year, for determining which third graders are at risk of being held back if they aren’t deemed proficient readers under a 2021 law targeting pandemic learning lag.

Now under the same law, the state may have to retain thousands of fourth graders who test poorly this spring.

“I think we have to look into it,” said Rep. Mark White of Memphis, who chairs a House education committee. “We’ve probably got a lot of fourth graders who have already done summer school and tutoring but still won’t pass that test. It’s never a bad thing to have off-ramps and waivers.”

He added: “I want us to continue looking closer at kindergarten, first, and second grades so we’re not waiting until the third and fourth grades to address these challenges.”

But Sen. Jon Lundberg, who chairs his chamber’s education panel, is less inclined to make more changes in the 2021 law.

“We’ve set the standard for proficiency and for showing adequate growth, and I don’t want to move those,” he said.

Federal education funding: Talk about rejecting it looks like just talk, for now

House Speaker Cameron Sexton surprised many in his own party last year when he floated the idea of Tennessee rejecting more than a billion dollars in federal funding for students, which he said could be offset with state tax revenues.

In November, a task force appointed by Sexton and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally held hearings to explore the possibility. But Lundberg, the panel’s co-chairman, told Chalkbeat afterward that he didn’t expect the state to reject federal funds, even if it can find a way.

Legislative leaders polled by Chalkbeat last week said they haven’t heard of any legislation coming out of the hearings.

“It doesn’t hurt to know where our funding is coming from and how it’s being spent,” said White, the House’s education leader, said of the task force’s discussions, “but I don’t see that conversation going anywhere in the short term.”

Teacher shortages: Vacancies could lead to creative thinking

With Sexton declaring that Tennessee has enough state revenues to cover more than $1 billion in federal funding, plenty of public school advocates asked why the state wouldn’t use that excess instead to accelerate the governor’s plan to raise the minimum salary for teachers to $50,000 by 2027. (This year, the base is $42,000.)

Districts struggled to fill nearly 4,000 vacancies statewide last school year, especially in the middle grades, English as a second language, world languages, and special education, according to one report. And shortages of school bus drivers are a nationwide problem.

Lee told reporters that, while state revenues have flattened in recent months, Tennessee’s economy remains strong.

Gov. Bill Lee speaks with reporters on Thursday after a tour of a Nashville ministry. “We should probably look at our investments in public school funding and investments in teacher pay every year,” he said when asked about the prospect of accelerating pay increases.

“We should probably look at our investments in public school funding and investments in teacher pay every year,” he said when asked about the prospect of accelerating pay increases.

But with the teaching profession facing a post-pandemic crisis in Tennessee and nationally, the legislature could also pursue other avenues to elevate the profession.

Currently, the state covers less than half of health insurance premiums for its teachers, while state employees get 100% of their premiums covered. Moving teachers to the state employee plan could be a boost to both teachers and the local districts that employ them.

Professional Educators of Tennessee has also called on the legislature to develop policies to address child care access and affordability for teachers, more than 80% of whom are female.

“If you want to keep good teachers,” said Executive Director JC Bowman, “ease their burdens so they can focus on their work in school to educate and nurture our future generation.”

To follow this year’s legislative business, visit the General Assembly’s website for calendars, committees, legislation, and livestreams.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Q&A: Public school leaders sound the alarm about vouchers, Lee’s education agenda

2024-01-04T23:39:40+00:00

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Tennessee state officials finally released their long-delayed letter grades for schools last month, just before the holiday break, using a new formula championed by Gov. Bill Lee’s administration.

But even before they knew their grades, leaders of a high-performing suburban Memphis school district denounced the system as a sham.

“This is all an attempt to paint Tennessee public schools as failing, thus ushering in a new era of vouchers for all,” a statement from Arlington Community Schools said. It was signed by Superintendent Jeff Mayo and school board members, including Dale Viox, president of the Tennessee School Boards Association.

Meanwhile, other suburban Memphis school districts have begun lining up against private-school voucher expansion, too, another key part of Lee’s education agenda. Lee’s voucher program uses taxpayer money to help families fund private school tuition, and the proposed expansion is expected to be a top legislative priority when the General Assembly returns on Jan. 9.

Lee’s proposal would remove income limits and ultimately extend the program statewide. It would be a huge leap forward for a program that was once billed as a pilot project and barely survived challenges in the legislature and the courts.

Viox said the TSBA is already instructing its members to pass formal board resolutions opposing vouchers. And it’s urging school boards to promote the strengths of their public schools and appeal directly to lawmakers.

“I think you’re going to find more and more people want to speak out about it,” Viox told Chalkbeat, “because there’s a lot of people in this area that I know personally and across the state that care a great deal about public education and doing right by students.”

Mayo and Viox talked with Chalkbeat about their opposition to the voucher program, and why they believe Tennessee’s new letter grade system is part of an attack on public schools.

This interview was conducted on Dec. 11 before school letter grades were released on Dec. 21. It has been edited for length and clarity.

What is it about the A-F letter grades and proposed voucher legislation that warrants the kind of statement you made?

Mayo: The best way that I’ve been able to describe the A-to-F grading system is it’s sort of the appetizer to what’s to come with the voucher system. And I think … if the state or the governor, or (the Tennessee Department of Education) — whomever is pushing for this — can paint the picture that school districts that are successful, high-performing, such as ours, are failing, then that sets the tone for support of the voucher expansion program, which, you know, ultimately, takes money away from public education. …

Jeff Mayo, superintendent of Arlington Community Schools, criticized Gov. Bill Lee for his proposal to expand a private-school education voucher program without plans to hold private schools to the same evaluation metrics as public schools.

We are held accountable for every penny that we receive from the state. … Every dime of it we have to say, ‘How is that contributing to students’ growth, or students’ achievement,’ whereas in a private school, that’s not the case. … They’re not held under the same state accountability that we are. There is no teacher evaluation accountability model that I’m aware of. …

And so to say that it’s going to even the playing field is inaccurate. And that’s the whole reason we’re calling this whole thing a sham. … I believe expansion of this has been part of the roadmap since day one.

Viox: It’s a bad idea to take taxpayer money and give it to private entities. … We know that across the nation … voucher programs are just rife with misuse. … And then if you want to talk about inclusivity and diversity: A private school can refuse you for any reason whatsoever. … So as many kids as you may think that you’re going to be able to include, you’re going to exclude twice as many under this program, because private schools are not going to take them, either for their religious beliefs or sexual orientation or whatever. …

You ask why it’s such a strong statement. Because we’re in a strong position. We have high-performance students, we have a very high-performance district, and this is probably not going to trickle down to us for a long time. But what it does do is it affects our educational partners in Shelby County. And if you think you can just forget about public education in Shelby County, and just focus on Arlington, Tennessee, you’re wrong. Because failing Shelby County schools will impact every one of these districts, and everyone in the state. … Across the state of Tennessee, we need to build up public education to what it can be, and not take money away and give it to private companies.

What do you hope the statement accomplishes?

Mayo: It’s debacle after debacle that we’re dealing with, with no guidance, no real assistance from TDOE when these new mandates are handed down. … My staff has to stop, they have to decide: ‘How are we going to do this? What are we going to do to help our students get on the other side of this?’ …

We keep piling on more ineffective accountability measures to pulverize public schools.
Jeff Mayo, superintendent of Arlington Community Schools

Even if we get an A, that doesn’t change my stance on this. It’s still, it’s a broken process. And instead of scratching that and rebuilding it, we keep piling on more ineffective accountability measures to pulverize public schools. That’s why this statement from my vantage point needed to be as strong as it is. … TDOE asks for input, but we never see our input in the end product of any of these new laws or mandates … . And so it’s exhausting.

Viox: At this point, it is difficult to ignore what the state is doing to attack public education. … And like he said, they’re tired. And as an advocate for public education, I am as well.

Is there any set of accountability metrics that would move you more in favor of voucher expansion?

Viox: Not me. … These guys can go out and raise money for anything they want in any way they want. And public schools can’t do that. … (TSBA is) going to the state to try and say, ‘Hey, look, at least let our PTAs and people do lotteries, because … we can’t do that now.’ But private schools can raise money however they want. ... And what we see with other voucher expansions throughout the U.S. is the private schools are turning around … and raising their tuition for those public school kids by that same voucher amount. So essentially, they’re double dipping.

Mayo: I think it’s a long range plan to continue to siphon money from public schools. … It’s not uncommon for the … TDOE to deliver down mandates that are unfunded, that districts are expected to scramble around and find the money to, you know, make it happen. So if you’re looking at, you know, already being very low-funded when you compare to the nation, what our state funds for education, and then this continuation of vouchers siphoning money away from that, you know, that’s the whole mantra behind this being a sham.

Viox: If you’re this … bent on getting a voucher program, fund it separately. We would have no problem with that. And I think if you look at across the nation, people that have expanded their voucher programs, it’s come with a really hefty price tag.

Dale Viox, the president of the Tennessee School Boards Association, said the organization is encouraging its members to push back against the governor's proposal to expand eligibility of private-school education vouchers.

Can you talk to me more about what specifically that (separate funding) would look like? … If Arlington loses any students, you are losing funding by a declining enrollment.

Viox: If you come to any of our schools and can’t find something you’re interested in, in the various clubs, and school sponsored sports, and all of the things that we offer — just hundreds and hundreds of activities for students. I feel like we would not necessarily lose students to … private schools. … As long as the funding is there and completely separate, that’s honestly not a concern for me. Now, that’s not to say it won’t be a concern for other school districts that are struggling. … There’s always going to be private schools. Any specific government money to help them expand, I wouldn’t be in favor for. …

When you look at all these other states, I don’t know what their oversight is, but I think Arizona in their first year before they expanded their voucher program, on the surface found almost a million dollars, it was over $700,000 in misappropriated funds. … And never forget, that if they give him a year’s worth of public funding, and they live within your district, and they go to that private school, and either don’t make it or don’t actually use it for those (school) funds, they come back to us, and we are going to educate those kids.

If the voucher expansion were to pass as it’s been proposed ... what challenges could you immediately see for Arlington’s district?

Mayo: It will not be immediately impactful to us. But as I stated earlier, I believe the expansion is to continue. I think that is the long-range plan. So eventually, we could be faced with losing students, which impacts funding, which impacts teacher layoffs, it impacts the diminishing of programs that we’ve invested a lot of money in through our capital improvement projects. …

I’m a long-range planner. And I think those are things that you have to look at.

Viox: I’m also a higher level view guy: If it affects Metro Nashville, and it affects Shelby County, then it will affect us. The greatest impact is going to be on them. They are our brothers and sisters in public education, and we cannot just completely discount how it’s going to affect them. Because as it affects Shelby County, it will trickle out into the municipalities as businesses leave.

Private schools are turning around … and raising their tuition for those public school kids by that same voucher amount. So essentially, they’re double dipping.
Dale Viox, Tennessee School Boards Association leader

Mayo: The A-to-F distinction that I don’t think we’ve really talked a lot about is the impact it has just on our local community. Because let’s face it, Arlington is growing because of our schools. Businesses are coming here. Parents are moving here, you know. And then if all they have to go by is they pull up our website … and they see that Arlington, well, looks like a really good community and everything, but their school district has an F. That’s the only piece of information that parents have, if they’re not familiar with what’s been going on in the state of Tennessee.

Is there anything this conversation is missing?

Mayo: It really takes creativity away sometimes from the school district, because I know we’re in the process of developing our 2025-26 school year calendar. …One of the people in the group said, ‘You know, have we ever thought about a year round school?’ ... If we wanted to do that, how could we ever do that, if we’re having to offer learning camps and all of that as a product of third grade retention? … If we wanted to be innovative and wanted to be creative and experiment with that, how could we do that? We couldn’t.

Correction: Jan. 4, 2024: A previous version of this story said Dale Viox is the president-elect of the Tennessee School Boards Association. Viox is the president of the association.

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

A-F grades come out this week for Tennessee schools. Here’s what to know.

2023-12-18T11:00:00+00:00

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This week, for the first time under a 2016 law, Tennessee will give each of its public schools an A-F letter grade.

The goal, says Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds, is to help families, educators, communities, and policymakers understand how their local schools are doing.

And what better way, she says, than by using a letter-grade system that families are familiar with from their student’s report cards.

But the policy has been controversial since lawmakers began debating its merits nearly a decade ago, and local school leaders worry the grades will actually create confusion for parents and harm school communities.

They say a single grade is more simplistic than simple, and can’t fully capture the quality of learning and support that’s happening in a school, especially for communities where students face extra challenges before even walking into the classroom.

Local concerns escalated when the state education department recently revamped its grading formula in a way that will make it harder for certain schools to get an A or a B.

Here’s what you should know about the upcoming school letter grades, which the state is scheduled to release on Thursday.

What exactly will the grades measure?

As required by state law, the grades must take into account student performance and improvement, as demonstrated on annual tests under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, also known as TCAP. High schools will also be judged on their students’ college and career readiness, based on measures such as ACT scores, postsecondary credits, or industry credentials.

How will the grades be calculated?

The formula weights student proficiency the heaviest, according to the department’s recent presentation to the State Board of Education. Next comes growth, or how much a school’s students improved from one year to the next. A separate factor seeks to assess how well schools are helping their lowest-performing quartile of students to improve.

The formula factors in test scores for English language arts, math, and science for elementary schools, and for all four core subject areas for middle and high schools. But some subjects count more than others.

The state has not publicly released the thresholds for what constitutes an A, B, and so on, based on its tallies of all the data.

Will the grades matter?

Yes, and not just in terms of public perception of a school’s quality. Under Tennessee’s new funding formula for K-12 education, school districts or charter authorizers can face hearings before the state Board of Education if their schools are rated D or F, beginning with the 2024-25 school year.

Ultimately, administrators could be forced to submit a corrective action plan or undergo a state audit of spending and academic programming at the school.

School ratings also can affect the price of real estate in a school’s neighborhood, as well as teacher and student morale. Studies have shown that ratings such as those given by third-party websites frequently are biased and can steer families toward schools serving more affluent, white, and Asian students.

Why is Tennessee grading its schools?

Legislators who voted for the law said A-F school grades would provide a common-sense aid to parents trying to navigate an increasingly complex school choice system.

Big supporters included ExcelinEd, an advocacy group founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, plus other groups that favor giving taxpayer-funded vouchers to families to send their children to private schools. (Gov. Bill Lee recently proposed a statewide expansion of Tennessee’s voucher program, which operates in three counties and has fewer than 2,000 enrollees. The state is not grading private schools that receive vouchers.)

School letter-grading policies were also promoted by the American Legislative Exchange Council, also known as ALEC. Its members are mostly conservative state lawmakers, and its funding comes from foundations, trade groups, and some corporations, according to research from the Center for Media and Democracy.

The law passed in 2016. Why are schools just now receiving their first grades?

The initial grades were to come out in 2018 but got delayed repeatedly, mostly because technical glitches and the pandemic disrupted state testing.

This year, soon after assuming her new job as Tennessee’s education chief, Reynolds prioritized the rollout of A-F grades and launched a process to revise the grading formula, which will use results from tests that already have been administered. The goal of the overhaul, she said, was to generate grades that signify meaningful differences in school performance in a way that makes sense to Tennesseans.

How did the formula change, and what effects will the revisions have on the final grades?

Previously, Tennessee’s grading formula skewed toward growth, which refers to the progress or improvement that schools made toward helping their students meet certain academic standards over the course of a year.

The new formula puts greater emphasis on achievement, or proficiency. Achievement is basically a snapshot of how much students in a school know, and whether enough of them are meeting grade-level standards on their state tests.

The changes will likely mean fewer A’s and generally worse grades than previously expected for many schools, especially those serving students from lower-income families in rural and urban communities.

More broadly, the shift marks a change of course for Tennessee, which was an early adopter of using growth data to evaluate how its students, teachers, and schools are doing. Educators have mostly embraced this model as ultimately the best way to gauge the quality of learning in their classrooms and schools.

Do other states issue A-F letter grades for schools?

As of late 2021, 11 states had such grading measures in their accountability systems, according to the most recent data from the Education Commission of the States.

But several states, including Georgia, Indiana, Michigan, and Utah, have since rolled back those policies. And in Texas recently, a judge blocked the state education agency from issuing grades after several districts sued. The districts charged that the agency had unfairly recalibrated its formula and waited too long to communicate those changes.

Where will Tennessee’s grades be published?

As of last week, state officials had not shared exactly how they plan to release this week’s grades. Chalkbeat continues to track and report on the topic.

Eventually, the department plans to publish all grades, along with school-level TCAP scores from the 2022-23 school year, on the State Report Card. The online tool should be ready to go live with the latest data in January, according to several spokespeople for the department.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Gov. Bill Lee short on details as he rallies for universal school vouchers in Tennessee

2023-12-14T01:51:50+00:00

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Gov. Bill Lee hit the road Wednesday to begin selling his universal school voucher proposal, but offered no new details about how much the program would cost over time, specific ways to hold private schools accountable when receiving taxpayer money, or what the impact could be to public schools.

However, the Republican governor, who announced in late November that he wants to take vouchers statewide, said he expects GOP leaders to file legislation on his behalf before Jan. 9, when the General Assembly reconvenes, answering many of those questions.

Despite skepticism and outright opposition to his plan from many corners of the state, Lee believes the pandemic has changed the calculus so that more Tennesseans — and their elected representatives — are ready to support universal school vouchers. In 2019, Lee’s scaled-down voucher program, using education savings accounts, barely squeaked through the House in a contentious and controversial vote.

“Through the pandemic, parents just became much more engaged with what was actually happening with their children and their education,” said Lee, adding that more parents are demanding more education choices for their children because of disagreements spawned by COVID over school closures and what kids are taught in public schools.

But the voucher proposal also has stoked fierce opposition across the state, especially in the Memphis area.

Last week, Arlington Public Schools released a fiery statement denouncing Lee’s plan as part of a systematic attack on public schools, while the director of Germantown Municipal School District recorded a video declaring that any private schools that accept voucher money should be held to the same standards as public schools. Lakeland’s school board passed a resolution this week opposing the plan, and the chairwoman of the board for Memphis-Shelby County Schools issued a statement Tuesday saying the board was “vehemently opposed” to Lee’s initiative.

Research is also mixed about whether vouchers help improve student performance.

On Wednesday, Lee was joined by House Speaker Cameron Sexton in Memphis at a panel discussion at New Hope Christian Academy, one of 80 private schools currently accepting vouchers through the education savings account program that began in 2022 in Davidson and Shelby counties, expanding this fall to Hamilton County.

While short on specifics, some comments by Lee and Sexton gave insights into the behind-the-scenes negotiations happening to garner support for Lee’s Education Freedom Scholarship Act and to pound out a bill to put before the GOP-controlled legislature.

Academic testing requirements for voucher students unclear

Both leaders expressed openness to adding a facility component to the state’s new K-12 funding formula to help local governments pay for new public school construction or improvements to existing public school campuses — a chronic challenge in a state where schools need about $9 billion of infrastructure investments over five years, according to one recent government report.

Lee said he pushed for the formula overhaul in 2022 “to provide for more nuanced funding” and suggested that facility needs are in line with the new approach.

“If there are particular needs that school districts have, then we should look at that formula and how we more appropriately fund public schools going forward,” he said. “Not just more money, but more wisely spent money.”

The governor also said accountability for participating private schools would be part of his voucher bill, but he did not elaborate on what that would look like.

Currently, private schools participating in the ESA program have to administer annual state tests for math and English language arts to voucher students. But it’s hard to attract private schools to participate under that mandate. And results from those tests during the first year of the program indicate that participants performed worse than their public school peers in Davidson and Shelby counties, according to data from the state education department.

The governor’s press secretary, Elizabeth Johnson, previously told several media outlets that no testing requirements were in the draft legislation, though details were still being hammered out. Johnson did not immediately respond when asked Wednesday if any of those positions have changed as the proposal has evolved.

The draft also didn’t include other accountability measures that public schools must abide by such as third- and fourth-grade retention requirements for students who are deemed poor readers, or A-F grades for schools beginning this month, Johnson previously said.

Taking a different tact, Sexton suggested that Tennessee should rethink its accountability systems for public schools as part of any expansion of private school vouchers.

“Why don’t we treat the high-performing school districts the same as private [schools] and give them more autonomy and freedom to do their job?” Sexton told reporters after the panel discussion.

“Why not reward quality instead of trying to treat all school systems the same regardless of where they are?” he said.

Such a change would begin to unravel a fundamental education policy in Tennessee, where GOP officials previously credited the state’s vaunted accountability systems for historic gains on national tests between 2011 and 2013.

Suburban Memphis leaders oppose planned voucher expansion

The governor emphasized accountability through parental choice during his visit to New Hope.

“We do know that parents know best what’s best for their kids,” Lee said. “When parents have choice, the parents and the children are empowered to live a better life and to move in a better direction.”

Lee later traveled to Chattanooga to participate in a similar event at Chattanooga Preparatory School to promote his proposal.

Sexton, who voted against the 2019 voucher bill but now says he supports universal vouchers, stayed in Shelby County to meet with suburban leaders. Public school officials in those suburbs have been among the noisiest critics of Lee’s proposal.

“In my past 10 years as a superintendent, our legislature has passed hundreds of laws that are crushing the way that we run our schools,” Germantown Municipal School District’s Jason Manuel said in his video recording. “None of these laws will apply to the schools accepting this taxpayer money.”

Manuel called for an even playing field. “Either these schools have to follow all of the same laws we do, or our legislators need to take all the restraints off of our schools and let us get back to the way we have always served our children,” he said.

Private school choice programs have grown in recent years, with states such as Florida, Iowa, and Arkansas passing massive expansions of their voucher initiatives.

But do vouchers work?

According to an ongoing Chalkbeat review of the research, there’s little recent evidence that vouchers improve student test scores. In fact, they’ve sometimes led to declines. But older studies are more positive toward vouchers, and some show that vouchers have a neutral or positive impact on student outcomes later in life.

Research also suggests that targeted voucher programs may not be costly, but universal programs probably will be.

Other education advocates worry that that mostly GOP-driven drive to give parents more choices beyond public charter schools, magnet schools, and other optional programs will accelerate resegregation in schooling.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach her at LTestino@chalkbeat.org

Tennessee governor proposes extending school voucher program statewide, eventually to all students

2023-11-29T01:32:04+00:00

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Gov. Bill Lee proposed Tuesday to take Tennessee’s education voucher program statewide, starting with up to 20,000 students who would get taxpayer money next school year to attend a private or home school.

The Republican governor also called for all K-12 students to be eligible for vouchers beginning in 2025.

Lee’s Education Freedom Scholarship Act, offering $7,075 annually for each participant, would mark a massive expansion of eligibility for a voucher program that was billed as a pilot project and is now in its second year. The state’s education savings account program, which currently is limited to three urban counties, has just under 2,000 enrollees.

During an announcement in Nashville attended mostly by lawmakers and allies, Lee said statewide voucher eligibility was his vision for Tennessee during his first gubernatorial campaign in 2018, when he called for more education choices for parents.

“Parents know what’s best for their child as it relates to education,” he said, adding that the vouchers would give all Tennessee families the freedom to choose a good fit, whether it’s in public, private, parochial, or home schools.

His plan would eventually eliminate income requirements and change who could benefit from the vouchers. Rather than giving students from low-income families an opportunity to attend private schools — the original stated purpose of Lee’s education savings account program — the universal vouchers Lee now proposes could also subsidize tuition costs for students from more affluent families who already attend private schools.

It’s uncertain whether the final legislation would hold private or home schools accepting voucher money to the same accountability standards that public schools are subject to, including testing requirements or the A-F letter grades that the state is preparing to give out for the first time in December.

“The final details of this legislation aren’t worked out,” Lee told reporters after his announcement. “This is Day One. This will be a legislative effort.”

But Lee’s proposal will face a battle when the General Assembly reconvenes in January. Even under a GOP supermajority, Tennessee’s voucher law squeaked through the House of Representatives in 2019, after sponsors agreed to limit the program to a few urban areas.

The open-ended cost of universal vouchers will be an issue in a state where financial experts have warned lawmakers recently that Tennessee’s government needs to control spending in coming years. Lee said his voucher proposal would be funded through a separate scholarship account, not the funding structure currently in place for public schools, but he didn’t provide a cost analysis.

Lee is trying to ride the momentum of other states with Republican-controlled legislatures — including Florida, Iowa, and Arkansas — that passed massive expansions of their voucher programs this year amid parent anger over pandemic-era school closures and disagreements over what kids are taught in public schools.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a fellow Republican who signed a law in March creating a school voucher program in her state, appeared on stage with Lee for his announcement. She heralded the work of their states as part of a “conservative education revolution,” with vouchers as a centerpiece.

More important for the legislative battle ahead were pledges Tuesday by Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally to advance Lee’s voucher agenda. Sexton, a charter school advocate and likely candidate for governor in 2026, voted against Lee’s education savings account bill in 2019 and did not say why he now supports Lee’s proposal.

However, the legislature’s Democratic leaders said Lee and GOP leadership are in for a fight — similar to the one in Texas, where a bipartisan coalition of Democrats and rural Republicans beat back Gov. Greg Abbott’s school voucher bill this month during a special legislative session.

During a morning news conference, Tennessee Democrats charged that statewide vouchers will weaken public schools and lead to cuts in everything from school personnel to arts and athletic programs, plus increased property taxes for residents. And they pledged to work across the aisle with Republican lawmakers who have been skeptical of vouchers from the outset.

“On the House side, we’re already reaching out to local officials to join us in supporting public schools,” said Rep. John Ray Clemmons, a Nashville Democrat and House caucus chairman, noting that public school districts are typically the largest employers in the state’s rural communities.

From left, Sens. Raumesh Akbari and London Lamar, both of Memphis, listen as Rep. John Ray Clemmons, right, of Nashville, criticizes Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee’s education voucher expansion proposal during a news conference on November 28, 2023.

Democrats also warned that, under the governor’s plan, private schools will be able to choose the voucher students they want to accept, especially from families that are already bound for a private education.

“What this is is a coupon program for rich families who do not want to pay the full price of tuition,” said Sen. London Lamar of Memphis, leader of the Senate Democratic caucus.

Meanwhile, leaders of groups both for and against vouchers said they were mobilizing for the fight ahead.

Among the pro-voucher contingent is Americans for Prosperity in Tennessee, part of a conservative network backed by the billionaire Koch brothers, and the American Federation for Children, whose founding chairperson was Michigan billionaire Betsy DeVos.

Groups opposing Lee’s plan include the state’s two largest professional organizations for educators, the Tennessee Education Association and Professional Educators of Tennessee.

Tennessee has been a battleground state in the school choice movement, with a coalition of conservative political organizations using out-of-state money to campaign against incumbent lawmakers who oppose vouchers.

Lee’s newest proposal, if approved, would put Tennessee on track to become the 10th state to adopt a universal voucher program, joining Arizona, Ohio, Oklahoma, North Carolina, and West Virginia. But the change would happen before state officials have enough data to evaluate the effectiveness of its current education savings account program, which launched last year in Davidson and Shelby counties and this year in Hamilton County.

For the 2024-25 school year, Lee proposes to provide 10,000 “scholarships” for students who are considered economically disadvantaged, have a disability, or are eligible for Tennessee’s current education savings account program. Another 10,000 would go to a universal pool of students across the state.

Beginning in 2025-26, Tennessee would offer vouchers to any K-12 student.

A one-page promotional document circulated by the governor office said Tennessee would prioritize “currently enrolled students, low-income and public school students if demand exceeds available funding.”

For years, Tennessee has been in the bottom tier of states in funding public education and remains in the bottom half nationally, even with a $1 billion increase this year as part of Lee’s overhaul of Tennessee’s education funding formula.

In 2020-21, before the latest investment, national data ranked the state 37th for per-student funding. And in its annual grades for education funding, the Education Law Center gave Tennessee two F’s for funding level and effort, and a D for funding distribution.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Nashville, Shelby County withdraw challenge to Tennessee private school voucher law after long fight

2023-11-17T23:54:28+00:00

Nashville and Shelby County governments have pulled out of their more than 3-year-old legal dispute with the state over a 2019 private school voucher law.

The paperwork to withdraw their latest appeal was filed quietly on Aug. 25 with the Tennessee Court of Appeals, according to court documents.

The pullout by Tennessee’s two largest counties is the latest setback for efforts to overturn the controversial education savings account law, the signature legislation of Gov. Bill Lee’s first year in office.

The law, which allows the state to give taxpayer money to eligible families to pay toward the cost of private school tuition, was declared unconstitutional by a Nashville judge in 2020 because, at the time, it affected students only in Nashville and Memphis, where local officials have consistently opposed vouchers. But after several appeals, the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled in favor of the state in 2022 and resurrected the law, allowing the program to launch last year in the two counties. This fall, the state rolled out the program in Hamilton County after lawmakers voted earlier this year for expansion.

On Friday, Nashville Law Director Wally Dietz declined to comment about the decision to pull out of the suit, as did E. Lee Whitwell, chief litigation attorney for Shelby County government.

Nashville Law Director Wally Dietz criticizes a Tennessee Supreme Court ruling upholding the state’s private school voucher law during a news conference on June 1, 2022, soon after the court’s decision.

But Dietz, whose office has been leading the charge on the Nashville-Shelby lawsuit, noted that the legal challenge remains alive through a second lawsuit filed in 2020 by the Education Law Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of 11 public school parents and community members in Memphis and Nashville. Their appeal is pending before the state’s appellate court.

The state Supreme Court’s ruling in May 2022 rejected Metro Nashville and Shelby County’s argument that the voucher law violated a “home rule” provision in the Tennessee Constitution. The latest court battle has been over whether plaintiffs in both lawsuits have legal standing to pursue the case based on other legal claims, such as a constitutional clause that requires the state to maintain a system of “free public schools,” with no mention of private schools.

In a split vote in late 2022, a three-judge panel of Davidson County Chancery Court dismissed those claims. Soon after, attorneys behind both lawsuits appealed that ruling to the Tennessee Court of Appeals.

Chris Wood, a Nashville lawyer helping to litigate the remaining lawsuit, said the pullout by Metro Nashville and Shelby County has no bearing on his case filed jointly with the Education Law Center, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the ACLU.

“We’re still here,” Wood said Friday. “Our case has always been our case. And while it’s good to have other folks working with you, this really doesn’t have an impact on what we’re doing.”

A spokesperson for the Tennessee attorney general’s office did not immediately respond when asked Friday about the development.

Currently, Tennessee’s education savings account program has fewer than 2,000 students enrolled in 75 state-approved private schools in the three counties where it operates, significantly below this year’s 5,000-seat cap.

Rep. Mark White, a Memphis Republican who chairs a House Education Committee, has said he expects to file legislation next year to take the program statewide.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee’s first A-F letter grades for schools will stress proficiency

2023-11-03T00:01:41+00:00

After months of asking Tennesseans how the state should judge its public schools when giving them their first A-F letter grades, Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds mostly ignored the feedback.

In her first major initiative since taking the helm of the state education department in July, Reynolds chose a school grading system that elevates the importance of proficiency — whether students are meeting certain academic standards on state tests — over the progress that schools make toward meeting those standards over the course of a year.

Her plan, unveiled on Thursday, will mark a sharp change of course for Tennessee, considered a pioneer in emphasizing growth measurements to assess its students, teachers, and schools.

It’s also significantly different from what Tennesseans have asked state officials for since Reynolds announced in August that an overhaul in the state’s grading system was coming. The overwhelming feedback at 10 town halls, meetings with stakeholders, and in nearly 300 public comments was for keeping the calculation focused on growth, as it has been the last five years.

Reynolds’ plan is similar to the model backed by ExcelinEd, the education advocacy group founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and where Reynolds previously served as policy director.

It will still include improvement as a factor, as required by a 2016 Tennessee law, but achievement will get more weight than under the original formula — and there won’t be a way for schools to meet the achievement criteria by meeting certain improvement goals, according to a presentation to the state Board of Education.

“This version is recalibrating that balance point and is going to say more about where the kids are in those schools right now,” said David Laird, assistant commissioner of assessment and accountability in the education department. “It is less of a referendum on maybe what the school’s impact has been, but it’s more clearly articulating their challenges right now.”

The department also announced that the grades will be released in mid-December, a month later than previously planned. State officials say they need more time to verify data going into the grades.

This is the first time the state will issue its letter grades since the 2016 law requiring them took effect. Previous attempts were called off because of testing glitches and the pandemic.

There are several other changes to the calculation.

The formula will factor in test scores for science and social studies, although not as much as for math and English language arts, which were the focus of the original model.

Gone is data related to chronic absenteeism. A new factor will be how well schools are helping their lowest-performing quartile of students to improve. For high schools, college and career readiness will be included, based on measures such as ACT scores, postsecondary credits, or industry credentials.

The debate about growth vs. proficiency was the biggest concern for school leaders who have been waiting and planning for grades for five years.

Focusing on proficiency likely will mean fewer A’s and generally worse grades than expected for many schools, especially those serving students from lower-income families in rural and urban communities.

Beyond the stigma of getting a D or an F, officials representing those schools eventually may face hearings before the state Board of Education or audits of their spending and academic programming.

Several board members worried that teachers could flee schools graded D or F, exacerbating the challenges faced by schools in high-poverty areas, where students face extra challenges before they even walk into a classroom.

“It’s a struggle for me to think about saying everyone should pull themselves up by their bootstraps, when some folks have a closet full of boots, and some have none,” said Darrell Cobbins, who represents Memphis on the board.

Many education advocates worried the state could return to an era when schools with many affluent students coasted to the top ratings, while doing little to show they were helping students improve. Meanwhile, schools in high-poverty areas will have little chance to earn an A or B, they told Chalkbeat.

“Measuring only absolute proficiency for 50% of a school’s grade will most certainly disadvantage our highest poverty schools,” said Erin O’Hara Block, a school board member for Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, who served on the working group giving input to the state.

“I’m not sure what this system is supposed to motivate for schools, nor how it will truly inform parents on differences in what various schools can offer to their children,” she said.

Reynolds said the letter grades are a tool to provide families and school communities with information they can use to make decisions, not necessarily to incentivize schools to improve.

“We want to tell the truth about whether or not our kids are actually achieving,” she said.

But Gini Pupo-Walker, director of the Education Trust in Tennessee, is hopeful the grades will somehow be tied to extra resources to help struggling schools.

“We look forward to learning more about how the state plans to support schools that receive D’s and F’s,” she said, “and ensure schools are paying attention to the success of all students.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee rushes to revamp its A-F letter grades for schools. Educators cry foul.

2023-10-26T10:00:00+00:00

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It was supposed to make things simpler.

A 2016 Tennessee law required the state to assign each public school a letter grade, A to F, based mostly on student test results. The intent was to give parents and communities an easy way to assess the quality of education at each school.

Nothing about it has been simple, though. Since the law took effect, the state hasn’t issued any grades, mostly because of testing glitches and the pandemic.

And now there’s a new complication: As the state prepares to finally issue its first grades in November, the education department and its new leader are revamping the grading formula. The changes likely will mean fewer A’s and generally worse grades than expected for many schools, especially those serving students from lower-income families in rural and urban communities.

The rollout will be a jolt to many Tennessee public school leaders, who have been waiting and planning for these grades for five years, thinking they understood what the criteria would be. And beyond the stigma, the grades could have real consequences: Officials representing schools that get D’s or F’s eventually may face hearings or audits of their spending and academic programming.

“It almost seems like we’re trying to change rules after the game’s already been played,” said Brian Curry, a school board member in Germantown, during an August town hall in Memphis to discuss potential changes with state officials.

Why the letter grades for schools matter

Tennessee’s 2016 school report card law didn’t include consequences for schools that get low grades.

That changed last year, when Tennessee passed a new system for funding K-12 education.

Under the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement Act, or TISA, school districts or charter authorizers can face hearings before the state Board of Education if their schools get D’s or F’s on the state report card, beginning with the 2024-25 school year.

Ultimately, administrators could have to submit a corrective action plan or undergo a state audit of spending and academic programming at the school in question.

State board member Darrell Cobbins, whose district includes Memphis schools, acknowledges that the increased funding that came with TISA warrants additional accountability. But he wonders about the feasibility of what the law asks of the all-volunteer board. Holding hearings for potentially hundreds of schools will be a “major undertaking,” he said.

The board is working with a consultant, Bellwether Education Partners, to develop a review process that Cobbins hopes will be logical, consistent, and explainable.

At the crux of the state’s late change is a long-running debate over proficiency vs. growth — whether students should be judged based more on whether they meet certain academic standards, or on how much progress they make toward those standards. Where the state lands in that debate is especially important for schools where students face extra challenges even before they walk into a classroom.

But many public school leaders believe there’s a larger political motive behind the sudden drive by Gov. Bill Lee’s administration to change the rules: advancing his school choice agenda.

Under a 2019 voucher law pushed by Lee, Tennessee now provides taxpayer money to help some families send their children to private schools. But the program has fewer than 2,000 students enrolled in the three counties where it operates, significantly below this year’s 5,000-seat cap. Lee wants to expand enrollment and eventually take the option statewide.

“School choice has got to be part of what’s driving all this,” said Mike Winstead, director of Maryville City Schools and a former Tennessee Superintendent of the Year.

“Think about it,” he continued. “If you have an A or B school in your community, that may not motivate parents to want to pull their kids out of public schools to use a voucher.”

Several other district leaders brought up the same concern to state officials at town halls hosted by the department in August and September to get public feedback about revising the grading formula. But state officials flatly deny there’s a connection between the voucher law and changes to the grading formula.

The grading law “was passed to promote transparency, and families should be able to know and to understand how their students’ schools are performing,” a department spokesman said in a statement to Chalkbeat.

Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds said the goal of the new formula is to generate grades that signify meaningful differences in school performance in a way that make sense to Tennesseans, whether they reflect proficiency, growth, or other criteria that are ultimately chosen.

“Whether you are a student, parent, teacher, policymaker, or an interested community member, school letter grades will empower all Tennesseans with the information they need to support K-12 public education and our local schools,” she said.

Tennessee initially adopted growth-focused model

State law requires that Tennessee’s model for grading schools take into account student performance and improvement, as demonstrated on annual state tests, and it allows inclusion of other reliable indicators of student achievement. The statute directed the education department to come up with a formula to turn those results into a single letter grade for each school, to be published online on the State Report Card.

When developing the calculation under former Republican Gov. Bill Haslam’s administration, the department stressed achievement and growth in math and English language arts. And it created two pathways for schools to demonstrate achievement.

One way was based on what the state calls “pure achievement,” meaning that a certain percentage of a school’s students demonstrated a required level of proficiency, skill, or knowledge. By this metric, a school that started the school year with a high proficiency rate was likely to receive an A even if it had not improved student learning during the school year.

The other way rewarded schools that met certain goals to move their students toward proficiency from one year to the next. The idea was that all schools, especially those serving low-income students or that have historically performed poorly, should have an opportunity to get an A as long as they make strong progress toward the state’s achievement goals.

So even the achievement part of the grading formula could be fulfilled with strong growth. In this way, Tennessee was an early adopter of a growth-heavy model when developing its accountability system.

“All means all!” became the mantra of then-Education Commissioner Candice McQueen as she worked with education stakeholders for nearly a year to design a system to incentivize improvement for all students — whether they are considered low, average, or high achievers — as well as for all schools, regardless of their demographic makeup.

Tennessee had modest success with that approach, even though the actual letter grades were never issued. Before the pandemic hit in 2020, students were showing incremental growth in math and reading based on some of the nation’s highest proficiency standards.

But state lawmakers have become increasingly impatient with the pace of improvement, especially in reading. About a third of the state’s students meet grade-level standards on the English language arts test, which requires students to demonstrate the ability to read closely.

“School choice has got to be part of what’s driving all this. Think about it. If you have an A or B school in your community, that may not motivate parents to want to pull their kids out of public schools to use a voucher.” — Mike Winstead, Maryville City Schools director

“At the end of the day, I want to know: Can you add, subtract, multiply, and divide, and can you read, regardless of how much you have grown from one year to the other?” said Rep. Mark Cochran, an Englewood Republican, during one legislative hearing about the state’s emphasis on growth.

Meanwhile, the legislature has sought to provide more options for families dissatisfied with the performance of traditional public schools by introducing private school vouchers and allowing charter schools to open statewide.

Now as Tennessee revamps its school grading system, Lee’s administration is poised to shift weight in the equation from growth to pure achievement. Reynolds wants the state to do that by eliminating the growth pathway for demonstrating achievement. Growth would still be a component of the overall grade, as dictated by state law, but a much smaller part.

“I want to be very clear that when we’re talking about academic achievement, we’re talking about academic achievement,” Reynolds, the new education commissioner, said at an Oct. 12 meeting of education stakeholders.

State hears strong calls for retaining growth focus

Reynolds, who was sworn in to her post in July, launched the reevaluation of the grading system about a month later as her first major initiative. She invited Tennesseans to weigh in on how the state should measure a school’s academic success. At the time, state officials said all options were on the table.

At town halls, meetings with stakeholders, and in nearly 300 public comments from Tennesseans, state officials heard a common theme: Keep some kind of growth option as part of the achievement calculation. Measuring student performance with a single letter grade requires nuance, many educators said, and the growth-based model allows that.

“Is having a campus that has only 15% reading proficiency really a B school, if those kids cannot read?” — Lizzette Reynolds, Tennessee education commissioner

A formula that’s weighted too heavily toward pure achievement, they warned, would produce grades that essentially mirror the economic profiles of the schools — with high-income communities getting the A’s and B’s — and families wouldn’t be able to use the grades to differentiate the performance of one high-poverty school from another.

“Given the strong correlation between achievement and poverty, I think it’s really difficult to talk about just achievement in isolation. We really need to balance this with growth,” said Madeline Price, policy director for the State Collaborative on Reforming Education, at an Oct. 5 meeting of the stakeholders group.

“All schools, especially low-income and traditionally low performing schools, should have a very real opportunity to receive an A” if they significantly improve student performance, the leaders of Tennessee’s school superintendent organization wrote in a letter to Reynolds.

Meaghan Turnbow, who coordinates programs for English language learners in fast-growing Rutherford County Schools, south of Nashville, noted pitfalls in a model that emphasizes proficiency over growth.

“We have students come to our district from all over the world with various education levels and English levels,” she wrote in a public comment. “Year to year they grow, but it may be several years before they are considered meeting or exceeding expectations.”

Tennessee Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds speaks to a gathering of school superintendents in September. Reynolds has signaled that she wants to narrow the way the state judges student performance.

But soon after asking for public feedback, Tennessee’s new education chief signaled that she wanted to narrow the way the state judges student performance.

During an Aug. 29 town hall in Chattanooga, Reynolds acknowledged that the education department, before scuttling plans to issue grades in the fall of 2022 under former Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn, had run the numbers but didn’t like what it saw. For instance, she said, a school with 80% of its students reading on grade level might have received a B, but so might a school that had only 15% of students reading on grade level, while also demonstrating high growth.

“Is having a campus that has only 15% reading proficiency really a B school, if those kids cannot read?” Reynolds asked.

“We should celebrate growth,” she continued. “We should also celebrate achievement, because at the end of the day, kids can grow. But if they never get on grade level, they don’t have much of a future, particularly when it comes to reading and math.”

How a single school could get conflicting evaluations

The A-F grading system, as required by the state, was billed as a simple, common-sense tool to help parents understand how their child’s school is doing and compare schools.

But changes the department is making could add a new layer of complexity for school communities.

When Tennessee developed its accountability plan in 2017, it opted for a single system to satisfy both the state law and a 2015 federal accountability law called the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA. That way, “we’re not sending different messages to parents and the general public,” said Winstead, the Maryville schools director who served on the state task force that developed the plan.

ESSA doesn’t require A-F grades, but it directs the state to use its own criteria to identify schools that are academically in the bottom 5%, plus other schools showing low performance or significant disparities across groups of students who are Black, Hispanic, economically disadvantaged, or English learners, or have learning disabilities. Such schools become eligible for additional federal funding.

Because of the link between the two laws, the schools that would earn the lowest grades under Tennessee’s current formula are the same ones that would get federal support to help them improve. And educators would work with a common set of goals, priorities, and incentives.

Changes that the Tennessee Department of Education is making could create two separate accountability systems, producing conflicting assessments of how a school is doing.

Under Reynolds, the Tennessee education department appears ready to decouple the state’s A-F system from its federal compliance plan. The change would result in Tennessee having two accountability systems, potentially producing conflicting assessments of how a school is doing.

For example, if the new state formula places less emphasis on certain student groups than the federal system does, a school that has big racial or economic disparities in student performance could still earn high grades from Tennessee based on overall proficiency rates. Meanwhile, a school with low proficiency rates would get a D or an F, even though it may serve certain groups of students better than an A or B school.

Mary Batiwalla, former assistant commissioner of assessment and accountability in Tennessee, says what’s going on here has parallels in Texas, where Reynolds used to be chief deputy commissioner. Officials there changed their grading criteria this year to apply to schools retroactively. However, after some school districts sued that state over the changes, Texas delayed the release of its grades.

Texas lawmakers are also in the midst of a special session on vouchers to debate whether students should be able to use public dollars to attend private schools. Batiwalla worries that officials in both states are hijacking the grading systems for political aims, not to incentivize school communities to improve.

“If you want to do vouchers, do vouchers,” said Batiwalla, an outspoken critic of Reynolds’ efforts. “Don’t take away this policy tool that has the potential to drive improvement from the rest of the public schools.”

Proficiency focus could shortchange some students

Other tweaks are likely when Tennessee releases its new equation in the days or weeks ahead, just before giving schools their first set of grades.

“If you want to do vouchers, do vouchers. Don’t take away this policy tool that has the potential to drive improvement from the rest of the public schools.” — Mary Batiwalla, former assistant commissioner, Tennessee Department of Education

The department has heard calls to include social studies and science scores in the calculation, as well as data related to third-grade reading, participation in tutoring programs, and postsecondary indicators like dual enrollment and career and technical education offerings, just to name a few. There’s also a growing consensus around ditching student absenteeism data, which is a factor in the current equation.

But most educators have their eye on the growth vs. proficiency debate. They worry that greater emphasis on proficiency will motivate schools to focus on improving “bubble kids” — those scoring just under proficiency — instead of working to improve students at all levels of achievement.

“You’re incentivizing bad choices that serve just a few kids instead of all kids,” Winstead said.

Winstead’s suburban school system should be fine. Maryville City Schools, near Knoxville, is one of the state’s highest-achieving districts and stands to benefit if Tennessee’s revamped grading formula puts more weight on proficiency. But Winstead philosophically disagrees with the approach that the state appears to be taking.

“This is going to demoralize a lot of school communities,” he said, “teachers, kids, and parents — folks who have done incredible things to move kids forward.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org. Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee charter panel leader backs 5 school appeals, including one from Hillsdale group

2023-10-02T23:47:13+00:00

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The head of a powerful Tennessee commission is recommending the state overturn five of eight local school board decisions denying charter school applications, including two in Memphis and one from a group linked with conservative Hillsdale College.

The recommendations from executive director Tess Stovall, released Monday, will be a key factor in votes set for later this week by the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission. The panel, whose nine members were appointed by Gov. Bill Lee, was created under a 2019 law pushed by the governor in his campaign to open more high-quality charter schools across Tennessee.

If the commission concurs with her recommendations as it usually does, Tennessee would become home to two classical charter schools operated by American Classical Education, a network affiliated with Hillsdale, a small conservative Christian college in south central Michigan.

Their opening would begin to fulfill a key education priority for Lee, who has said he wants the Hillsdale group to open at least 50 charter schools in Tennessee.

But Lee’s courtship of Hillsdale has attracted controversy. It is part of his ambitious plan to revamp the state’s charter sector in part by widening its student demographics beyond low-income urban areas. The governor is also supporting classroom history lessons like Hillsdale’s that emphasize America’s strengths rather than its shortcomings.

Additionally, Stovall recommended Monday that a Memphis school exiting the state-run turnaround initiative known as the Achievement School District should retain its charter, despite not moving out of the state’s bottom 5% of Tennessee schools academically in 10 years.

Stovall also said the commission should overturn the Nashville school board’s votes to reject two charter applications.

In its first two years of operation, the commission granted five out of 16 appeals.

Tennessee meets Hillsdale

American Classical drew national attention in 2022 after Lee endorsed Hillsdale’s approach to K-12 education, and invited its leaders to apply to open charter schools in Tennessee that align with his conservative beliefs regarding civics and other topics.

That drive stalled over public outrage in response to Hillsdale President Larry Arnn’s comment that teachers are “trained in the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country.” And the fallout prompted the network to withdraw applications to open three charter schools.

But this year, American Classical is trying again. It’s already gotten approval by Rutherford County’s school board to open a school in the fast-growing suburban enclave south of Nashville.

Stovall is recommending the state OK another American Classical school in Jackson-Madison County Schools, which is projecting an 8% increase in enrollment because of the impending arrival of Ford’s electric truck assembly plant in nearby Haywood County.

The West Tennessee district’s school board voted in July to deny American Classical’s application, saying the charter school would have a “substantial negative fiscal impact” to the school system. But based on its own financial analysis, staff for the commission rejected that claim, while Stovall commended American Classical’s identification of a school leader and target community.

However, Stovall recommended the state reject another appeal from American Classical to open a school in Maury County, a growing area southwest of Nashville. She cited concerns with the group’s enrollment projections, and dinged the operator for not identifying a school leader or the community in which the school intends to locate.

“Overall, the sponsor has several significant gaps within its proposed plan that it must address before it is ready for approval,” Stovall said.

Recommendations split on four Memphis appeals

In Memphis, Stovall sided with the appeal filed by Capstone Education Group to continue operating Cornerstone Prep Lester, one of five schools seeking to remain open as they prepare to exit the Achievement School District, or ASD, at the close of the 2023-24 school year.

A charter management organization, Capstone has operated Cornerstone in the city’s Binghampton community since the 2012-13 school year but never met its academic goals for automatically exiting the turnaround district.

However, Stovall said Cornerstone has shown improvement the last three years and appears to be “on track” to continue that trajectory.

“A significant reason for my recommendation to approve the application is the track record of the network, [which] has demonstrated that it can have success in school turnaround work in Memphis as it has achieved priority exit status with two of its three ASD-operated schools,” she said.

Stovall also recommended the state OK the application of Empower Memphis Career and College Prep, which wants to open a K-8 charter school focused on career and technical education in the city’s Orange Mound community.

The Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) board denied Empower’s application over concerns that Orange Mound already has too many unoccupied classroom seats while the district seeks to right-size its footprint. But Stovall said Empower’s application is of high quality, and that the commission may want to let the operator see if it can meet enrollment goals; Empower proposes to start with 100 students and eventually grow to 450.

Stovall recommended that the commission reject the other two appeals from Memphis.

One is from Green Dot Public Schools to continue operating Fairley High School in the Whitehaven area after exiting the ASD. The other appeal is from Pathways in Education, a school for nontraditional high school students that once operated two locations under the ASD.

Stovall agreed with the Memphis-Shelby County board that Green Dot has not shown “a clear path to tangible growth, achievement and success for Fairley students” to merit granting a new 10-year charter.

Without a charter operator, the fate of schools like Fairley exiting the ASD has been left up to local school officials. But Fairley, at least, appears poised to remain open under the oversight of Memphis-Shelby County Schools. Its supporters and alumni have turned out in droves imploring officials to maintain operations.

“I am confident in MSCS’s statement in the public hearing that, if the school is returned to MSCS, Fairley High School will remain open and in operation” under the district’s school turnaround program known as the Innovation Zone, or iZone, Stovall said.

In recommending the rejection of Pathways in Education’s appeal, Stovall noted that both of the applicant’s previous schools under the ASD were contract schools, not charter schools, and therefore were held to a different standard.

“As currently proposed, I have doubts as to whether the sponsor’s proposed plan could meet all requirements of charter schools and be successful under the current school accountability framework,” Stovall said.

Stovall also recommended overturning two Nashville school board denials of charter applications.

Invictus Nashville appealed to the state to let it open a Montessori school next year with up to 144 students in the city’s McGavock neighborhood. And Florida-based Noble Education Initiative proposed to open Nashville Collegiate High Schools in the Cane Ridge area.

The Metro Nashville school board said both groups failed to fully meet the state’s standards in academics, operations, and finance. The board also said opening the schools would negatively impact Tennessee’s second largest school district.

However, the commission’s staff disagreed based on their reviews of the applications and an analysis of the district’s finances.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee’s new education chief says implementing policy is her strength and the governor’s priority

2023-07-24T10:00:00+00:00

Three weeks into her job as Tennessee’s education chief, Lizzette Gonzalez Reynolds says her charge from Gov. Bill Lee is to implement existing major policy changes — from how reading is taught to the continued rollout of private school vouchers — not to craft new initiatives.

She feels prepared for that role, having overseen state-level education policy work in Texas for nearly a decade, including six years as its No. 2 administrator. She also has years of policy and political experience at the federal level, and most recently led policy work for the advocacy group ExcelinEd, founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

“Implementation is kind of my sweet spot,” Reynolds said. “When I was chief deputy commissioner in Texas, that’s what I did.”

Among her priorities in Tennessee: executing new programs to develop stronger readers; troubleshooting the switch to a new K-12 funding formula as of July 1; strengthening school models to prepare students for success after high school; and operating and expanding Lee’s controversial voucher program that gives taxpayer money to eligible students to attend private schools.

Meanwhile, much of the work to roll out a comprehensive new school safety package, approved this spring after a mass school shooting in Nashville, has shifted under a new law to the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security.

Since her official start on July 1, Reynolds’ schedule has been packed with meetings with staff, lawmakers, government officials, and education stakeholders.

Among the latter is JC Bowman, executive director of the Professional Educators of Tennessee, who described Reynolds as “straightforward and direct.”

“She made it clear that she is here to serve students and educators in Tennessee. … I think she will do well here if she will stay above the political fray,” said Bowman, who was a frequent critic of Reynolds’ predecessor, Penny Schwinn.

This week, the new commissioner travels to Memphis, home to the state’s largest school district, for introductions with local officials and community leaders.

Last week, in her first media interview since Lee announced her hiring in May, Reynolds sat down with Chalkbeat to talk about her background, priorities, and leadership style. Since she’s on a learning curve in a new state, questions about policy specifics were off the table.

But she was open about her own K-12 experiences as a public school kid growing up in Harlingen, Texas, a heavily Hispanic community in the Rio Grande Valley near the U.S.-Mexico border.

She described how, as a Hispanic American and a female, she experienced discrimination. As a first-generation college graduate and the oldest of four children of working-class parents, she benefited from scholarships and financial aid. And, as a parent of three children, one of whom was diagnosed with a disability in elementary school, she tapped both public and private schools to find the best fit for her family.

Reynolds said she jumped at the chance to join the administration of Lee, a Republican businessman who pushed for sweeping changes to education in his first term and was easily reelected last year.

“Tennessee has always been the bellwether state of doing things that challenge the adults in the system to continue to do better,” she said. “I want to be part of that story.”

Below are highlights of Chalkbeat’s interview, which has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

Getting to know you on a personal level, describe your own education experience. Did you go to public schools? Private schools? How did they shape you?

My only early experience in a private school was attending a Catholic school in pre-K. From kindergarten through 12th grade, I went to public schools in Harlingen.

From an early age, my mom drilled into me that “you got to go to college.” So I was always in a competition to be at the top of my class. I was going to be an astronaut, by God!

“I was going to be an astronaut, by God!”

I loved math but, when I took trigonometry in high school and it wasn’t connecting, my teacher was like, “You know, you’re a girl. You really don’t need to be doing this. You probably should just drop my class.” So I did.

I was shy and I couldn’t wait to get out of Harlingen. I was blessed with a great school counselor. When I told her I wanted to go to college, she said, “OK, here’s what you need to do.”

I got a merit scholarship to attend Southwestern University, where people in the financial aid office became my best friends and I was able to cover tuition increases through a combination of work-study and Pell grants. By then, I wanted to become an accountant. But after taking a political science class with a truly dynamic professor, I changed my mind. I wanted to save the world.

Your selection was announced by the governor’s office on the same day that Schwinn’s impending departure was announced. How did you come to this job?

A lot of the work I did for the Foundation for Excellence in Education (ExcelinEd) was not only to advocate for its policy agenda but to work across the country with other advocates and supporters and philanthropy. I was on the proverbial “list” of people across the country who might be interested in being a state-level deputy or chief. And I’ve paid my dues. I had thought maybe I might lead the Texas Education Agency someday. But I wasn’t actively looking. I’d been at ExcelinEd almost seven years and loved my job.

This spring, the governor’s office here called and wanted to talk about Tennessee’s chief position and I said, ‘Of course I’ll talk.’ What a great opportunity to meet Gov. Lee, who had a great relationship with Gov. Bush. (During the week of April 11) I came to Nashville and met with (Chief Operating Officer) Brandon Gibson and then interviewed with the governor the next day.

“Tennessee has always been the bellwether state of doing things that challenge the adults in the system to continue to do better.”

When I walked into his office, everybody was so awesome. Gov. Lee looked at me and said, “Why do you want to be commissioner of education in Tennessee?” I basically said, “Who wouldn’t want to be commissioner here?” Tennessee has always been the bellwether state of doing things that challenge the adults in the system to continue to do better. It’s still strong in accountability and assessment. There’s great work passed in this administration and previous administrations. And then, just the fact that the governor really cares about education, that it’s a priority.

Tennessee is just a good place to be. I want to be part of that story and the continued success of this state with kids. At this agency, we don’t touch kids every day, but we help influence what happens in the classroom because of the supports and resources that we provide.

When I walked out of the governor’s office, I said to myself, ‘I want to work for that man and I’m going to be really disappointed if I don’t get the offer.’

About a week and a half later, I got the offer.

What did you and Gov. Lee talk about in your interview? Why do you think he picked you?

Bottom line, this job was going to be about implementation and execution of the agenda passed through the legislature and through his leadership and (Penny Schwinn’s) leadership at the agency. A lot has already been done. Now the hard work is the implementation piece and that is kind of my sweet spot.

“Tennessee is where reform really percolated and expanded and continues to live.”

When I was chief deputy commissioner in Texas, that’s what I did: Making sure resources are there, thinking about the right resources, bringing folks in to support those implementation efforts — all the pieces of the puzzle that need to come together to ensure that kids and educators get what they need to be successful.

But sometimes implementation also requires you to say no to some things or to certain vendors.

Because of your policy work with ExcelinEd, with its focus on school choice and privatization, many stakeholders think your selection suggests that voucher expansion and advancing choice programs are Job One for you under this administration. How would you respond?

First of all, it’s not about privatization. Our No. 1 priority at ExcelinEd was to improve the system because we know that about 90% of our kids are in a public school system. Second priority is the options outside the system, which includes ESAs (education savings accounts, a kind of private school voucher), charter schools, open enrollment, public school choice, letting parents go where they want to go in the public school system. Third priority is reimagining the system, so really thinking about what other ways we can develop these comprehensive high schools. That’s how we think at ExcelinEd, and that’s why I think I was a good candidate for this job.

Yes, ESAs are part of the package, but it’s not the only package. There is no silver bullet when it comes to education. ESAs are great, but they’re not for everybody. It all depends on the parents and the families and what they want to do and what options they want to pursue.

It wasn’t that long ago that a Tennessee governor wouldn’t think of choosing an education commissioner who didn’t have teaching experience. But you don’t, nor do you have a teaching license. How will you have “street cred” with educators here, given that your background is primarily in policy and politics?

As a parent of public school kids, I’m as close to the classroom as you’re going to get because I’m a consumer of the public school system. To say that my experience is irrelevant, I don’t think it’s very fair. But in that vein, I also want to listen and learn. Earlier today, for instance, I met with folks at the Tennessee Education Association (the state’s largest teacher group).

I’ve got to come at it with empathy and support. Have I done their job every day? No, I haven’t. But we’re all in this together. I’m going to listen. I’m going to engage and implement in a way that is fair and where the decision-making is transparent.

The department has had a number of significant departures in recent months, including Chief Academic Officer Lisa Coons and Deputy Commissioner Eve Carney, who was a veteran manager responsible for many of the state’s biggest education programs and initiatives. How are you building out your cabinet and filling out gaps in leadership? Will you look inside or outside of the state?

I’m looking for the best qualified folks, but my preference is to find people in Tennessee. We just hired Kristy Brown from Jackson as our chief academic officer. We need to fill the role of chief program officer, and I’d love to find a Tennessean for that. I don’t feel the need to look outside of the state because I think there’s a lot of qualified people here. Tennessee is where reform really percolated and expanded and continues to live.

Have you and your family officially moved from Texas to Tennessee, or do you plan to?

I’m here and I’m moving soon into a place in East Nashville. My husband is staying in Austin with our youngest son, who’s a rising junior, until he finishes high school. Our son wants to look at colleges here, so I’m super excited.

I don’t know if I’ll go back to Austin to live. We’ll see.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis-Shelby County School Board OKs two charter school applications, denies seven

2023-07-19T23:28:34+00:00

The Memphis-Shelby County Schools board on Tuesday approved applications for two charter schools to join the district in 2024-25, while denying seven others.

Journey Coleman, an Achievement School District charter school, will become a charter school under MSCS. Tennessee Career Academy, a new charter school, will also open in the district. Both schools will join the MSCS district in 2024-25.

Other charter applicants were denied, but will have a chance to appeal.

Denying the four other ASD charter school applications leaves the students and staff at the schools in limbo.

Another web of decisions will determine what happens next. Without approval to operate under the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission, the fate of the schools is left to MSCS. If the district doesn’t decide to make them traditional schools, the four charter schools will close when their charters expire after the 2023-24 school year.

MSCS officials Tuesday suggested plans for some of the schools to return as traditional schools, but none of those plans are final.

So far, neither the district nor the board has articulated a comprehensive strategy for dealing with the fallout of the ASD’s collapse.

Here are the MSCS board’s votes. Five are existing schools in the Achievement School District:

Cornerstone Prep Lester Campus School, sponsored by Capstone Education Group: Denied
Fairley High School, sponsored by Green Dot Public Schools TN: Denied
Humes Middle School, sponsored by Frayser Community Schools: Denied
Journey Coleman, sponsored by Journey Community Schools: Approved
MLK College Prep High School, sponsored by Frayser Community Schools: Denied

The other four are proposed new charter schools:

Change Academy, sponsored by Trust God and Never Doubt Outreach: Denied
Empower Memphis Career & College Prep, sponsored by Empower Career and College Prep: Denied
Pathways In Education-Memphis, sponsored by Pathways Management Group: Denied
Tennessee Career Academy, sponsored by TN Career Academy Inc.: Approved

Approvals for the two successful applicants take effect July 25, 2023.

Sign up for Chalkbeat Tennessee’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the Memphis-Shelby County Schools and statewide education policy.

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Key Tennessee education official Eve Carney resigns amid leadership transition

2023-06-05T23:30:24+00:00

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The leadership transition at the Tennessee Department of Education accelerated this week with the resignations of two high-level officials, including a veteran manager responsible for many of the state’s biggest education programs and initiatives.

Deputy Commissioner Eve Carney will step down on June 30, a department spokesperson confirmed Monday.

The departure of Meghan McLeroy, the department’s chief officer responsible for supporting schools and districts statewide, is effective Aug. 1, the spokesperson said.

A staff member with the department since 2008, Carney currently oversees state-level work involving federal programs, school choice, testing, accountability, school improvement, and the state-run Achievement School District for low-performing schools. She is among the deepest wells of institutional knowledge within the department.

Her resignation comes at a critical time as Lizzette Gonzalez Reynolds prepares to take the helm of the department on July 1 after Penny Schwinn ended her four-year tenure as commissioner last week.

Carney — who is one of four remaining members from Schwinn’s original cabinet — was expected to play a key role in helping Reynolds as the new commissioner from Texas faces myriad challenges.

Tennessee is shifting to a new education funding formula on July 1, enforcing a controversial new third-grade retention policy for struggling readers, operating large-scale tutoring and summer learning programs to help students catch up from the pandemic, expanding its private school voucher program to a third major city, and fortifying its school buildings after a Nashville school shooting left three students and three staff members dead on March 27.

The state also is scheduled to start giving A-to-F grades to its 1,700-plus public schools this fall after delaying the new accountability policy for five years because of testing and data disruptions, most recently caused by the pandemic.

A former Tennessee high school teacher and former chief of districts and schools for the department, Carney became Schwinn’s go-to manager to oversee high-level, high-profile programs.

She often stepped in to provide oversight amid employee turnover in Schwinn’s first months on the job. And last summer, when the Tennessee Supreme Court lifted a 2-year-old order to let the state resume work on its new private school voucher program, Schwinn turned to Carney to launch the rollout in a matter of weeks.

Carney was viewed as a possible successor to Schwinn, especially after Chiefs for Change, a national network of education leaders, named her in January to its latest cohort of “future chiefs,” considered a springboard for administrators seeking top jobs.

But in May, when Schwinn announced plans to step down at the end of the school year, Gov. Bill Lee went out of state to find his new education chief. Reynolds has political and policy experience in Texas and Washington, D.C., and most recently oversaw policy for the advocacy group ExcelinEd, founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

Lee also named Sam Pearcy, the department’s deputy commissioner of operations, to serve as interim education commissioner until Reynolds’ arrival. Pearcy was sworn in on June 2, after Schwinn’s last day on June 1, said department spokesperson Brian Blackley.

An alum of Teach for America, Pearcy joined the department in 2011 as part of the team overseeing school reform work under Tennessee’s $500 million award for the federal Race to the Top program.

McLeroy, another early member of Schwinn’s cabinet, has been with the department since 2011. She also initially helped to lead the state’s Race to the Top work.

The department plans to reassign Carney’s and McLeroy’s responsibilities to existing staff by the end of June, Blackley said.

Earlier this spring, Lisa Coons, the state’s chief academic officer, left Tennessee to become superintendent of public instruction for Virginia’s education department.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee legislature sends governor pared-down school voucher expansion bill, omitting Knox County

2023-04-21T19:45:13+00:00

Tennessee lawmakers agreed Friday to expand the state’s private school voucher program to Hamilton County — but not to Knox County — as they prepared to wrap up their legislative session for the year.

The House had approved a bill on Wednesday to add both counties to the program now operating in Shelby County and Metro Nashville to let eligible families use taxpayer money toward private school tuition.

But the Senate, which voted in February to extend vouchers to Chattanooga-based Hamilton County, rejected the wider House expansion bill on Thursday without explanation.

On Friday, the House voted 57-27 to concur with the Senate version and send the measure to Gov. Bill Lee for his signature.

The final bill, while pared down, marks the first major expansion of the private school voucher program, which launched last fall under a 2019 law that cleared a series of legal hurdles last year but still faces challenges in court.

With 44,000 students, Hamilton County Schools is one of the state’s largest districts.

Lee pressed for the law to give parents more education choices for their children. But detractors say that private school vouchers do not improve student outcomes and divert scarce resources from public schools that serve most students who are disadvantaged or have special needs.

Tennessee’s law caps enrollment at 5,000 students in the program’s first year. The program has significant room to grow, based on the latest numbers from the state education department.

As of April 14, the state had approved 705 applicants to use vouchers this school year to exit Memphis-Shelby County Schools and Metro Nashville Public Schools. Of that number, 453 applicants had submitted proof that they’ve enrolled in state-approved private school and are using their voucher of nearly $8,200 toward tuition.

While there was no discussion on the Senate floor about reasons fo rejecting the House’s proposed expansion to Knox County, none of the three Republican members who represent that area — Sens. Richard Briggs and Becky Massey and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally — supported it.

“I think we have a very good school system in Knox County and that parents already have a lot of choices,” Briggs told Chalkbeat last month.

He noted that students in his district have the option to attend magnet schools, a charter school, specialized learning academies, and international baccalaureate programs, and to transfer among the district’s 90 schools, as long as there’s space available.

“The last time we voted on (school vouchers) in the legislature, the majority of our Knox County delegation voted against it,” Briggs added. “And there’s definitely not support for them among our citizens.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Bill to extend private school vouchers to Hamilton and Knox counties clears Tennessee House

2023-04-19T19:06:15+00:00

Tennessee’s House voted Wednesday for a bill to extend vouchers to Hamilton and Knox counties, just months after the purported pilot program launched in Shelby County and Metro Nashville to let some families use taxpayer money toward private school tuition.

The proposal passed 57-35 and now returns to the Senate, which voted in February to add Hamilton County before the House sponsor introduced an amendment to include Knox County, too.

If it becomes law, the wider expansion bill will bring Gov. Bill Lee’s education savings account program to all four of the state’s urban districts.

The push shows the Republican-controlled legislature’s desire to expand the program quickly after it cleared a series of legal hurdles that had delayed its launch as a pilot program under a 2019 law. The law still faces challenges in court from the Shelby County and Metro Nashville governments.

The state comptroller’s first report on how well the pilot is working isn’t due until Jan. 1, 2026, but that hasn’t stopped Republican lawmakers from pursuing a quick expansion.

“Why would you add two additional counties to an unproven, unsubstantiated program?” asked Rep. Sam McKenzie, a Knoxville Democrat, before voting against the bill. A pilot program, he argued, is designed to test an idea’s effectiveness on a small scale.

“This will actually help us collect more data by having more counties,” responded Rep. Mark White, a Memphis Republican who is co-sponsoring the measure with Sen. Todd Gardenhire of Chattanooga.

Critics say private school vouchers do not improve student outcomes and divert scarce resources from public schools that serve the bulk of students who are disadvantaged or have special needs — also leading to more segregated schools.

White said parents simply want more options for their children’s education. He added that he is seeking to add Hamilton and Knox counties at the request of several lawmakers who represent those areas, including Republican Rep. Michelle Carringer of Knoxville, who spoke on the floor in favor of the bill.

But several Democrats representing both counties said the support of some GOP lawmakers wasn’t good enough.

“The citizens of Knox County, the majority of them, do not want vouchers,” said Rep. Gloria Johnson of Knoxville.

Rep. Yusuf Hakeem, a Chattanooga Democrat, represents Hamilton County and previously served on the local school board.

Rep. Yusuf Hakeem, of Chattanooga, added: “What you’re telling us is that it’s not relevant what the parents think in those communities. It’s not relevant what the community leaders think.”

Tennessee’s voucher law caps enrollment at 5,000 students in the program’s first year, far above the current enrollment.

As of April 14, the state education department had approved 705 applicants to use vouchers this school year to exit Memphis-Shelby County Schools and Metro Nashville Public Schools. Of that number, 453 applicants had submitted proof that they’ve enrolled in state-approved private school and are using their voucher of nearly $8,200 to pay toward tuition, a department spokesman said.

The program is already poised to expand next school year under a separate bill passed earlier this session and signed into law Monday by Lee. That measure extends voucher eligibility to students who attended private or home schools during the last three school years. Previously, a student had to move directly from a public to private school.

You can track the bill to extend vouchers to Hamilton and Knox counties on the state legislature’s website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee’s latest private school voucher expansion proposal would add Knox County, too

2023-03-23T23:13:53+00:00

Tennessee’s private school voucher program, currently limited to eligible students attending public schools in Memphis and Nashville, would expand to all four of the state’s urban districts under new legislation.

A bill to extend the program to Chattanooga-based Hamilton County Schools passed last week in the Senate. And under a new GOP measure filed recently in the House and facing its first vote next week, the bill could be amended to include Knox County Schools, too.

Rep. Mark White of Memphis, who is co-sponsoring the expansion bill with Sen. Todd Gardenhire of Chattanooga, said Thursday that he is seeking to add Tennessee’s third largest district at the request of some Republican state lawmakers from the Knoxville area.

The proposal marks the latest effort to expand eligibility for Gov. Bill Lee’s education savings account program, which gives taxpayer money to eligible families to use toward private school tuition.

The program launched last fall as a pilot program under a 2019 voucher law that surmounted a string of legal obstacles and continues to be challenged in court. The law allows up to 5,000 students to participate in the program’s first year, but according to the Tennessee Department of Education, the state has approved just over 700 applications so far for families wanting to exit Memphis-Shelby County Schools and Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools this school year.

The House Education Administration Committee, which White chairs, is scheduled to consider the expansion bill and White’s Knox County amendment on March 29.

Rep. Mark White, of Memphis, chairs the House Education Administration Committee.

Rep. Bryan Richey has filed a more ambitious amendment to take vouchers statewide, but White does not expect a vote on the Maryville Republican’s proposal.

“If he tries to run that amendment, it will kill Gardenhire’s bill,” said White. “I told him, ‘Don’t run it this year; run it next year.’”

That comment — and this year’s expansion bill — are indicative of the larger goal of the governor and many Republicans, according to Rep. Gloria Johnson, a Knoxville Democrat who opposes vouchers.

“They’re going to push the envelope,” Johnson said, “until all of Tennessee’s public tax dollars for education are going to private schools and charter schools. And none of those schools are being held to the same standard as our traditional public schools.”

Lee, who recently began his second term as governor, has said he wants both high-quality public schools and more education choices for families, even as vouchers and charter schools redirect funding away from traditional public schools.

When Gardenhire filed the original expansion bill in December, he said Hamilton County Schools would be the only district affected. But White said state lawmakers from several other counties approached him later about including their local school districts, too.

On Wednesday, Gardenhire told Chalkbeat that he supports the effort to add Knox County to his legislation. If the House approves it, he plans to bring the bill’s expanded scope back to the Senate for a vote.

But several other Knox County lawmakers, including at least one Republican, say they will vote against any expansion.

“I think we have a very good school system in Knox County and that parents already have a lot of choices,” said Republican Sen. Richard Briggs of Knoxville.

Briggs noted that students have the option to attend magnet schools, a charter school, specialized learning academies, and international baccalaureate programs, and to transfer among the district’s 90 schools, as long as there’s space available.

Knox County’s school board has passed multiple anti-voucher resolutions through the years. However, that body has become more divided since 2022 elections when a new state law opened the door to partisan school board races and drew local education policy under the influence of the national political divide.

Jennifer Owen, a Knox County school board member who was not up for reelection last year, said she opposes vouchers.

“I’m getting texts from a lot of concerned people here,” Owen said of the expansion amendment. “I think people who push this kind of thing brand it as school choice, and people just don’t know what that means. But in fact, we already have lots of learning options for kids.”

Five Republican representatives from Knox County have signed on as co-sponsors of White’s bill: Michele Carringer, Elaine Davis, Jason Zachary, Justin Lafferty, and Dave Wright.

On Thursday, Davis, Zachary, and Lafferty told Chalkbeat that they support White’s amendment but declined to comment on why.

Johnson, one of two Knoxville Democrats in the legislature, said voucher support from a few Republican legislators is not an accurate gauge of what most Knox County voters want.

“They are answering to special interests, not the majority of their constituents,” she said.

A second GOP-sponsored voucher bill advancing through the legislature also would expand eligibility for education savings accounts, although not to the same extent as the Hamilton-Knox legislation.

Sen. Jon Lundberg, of Bristol, and Rep. Chris Todd, of Jackson, are seeking to expand eligibility to students in Memphis and Nashville who attended private or home schools during the last three school years. The current law says a student must move directly from a public to private school to be eligible for the program.

Their bill cleared the Senate in February and is scheduled for a vote on the House floor on March 30.

Tennessee’s voucher law refers to education savings accounts as a “pilot program” and directs the state comptroller to report on the program’s efficacy after its third year of enrolling students. But because ongoing litigation delayed the program’s launch, the first report isn’t due until Jan. 1, 2026.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Private school voucher and charter-friendly bills sail through Tennessee Senate

2023-02-28T01:34:39+00:00

The Tennessee Senate on Monday approved two Republican-sponsored bills that would expand and clarify eligibility for students to receive private school vouchers or enroll in charter schools.

Both measures passed 27-5 along partisan lines and now await action in House committees.

Sen. Jon Lundsberg, of Bristol, sponsored the bill to expand eligibility for Gov. Bill Lee’s education savings account program to students who attended private or home schools during the last three school years. The current law says a student must move directly from a public to private school to be eligible for the program, which launched last fall in Memphis and Nashville.

A second bill, sponsored by Sen. Todd Gardenhire of Chattanooga and Rep. Charlie Baum of Murfreesboro, would cap enrollment at charter schools — which are publicly funded but independently operated — at 25% for students who live outside the school district that authorized the charter. The House is scheduled to take up that bill on Tuesday in its K-12 subcommittee.

Meanwhile, House Speaker Cameron Sexton filed legislation that would let the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission approve charter schools to serve home school students, as well as residential boarding schools that are charters. Those charter applicants could apply directly to the state-appointed commission for authorization, without having to go through local school boards.

All measures seek to continue the Republican governor’s push to expand education choices for families. But critics say vouchers and charter schools are vehicles to privatize education at the expense of traditional public schools, which operate under stricter regulations, provide more transparency through their locally elected school boards, and serve the bulk of students who are disadvantaged or have special needs.

Under the education savings account bill, co-sponsored by Rep. Chris Todd of Madison County, voucher eligibility would be extended to students who did not complete a full year in public school after 2019, when the legislature approved the voucher law.

“The reason we’re doing this is because that legislation was locked up in the courts for a couple of years,” Lundberg said about ongoing litigation that halted the voucher program’s planned 2020 launch before a 2022 Tennessee Supreme Court ruling upheld the law.

Last week, Lundberg told the Senate Education Committee the change would open eligibility to many students who have applied to receive education savings accounts but were denied because they weren’t moving directly from public to private schools. So far, the state has approved 643 out of 1,273 applications, he said.

The voucher program, which provides taxpayer money for families to use toward private school tuition, is open to students in Memphis and Nashville but could be expanded to Chattanooga-based Hamilton County Schools under legislation approved by the Senate last week. That bill is scheduled for its first vote in a House subcommittee on Tuesday.

The charter school bill approved on Monday is backed by the Tennessee Charter School Center, an advocacy organization funded by pro-charter groups.

Currently in Tennessee, it’s generally up to the local school district that authorizes a charter school, as well as the governing body that oversees that charter school, to determine how many out-of-district students can enroll.

Gardenhire said his bill seeks to address confusion around those policies with a state law that would cap out-of-district enrollment at 25%, and give priority to students from within the school district.

Sen. Jeff Yarbro, who voted against Gardenhire’s bill, said local school districts should be able to control enrollment policies for the charter schools that they authorize.

“If they’re making that decision for the public schools in their district, that same policy ought to apply to the charter schools in the district,” said the Nashville Democrat. “I think that ought to be a uniform policy.”

Elizabeth Fiveash, chief policy officer for the Tennessee Charter School Center, testified last week that out-of-district student enrollment in charter schools isn’t an issue in the four cities that have charter schools. However, it could be in the future as the state’s charter sector expands.

She told members of the Senate Education Committee that charter schools statewide have a waiting list of over 10,000 students, most of whom come from within the authorizing district.

“This is not an issue that’s currently happening,” Fiveash said, “but we’re trying to make sure it’s clear going forward.”

Sexton’s legislation, which is co-sponsored by Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, would mark a significant expansion of Tennessee charter school law.

Under the proposal, the state could authorize charter schools to enroll homeschooled students from within any school district in Tennessee. Those schools would be required to provide classroom instruction at least three days per week, while parents providing instruction the other two days could use remote instruction provided by the charter school.

Lundberg and Rep. Mark White of Memphis, who chair education committees for their respective chambers, have signed on as co-sponsors.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with information about Sexton’s charter school legislation.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee private school voucher expansion bill clears first legislative hurdle

2023-02-09T00:49:59+00:00

A proposal that would expand eligibility for private school vouchers to students in a third large Tennessee school district passed easily out of its first legislative committee on Wednesday.

The Senate Education Committee voted 6-2 to advance a bill to bring the state’s education savings account program to Hamilton County Schools.

If the legislation becomes law, eligible families in the Chattanooga-based district, which has 44,000 students, could apply to receive taxpayer money to pay toward private school tuition next school year.

The program, pushed by Republican Gov. Bill Lee, launched this school year in Memphis and Nashville after the Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the 2019 voucher law last spring. Metro Nashville and Shelby County governments continue to challenge the law’s constitutionality and have appealed their case to the Tennessee Court of Appeals.

The expansion bill passed out of committee with little discussion.

Sen. Todd Gardenhire, a Chattanooga Republican sponsoring the measure, said his proposal “just adds Hamilton County to the ESA pilot program” and wouldn’t affect other counties or school districts.

But Senate Minority Leader Raumesh Akbari said it’s too soon to broaden a new state program that’s intended as a pilot to see if education savings accounts are effective.

“I don’t think there’s been enough time to even see if it will be successful,” said Akbari, a Memphis Democrat who voted “no” with Republican Sen. Joey Hensley of Hohenwald.

“I was opposed to it being piloted in Shelby County and in Davidson County as well,” Akbari added.

Sen. Rusty Crowe, a Republican from Johnson City, declined to vote.

The law directs the state comptroller to report on the program’s efficacy after its third year of enrolling students, which would be by Jan. 1, 2026.

As of Monday, the state education department had approved 643 applications to use vouchers, three-fifths of which are from families wanting to leave Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

You can track the bill on the state legislature’s website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Gov. Lee aims to raise minimum salary for Tennessee teachers to $50,000 by 2027

2023-02-07T11:00:00+00:00

Gov. Bill Lee announced Monday that he’ll propose legislation to increase the minimum salary for Tennessee teachers from $41,000 to $50,000 over the next four years.

If the proposal passes, the new base salary in the fall of 2027 would be up 42% from 2019, Lee’s first year in office, when the state’s minimum teacher pay was $35,000.

The Republican governor has sought to raise teacher compensation annually and said he wants $125 million more toward pay increases next school year.

He didn’t give details about his long-term pay proposal during his state address Monday night before a joint session of the Tennessee legislature. But his brief comments about teacher compensation prompted two standing ovations from lawmakers in a state that ranks toward the bottom in K-12 funding and where many teachers have to work 10 to 15 years to reach a salary of $50,000.

Lee’s education chief, Penny Schwinn, told Chalkbeat that a large jump in base pay would transform efforts to recruit educators to the profession — and retain them in subsequent years.

“This is a game changer in terms of how we talk about the profession, how we compensate the profession,” Schwinn said. “This is that retention component that is going to be critical.”

Raising base pay would have a “domino effect” on how more experienced teachers are paid, too, she said.

“You raise the minimum, which raises the midpoint, which raises the end-point salary. That’s what we see every year that we’ve raised the base salary by about a thousand dollars. You see a domino effect for all of the salary schedules statewide,” Schwinn said.

In conjunction with his address, Lee’s administration released his $55.6 billion proposed budget for next fiscal year, recommending that the state’s largest new investment — $3.3 billion worth — go to repair and build roads and bridges to address Tennessee’s decaying transportation infrastructure.

For education, he proposed adding $350 million to the $750 million in recurring funds already approved to launch the state’s new education funding formula, known as the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement, or TISA, which takes effect July 1. Signed into law last year, TISA will replace the state’s 30-year-old funding system and sets a base funding rate of $6,860 per pupil, then distributes additional money to support students who need the most help.

The governor asked the legislature to approve one-time funding of $20 million for school safety grants and nearly $30 million for a related school safety initiative to hire at least one Homeland Security special agent in each of the state’s 95 counties to work with local schools and law enforcement.

“We’ve done a lot to make schools safer, but I don’t want to look up months from now and think ‘we should’ve done more,’” said Lee, promising to prioritize school safety every year he’s in office.

He’s also asking for recurring new funding of nearly $61 million to extend summer learning camps across Tennessee and to expand eligibility from grades 4-8 currently to kindergarten through the ninth grade, plus $10 million to provide bus transportation to and from those camps.

Lee seeks more funds for charter commission

Lee used his annual address to tout both public schools and voucher programs that give parents taxpayer money to send their children to private schools. He introduced Vincent Hunter, principal at Whitehaven High School in Memphis, which has expanded dual enrollment, advanced placement, and foreign language course opportunities and boasts a graduation rate above 90%. He also introduced Nashville fourth-grader Natalia Serrano, who enrolled in Holy Rosary Academy through Tennessee’s education savings account program, which kicked off this school year.

“I have always believed that we should strive to have the best public school system in the country — and provide choices for parents,” Lee said.

But Lee made no mention of charter schools in this year’s address, after using the platform a year ago to endorse a “partnership” with Michigan’s Hillsdale College to open classical charter schools in Tennessee that align with his conservative ideology. That effort initially failed (although Hillsdale’s American Classical Education charter group is trying again and recently submitted applications to open schools with five Tennessee districts).

Lee’s spending plan, however, includes more than $1 million more in recurring funding to support the state’s new Charter School Commission and its growing portfolio of state-authorized charter schools.

In his speech and budget blueprint, the governor called for more support for new mothers, foster care, and crisis pregnancy centers. He proposed investing $193.5 million to bolster the state’s embattled children’s services agency, which has been under scrutiny for sweeping failures in overseeing Tennessee’s most vulnerable children.

“DCS caseworkers have an incredibly difficult job, and they deserve our support,” Lee said. “Last year, we provided two pay raises for caseworkers, and I intend to boost their pay again in this budget.”

Critics say Lee’s policy plans fall short

The governor’s teacher pay proposals drew cautious comments from the Tennessee Education Association, the state’s largest teachers organization, which noted that Alabama’s minimum starting salary for a teacher this year is $43,358.

“Tennessee has a long way to go to reach Gov. Lee’s goal of a starting salary of $50,000, but the state is well positioned to make this a reality sooner rather than later as we continue to record significant surpluses,” the group said in a statement.

For instance, Tennessee tax collections for the current fiscal year have been beating forecasts by hundreds of millions of dollars. And for the new fiscal year that begins in July, Lee proposes adding another $250 million to the state’s “rainy day” reserve fund, which is already at a record high.

Meanwhile, “teachers, like other Tennesseans, have been affected by inflation and rising costs in the family budget,” said TEA President Tanya Coats. “More can be done to improve the economics of being a professional teacher in our state.”

Outside the Tennessee Capitol earlier Monday, a small group of Nashville-area pastors called on the governor to pursue policies that benefit everyone, not just a select few people or special interest groups.

“There is nothing more beneficial to the common good than fully funded, high-quality public education,” said the Rev. Kevin Riggs, pastor of Franklin Community Church in Franklin.

Nashville-area pastors and faith leaders speak outside the Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville on Feb. 6, prior to Gov. Bill Lee’s 2023 state address.

Riggs criticized new state laws aimed at banning books in classrooms and school libraries, holding back third graders if they don’t test as proficient in reading, and targeting LGBTQ students.

“These policies are failing our families,” he said. “We need to listen to teachers and principals and support the work of our public schools, making them stronger and our communities healthier.”

Over the weekend, House Minority Leader Karen Camper urged the governor to halt any policies that drain money from public schools, such as vouchers.

“Let’s invest in pre-K, smaller classroom sizes, and professional teachers who are preparing our children, not just for this decade, but for those beyond our lifetimes,” said the Memphis Democrat, in her party’s “prebuttal speech.”

“We must guard against the expansion of policies that result in the re-segregation of schools,” Camper continued. “If we ignore our past, we insult the struggles of so many heroes like Ruby Bridges, the Memphis 13, and Clinton 12, who passed down progress and inclusion in every generation since.

Tennessee lawmakers will begin reviewing the governor’s budget this week in their finance committees. The legislature must approve a final budget before recessing for the year this spring.

You can read the governor’s full address here

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Two charter schools in Memphis and Nashville to move from one state-run district to another

2023-01-27T23:44:22+00:00

Two charter schools exiting Tennessee’s school turnaround district will pivot to the oversight of another state-run district operated by a new charter school entity.

The Tennessee Public Charter School Commission approved applications Friday from Promise Academy Spring Hill, which serves kindergartners through fifth graders in Memphis’ Raleigh community, and LEAD Neely’s Bend, which serves grades 5-8 in the Madison area of Nashville.

Their transition from the state’s Achievement School District will occur this fall.

Both schools were academically in the state’s bottom 5% when the state moved them into its turnaround district, which mostly used charter operators as its improvement strategy. The so-called ASD has had mixed results but did not deliver on its early promises to transform schools within five years.

Both Promise Academy and Neely’s Bend became eligible to leave the ASD last fall based on improved academic performance under new exit criteria established by a 2021 state law. The law, signed by Gov. Bill Lee, requires schools to exit the ASD after 10 years — or sooner if they’ve stayed off Tennessee’s priority list of the lowest-performing schools for two cycles.

“What we’ve seen with these schools is what we want — helping students achieve better outcomes,” said Commissioner Eddie Smith after the panel unanimously approved the applications from Promise Academy and LEAD.

The ASD exit law also allows higher-performing ASD schools to bypass their home districts and move to the new state-run district overseen by the charter commission. Lower-performing schools exiting the ASD can still seek to return to their home school districts, as four ASD schools in Memphis did last fall.

When the state launched the ASD in 2012 with six schools, the plan was to return all the schools to their hometown districts. The district eventually grew to 30 schools.

Parents, teachers, and community members packed a 2014 meeting at Neely’s Bend Middle Prep School to discuss the state’s proposal to take the Nashville school over.

At public hearings in December, officials with Memphis-Shelby County Schools and Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools told commission staff that they wanted Promise Academy and Neely’s Bend to become part of their local charter school portfolios.

Created under a 2019 law and with members appointed by the governor, the commission took over the charter appellate duties of the State Board of Education, as well as four state-authorized charter schools in Memphis and Nashville.

With Friday’s votes, the commission’s portfolio grows to 16 schools, including three other former ASD schools in Memphis whose applications were approved last school year: Cornerstone Prep Denver, Lester Prep, and Libertas School of Memphis.

In other business, the commission reelected Tom Griscom of Chattanooga as chairman and Chris Richards of Memphis as vice chairman.

Griscom is a retired newspaper publisher who served as director of White House communications under President Ronald Reagan. Richards is a lawyer and retired executive of FedEx.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee legislative preview: Key education issues to watch as lawmakers return

2023-01-10T11:00:00+00:00

When Tennessee legislators passed a tough third-grade reading law during their 2021 special session on education, they didn’t seek the input of many educators.

But they’re hearing a lot of feedback now, as the law’s stricter retention policy kicks in with this year’s class of third graders. Educators are warning about the potential for thousands of students to be held back because of low reading scores, along with a slew of logistical challenges created by the law.

Revisiting the controversial third-grade reading law is expected to top the list of education priorities heading into this year’s 113th General Assembly, beginning Tuesday in Nashville.

Meanwhile, Republican Gov. Bill Lee will unveil details of his legislative agenda and proposed budget several weeks after being sworn in for his second term on Jan. 21.

Last year, no education issue seemed too big or small for the GOP-controlled legislature to take up — from passing Lee’s sweeping rewrite of the state’s K-12 funding formula to authorizing teachers to confiscate students’ cellphones if they’re deemed a distraction in class. Lawmakers also asserted state power over several matters traditionally handled at the local or school level, including which books are OK for libraries and how to resolve a dispute between two cities over school properties.

This year, the GOP may flex its supermajority power again on socially divisive issues, including one bill that seeks to limit health treatment for transgender youth.

But whether charter school advocates will try again to pass charter-friendly legislation is still uncertain after several Republican-sponsored proposals sputtered last year and the fallout over charter applications linked to Michigan’s Hillsdale College galvanized supporters of traditional public schools.

As for the Democrats, their minority status limits their influence over legislation. But expect them to hammer their messaging around themes of restoring local control over education and the potential fiscal effects of expanding Tennessee’s charter school sector and private school voucher programs.

Here are five things to watch for as the General Assembly convenes:

Expect a ‘quieter year’ from Lee’s administration

During his first term, the governor spent significant political capital to pass major education laws — launching a private school voucher program, creating a powerful state commission to oversee charter school growth, expanding vocational education options for middle and high school students, and replacing the state’s 30-year-old resource-based funding formula with a student-centered one called Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement, or TISA.

Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican businessman from Williamson County, will be sworn in to his second term in office on Jan. 21.

Last fall, Lee suggested the dizzying pace would continue, with a campaign pledge to teachers and parents that he would “make the most of the next four years.”

But legislative leaders working closely with his administration say this year’s education focus will be to execute what’s already passed — not introduce new major initiatives.

“We’ve done a lot, and I think it’s going to be a quieter year on education,” said Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson, who carries bills on the governor’s behalf.

Specifically, he said, Lee wants to monitor this year’s rollout of the funding formula and third-grade retention policy. “We may need some tweaks and improvements on those but, in terms of any new broad initiatives, I don’t anticipate anything from the administration,” Johnson told Chalkbeat.

Lee pledged more money for K-12 education

When Lee pressed last year for an education funding overhaul, he pledged an additional $1 billion annually for students if TISA passed, beginning with the budget that takes effect this July 1. With state revenues continuing to exceed expenses, the expectation is that he’ll make good on that promise.

On other budgetary matters, Lee has said he wants to continue upping teacher pay. He’ll also likely set aside money so the all-volunteer state textbook commission can hire staff to manage a new library book appeals process authorized by the legislature in 2022. And he’s expected to propose more funding for the state agency for children’s services, which is severely understaffed and short of beds for abused, neglected, or foster children who are taken into state custody.

Meanwhile, the legislature will review ways to continue tapping state or federal dollars for perennial educational wants, from more social services for schools to expanded access to pre-kindergarten and early child care.

Lawmakers will revisit third-grade retention policy

Vowing to stop the cycle of letting students who can’t read move up to the next grade, Lee pressed for the new third-grade reading law, which tightens state retention policies that generally haven’t been enforced under a 2011 law.

The 2021 law made it more likely that schools will hold back students who aren’t considered proficient in reading by the end of third grade, based on the results of annual state tests this spring. It also authorized new summer school and after-school tutoring programs that can help struggling third graders avoid being held back.

But with only a third of Tennessee third graders projected to test proficient in reading, educators insist that state test results don’t tell the full story about a student’s reading ability. They want more local input that takes into account the results of periodic “benchmark” tests administered throughout the year.

“This is the No. 1 concern I’m hearing across the state with superintendents, school boards, and parents,” said House Education Committee Chairman Mark White, who says he’s open to adding benchmark test results into the calculations. “We cannot ignore it.”

Expect other legislative proposals to try to improve the quality of education before third grade, especially to support literacy.

Rep. Scott Cepicky, a Republican from Maury County, is one of the legislature’s most prolific sponsors of education legislation.

Rep. Scott Cepicky, for instance, is looking at raising the minimum age to begin kindergarten. Currently, Tennessee law requires children entering kindergarten to be at least 5 years old on or before Aug. 15 of the school year they’re entering.

His proposal is based on a recent analysis by the state comptroller’s office, which found that Tennessee students who were older at kindergarten enrollment performed better on third-grade literacy tests than their peers.

School voucher program could expand

After overcoming a string of court challenges, private school vouchers became available this school year in Memphis and Nashville. Now Sen. Todd Gardenhire is looking to expand the “pilot” program to Hamilton County, where he lives.

The Chattanooga Republican had voted against education savings accounts in 2019, but said he’s changed his mind since the Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the controversial law last spring. He’s also frustrated that Hamilton County Schools has abandoned a $20 million school improvement plan for its lowest-performing schools.

Gardenhire filed his bill last month and recruited White to co-sponsor the measure in the House.

Meanwhile, the law continues to face legal challenges. Metro Nashville and Shelby County governments gave notice last month that they’ll appeal a lower court’s dismissal of their remaining legal claims to the Tennessee Court of Appeals.

The state comptroller’s first report on the program’s efficacy isn’t due until Jan. 1, 2026.

Efforts to attract and keep teachers grow

Both state and national data suggest that teacher shortages are limited to certain districts, schools, and subjects, not an across-the-board problem. But with the churn of educators and school staff worsening during the pandemic, expect several new proposals to try to strengthen teacher pipelines beyond Tennessee’s existing grow-your-own programs, as well as to support those already in classrooms.

The Tennessee School Boards Association is urging the legislature to incentivize potential teacher candidates by reimbursing those who pass the Praxis exam, which measures knowledge and skills needed to be a teacher. The test generally costs about $120. (The State Board of Education is also considering dropping EdTPA, another licensing test required currently of about 900 “job-embedded” candidates, who make up about a third of the state’s teacher pipeline.)

Cepicky and Sen. Joey Hensley have filed a bill to provide teachers with $500 annually to pay for classroom supplies, instead of the current $200, so that they’re not counting on charity or personal funds to cover those costs.

But for many districts, an even bigger staffing issue is hiring enough support staff.

South of Nashville, Williamson County Schools has only three-fourths of the school bus drivers needed by the suburban district and is also understaffed for teacher aides for special education students.

“Every little tool you can give us in our toolbox, if it can fill one or two spots, it’s worth it,” Superintendent Jason Golden told his local legislative delegation during a weekend workshop.

“We’re looking at it,” responded Hensley, a Hohenwald Republican. “We know it’s a big issue.”

To find legislators, track bills, and livestream legislative business, visit the Tennessee General Assembly website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Nashville, Shelby County to appeal court’s dismissal of Tennessee school voucher case

2023-01-03T22:09:48+00:00

Plaintiffs behind two lawsuits challenging Tennessee’s private school voucher law plan to appeal a judicial panel’s dismissal of their remaining legal claims.

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.

Emboldened by a string of court victories, Lee’s administration began accepting applications late last summer to launch the program by fall. Meanwhile, officials in those cities went back to court to try to stop it, partly on grounds that their school districts would face financial harm if the voucher program diverts taxpayer funding from public to private schools.

But in a 2-1 vote in November, a three-judge panel ruled the plaintiffs don’t have legal standing at this point to pursue the case on those grounds, noting that the law provides for compensating the districts for lost funding in the program’s first three years.

In pursuing the appeal now, the plaintiffs are pointing to the dissenting opinion from Chancellor Anne Martin of Nashville, who cited the state’s constitutional obligation to maintain a free public school system that provides equal educational opportunities for residents. Martin said the plaintiffs’ allegations of discriminatory treatment and unequal funding were sufficient concerns to let the case proceed.

On Tuesday, Nashville Law Director Wally Dietz told Chalkbeat that an appeal is the “next logical step to bring some clarity to these issues.”

“Chancellor Martin made important points in her dissenting opinion,” Dietz said, “and we believe these important constitutional questions should be resolved by an appellate court.”

A spokeswoman for the state attorney general’s office declined to comment.

The appeals will go before a judicial panel that ruled against the voucher law in September 2020, siding with Martin’s initial ruling that the statute unconstitutionally singled out two counties. Her ruling halted the program’s planned launch that year.

But after the state’s highest court overruled two lower courts and upheld the voucher law last May, the governor ordered the education department to kick off the voucher program with the 2022-23 school year.

As of Dec. 22, the department had approved 323 voucher applications from students in Memphis-Shelby County Schools and 236 applications from students in Metro Nashville Public Schools — well under the law’s participation cap of 5,000 students for the program’s first year. Another 510 applications were deemed ineligible, according to a department spokesman.

Meanwhile, a Chattanooga lawmaker has filed legislation that would expand the state’s voucher program to Hamilton County.

Similar legal battles over school choice and privatization are playing out in other states. In New Hampshire last month, opponents sued to stop one of the nation’s broadest school voucher laws, while the Kentucky Supreme Court struck down a Republican-backed initiative to award tax credits for donations supporting private school tuition. (A similar initiative in Michigan, backed by former U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, stalled.) Arizona launched its education savings account program last year, overcoming efforts to stop it.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee private school voucher law would expand to Hamilton County under bill

2022-12-08T22:05:03+00:00

Tennessee’s private school voucher law, which now only affects districts and some students in Memphis and Nashville, would widen to include Hamilton County Schools under new legislation filed this week.

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 — but not districts in other counties with priority schools such as Knox or Madison.

The proposal would mark the first expansion of the program that launched this fall under the controversial 2019 voucher law. The law, which was signed by Gov. Bill Lee, passed Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature after a decade-long tug-of-war between those who want to use taxpayer money to give parents more education choices and others who say that approach diverts money from already underfunded public schools.

When the initial voucher bill was being debated, Gardenhire was among lawmakers in Chattanooga and Knoxville who sought to exclude their counties from the law’s reach. But Gardenhire says the circumstances have changed, and he now supports including his home district.

He noted that Hamilton County Schools now has more priority schools than in 2019, when the district was in the midst of a $20 million school improvement plan known as Partnership Network. That initiative has since been disbanded.

“We’ll know in a few years if the ESA program works. But we know what we’re doing now in Hamilton County is not working. It’s a total disaster,” Gardenhire told Chalkbeat on Thursday.

Gardenhire said he also was concerned initially that courts would overturn the new education savings account law, but the Tennessee Supreme Court upheld it on appeal this spring. (Plaintiffs that include local governments in Davidson and Shelby counties are still considering whether to appeal another court’s recent ruling dismissing the remainder of their claims.)

“With the appeals adjudicated, it’s time to put Hamilton County Schools under the ESA Act,” Gardenhire said.

Democrats, who voted unanimously against the voucher law, were quick to criticize the bill.

“Public school tax dollars belong in our public schools,” said Sen. Raumesh Akbari, of Memphis. “We opposed private school vouchers for Nashville and Memphis, and we oppose any expansion of a disproven approach that hasn’t worked anywhere it’s been tried.”

Akbari said Tennessee should instead invest its time and resources in strategies that have a proven record of boosting student achievement, like smaller class sizes and wraparound student support.

The law refers to education savings accounts as a “pilot program” and directs the state comptroller to report on the program’s efficacy after its third year of enrolling students. But because ongoing litigation delayed the program’s launch, the first report isn’t due until Jan. 1, 2026.

Rep. Yusuf Hakeem, a Chattanooga Democrat, said Tennessee should not expand the program so soon after rolling it out.

“Good policy means studying something for several years before you start trying to change it,” Hakeem said. “We don’t even have a year of data yet to track.”

Gardenhire said he has a co-sponsor lined up in the House but declined to identify that legislator.

Two key GOP legislative leaders have signed on as co-sponsors in the Senate: Bo Watson, of Hixson, who chaired his chamber’s finance committee in the recent legislative session; and Sen. Jon Lundsberg, of Bristol, who chaired the education committee.

Tennessee is among more than 20 states that have either started or expanded voucher-type programs in the last two years.

Research on the effectiveness of vouchers is mixed. Recent studies have found that switching to private education using a voucher tends not to help — and may even harm — students’ test scores, especially in math. Other studies, though, have found neutral or positive effects of vouchers on high school graduation and college attendance.

You can track the bill’s progress here.

Marta W. Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Four Memphis charter schools are spared in MSCS board vote, despite academic deficiencies

2022-12-07T03:14:20+00:00

The Memphis-Shelby County Schools board voted to spare four charter schools Tuesday, going against the recommendations of district administrators who had called for closing the schools over concerns about their academic performance.

KIPP Memphis Academy Middle, KIPP Memphis Collegiate Middle, Arrow Academy of Excellence, and Memphis Business Academy Hickory Hill Middle had all landed on the state’s list of priority schools for the 2021-22 school year, meaning that they were in the bottom 5% academically based on recent achievement data. State law says charter school authorizers, such as MSCS, can shut down schools that appear on the priority list for the first time, though they don’t have to.

But board members voted 7-0 to give all four schools a chance to improve as post-pandemic academic recovery efforts continue. (Vice Chair Sheleah Harris and board member Kevin Woods were absent.)

The board was also slated to vote Tuesday on whether to close two other charter schools — Granville T. Woods Academy of Innovation and Memphis Delta Prep — under a state law that requires the closure of schools that make the state’s priority list for two consecutive cycles.

But interim Superintendent Toni Williams pulled the item from the agenda early in the meeting. Minutes later, The Commercial Appeal reported the two schools had sued MSCS in Shelby County Chancery Court earlier in the day, alleging the district is using incomplete testing data to substantiate the proposed closures. The first hearing of the case is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Dec. 19, according to the court filing.

This year’s priority list was based on two-year success rates using data from the 2018-19 and 2021-22 school years.

A day before the board vote, charter school leaders came before the board to make their case for staying open.

Two schools — Arrow Academy of Excellence and Memphis Business Academy Hickory Hill Middle School — emphasized that state academic data used as the basis for the district’s recommendations to close the schools, was limited.

Arrow Academy, opened in 2013, serves 95 students in grades K-5 in South Memphis. Memphis Business Academy Hickory Hill Middle serves 54 students in grades 6-8 in the southeastern corner of the district. During the 2018-19 school year, neither school reached the threshold of 30 tests per subject to be included in the state’s accountability measures for that year.

That means the district’s recommendation to close the schools was based solely on test scores from 2021-22.

In their presentations to the board, representatives from both schools emphasized their continued work to improve academic performance in the wake of COVID and pointed to board materials showing they meet the district’s standards for academics, operations, and financial management.

KIPP Memphis officials touted academic improvements at their two schools that were identified as priority schools.

KIPP Memphis Collegiate Middle, which serves just over 200 students in Uptown, improved its academic growth rating on the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System from Level 1 in 2021 to Level 5 in all subjects and its composite score. The school also met the district’s standards for academics, operations, and financial management.

KIPP Memphis Academy Middle, which serves 225 students in North Memphis, also recorded TVAAS improvements from 2021, from a Level 1 composite growth score in 2021 to Level 4 earlier this year. Despite the progress, the school fell just short of meeting the district’s standards for academics, receiving an overall score of 2.93. Board policy recommends that charter schools have a composite score of at least 3 in academics, operations, and finances.

KIPP claimed in a presentation to the board that, if KIPP Memphis Academy Middle closed, about a quarter of its students would be transferred to one of 11 schools in the district that have lower performance ratings.

KIPP officials also trumpeted several new initiatives since Antonio Burt took the helm of the city’s oldest charter network, including restructuring school leadership and staff, providing high-dosage tutoring to grades 1-2, investing up to $5 million on facility improvements, and more.

Samantha West is a reporter for Chalkbeat Tennessee, where she covers K-12 education in Memphis. Connect with Samantha at swest@chalkbeat.org.

Hillsdale-linked charter school group will try again in Tennessee

2022-12-06T01:16:02+00:00

A group linked to Michigan’s conservative Hillsdale College is formally exploring opening schools in five Tennessee counties, just months after a controversial failed attempt to open its first charter schools in the state.

American Classical Education filed letters of intent in recent days with school districts in Madison, Montgomery, Maury, Robertson, and Rutherford counties — all growing suburban areas near Nashville. The proposed schools would open in the 2024-25 school year.

“In the past few months we’ve heard from thousands of Tennessee families who are interested in classical charter schools,” said Dolores Gresham, a former state senator who chairs American Classical’s board in Tennessee.

“We remain committed to working with communities where there is interest and demand from families for schools with classical curriculums,” she said in a statement.

The letters of intent are the first step in what could be another contentious battle over the charter network’s ambitions plans for Tennessee.

American Classical sought earlier this year to bring its charter model to three of the counties — Madison, Montgomery, and Rutherford. However, all three school boards rejected the applications to open the independently operated, taxpayer-funded public schools.

The network then sought to overturn those decisions through a year-old state appeals commission appointed by Gov. Bill Lee, considered a national champion of the charter school movement. But the group abruptly withdrew its appeals just days before a scheduled vote amid questions about its plan for serving students with disabilities and the adequacy of its efforts to engage with local citizens in those communities.

The retreat was a blow to the Republican governor, a friend of Hillsdale President Larry Arnn. In an unprecedented endorsement by a Tennessee governor, Lee urged Arnn to open 100 charter schools in Tennessee under Hillsdale College’s classical school model, including a K-12 curriculum that emphasizes America’s strengths rather than its shortcomings.

But scrutiny of the network’s first three applications heightened in June after leaked video footage showed Arnn declaring at a private reception in Franklin, Tennessee, that teachers are “trained in the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country.” Public outrage followed.

After American Classical withdrew its appeals, Gresham indicated that the group would return with more applications.

Charter operators meeting the deadline to file letters of intent have until Feb. 1 to submit formal applications.

A spokesman for American Classical told Chalkbeat that the letters are an “exploratory step” but added: “It wouldn’t shock me if applications are filed in all five counties.”

The suburbs would be new territory for charter schools in Tennessee. Currently, its 100-plus charters operate only in Chattanooga, Knoxville, Memphis, and Nashville — the state’s four largest cities — although Rutherford County has approved two other charter applicants to come there in the next few years.

Maury County Mayor Sheila Butt welcomed American Classical’s letter of intent to her county south of Nashville.

”We need to provide families with additional school choice options and we all want what’s best for each individual student and his or her needs,” Butt said. “It is evident that there is a desire from many families for a classical school curriculum.”

But others involved in the charter school review process were neutral in their comments about the prospect of a new round of applications from the Hillsdale-affiliated group.

“Our school district’s charter school review committee will thoroughly review any charter school application submitted to the district … and our director of schools will make a recommendation to the school board,” said James Evans, a spokesman for Rutherford County Schools, where the district cited shortcomings in American Classical’s plans for academics and operations in its last application.

Anthony Johnson, a spokesman for Clarksville-Montgomery County Schools, said the district “is committed to a thorough and transparent review aligned with state laws and procedures.”

Both spokesmen added that district officials will not comment publicly about applications during the review process.

While American Classical was founded by Michigan-based Hillsdale, the letters of intent identify several new members of its board in Tennessee. In addition to Gresham, who lives in Fayette County in West Tennessee, they include Michelle Garcia, an activist parent in Rutherford County; Joey Hale, a real estate executive in Madison County; Dennis Pearson, a professor at Austin Peay State University in Montgomery County; Tricia Stickel, the election commissioner of Maury County; and Darrell Woodard, a Robertson County commissioner.

The addition of Hale, Stickel, and Woodard means the board has representatives from each of the five counties the network has identified as potential school locations.

Marta W. Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools board approves expansion of two charter schools

2022-12-01T03:30:42+00:00

Two charter schools that have been at odds with Memphis-Shelby County Schools administrators won approval from the school board for their requests to expand.

In a pair of 8-0 votes at a specially called meeting, the board allowed Memphis STEM Academy, a K-5 charter school in Frayser, to increase its enrollment, and gave Believe Memphis Academy, a South Memphis college preparatory charter school, permission to add four grade levels beyond its current 4-8.

The vote to allow Believe to expand to K-8 went against the recommendation of district administrators, who raised concerns about the school’s academic performance. While the school met the district’s standards for operations and financial management, the school received an overall score of 2.74 for academics. Board policy recommends that charter schools have a composite score of at least 3 for each of the three areas.

But board members ultimately came together to support Believe Memphis Academy for different reasons.

Board member Amber Huett-Garcia questioned whether it was fair to judge the school based on student performance data from last year, when schools were still dealing with the continued impact of the pandemic.

Chair Althea Greene said most Believe students are not from the South Memphis area and are therefore not pulling students or resources away from Alcy Performing Arts Elementary, MSCS’ traditional school in the neighborhood.

Board member Frank Johnson, who was recently appointed to represent MSCS’ District 7, which includes South Memphis, expressed his support for Believe and the impact it has had on the community since its opening in 2018.

“I am from this community that’s in question, and when Danny Song landed in our community, it was actually a benefit,” Johnson said, referring to the school’s founder and executive director. The school, Johnson added, “patched a hole” left by the KIPP Memphis charter network, which closed two schools in the area in 2020.

The board’s vote to allow Memphis STEM Academy to expand aligned with the recent recommendation from district officials. But earlier this year the district had actually called for closing the school, because it had enrolled more students than allowed under its agreement with the district. Board members ultimately spared it from closure. And their latest vote clears the school to increase its enrollment to 300.

With 218 students as of Oct. 7, Memphis STEM Academy is currently compliant with its agreement with the district, according to materials shared during the board meeting. In addition, district officials said, the school meets the district’s standards for academics, operations, and financial management, and has provided data showing more families are interested in enrolling their students there and that the building can accommodate more students.

Samantha West is a reporter for Chalkbeat Tennessee, where she covers K-12 education in Memphis. Connect with Samantha at swest@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee’s private school voucher program wins again in court

2022-11-24T00:06:32+00:00

A judicial panel sided with the state on Wednesday and dismissed remaining legal claims raised in two lawsuits challenging Tennessee’s private school voucher law.

The judges ruled that Metropolitan Nashville and Shelby County governments, along with a group of parents who oppose vouchers, have no legal standing to challenge Tennessee’s 2019 Education Savings Account law, which provides taxpayer money to pay toward private school tuition.

Voucher advocates quickly hailed the decision by the three-judge panel of Davidson County Chancery Court as a victory for parents wanting more education choices for their children.

“Today is a great day for educational freedom in Tennessee,” said Justin Owen, president of the Beacon Center of Tennessee, one of several groups involved in the case.

But the ruling also could position the nearly 3-year-old legal dispute for a hearing before a higher court.

“We are reviewing the opinion and will discuss a possible appeal when we return to work next week,” said Wally Dietz, Metro Nashville’s law director.

The judges dismissed the argument that both governments face financial injury in funding their local public schools when students choose to withdraw and enroll in private schools — taking their funding with them.

In a 26-page decision, they cited a provision of the law that — subject to appropriation by the legislature — replaces any funding lost through vouchers through a school improvement grant program for the first three years.

Thus, the judges wrote, the “Plaintiffs’ claims are not yet ripe because the ESA replaces the diverted funding for at least three years.”

But their decision does not necessarily put the case to rest.

“We are disappointed by the court’s order and disagree with its conclusions,” said Chris Wood, a Nashville attorney representing parents and taxpayers in a second lawsuit opposing the law. “We are reviewing our options, which include appealing the court’s decision.”

The ruling came from Chancellor Anne Martin, Judge Tammy Harrington, and Judge Valerie Smith under a new state law requiring that constitutional matters be heard by three judges representing each of the state’s three grand divisions instead of by a single judge based in Nashville.

But Martin, the Nashville judge who initially declared the law unconstitutional in 2020, wrote that, while she concurred about the issue of standing, she dissented over other issues, including the plaintiffs’ arguments that vouchers will create unequal education systems. The state constitution says Tennessee is obligated to maintain a system of free public schools that provides for equal educational opportunities for its residents.

Wednesday’s ruling is the latest in the legal dispute after the Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the embattled voucher law in May.

The high court overturned another argument that the statute was unconstitutional because it applied only to Davidson and Shelby counties, without local approval. That ruling cleared the way for the program’s launch this school year. Then, in September, the state attorney general’s office urged the panel to dismiss all remaining legal challenges.

A spokeswoman for Gov. Bill Lee, who pushed for the voucher law, did not immediately respond when asked for comment.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee election: Gov. Bill Lee wins second term, will prioritize education again

2022-11-09T01:26:16+00:00

Gov. Bill Lee cruised to a second term in office in Tuesday’s election, partly on his campaign pledge to Tennessee parents and teachers to “make the most of the next four years” on education. But he offered few details on exactly what that will mean.

The Associated Press reported that election results showed the Republican governor easily defeated Dr. Jason Martin, a Nashville physician and the Democratic Party’s nominee, whom he declined to debate. The ruby-red state hasn’t elected a Democrat to statewide office since 2006.

Lee’s landslide victory sets up the governor to claim a mandate for whatever he proposes through 2026, or to support any ambitions he might have for national office.

In his victory speech Tuesday evening, the governor said he will continue to elevate parental rights. He also touted public school investments under his administration, as well as expanding choices for families “who want something a little different for their kid” than traditional public schools.

“I’ll remind you for the next four years ... that those two ideas are not in conflict with each other,” Lee said. “We can fund public schools and provide alternative opportunities for children at the same time if we are committed to funding students and not systems.”

During his campaign, Lee has been short on details about his second-term agenda for education. Instead, he’s emphasized staying the course on his first-term accomplishments, including rewriting Tennessee’s 30-year-old education funding formula, expanding middle and high school access to career and technical training, and grounding reading instruction in phonics.

Lee’s final 30-second campaign ad — part of a $3.2 million campaign spending blitz in October — also touted safer classrooms and ended with this promise: “Parents and teachers, you have my word that we’ll make the most of the next four years.”

Campaign spokeswoman Laine Arnold said the ad signaled Lee’s “intent to continue making education a top priority.”

Asked on the eve of Election Day for specifics about his education priorities for his second term, Lee said he again wants to invest more money toward teacher pay and further expand education choices through charter schools and private school vouchers. He also wants to continue prioritizing vocational, technical, and agricultural education.

“These are all things that we have implemented in the last four years, but we now have to make certain that those are growing, that they’re invested in, and that there’s significant improvement in all areas,” the governor told reporters during his final campaign stop in Franklin, south of Nashville.

Gov. Bill Lee speaks to a small crowd during his final campaign stop on Nov. 7, 2022, in Franklin, Tennessee, where Lee graduated from a public high school in 1977.

But Democrats — who are still smarting that Lee pushed through a private school voucher law with a controversial, razor-thin vote during his first year in office — are interpreting the governor’s vague TV promise on education as an ominous threat.

They expect Lee and another GOP legislative supermajority to try to expand his education savings account program to shift more taxpayer money from public to private schools. Currently, the program is limited to Memphis and Nashville.

Democrats also expect more proposals to censor books and instruction in public schools.

In 2021, Tennessee became one of the first states to enact a law, which Lee signed, to restrict K-12 classroom discussions about the legacy of slavery, racism, and white privilege.

This year, Lee pushed through a law requiring reviews of school and classroom library collections. He signed a second measure that authorizes the state textbook commission to ban challenged materials statewide if its appointed members deem them “inappropriate” for students’ ages and maturity levels.

As for the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Lee has said students should be taught that the deadly 2021 insurrection was a day of “lawlessness” by individual attackers. He has not referenced the broader plot, still under federal investigation, to disrupt the transfer of presidential power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden.

“Republicans have already started to systematically eradicate history in textbooks and ban teachings related to race, gender identity, and sexuality,” said Rep. Vincent Dixie, a Nashville Democrat who chairs his party’s House caucus. “Four more years under this leadership will only lead to more micromanagement of school curricula and stricter fines and punishment for our already overworked and underpaid educators.”

Lee won big despite a major misstep

A businessman and farmer from affluent Williamson County, near Nashville, Lee surprised both political parties four years ago when he survived a bruising primary race and won his first bid for public office to become Tennessee’s 50th governor.

Campaigning for more education choices for families and vocational training options for students, he made education a top priority and used the state’s GOP muscle to pass much of his agenda.

But Lee suffered a humiliating blow this year after inviting the president of Michigan’s conservative Hillsdale College to bring up to 100 charter schools to Tennessee, only to have a Hillsdale-linked charter group withdraw its first three applications after a Lee-appointed panel found the proposals weren’t up to snuff.

Lee also was stung by public outrage — and criticized by numerous members of his own political party — after a leaked video showed him sitting silently at a private reception in June as Hillsdale’s president, Larry Arnn, mocked teachers, their training programs, and diversity officers. The governor declined to disavow Arnn’s remarks or disaffiliate with Hillsdale. Instead, he blamed “left-wing activism in public education” as hurting the “genuine work of our teachers.”

At the time, Lt. Gov. Randy McNally called Arnn’s comments “ill-conceived, unfortunate and untrue.” This week, the legislature’s top GOP leader said Lee’s accomplishments have offset any of the governor’s missteps over Arnn’s comments.

“I think voters have been looking at his entire record,” said McNally, who’s from Oak Ridge. “He was dealt the worst hand of any governor I can remember — with COVID, floods, tornadoes, and protests. I think he’s handled it very well.”

Dr. Jason Martin campaigns to be governor.

But Martin, a critical care doctor, said it was the governor’s hands-off approach to the COVID pandemic that spurred him to run against Lee. The Democratic nominee also criticized Lee-backed school voucher, charter, and censorship policies for giving the state ultimate control over those decisions at the expense of locally elected officials.

Other critics have said it’s hypocritical for Lee’s campaign ads to claim that children, families, and moms have been his “top priority,” when he has not supported expanding Medicaid. That position has cost Tennessee billions of dollars in federal health care benefits for the working poor.

The governor also helped to grow the state’s rainy day fund to record levels while its Department of Children’s Services — the state agency charged with caring for abused, neglected, and foster children — is severely understaffed and short of beds for children taken into custody.

Next steps: Shaping another term in office

Fresh from his Election Day victory, Lee will kick off budget hearings Wednesday to prepare for his 2023-24 state spending proposal, which he’ll present to the Tennessee General Assembly several weeks after lawmakers convene on Jan. 10.

Budget discussions about K-12 education with Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn are listed second on the four-day schedule.

Months before his reelection, Lee pledged to invest an additional $1 billion in students and schools next fiscal year, when federal pandemic relief funding is set to run out and the state’s new funding formula kicks in.

But while Lee was considered a heavy favorite for a second term in office, many education stakeholders have wondered privately whether Schwinn will stay on.

The former Texas academic chief shepherded the governor’s major initiatives, including strategies to improve literacy and help students recover from pandemic learning loss, as well as expanding grow-your-own teacher training programs and implementing a new education funding formula that lets money follow the student, plus sets aside more money for students with higher needs.

But in her first nine months on the job, nearly a fifth of the education department’s employees left, mostly from resignations. And early on, she frustrated lawmakers for rolling out initiatives and taking administrative shortcuts without ample legislative input, review, or approval, even as she led Tennessee through the pandemic, considered the biggest education upheaval in modern history.

Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn

Asked last month if she expected to continue her role for a second term, Schwinn said she and Lee “have had those conversations.”

“I plan to be here, and we’re moving full steam ahead,” she told Chalkbeat.

She cited the state’s strategic plans on literacy, student acceleration, innovative school models, grow-your-own teacher training programs, and the state’s new funding formula.

“We are really proud of these big pieces of legislation that have passed and the interventions and work,” she said. “Now we have to double down and stay the course.”

Clarification: Nov. 21, 2022: A previous version of this story said early employee turnover had been high in the education department and that Schwinn’s future in the second term of Gov. Lee’s administration was less certain than his. This version reports early employee turnover data and clarifies that numerous stakeholders have wondered if Schwinn would stay in her role for a second term.

Marta W. Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee Charter Commission head recommends against two proposed schools in Memphis

2022-10-14T16:58:56+00:00

The executive director of the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission has recommended against approving two proposed charter schools in Memphis, siding with a school board that found the charter applications failed to meet state standards.

Tess Stovall’s recommendations uphold the Memphis-Shelby County School board’s unanimous decision in April and again in July to reject the applications for the proposed Binghampton Community School and Tennessee Volunteer Military Academy. Leaders of both schools had appealed the decisions to the state.

The final decision on the applications will be up to a vote of the nine-member state commission. The commission’s members were all appointed by Gov. Bill Lee, who lobbied to create the panel in an effort to open more high-quality charter schools. The board will vote at its quarterly meeting on Tuesday.

Unless the commission members vote to reject Stovall’s recommendation, the two schools will not open in August 2023 as planned.

Last month, the commission considered appeals from a charter group affiliated with Hillsdale College in Michigan whose applications had been rejected by local school districts. But the group withdrew its application before Stovall issued her recommendations.

In the MSCS cases, Stovall said she agreed with the district that both schools’ applications failed to meet state standards in their academic, operation, and financial plans.

According to its application, Binghampton Community School on the eastern edge of Midtown would serve about 360 students in grades K-5, and provide children with early access to International Baccalaureate programming. The Tennessee Volunteer Military Academy would provide about 800 students in grades 6-12 in Cordova and East Memphis with military-based educational programming with a focus on career technical education pathways and internships.

While Stovall called Binghampton’s academic plan “strong and comprehensive” and said she believes the neighborhood would be a “great location” for a charter school, she cited several concerns about the impact of the head of school’s resignation. Nikita House, the lead founder of the school, resigned in July due to “extenuating personal circumstances.”

The school’s academic plan appeared to depend on the “unique skills” of the school’s former leader she said. So did its facility and staffing plans, she said.

In addition, Stovall said cost assumptions for the school did not appear reasonable, and leaders lacked sufficient funding to begin operations — again, largely due to the head of school’s departure.

Binghampton Community School leaders have said they would hire a new head of school once they get approval from the state, but Stovall said she “cannot ignore the material difference between the amended application and the current status of the proposed school with the named Head of School.”

Stovall also outlined myriad concerns about Tennessee Volunteer Military Academy, noting that the academic plan in the application did not outline its grade and class structure, an instructional model, or curriculum. In addition, Stovall said there was a lack of evidence for how the school would serve students with disabilities and English language learners.

The application also lacked letters of support, which Stovall said “calls into question whether the school will be able to recruit and enroll its targeted student population.” The school later provided 40 written public comments before a public hearing last month, but Stovall said they did not indicate the school could meet its projected enrollment of 800.

In her recommendation for denial, Stovall also cited the school’s “unclear relationship” with Charter One, a for-profit national education management organization.

Tennessee Volunteer Military Academy also did not include a reasonable budget in its application, Stovall said, and it was unclear whether the school could secure a building in order to open in August 2023.

Samantha West is a reporter for Chalkbeat Tennessee, where she covers K-12 education in Memphis. Connect with Samantha at swest@chalkbeat.org.

Here is what Tennessee governor, Democratic challenger say on education

2022-10-07T14:00:19+00:00

Gov. Bill Lee and his Democratic challenger, Dr. Jason Martin, agree that Tennessee students need timely and relevant vocational training opportunities, but the two candidates for governor don’t concur on much else when it comes to K-12 education.

In fact, the two men hold widely divergent positions on charter schools, book bans, the state’s new third-grade retention law, and most of the biggest education issues facing Tennessee for the next few years, according to their responses to Chalkbeat’s 2022 candidates survey.

Lee, a Williamson County businessman and farmer who was elected governor in his first run for public office, staunchly defends initiatives he’s championed since 2019 to give the state more control — at the expense of local officials — over classroom instruction, books, school choice, and education spending.

“Nothing is off the table when it comes to expanding opportunities for Tennessee families,” the Republican governor responded when asked if he wants to widen the state’s recently launched private school voucher program beyond Memphis and Nashville, where local officials opposed the policy.

Martin, a Nashville physician who has been critical of Lee’s hands-off approach to the COVID-19 pandemic, said Tennessee’s biggest educational challenges are rooted in inadequate school funding and wraparound services to support students both in and out of the classroom. Making his own first bid for public office, he consistently sides with policies that uphold local education control.

“Decisions that affect our schools, teachers, and students should be made by those closest to the community,” Martin said when asked about a new law allowing a state panel to overrule school board decisions and ban certain library books statewide.

Election Day is Nov. 8, with early voting from Oct. 19 to Nov. 3.

Below, you can read our questions and the candidates’ responses, which have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

Chalkbeat: COVID-19 has caused the biggest disruption to education in modern history. What is the single most important way the governor can help stabilize and support Tennessee school communities moving forward?

Lee: In January 2021, we called a special legislative session to address learning loss. That action made Tennessee a national leader in early interventions for kids. With the help of partners in the General Assembly, we created summer learning camps and targeted interventions for literacy. Recent data — including state test scores showing that reading proficiency has returned to pre-pandemic levels in almost all grades — suggests Tennessee students are recovering well. We will build on those efforts.

Martin: Tennessee schools would not have been hit nearly as hard during the pandemic had our schools been properly funded before. Ranking 45th in the nation in per-pupil spending, we need a better way to fund our schools that takes into account the different economies across communities and resources needed for each district. We must reevaluate our state’s education funding formula to make sure teachers are paid a fair salary and schools have the resources to keep kids healthy, educated, and safe. Those include more social workers, guidance counselors, and after-school programs. We also must ensure that every household, rural or urban, has access to high-speed broadband so our students can learn in a 21st-century setting.

How can the state address learning lag, especially for student groups who already were behind, such as people of color, with disabilities, or from low-income families? Should Tennessee make its tutoring and summer learning programs permanent intervention tools? What else can the state do to help students catch up?

Lee: Closing the achievement gap has been a priority woven throughout our administration’s approach. It is a key reason why we have put so many resources into literacy and early intervention, and I anticipate those programs, like summer camps, are here to stay. It is also a major factor in why we pursued an overhaul of the state’s outdated approach to school funding and built a student-centered approach via the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement. This new education funding formula will give us more capacity to address the unique needs of low-income students, students with disabilities, and students with learning challenges like dyslexia.

Surrounded by GOP legislative leaders and Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn, Gov. Bill Lee signs Tennessee’s new education funding bill into law on May 2, 2022, at Franklin High School, where Lee graduated in 1977.

Martin: Education inequities are the result of years of ignoring marginalized and low-income communities, and I would prioritize funding their schools to match what well-funded communities have. Tennessee should utilize public and private partnerships to create year-round wraparound programs in schools, including support for student populations experiencing learning lag. Additional interventions such as permanent tutoring, after school-programs, and summer learning camps are important, but so is widening access to softer experiences such as internship and study programs. As a state, we need to try harder to relate classroom learning to the experiences of students where they live. As governor, I’ll sit down with educators to figure out how we can grow those resources and opportunities throughout our state.

As rates of pandemic-era depression and anxiety surge among children and young people, how can the state better support the mental health needs of its students? Would you propose investing more money in Tennessee’s new education funding formula base so that districts can hire more counselors, psychologists, social workers, and nurses?

Lee: Early in my administration, we pushed for an outside-the-box approach to fund student mental health resources, which resulted in the creation of the Tennessee’s Mental Health Trust Fund. We invested $250 million into that fund to expand students’ access to clinical services, suicide prevention, violence prevention, and other supports. More than 60% of kids who receive mental health care do so through their school, and we believe the trust fund will ensure those services are high-quality. We also have funded a behavioral health liaison for all 95 counties and have filled at least 79 of those positions, despite workforce challenges. As for nurses and other school supports, the TISA funding formula increases state funding for public schools by almost 20%, allowing local communities to make informed decisions about what is needed.

Martin: I would not suggest adding more money into the base of Tennessee’s new education funding formula, because I believe that the formula needs to be rewritten. I do support expanding Medicaid and insuring more children to make sure they get the health care they need, including for mental health. I also support funneling more money directly into schools so they can hire health care professionals. We need to invest in wraparound services to expand access to mental health counselors, nutrition programs, interventionists, and other programs that help to keep students on track.

Should the legislature revisit the new state law that puts up to 70% of third-graders at risk of being held back if they don’t test as proficient in reading by the end of this school year? Why or why not? Specifically, would you support scaling back the law so it applies only to students who score in the state’s bottom achievement category, which currently comprises about a fifth of third-graders? And should retention decisions take into account local input, in addition to the state test results?

“If you really care about a child’s future, the last thing you should do is push them past the third grade if they can’t read.” —Gov. Bill Lee

Lee: If you really care about a child’s future, the last thing you should do is push them past the third grade if they can’t read. This law is about working with parents to do right by their students before it’s too late. While retention is an option, we are making sure parents fully understand their students’ reading progress and the tools that are available to them well before repeating third grade is on the table. Tennessee’s law also prioritizes strategic investments in proven practices to support reading, such as participating in an extended summer program and in high-dosage, low-ratio tutoring to help their kids catch up. There shouldn’t be any stigma around pausing to help children learn a skill that will impact them for the rest of their lives.

Martin: We should revisit the law and, this time, take into account what teachers, administrators, and groups who represent educators say. Having the state legislature pass a law that affects so many students without consulting those who know most about the issues is not just irresponsible, but detrimental to our children. If the consensus among our education experts, which includes teachers, is that we should scale back the law to apply only to students who score in the state’s bottom achievement category, then I would support that position. No one is better qualified to speak to a student’s proficiency than a teacher. That local input is necessary for a successful education policy.

As governor, how will you measure the success or failure of Tennessee’s new Education Savings Account Pilot Program? Would you consider expanding the program beyond Memphis and Nashville to provide private school vouchers statewide? And should the Tennessee Constitution be amended to clarify that taxpayer-funded subsidies to private schools are constitutional?

Lee: After a definitive Tennessee Supreme Court ruling, three years of waiting, and just weeks before this new school year, parents in Memphis and Nashville finally got the opportunity to apply for education savings accounts. The response was tremendous and our Department of Education has worked overtime to create a high-quality, transparent process for families who want to participate. We’ve received heartfelt letters from students wanting this opportunity. One young man signed his application letter “please consider me” and noted how much it would mean to be in a more supportive learning environment after his father passed away. Critics who have fought this program tooth and nail should sit down face to face with these families to see what it looks like to deny opportunity. Hundreds of families are already enrolled, but nothing is off the table when it comes to expanding opportunities for Tennessee families. It’s all about parents deciding what’s best for their children.

“I would work with both sides of the aisle to repeal the unconstitutional voucher program.” —Dr. Jason Martin

Martin: The Tennessee Constitution should not be amended, because the voucher program is unconstitutional and has been found so by several courts. As governor, I would not consider expanding the program. In fact, I would work with both sides of the aisle to repeal the unconstitutional voucher program. Public taxpayer dollars should be spent on public schools.

Recent polling by the State Collaborative on Reforming Education found that Tennessee voters believe — by a 2-to-1 margin — that decisions on whether to approve taxpayer-funded, independently run charter schools should reside with local school boards, and not with state government. Do you agree? Why or why not?

Lee: Charter schools are public schools. The process lives first at the local level, and the charter commission handles appeals. Tennesseans have both a transparent look into the approval process and an opportunity to provide input. It is a healthy mix of citizen, local, and state collaboration when it comes to determining what new options are available to parents.

Martin: Yes, I absolutely agree. Locally elected school boards should decide whether or not to approve a charter to run a school independent of the local district. When money collected locally is what is being spent on some of these charter schools, it is best left to those in the community to decide where that money goes.

Dr. Jason Martin speaks to protesters in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, on Sept. 14 before the state’s public hearing on an American Classical Education charter school application rejected by Rutherford County Schools.

What should Tennessee do in the next two years to reverse trends that show more teachers leaving the profession and too few entering it? How can policymakers address the workload and lack of respect that many teachers cite as their reasons for exiting?

“We must also address why the bureaucratic side of school systems is growing so heavily, yet the teacher workforce has been shrinking.” —Gov. Bill Lee

Lee: Teaching isn’t just a job; it’s a calling, and we’ve increased teacher pay each year we’ve been in office. We have also closed loopholes that prevented those hard-earned raises from making it to teachers’ paychecks. Tennessee is a nationally recognized pioneer in growing the teacher workforce. Our education department worked with local districts and our Department of Labor and Workforce Development to build the Grow Your Own program so Tennesseans can train to become a teacher for free while earning a wage. It is the first-ever federally recognized teaching apprenticeship program and is already attracting new teachers to the classroom. We’re making progress. But I believe we must also address why the bureaucratic side of school systems is growing so heavily, yet the teacher workforce has been shrinking.

Martin: To begin with, I wouldn’t ever disparage teachers by sitting by and accepting criticism of their profession or where they went to school. First and foremost, we must increase teacher pay. Second, if the state invests in wraparound services and fully funds our schools, it will lessen the workload of teachers. Third, we need to incentivize aspiring teachers by reducing the costs of going to school to become a teacher and to obtain their certifications. New teachers should not be saddled with insurmountable debt to serve in this noble profession. Finally, improving the profession is an ongoing effort. As governor, I would hold regular meetings with teachers to develop strategies and measure progress.

With book bans making headlines, should decisions about removing books from classrooms and school libraries be made by locally elected school board members, based on local community standards — or by a state-appointed panel such as the Tennessee Textbook Commission, as authorized under a 2022 law? And why?

Lee: Our priority is to ensure parents know exactly what their children are learning at school — and that the learning materials are age-appropriate. We’ve added transparency so parents can see what materials are in classrooms and libraries. We’ve also given parents recourse to address divisive politicking in the classroom that has nothing to do with educating our kids well in reading, math, and the basics.

Martin: Decisions that affect our schools, teachers, and students should be made by those closest to the community. That includes decisions about curriculum and what books that students should be allowed to read. The Tennessee Textbook Commission has shown itself to be overbearing and unwilling to listen to what parents, teachers, and administrators have asked for in their children’s education.

Will you commit to working to move Tennessee out of the bottom fifth of national rankings in per-pupil funding? And as Tennessee switches to a new education funding formula next year, how will you ensure the state is keeping up with the true costs of educating students?

Lee: My administration has increased funding for education every single year I’ve been in office. We’ve invested a historic $1 billion of new funding directly into our students. That’s an almost 20% increase in state funding, the largest in Tennessee history. A key function of TISA is to fund our students well and pay our teachers competitively.

“I believe that TISA will actually burden many of our school districts with new costs.” —Dr. Jason Martin

Martin: Yes, I am committed to moving Tennessee out of the bottom national rankings in per-pupil funding. I do not believe Bill Lee’s TISA will do that, nor do I believe that it will keep up with the true costs of educating students. In fact, I believe that TISA will actually burden many of our school districts with new costs. We cannot identify a solution and expect it to fix the problem forever. So we should routinely revisit and reevaluate our state’s education funding formula. If we don’t, we won’t be able to keep up with education advancements and their costs, including new technology, teaching methods, and curricula.

Anything else you’d like to say about your priorities for K-12 education?

Lee: I’ve been a passionate advocate for putting career and technical education back in Tennessee classrooms. This has been a priority — not only because of my longtime work with plumbers, pipefitters, and welders, but also because of teachers like Dan Smith. A former Agriculture Teacher of the Year, Dan taught at Dyer County High School and is an inspiration behind one of my most important initiatives: the Governor’s Investment in Vocational Education, to enhance career and technical education. Other things we’ve accomplished include Reading 360, a nationally recognized literacy initiative. We’ve expanded family engagement through Ready4K, giving parents easy-to-use activities that promote early learning with their children. And the state has invested $500 million to eliminate structural barriers between high school, workforce, and postsecondary systems. Every high school and middle school in the state will benefit.

Martin: Many Tennesseans depend on trade and vocational schools, training programs, apprenticeships, and two- and four-year colleges and universities to achieve their goals. This requires increased incentives while undergoing K-12 education for trade programs, certifications, future nurses and healthcare workers, and training for a more technologically competitive workforce. In supporting more local control of curricula, it is my hope that local administrators and teachers will provide the right instruction for all students, whether they choose to attend college or a trade school, or to pursue another path after graduating from high school.

Tell us about the kinds of schools you went to, what school was like for you, and how that influences your education policy today.

Lee: I am a proud alum of Fairview Elementary, Franklin Junior High School, and Franklin High School. It was especially meaningful to return to my alma mater this spring to sign our state’s new funding formula into law. I studied mechanical engineering at Auburn University, and that training really shaped my perspective on how we can methodically solve big problems. As an engineer, I’ve worked on massive, complex jobs where you used both blueprints and shop drawings. While a blueprint gives direction, it’s the shop drawings that dictate the day by day. The shop drawings capture every little detail that brings the vision to life. Our blueprint for education in Tennessee says kids should be prepared for life beyond the classroom. Our shop drawings look like putting parents back in the classroom and reinforcing that parents are the authority on their children. This looks like teaching our kids informed patriotism and becoming a top five state for civics education.

Martin: I attended public schools in lower Alabama, including a magnet high school. My schools were diverse across income levels and racial backgrounds. We had lifelong teachers who were committed to their classrooms. High school is where my activism for public education began. I founded a group called Students for Education, which advocated for public school funding and did coalition building to pass a property tax to increase funding for our district. Learning about the formula that funded my own public schools while attending them is a lesson that has stayed with me. And in my community, I have continued to fight for adequate school funding.

When it came time to choose schools for your own children, did you choose public schools? Private schools? Charters? Home school? And why?

Lee: I have four children, and we made decisions about their education based on each of their unique needs. That meant a mix of public school, private school, and home school for my children. I also became involved with charter schools while mentoring Adam, a young man who was growing up in the inner city and needed a different environment to succeed. When we keep our focus on students, we see the value in each offering, whether public, private, or home school.

Martin: Working in the medical field, my wife and I began our careers in our 30s. We were often on the move because my focus was on serving communities needing healthcare attention the most. So that our daughters didn’t have to change schools frequently, we chose an independent school that provided them with stability in their education, regardless of zoning or ZIP code, and that met their individual needs. It is a school that values economic, racial, and religious diversity and that reflects the values in our home.

For more information about voting, visit GoVoteTN.gov or call the Tennessee Division of Elections toll-free at 1-877-850-4959.

Marta W. Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Hillsdale-linked charter group withdraws applications in Tennessee

2022-09-29T20:16:22+00:00

A charter group linked to Michigan’s Hillsdale College on Thursday abruptly pulled its three applications to open schools in Tennessee following public outrage over controversial statements made by the college’s president earlier in the year.

Dolores Gresham, who chairs American Classical Education’s board of directors, notified the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission that the charter network was halting its appeals process before the state this year.

The decision came just days before the commission was to vote on the network’s applications to open independently operated, taxpayer-funded public schools in Madison, Montgomery, and Rutherford counties, after school boards in all three places voted overwhelmingly this summer to reject their proposals.

The retreat puts an end — at least, for now — to the contentious battle over the network’s future in Tennessee.

But in a statement, Gresham suggested the group may apply during another year.

“We believe, with complete conviction, that there will be many future opportunities in Tennessee as there are in most of America,” Gresham said. “We look forward to applying for additional charter schools where local parents, teachers and students desire excellent education alternatives.”

In her withdrawal letter to Commission Chairman Tom Griscom, Gresham noted that the panel had declined to delay its scheduled Oct. 5 vote so American Classical could “address concerns and clarify confusion and misconceptions raised by Commission staff in each of the public hearings earlier this month.”

Dolores Gresham chairs the board of directors of American Classical Education.

Gresham, a former Republican state senator who is one of four Tennesseans on the group’s board of directors, did not specify what those concerns were. However, numerous issues — including questions about the adequacy of local public engagement and the network’s plan for serving students with disabilities — were raised during the hearings, as well as in written public comments from Tennesseans.

She also cited the commission’s Oct. 5 “meeting structure” that “will not allow Commissioners to hear directly from community members whose interests lie at the heart of the Commission’s work.”

Chase Ingle, a spokesman for the commission, declined to comment about discussions between American Classical and the state panel’s staff. “Any applicant has the right to withdraw an application in our process,” he told Chalkbeat.

The commission’s vote was expected to test the independence of the commission’s nine members, all of whom were appointed by Gov. Bill Lee.

Earlier this year, Lee said he wanted the Hillsdale group to open at least 50 charter schools in Tennessee. The Republican governor also pushed for a 2019 law creating the appellate panel, leading some critics to charge that the process was skewed to approve more charter schools, especially those related to the small conservative Christian college in south central Michigan.

But scrutiny of the process was elevated when Hillsdale President Larry Arnn declared in June that teachers are “trained in the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country.” The remarks, caught by a hidden camera and broadcast by Nashville WTVF reporter Phil Williams, sparked public outrage directed at both Arnn and Lee, who was on stage with Arnn and has refused to disavow his words.

A spokeswoman for Lee did not immediately respond when asked Thursday about American Classical’s withdrawal.

However, House Education Committee Chairman Mark White, one of Tennessee’s leading charter advocates, said he was pleased with the development.

“I believe this to be a good decision by Hillsdale charters at this time due to the events this past summer,” the Memphis Republican told Chalkbeat, referring to the fallout over Arnn’s remarks.

In August, White had said Arnn’s highly publicized words had made it harder for American Classical and every would-be charter operator in Tennessee.

“It’s set us back years,” he told Chalkbeat at the time.

This story has been updated with new information.

Marta W. Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.