If you thought that ESA recipients would be given a $7000 check for educational expenses each year, then you will be in for a surprise.  In fact, direct payment to the parent or student is strictly forbidden in both proposals.  In the house bill it reads on pg. 10, “(a) A scholarship awarded under this part: (1) Must not be paid directly to an eligible student or to an eligible student’s parent;” In the Senate bill it says on pg. 13 “(b) The department shall establish and maintain separate scholarship accounts for each recipient and shall verify that the uses of scholarship funds are permitted…”  The Senate bill also specifies that refunds from schools or providers shall NEVER go to the parent or recipient but only to the scholarship account (p. 14, (d)).

Additionally, in the Senate version, use of the funds must be PRE-APPROVED by the DOE (p.13 (b)). Further, the parent or recipient can be suspended or terminated by the DOE if they fail to comply with requirements meaning that the account will be closed by the DOE (pg. 15, (b)). Fraud measures are in place. First, if a parent or recipient uses scholarship funds on non-qualified purchases or if they have misrepresented “the nature, receipts, or any other evidence of one or more of the expenses paid using scholarship funds” (pg. 15 (c)), they will have to pay the amount back to the state.  Second, if they believe that a person knowingly used the funds on expenses that were not qualified (remember pre-approval required) or knowingly misrepresented the information then the DOE may refer the recipient for criminal prosecution (pg. 16 (d)).

The House version also has a section on penalty for fraud or misrepresentation.  On pg. 10 it reads “(a) A parent who knowingly provides false information on an eligible student’s application in order to obtain a scholarship commits a class A misdemeanor.”

At the end of the year, any unused funds will be put back into the treasury for next year’s scholarship fund.  For private school tuition, the funds will probably be used up on that alone.  If a homeschool student does not find a way to use all the funds on approved expenses, then the money will be returned to the state.  You do not get to keep any excess for your personal use or put it toward next year.

To sum it up, no money is directly given to the student or parent.  You can only use the funds on DOE approved expenses (more on this in another blog), receipts and proofs are required for approval of an expense, and you may have to pay it back or face criminal charges if you are not very careful with the procedures and rules.  Money is never FREE and Government Money is never without strings.

It seems that many of our legislators have forgotten their duty and their jurisdiction.  When homeschoolers bring up concerns regarding the ESFA legislation, they keep telling us that the legislation will not affect us.  When we point out the doors that are being opened in the legislation which could lead to infringement upon our freedom to homeschool according to our convictions, they tell us that we will just have to make sure the “right” people get elected each year.   Additionally, when we give them language by which they could shore up protection for our future, they refuse.  “No need,” they say.  “Not our job,” they reprimand.

Many in the capitol seem to have forgotten that they are the branch closest to the people- to be the most able to respond to their needs.  Despite being the “branch of the people”, most legislators, in this instance, are willing to open doors which may one day lead to the infringement of our freedom while rejecting legislative language that offers protection against those dangers.  They simply dismiss our concerns saying that it is someone else’s job to worry about the future freedoms of families in Tennessee.  I ask, “If they do not care for future freedoms and protect us, then who will?”

Please reach out to your representative and senator in regard to HB 1183 and SB 503, sister bills going through legislative committees.  It is within the contexts of discussing these two bills with our legislators that their forgetfulness has become evident.  Remind them that they have a sworn duty to uphold principles of freedom while working within the boundaries of the Tennessee Constitution.  Tell them you expect them to limit their power to the jurisdictions within which they have been given authority.  In the Tennessee Constitution Article XI Section 12 it reads, “The General Assembly shall provide for the maintenance, support and eligibility standards of a system of free public schools (emphasis mine).”  They are not delegated authority over the private sphere where liberty from state interference should be carefully guarded.  Respectfully but firmly remind them that homeschool families and private school families expect them to make laws that promote freedom rather than imperil it for generations to come.

Milton Friedman may have been a noble prize-winning economist with an idea he claimed would free education from the governmental dominance.  However, he was not a Christian. When he communicated concerning his proposed voucher system in education, he rested his arguments upon expediency rather than eternal principles set down by the Creator. Therefore, he failed to find the balance that he desired between individual freedom and the need for social cohesion.  The state, even in his schema, was necessary for setting approval standards in education as well as financing it. The following are some select quotes primarily from his essay “The Role of Government in Education” (1955) and an interview a few years before his death in 1995.  He has another work Free to Choose from 1981 which I will address in another post where he goes into greater detail but where government still plays a financing and approval role.  Below are a few bullet point quotes or summaries from his writing with my thoughts following each quote.

• Generally, while acknowledging the role of family in the care of children who are not yet capable of handling the “freedom” endowed to individual, he saw the role of the family as “a procedure [which] rests on expediency rather than principle” (1955).  My Comments: The family was not instituted by God for the care and protection of children and raising up the next generation in the faith but just a matter of expediency since children were not old enough to be responsible members of society.  The very foundation of his worldview is faulty leading to the need for government oversight of the education of children on some level.  His view of family was based on expediency.  Since many of the leftist ideologies of today have come up with models which “free” the child from the need for family, his foundational premises can be called into question by progressives. Arguments from expediency can be easily undone.

• He believed that the government should finance education but not administer that education.  He gave government the role of setting down minimum standards to promote a widespread acceptance of some common set of values required to maintain a stable society (1955).  My comment: Therefore, government ultimately standardizes the enculturation which occurs through education.

• “Governments could require a minimum level of education which they could finance by giving parents vouchers redeemable for a specified maximum sum per child per year if spent on “approved” educational services.” (1955)- My Comment: This means that expenditures must be government approved according to their standards.

• “Parents would be free to spend this sum and any additional sum on purchasing educational services from an “approved” educational institution of their own choice.” (1955)- My Comment: Again, expenditures must be approved by government standards.

• “The role of the government would be limited to assuring that the schools met certain minimum standards as the inclusion of a minimum common content in their programs, much as it now inspects restaurants to assure that they maintain minimum sanitary standards” (1955)- My Comment: Government standards approved in education and the resulting enculturation of the next generation is vastly different from a restaurant food safety checklist.

• “How draw a line between providing for the common social values required for a stable society on the one hand, and indoctrination inhibiting freedom of thought and belief on the other? Here is another of those vague boundaries that is easier to mention than to define.” (1955) – My Comment: He does not answer his own question here.  However, this may be THE pivotal issue of a public money voucher system and the door it opens to infringement upon religious freedoms and parental rights.

Also Note: He doesn’t answer, but studies from other countries in later decades- Australia show that government funding of private education flattens out education control over time– “another consequence “ of the experiment of Australia’s policy of limited privatization of education begun in 1973 “was the increasing regulation and centralization of decisions and the loss of private school autonomy which limited the feasible range of options and will probably continue to do so in the future…most of these consequences were generic and would probably follow if this system were adopted in other countries” – “Private Education and Redistributive Subsidies in Australia” Estelle James (1991) in Privatization and Its Alternatives Ed. William Gormley

• “For the lowest level of education, there is considerable agreement, approximating unanimity on the appropriate content of an educational program for citizens of democracy—the three R’s cover most of the ground.” (1955)  My Comment: This is definitely not true today as leftist ideology permeates the curriculum down to the youngest grades.

• “But education is not open and shut. In Capitalism and Freedom we came out on the side of favoring compulsory schooling and in Free To Choose we came out against it. So I have become more radical in that sense. Murray used to call me a statist because I was willing to have government money involved. But I see the voucher as a step in moving away from a government system to a private system. Now maybe I’m wrong, maybe it wouldn’t have that effect, but that’s the reason I favor it.” -Friedman in Reason Interview 1995 https://reason.com/1995/06/01/best-of-both-worlds/ My Comment: He thought that vouchers would lead to more freedom from government but he had the faulty worldview that the family was merely expedient and the government needed to maintain a level of control through approval of minimal standards for use of its money at an “approved” school of the family’s choice.  We can already see that vouchers have not undermined the public system in the states thus far after decades of trials.

Bottom Line:  He was wrong on education vouchers leading to freedom from governmental indoctrination. 

By Jennifer Potter

In this brief post we offer a correction in part of our review of House Bill 1183. Because HB1183 has language dealing with the scholarships and even more language dealing with public education issues, we need to clarify the testing requirements for scholarship recipients. Previously, we noted that the testing requirements in the bill for the scholarship students follow the federal guidelines and testing schedule. However, that testing schedule is for the public education portion of the bill.

While the scholarship students in private schools will have their academic performance indicators monitored by the Department of Education, they are not required to test according to the federal guidelines like the public-schools. Instead, a third-party contractor will be collecting data from the private schools regarding the scholarship student’s academic performance per the school’s chosen measures. These will be included in a yearly report to the house education committees. We have been told that the third-party contractors will be prohibited from selling the student’s data for profit but do not see the language for this provision in the current version of the bill.

Despite its less rigorous testing schedule, the house bill still contains the same Department of Education approval oversight, DOE rules promulgation issues, and public-private funding concerns. Because the funding schema in this bill involves government money (not tax relief) being paid directly to private education institutions, it tips the balance of power over private education in favor of ever greater state oversight- especially in the future as the size of the program grows.

While some of the public education measures in this bill seem to have some merit, we continue to oppose the bill for reasons discussed. Let’s find another way to help children stuck in a bad education system, not extend the power of that system over the private sphere.

SB503 and HB1183 are presently traveling through the legislative process as sister bills, but are far from identical twin sisters.  Each deserve individual attention as nuances as well as vast differences exist between the two bills focused on one goal of implementing school choice in Tennessee.  Our series on the school choice movement in Tennessee has highlighted multiple aspects of each bill given that Tennessee’s ultimate school choice, if passed, will result from a fusing of these two bills in some form.  Today, we look at how the funding formulas and methods of each will affect private schools in our state.

SB503

The Senate bill attempts to cut costs by using TISA funding and by allowing children with ESA funds to transfer between Local Education Agencies (LEA’s).  In the SB503, children are eligible to attend either a private school or another public school outside their LEA.  For transfer to another LEA, children take their TISA (Tennessee Investment in Students Achievement) funding with them and leave the local funding.  There are funding formulas for movement between LEA’s that I will not spend time on here since they make little difference for private or homeschool students which is my focus. (SB 503 pg. 4-5 (c) (1) (B)

For private school- Non-Public Category I-V- the approximately $7000 is paid out from 100% state funds (SB503 p. 5 (2) (B)).  From our understanding of the language, TISA money is generated for each student who receives an ESA.  This would mean that those students currently in private education either schools or homeschools who are not allocated TISA money currently, could now receive TISA money allocation from the state.  That TISA calculated money would be transferred into the EFSA scholarship fund for the student.

By approaching the funding in this manner, SB503 offers a smaller price tag in the first year of the bill at less than $100,000,000.  In contrast to the $140,000,000 estimated price tag for the House bill HB1183, this might seem like a good deal, but we have to continue reading to the punch line.  Each bill in the Senate and the House requires an attached fiscal note that estimates the cost of a bill on the state since each budget must be balanced so that the state does not go into debt.  The fiscal note for SB503 begins with the lower cost of the program but continues that within 2 years the program could balloon to over $500,000,000 per year.  That amount of money is a hefty price for the state and will make a sizable impact on the state’s private school sector.  More to come on that impact after considering the House’s sister version.

HB1183

The House bill takes a more straightforward approach, ignoring the exchange of students between public school districts and seeming to leave TISA funding untouched.  It simply lays out $7075 per student multiplied by 20,000 students and funds this from $140,000,000 earmarked for the program in the Governor’s budget.  The TISA money already earmarked for public schools from prior and current budgets is not addressed, meaning that the money likely comes from the Tennessee General Fund although this is not stated explicitly.  I believe this lack of mention might allow flexibility in future appropriations decisions for future year budgets by not pigeonholing the legislature into where future money can be appropriated from. 

The House bill then offers a slower growth formula built into the legislation than the sudden expansion possible with the Senate version.  As the number of scholarships actually given out each year reaches 90% of those available, the following year, the total number of scholarships can be increased by 20% if the legislature appropriates money in the coming year’s budget.  The hypothetical situation in which each year the total is increased by 20% due to a high use of the scholarships each year would produce a price tag of over $500,000,000 like the Senate version in about 7 years. Although this formula allows a slower buildup, the costs to the state and ultimately the taxpayer are impressive over time.

Impact of either bill

The independent nature of private education funding which is free from government money would be fundamentally changed by this legislation in either form described above.  Over time, as the program grows, government funding would become a major source of income for private institutions.  Studies in other countries have shown that governmental funding fundamentally changes private education even if that is not the intent of those passing the initial legislation.  Over time, the presence of the largest payor of services flattens out the differences in education like happened in Chile and Australia.  In the end, the difference between private and public education becomes more a matter of semantics than content- same system, different building.  Additionally, dependence upon government funds is likely to increase prices over time and increase administrative costs to meet governmental reporting requirements and testing which will be discussed later. These cost increases have been seen in higher education as well as medicine when government funding entered the picture and grew into a major funder of these services.