Tracing the history of the modern School Choice movement in America becomes a monumental task given the sheer number and variety of experts who have weighed in on this subject over the last 70 years.  The issue is tied up in the whirls and whims of politicians, economists, sociologists, psychologists, lawyers, and other leading experts weighing in on education policy.  While School Choice, particularly vouchers, are often viewed as a priority for the political Right, both sides of the aisle seem to have found reasons to embrace School Choice vouchers.  At the risk of over-simplification, the Right will usually hold up vouchers as a means of privatizing education through competition and the progressive Left tends to uphold vouchers as a means of assuring equity in education for those groups deemed disadvantaged.  Underlying the pro-voucher arguments lies the tightly held assumption that the government should in some way control and provide for the education of children.  Proponents of vouchers often focus upon the central role of the family in education decisions but behind each choice lies the bureaucracy of the State ensuring that the choices remain tightly controlled by the experts holding the reins of power. 

        By way of a brief overview, generally people place right leaning free market economist Milton Friedman’s essay “The Role of Government in Education” (1955) at the beginning of modern School Choice history.  In this essay, he advocated for removing government as the administrator of education but was satisfied with government as the financier of education.  For this end, he proposed using a system of vouchers to separate education financing from its administration, and although he prefers private school administration, he gives the government the right to lay down the basic minimal standards.  (Friedman 1955).  By the 1980’s, people like William Bennett, former Secretary of Education under the Reagan administration, looked to vouchers to “improve the efficiency of schooling as well as make possible the implementation of national standards…” (Bast et al 1997). Reagan himself promoted the idea (Cavanagh 2004 and Pear 1985).  By the 1990’s, Dick and Betsy DeVos picked up the School Choice voucher issue as a means to improve education which for them included strengthening the public system through competition. They began mobilizing a philanthropically-funded, national political strategy to be carried out across the states, pushing various iterations of School Choice through political advocacy, campaign management, and political rewards (Wilson 2011).  By 1995, Milton Friedman, founder of the voucher idea, had rejected compulsory schooling as a good idea but still held that vouchers could lead to privatization of education although he admitted in an interview that he could be wrong about that (Doherty 1995).  By the late 1990’s School Choice was making its way into the states through the work of foundations such as those funded by the De Vos’s, and Right leaning institutions like the CATO Institute were writing policy debates over the use of vouchers as a means of separating school and state.  The proponents of vouchers held that there was no other way to undo the public system and the voucher antagonists insisting that they would lead to more government control not less (Bast et al 1997).    

       While those on the Right debated the merits of School Choice vouchers, the left leaning progressives had made significant inroads into controlling the education bureaucracy.  What has been their take on vouchers?  Initially, those in the educational establishment tended to resist School Choice efforts- including vouchers- but this was not the only viewpoint. In “The Secret History of School Choice: How Progressives Got There First” an associate professor at Georgetown University Law Center makes the case, as the title suggests, that progressive advocates not free market advocates, had been making headway in the school choice game since the time of Reconstruction after the Civil War.  Of interest for this discussion, progressive voucher proponents in the late 1960’s made plans for their use that differed somewhat from the stated goal of those across the aisle.  “These early voucher plans were self-consciously designed to maximize equity and racial justice” (Forman 2005 p.1310).  Under President Johnson’s administration, a group at Harvard’s Center for the Study of Public Policy received a grant to develop an “equity-oriented voucher system” (p. 1311). Basically, this plan included both public and private schools with voucher amounts increasing according to the student’s level of poverty.  In addition, to prevent discrimination, the Jenck’s plan forced participating schools to only use their admissions criteria for up to one half of the entering class with the other half to be determined by lottery.  For the progressive voucher system, in general, all schools would become public schools- even parochial schools. At the time, this plan did not lead to a widespread progressive voucher movement with only one school in San Jose using a modified version for 5 years with inconclusive results. The plan fell out of political favor.  The Jenck’s plan may have fallen out of favor in the 1970’s but progressives may very well be looking at this plan today as the writer of this 2004 essay encourages in his conclusion (Forman 2005).

       Indeed, the outlines of the Jenck’s plan seem very similar to the talking points found on the websites of the numerous organizations working today in Tennessee, with their billionaire, elitist donors providing ample resources with which to perform their political advocacy-some donors are considered more right and some more left leaning but the foundations that they support are busy pushing the diversity, equity, and inclusion mantra of the progressive voucher supporters all those years ago (see a list of some of the foundations at the end of this article). One such entity, American Federation for Children is doing extensive political advocacy in Tennessee and Betsy DeVos, having begun the groundwork for state-by-state political advocacy decades ago, served on their board until 2016 (AFC 2016).  The organization’s obvious progressive slant on School Choice can be found on their website.  Today, Governor Lee and the Tennessee legislators along with their political advisors seem to have amalgamated the right and left view of vouchers into the Education Freedom proposal as manifested by their reasoning and talking points.  

       Further, the funding sources for the numerous organizations advocating for some type of school choice in Tennessee includes a plethora of interconnected philanthropists and corporations- many who seem to benefit financially from public money infused into the private sector (Vogel 2016).  Following the money and mergers of various organizations over the decades is an arduous and at times impossible task but today the organizations have a big financial impact upon the executive and legislative branches in Tennessee (Friedman 2023). According to a 2023 campaign finance estimate, together eleven “school choice” minded advocacy groups working in Tennessee have spent over 16.26 million dollars over the past 15 years influencing Tennessee politics and politicians (Friedman 2023). In another example of a national political advocacy group working in Tennessee, 50CAN, based in Washington D.C. openly takes credit for influencing Tennessee legislators toward School Choice options in recent years as well as openly advocating for a universal ESA to be passed in this calendar year (Magee 2022 and Magee 2024).  By way of example, their donors over the years have included both right and left of center organizations like the Bill and Malinda Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and the Carnegie Corporation and the left of center grant making foundation known as the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (Financial 2023, Influence Watch 50CAN, Influence Watch SVCF). The political pressure and money influencing Tennessee governance on this issue cannot be understated.

Bibliography:

       Friedman, Milton . The Role of Government in Education *. 1955. https://la.utexas.edu/users/hcleaver/330T/350kPEEFriedmanRoleOfGovttable.pdf

       Bast, Joseph L., et al. “Vouchers and Educational Freedom: A Debate.” Cato.org, 12 Mar. 1997, www.cato.org/policy-analysis/vouchers-educational-freedom-debate. Accessed 18 Feb. 2024

       Cavanagh, Sean. “Reagan’s Legacy: A Nation at Risk, Boost for Choice.” Education Week, 16 June 2004, www.edweek.org/policy-politics/reagans-legacy-a-nation-at-risk-boost-for-choice/2004/06. Accessed 18 Feb. 2024.  

       Pear, Robert, and Special To the New York Times. “REAGAN PROPOSES VOUCHERS to GIVE POOR a CHOICE of SCHOOLS.” The New York Times, 14 Nov. 1985, www.nytimes.com/1985/11/14/us/reagan-proposes-vouchers-to-give-poor-a-choice-of-schools.html. Accessed 18 Feb. 2024.

       Wilson, Bruce. “Heritage Foundation, Dec. 3, 2002: DeVos Outlines Strategy in War on Public Education.” Www.youtube.com, 1 May 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xt9FmMrvJ3A. Accessed 18 Feb. 2024.

       Doherty, Brian. “Best of Both Worlds: An Interview with Milton Friedman.” Reason.com, 1 June 1995, reason.com/1995/06/01/best-of-both-worlds/. Accessed 18 Feb. 2024.

       Forman, James. “The Secret History of School Choice: How Progressives Got There First.” Faculty Scholarship Series, 1 Jan. 2005, openyls.law.yale.edu/handle/20.500.13051/2530?show=full. Accessed 18 Feb. 2024

       “Bill Oberndorf Succeeds Betsy DeVos as Chairman of American Federation for Children.” American Federation for Children, 30 Nov. 2016, www.federationforchildren.org/bill-oberndorf-succeeds-betsy-devos-chairman-american-federation-children/. Accessed 18 Feb. 2024.

       “HOME.” American Federation for Children, www.federationforchildren.org/. Accessed 18 Feb. 2024.

       Vogel, Pam. “Here Are the Corporations and Right-Wing Funders Backing the Education Reform Movement.” Media Matters for America, 27 Apr. 2016, www.mediamatters.org/daily-caller/here-are-corporations-and-right-wing-funders-backing-education-reform-movement#ascafc. Accessed 18 Feb. 2024.

       Friedman, Adam. “The $27.1 Million Clash between Education Reform and Public School Advocates.” Tennessee Lookout, 1 Dec. 2023, tennesseelookout.com/2023/11/30/the-27-1-million-clash-between-education-reform-and-public-school-advocates/. Accessed 18 Feb. 2024.

       Beaman, Lee. “The Web Connecting Tennessee’s Education Reform Groups.” https://tennesseelookout.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Charter-school-connections-4-2.pdf

       Magee, Marc Porter. “Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement (TISA).” 50CAN National, 2 May 2022, 50can.org/goals-wins/tennessee-investment-in-student-achievement-tisa/. Accessed 18 Feb. 2024.

       —. “Week 198.” 50CAN National, 15 Jan. 2024, 50can.org/the-new-reality-roundup/week-198/. Accessed 18 Feb. 2024.

       “Financials.” 50CAN National, 2023, 50can.org/financials/. Accessed 18 Feb. 2024.

       “50CAN.” InfluenceWatch, www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/50can-inc/. Accessed 18 Feb. 2024.

       “Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF).” InfluenceWatch, 2023, www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/silicon-valley-community-foundation/. Accessed 18 Feb. 2024.

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               Thankfully, black holes reside far away from us in the universe as their irresistible gravity will pull anything nearby, even light, into their utter darkness.  While we do not have to worry anytime soon about a black hole engulfing the earth, we do need to be concerned about a legislative black hole called school choice.  Bad legislation such as school choice can act similar to a black hole in that it can pull the unsuspecting bystanders into an undesirable situation by its own legal force or through its connections to other previous legislation.  Beyond these legislative strings, “natural” strings pull some into the black hole unexpectedly when they are connected by shared programs or services.  I will cover the basics of these various strings in regard to the black hole potential for school choice legislation in Tennessee to affect homeschoolers so that you can decide for yourself how to respond.

               Over the course of this essay, I will provide the following information concerning the present status of Tennessee homeschooling and then the potential future for homeschoolers under school choice.  First, I will review the current homeschool legal status and how we got here.  Second, I will examine the natural and legal ties of homeschooling with public and private schools.  Third, I will discuss some effects that school choice legislation could have on public and private schools.  Finally, I will return to the primary emphasis of this article, how homeschoolers can get pulled into the school choice black hole before they know what grabbed their children.

               The current laws permitting and addressing homeschooling in Tennessee did not begin with the state’s founding nor did they pop into existence and remain unchanged.  Under the compulsory school laws which covered Tennessee in 1913 (LINK) students were required to attend a public or private school between certain ages.  Today, this is an accepted fact of life that kids must go to school. This fact of life had little pushback until back in the 1970s and 1980s when parents were beginning to object to some subjects and books taught in public schools. This led to the early homeschool movement.  After a series of court battles followed by legislative advocacy, homeschooling legality was signed by Governor Lamar Alexander in 1985.  Initially, this freedom was limited, but over time legislative changes have brought us to the present status in which parents have three options to homeschool their children in Tennessee. The first option, which still continues from early legislation is for the parents to enroll as an independent home school with the local school board and follow certain rules.  The second option allows parents to affiliate with a church-related umbrella school that allows more independence from the public system.  The final option allows parents to enroll their child with an accredited online school.  Each of these have some requirements attached which can be read at (LINK).  While the current law offers some freedom, they require ongoing vigilance to maintain and need concerted effort to press for more freedoms.

               While Tennessee legal code officially considers these homeschool options separately from other school legal code, parents and their homeschooled children still live with various connections to the private and public-school systems.  At the most general level, all students must comply with state requirements for a high school diploma.  From there, connections with public schools exist for independent homeschoolers who report to the local education association (LEA).  These parents are held accountable by these LEA’s for standardized testing and other reporting.  The LEA’s can at times attempt to refuse permission for parents to withdraw their children from the public schools or at least make it difficult.  For these reasons and others, legal groups like Home School Legal Defense Association and Heritage Defense exist to provide legal support for these parents against resistance from school districts.

               For homeschoolers who choose either private school option, umbrella or online schools, you are dependent on the existence, support, and advocacy of such schools.  While many of these schools do not have brick and mortar private school counterparts, many do operate private schools which must follow legal codes applicable to them.  Homeschoolers who affiliate with these options must abide by the regulations that their umbrella or online school is held to.  These schools report less to the state but are still held accountable for their education of the children.  Participating families benefit from the services and opportunities found under such schools such as academic counseling, record keeping, social connections, and extra-curricular activities like sports.

               Should the school choice legislation described in a prior essay pass this year, the various forms of schooling in Tennessee will be affected in different ways.  The public school system stands the most at risk of major changes if parents are able to take their children out of poorly performing schools and then legislation dictates that the school loses some of their funding for that reason.  While the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement Act of 2019 (described at LINK ) claims that the money follows the child in order to incentive schools for success, one major pushback against the school choice program concerns this loss of money for public schools. Without an actual written proposal by our Governor for his so-called Education Freedom bill, we don’t know the final plan, but we can hear the hemming and hawing of numerous legislators claiming that we won’t take money from our children in the public school system despite that being a point of emphasis for school choice in general.  No one is sure which direction this will go.

               While the wider public will continue the public-school funding debate, private schools need to be watching the legislation’s development and final details also.  The private schools accepting voucher or scholarship money (which term is actually used by law makers is superfluous) will have to accept the regulations which are attached to the money.  In lay terms, there will be strings for any government money handed over to private schools.  Public school advocates demand a variety of strings, but ultimately it comes down to proof of the school’s success in terms of comparable standardized testing and some type of reporting whether accounting of money spent, or public reporting of curriculum taught.  The legislation could include limitations on what worldviews or topics are allowed in classrooms.  Once these schools accept state money with such strings, they must find ways to implement it through adding expenses or shifting expenses or raising prices.  Changes must occur to some degree or else they will risk losing their approval to participate. 

               Homeschoolers would seem to have it the simplest of all these groups.  Like private schools who could just say no to state money, they could feel pretty safe from governmental intrusion.  Private schools might suffer from such a decision due to competitive forces from those schools who take the money, but it would seem that homeschoolers could continue to function outside the gravitational force of school choice legislation.  If only that were true, I would not need to write so much about this issue.

               In reality, homeschoolers can also be pulled into the school choice black hole in a number of ways without seeing the danger before it is too late.  For the independent homeschoolers, they are already beholden to their local LEA for oversight, so less may change for them.  For homeschoolers operating through private options like the umbrella option or online school option, regulations for the private school could trickle down to the homeschoolers and pull them in. Regulations regarding required standardized testing could extend beyond the private school students receiving vouchers/scholarships to engulf the homeschoolers either by legal code imposed in the legislation or by the school’s necessity.  For online schools, curriculum options could be affected so that they would comply with state requirements or to optimize scores on standardized testing.  For either type of private school, the costs of compliance with the new system could increase costs which would be passed on to parents or cause the school to face difficult business dilemmas.       

               Outside of these more indirect effects upon homeschoolers under private schools, there is also the potential for legal terminology changes or confusions.  The long and broad history of law offers near limitless examples of the importance of terminology in understanding and applying passed legislation.  When a term is used in formal law, it must carry specific meaning.  When that word is used across a variety of legal codes, it must carry the same meaning in all settings and then connects those different laws when legal challenges arise to the definition of that term.  In Tennessee, homeschool laws maintain a separate section under education law which limits their connection to public school and private school laws as much as possible.  For example, homeschooling families do not have to abide by fire codes or emergency planning regulations.  Homeschool parents also don’t have the same education requirements as do schoolteachers.  Neither do they have the same reporting requirements to the state for their child’s education or curriculum.  Should school choice offer its money to homeschoolers under private school options, homeschooling code and public-school code could be intertwined.  This is almost never a good thing. 

               Beyond these indirect effects and potential legal ties, future legislation amendments could even bring homeschoolers who refuse the money into the regulations imposed on those that do.  Control enamored legislators claiming noble intentions could come back and decide that while initially only the homeschoolers taking the money had to follow the new rules, later they want all homeschoolers to follow a certain curriculum or take the standardized tests or have to report more on their children.  Even if the legislators don’t do this, the department of education could “interpret” the regulations as applying across all homeschoolers.  The Tennessee Department of Education recently attempted to reinterpret legislation regarding homeschoolers reporting of vaccination status.  Only a statement by the state legislature corrected them and stopped their completely opposite interpretation.  We must always be vigilant for future legislation to change our present freedoms or for the bureaucracy to impose its own faulty interpretation on otherwise decent legislation. 

               This brings up the question of why our government moves in these directions towards more and more restrictions of freedoms unless we push back.  In this case, it comes down to the basic assumption by many in government and the education world that our children belong to the public of Tennessee and they as our leaders have a responsibility to prepare them for our future society.  This blatantly contradicts the Biblical and Christian worldview that parents are the primary parties responsible for the education and rearing of children.  That worldview of lawmakers and the general public results in law code that seems to focus more on limiting parents’ freedom in the name of preventing parents from harming their own children.  What we need instead is more legislation intent on preventing government from intruding into the jurisdiction of family life and parental freedom.  The faulty worldview has created major blind spots for sometimes well-intentioned legislators in terms of supporting the education of Tennessee children.  They do not recognize the black hole they can create with this new legislation and do not seem to see the repercussions of the school choice upon private schools and homeschools in Tennessee.

               Parents of homeschoolers and those hoping for a future opportunity to freely homeschool future children must see through the darkness of this black hole by viewing the situation through a different worldview.  We must recognize that these precious little ones before us are gifts of God, and we are called to be stewards of their future rather than just serve as babysitters while the state dictates their future.  The legislation of our state can either work to protect our freedoms and thus our children or it can encroach on those freedoms and lead to lifelong harm.  We must evaluate school choice proposals when they are formalized and understand how it will impact on homeschooling in Tennessee.  If we don’t, no one else will do so.  It is up to us to stand firm.  We must know the issues ourselves and not depend on our legislators to simply tell us what is best for us and our children.  We must then make the issues known by others around us so that we can collectively and effectively advocate to reject the school choice black hole.  We can do this through social media postings of essays like this one, emailing our legislators, sharing this understanding with our churches, calling legislators with our opinions, attending legislative meetings, and more. In these situations, besides knowing your position, don’t accept platitudes and unhelpful generalities about helping all of our state’s children. Open other’s eyes to what we are facing and hold legislators accountable to protect our educational freedom instead of watching it go down a black hole with a new bill falsely advertised as Education Freedom.

Bibliography:

Langley, D. (2015, Autumn). A history of homeschooling in Tennessee. https://responsiblehomeschooling.org/research/histories/a-history-of-homeschooling-in-tennessee/#:~:text=The%20legality%20of%20homeschooling%20was,file%20as%20a%20private%20school

Tennessee investment in Student Achievement (TISA) formula. (2024a). https://www.tn.gov/education/best-for-all/tnedufunding.html T

Tennessee State Government – TN.gov. (2024). Home school . https://www.tn.gov/education/families/school-options/home-schooling-in-tn.html

Prior Essays in this Series:

Be The Opposition (by my wife) (LINK)

Three Reasons to Oppose School Choice

Part 1 – LINK

Part 2 – LINK

Part 3 – LINK

Part 4 – LINK

Comparison with North Carolina

Part 1 – LINK

Part 2 – LINK

Tennessee School Choice

Part 1 – LINK

Part 2 – LINK

Part 3 – LINK

(continuing from part 1 introduction)

Current Program Evaluation for Tennessee

               The purpose of any pilot program always includes the idea that a new concept can be tested at a small scale to see if it works before investing much larger amounts of money and effort into a larger scale endeavor.  In other words, one tests the waters before diving in so you can either pull back from bad ideas or adjust imperfect initial plans to increase the chances of success at the larger scale.  To make this process successful, an evaluation of some sort is required.  Jumping in the water without at least sticking a toe in could be a problem if the water is the wrong temperature.  For a governmental program spending millions of dollars, a pilot program allows this type of smaller scale test run before putting 100’s of millions of taxpayer money into a potentially unsuccessful program.  Once the pilot program has its chance to operate for a period of time, then we must take some measurements to decide if it worked.  If we stick our toes in and the water is too hot, we can change our original plunge plan.

               Before jumping into the larger scaled program, we should have reliable criteria that can be confidently measured which tells us whether we can expect to get our return on investment out of a program.  In regard to school choice, given the critical importance of our children’s future success in life and the hundreds of millions such a full scale program could cost (just look at other states in a prior article on site), we need to evaluate the small pilot program that occurred in Tennessee since the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement (TISA) legislation was passed in 2019 giving first Nashville and Memphis opportunities for school choice before adding Chattanooga.  Of course, we can also look at other states where similar programs have been running even longer, but if we have our own program and plan to inflate it to full statewide scale, we should evaluate if we are implementing a school choice program well or not.  Minimal criteria should include whether the student recipients of our state’s vouchers or scholarships demonstrated improvements in education versus children who remained in our public system.  Parental satisfaction and student mental health outcomes are less objective but still worth considering.  Once the program has run for several years, we could look at whether more students graduate, more go to college, or whether they earn higher incomes.  Tennessee’s program needs a few more years for these last criteria to be measurable, but some earlier short-term criteria could be evaluated if we were given the data.

               So, let’s look at the outcome studies which compare students who received scholarships versus those who remained in the public school assigned to them. To be blunt, we have silence at this point as I can’t find any studies in Tennessee that make that comparison.  The only thing that the state reports is that 91% of recipient parents are satisfied.  That is a very subjective number.  Realistically, a few years is probably needed to see if a student will learn more in a new school such that it can be measured and considered statistically and educationally significant.  Beyond that, some method of comparing the students on an equal “apples to apples” basis is needed.  In most other states, this standard comparison comes in the form of standardized testing, in which all students take the same test and see who scores better.  This seems like a level playing field at first glance, but such a Tennessee comparison has not been done so far. At a second glance, even it has some problems.

               Besides having no testing comparison in Tennessee, three problems arise out of trying to use such a standardized testing comparison.  First, private schools in Tennessee are not required to administer a standardized test to all their students.  Therefore, students moving from public to private schools may not get tested unless a new law requires it.  Second, even when schools do test their students or if they are forced to do so, there are several options for standardized testing.  If one group of students takes one test, and another takes a different test, the results are not technically comparable, still leaving us without an adequate comparison of apples to apples.  Finally, even if all the students are compelled to take the same test, a school which does not employ a curriculum focused on that specific test will find itself at a disadvantage.  Just like a sprinter training for the 100 yard dash will not fare as well in the 2 mile run having trained differently, the student who spends the year in one curriculum may not do quite as well on a test which did not match their recent curriculum.  Unless the public-school group and the private school group utilize the same curriculum for the year, the private school students could be at a disadvantage.  The private schools could therefore be incentivized to change their curriculum to match the test used for comparisons with the public school.

               Without a fairly implemented objective comparison in Tennessee that extends over several years including sufficient numbers of students, we cannot predict whether expanding the program to a statewide form is a good idea or not.  We are left with the one statistic and its hopeful logic.  The statistic promoted by the state on their website sounds encouraging that 91% of parents are satisfied.  What does that mean?  Are they simply satisfied that they qualified for $7000?  Are they satisfied that their child escaped a bully at school or school violence dangers?  Are they satisfied that their child has a better teacher or better friends at school now?  On the other hand, it seems logical that giving parents money to move their children out of a public school with subpar testing scores where they are bullied daily to a private school with higher academic standards would result in better outcomes for the child? If only logic always worked out in the real world.  There are so many factors intervening between the money and the outcome that simple logic is often too simple.  By looking at many other states as I did in another article, the outcomes for the school choice students have not always been as clearly successful as proponents have promised or reasoned.

               Therefore, in regard to objective outcome criteria for Tennessee’s pilot school choice program, we do not have data on which to base a decision.

               Without outcome data, we must turn to other statistics to better understand what the program is doing to or for our future generation.  These numbers are mostly available, but a few gaps exist which could help Tennesseans determine whether or not to take the plunge on universal school choice.  From Tennessee’s website, it looks like over 2400 students have been awarded educational scholarships out of over 3400 applicants.  That should mean that around 1.7 million dollars have been awarded.  The program stipulates income limits for recipients, so we can safely assume that these have been awarded to lower income families that probably would not have been able to afford the private schools.  From there, I don’t see any data on where these children went in regards to private or charter schools.  At least in North Carolina, there is a way to see how many children went to which private schools as some form of accountability and tracking North Carolina State Education Assistance Association. Before addressing the money question next, we return again to the one emphasized statistic, parents are 91% satisfied.  I still wondered what made them satisfied and why are 9% not satisfied?

               Now we come to an important data point, the cost of such a program.  Scaling such a program involves multiplication obviously, but also a conscious decision on how big do we want the program to be.  Even if we want to theoretically multiply and cover the state, at some point we have to draw a line and say we can’t afford to multiply by a bigger number.  At this point, Tennessee reportedly spends about $11,600 (according to Federal report U.S. Public Education Spending Statistics from Education Data Initiative per student in the public school system.  I assume that this number includes TISA’s 2019 increase in spending where 9 billion more was promised towards the education of Tennessee children.  According to TISA’s law codes, 70% of a given school’s funding comes from the state while 30% must come from the local government over the school system.  One of TISA’s guiding principles is that the money follows the child such that a school gets state money based on how many students are enrolled and additional factors regarding the child and certain school district characteristics.  High risk or special needs children mean more money for the school district while school districts with challenging conditions also get a higher funding.  How much beyond this TISA calculation are we going with this education scholarship money?

               For the current school choice pilot program beyond TISA’s foundation, the state publicizes a number of rules to be followed for the student and the schools receiving the funds.  As noted above, income limits apply to the student’s parents.  The private schools which the student wishes to move to  must accept the state money and its requirements.  Currently independent homeschoolers who are not under an umbrella program cannot receive this funding.  Beyond the private school tuition, the sate provides a list of approved spending.  Once those stipulations are fulfilled and a child is awarded the scholarship., $7075 is available to their parents for school choice. 

               Before looking at the proposed scaling of this program, we look back at what we have available in terms of this pilot program.  We are trying to decide if we want to go beyond sticking our toes in the water.  Do we have enough data on the costs, success, and impact of this pilot program to decide if we want to take a larger plunge and how much further of a plunge do we want to take?  Proponents seem to be basing their arguments more on three things.  First, we get an emotional appeal that the situation for our children is desperate, and we must do something before it is too late.  Second, we get an appeal to the logic that of course it will work to move children into supposedly better private schools.  Third, while we don’t have real outcome measures for our pilot program, we can assume that our bigger program will succeed “like” other state programs even though their outcome measures were not consistently improved.  So far, I am not convinced by the current information that is available.

Return Wednesday for Part 3 – Future Proposed Universal Program

Bibliography:

Parents have a choice in education

               Gazing backwards upon history reveals many critical choices which left ongoing determining influences upon public life.  In the legislative sphere, the passage of many laws marked significant trajectory changes in the nature of society.  Civil rights legislation, the passage of Medicare, or social security in past decades all marked moments when public life changed from one way of life to another.  This year, parents in Tennessee stand at such a fork in the road in regard to the education of children in our state as our Governor proposes something he calls Education Freedom. A choice must be made by our state in regard to whether or not we want to pay the necessary price for this so-called freedom.  As parents whose children’s lives will be greatly influenced by this legislative decision, we should think carefully about this decision and speak up with a clear, unified voice in influencing the future trajectory of our children’s education.  If we do not stand up for our children, legislators and lobbyists will be left in charge of shaping our children’s future.

               No one can honestly argue that Tennessee excels in educating its next generation.  Too many statistics reveal dismal numbers on various statistics.  Recent reports indicate for the entire state the percent of students achieving a grade appropriate score on standardized testing is less than half the students. (for other evaluations of Tennessee schools look at self reported “report cards”). Other random news reports document the outcomes of bullying in our schools which result in anything from increased diagnoses of mental illness to suicides. If that were not enough, nighttime news reports offer the peppering of school employees having illicit relationships and “contact” with students.  Meanwhile parents have to fight the constant attempt to force Critical Race Theory and failed Common Core methods upon vulnerable children. Our public education system in Tennessee clearly has a rottenness that is afflicting our next generation.

               Parents and the public express dismay about these statistics and reports, but none of us can address this issue alone.  The current options besides their local public school for parents have for their own children are to either homeschool, pay for private school, or move to a different school district.  While many can argue that these are not all viable options for all parents, they are still options that most parents can choose even if it means some sacrifice for the sake of their children.  These options are available thanks to legal freedoms that the current government recognizes and our society supports in general.  When addressing the wider picture of educating Tennessee’s children as a whole, parents must speak together so that these options are not taken away in the process.  Tennessee must keep these present options while effectively addressing the dismal status of our current system for all involved. 

               This brings us to the choice before parents today, a choice which our Governor Lee has proposed though not written out for the public to evaluate (as of January 18th, the bill’s proposed wording is still not available to the public).  Currently, the policy form of school choice, in which the state supplies a set amount of monetary funding for a child to attend a private school rather than their designated public school, is now active in 3 Tennessee counties.  The Governor proposes that this smaller pilot program for 3 counties should be expanded to the entire state for at least 20,000 students but eventually for as many as want it.  Superficially, it would seem cruel and uncompassionate to argue against such an appealing and seemingly noble proposal that all children should be able to attend the best schools their parents can choose for them. 

               When such a momentous opportunity is presented for anyone to shape the course of the future for so many children and thus our future society, such a superficial and reflexively quick acceptance of such a presently vague proposal is however unwise.  Anyone paying attention to the past few years should know that the good intentions of government do not always produce what they promise or what we want.  Anyone who has watched the course of any public policy implementation knows that there are secondary consequences for any major policy decision.  Anyone who has progressed beyond elementary common core math knows that such government programs cost money, lots of it, and practically always more than what was initially stated.  With all of this and our children’s education in mind, Tennessee parents must pause and be sure we are choosing the right fork in the policy road before we are stuck going downhill without any brakes.

               Participating wisely in this decision-making process for our children’s future requires an open-eyed evaluation of our current limited school choice program in the 3 counties where it operates as well as considering the unofficial proposals we have heard from our Governor and other lawmakers.  We cannot yet evaluate the actual bill since it exists only in the clutches of our leaders hidden in the dark backrooms of the capitol where no parent can presently read it for its actual details.  For the currently operating program we can consider what outcomes it has produced in the years since passage in 2019, the statistics publicly available for its participants, the money trail that flows through it, and the rules that govern it.  For the future proposal still waiting to be formally released, we can consider the proposed numbers for the program, the possible strings that may be attached to the program recipients, the money trail proposed for this larger program, and the perspectives or hints from various lawmakers who have spoken to the media on this choice. 

Return Monday for part 2 addressing the status of the current Tennessee School Choice program.

Bibliography:

                Anytime that anyone spends any money, we want to assure that we are getting what we paid for.  If we are considering whether or not to buy the next book in the school choice series, we should consider if the last book gave us the results we had hoped for.  With school choice, a primary foundation for implementation is to improve the education of the children receiving the scholarship or voucher.  The initial report on North Carolina State recipients was initially mildly encouraging. In a comparison of 245 students receiving voucher funding for private school enrollment, language scores improved but not math scores.  When further analyzing the data, these improvements were primarily in voucher studens from Catholic schools who were already administering the test being used to compare.  This suggested a potential bias in that the Catholic schools were teaching to the standardized test used for comparison giving them an advantage.  Given the difficulty of such a comparison even with standardized testing, further comparison was made and another study conducted.  This time the results by Duke University were less encouraging as described in the Helms article.               

“The Duke study, published in 2020, reports that initial requirements to provide some measure of academic outcomes have been weakened or ignored, and that ‘“’the data do not exist due to the lack of comparable testing between public and private school students.’”’”

This would seem poorly supportive of implementing school choice   Both logic and general consensus in education agree that using a curriculum which prepares students for a particular standardized test usually results in better test scores on that particular test, but not always for a different standardized test.  The study acknowledged multiple formidable challenges in creating an apples to apples comparison to determine true outcomes for school choice programs.  With taking all into consideration, especially the potential confounding factors of curriculum choices influencing test scores, the assurance of school choice supporters that we are getting our money’s worth is a little thin.   As I described in a prior article, this lack of impressive return on investment is common across other state programs which have attempted similar assessments.

                While the largest number of students still attend public or private schools, a sizable number of parents are choosing to homeschool their children for a variety of reasons.  Although, a program to fund private schools would not seem to automatically impact these homeschoolers, as is often the case with government, reality is not so simple.  At this point in North Carolina, I cannot find anyone who has clearly reported on positive or negative impacts on homeschoolers who elect to receive school choice funding or those who don’t.  As noted earlier, the statewide homeschooling association advises against participation in the current program for a number of reasons.  No one has reported on how many homeschoolers have or plan to participate and receive a school voucher.  No one has reported on any outcomes in these cases.  North Carolina homeschoolers already have to administer a state standardized test yearly, so school choice does not add any burden in this regard.

                As with any legislation, the first round which passes can seem innocuous, not adding strings or limitations to homeschooling freedoms.  The future alterations can be a greater source of danger. The next legislative session can amend the innocuous prior bill and add restrictive strings without having to fight the entire original battle for passing.  This can happen without anyone noticing until it is too late.  In North Carolina, a survey by the NCHEA would seem encouraging in how many current legislators reported being homeschoolers or having a positive attitude towards them, but some quoted responses were clearly a little off (Candidate Survey Results).  Given some of the proposed bills in recent sessions (NCHE Legislative Update), North Carolina homeschooling parents should not relax and trust their children’s educational freedoms to these supportive opinions.  Even if the legislators don’t make changes, there is a risk that the educational bureaucracy will “interpret” passed legislation differently than lawmakers intended.  We saw this recently in Tennessee regarding when legislation to remove the immunization reporting requirement for homeschoolers was reinterpreted as not removing the requirement by the state’s education department.  Lawmakers had to make a formal statement of their intent before the educational bureaucrats relented.  Similar reinterpretations occurred in Indiana.

                Looking at this School Choice book in the series, we in Tennessee should consider if we want to purchase a Tennessee edition or not.  We can see similar patterns developing already beginning with the small size start up in a few Tennessee counties now being pushed to expand across the state.  We see similar outside funding sources pushing this agenda as I describe in another article (LINK) with American Federation for Children along with 50CAN pouring money into Tennessee organizations just like North Carolina.  We already see several instances of charter schools which already receive current school choice money being caught up in fraud and wasted taxpayer money. (Tennessee Public Education Coalition 2022).  The funding for Tennessee is projected in the hundreds of millions like North Carolina, but so far politicians have been promising that public education will not lose funding.  That means the money has to come from somewhere since our government can’t grow it on trees (just printing presses).  A clear answer to that “where” has not been forthcoming so far.  The accountability debate is already in full swing in Tennessee as liberals and public-school advocates as well as conservatives demand to know how government money is being spent.  While many claim that no strings will be attached, no one should believe for a minute that regulations will not follow the money which is following the child to a private school or to a homeschool.

                Tennessee citizens, whether being parents or not, should also ask whether we will get any better results from all this money than North Carolina is receiving.  While parent satisfaction scores from other states do increase (Rhinesmith 2017) can we consider these debatable score improvements worth the effort and cost?  Is the greater determinant from which curriculum is chosen and thus the score depends more on preparation by a school for a particular test than the actual quality of instruction at a private school instead of a public school. 

                For homeschooling families in Tennessee who currently possess a little more freedom to do so than North Carolina families, what can we expect Tennessee’s version of school choice to bring.  For those who take the voucher money, they should expect at least a few accountability strings.  For those who don’t accept such government funding, will we be sucked into the regulations since many of us homeschool under umbrella programs.  While umbrella school involvement in homeschooling is not an option in North Carolina, Tennessee umbrella schools which accept voucher students could be forced to comply with more regulations. These regulations would eventually filter down to all homeschoolers in their umbrella schools even if they don’t accept voucher money themselves.  This is an unanswered question at present.  While I would not trust North Carolina legislators’ good wishes for homeschooling which they claim, I definitely would not trust our Tennessee legislators given past bill proposals like HB1214 in 2023.  Without significant pushback from homeschoolers, homeschooling freedoms would have been harmed.   During interactions with legislators regarding that bill, one lawmaker expressed concern for parents who claimed to be homeschooling, but who instead used that as excuse to take their children out of school.  This lawmaker wanted more regulations over all homeschoolers for the potential tiny numbers of parents who might do this.  Clearly, the lawmakers don’t trust the majority of parents to educate their own children. 

                In conclusion, school choice, whether called a voucher or a scholarship, is not automatically a win for either the students who participate or for those who don’t.  Tennessee, like North Carolina, is being intentionally influenced by forces outside the state.  There will be a similar high dollar cost without a clear reward.  The proposed program may have negative effects on homeschool legal code.  Homeschoolers must stay vigilant and not trust our legislators who generally believe that government and their elite bureaucratic advisors know what is best for our children.  In both Tennessee and North Carolina, we therefore have the same school choice book publishers pushing the same agenda trying to promote another tearjerker solution for our failing public education system promising a better ending while spending lots of money on an unproven storyline of school choice.  I say, “Let’s put the book back on the shelf and try a different book.”

Bibliography for Parts 1 and 2:

Associated Press. (2023, April 20). N.C. Lawsuit Over Private School Scholarship Program dismissed. NC lawsuit over private school scholarship program dismissed. https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nc/charlotte/news/2023/04/20/n-c–lawsuit-over-private-school-scholarship-program-dismissed

Candidate survey results. North Carolinians for Home Education. (n.d.). https://www.nche.com/candidate-survey-results/

Egalite, A. J., Stallings, D. T., & Porter, S. R. (2020). An Analysis of the Effects of North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship Program on Student Achievement. AERA Open, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858420912347

Helms, A. D. (2023, June 30). How do North Carolina’s School Vouchers Work? as expansion looms, here are answers. WFAE 90.7 – Charlotte’s NPR News Source. https://www.wfae.org/education/2023-06-30/how-do-north-carolinas-school-vouchers-work-as-expansion-looms-here-are-answers

Kotch, A. (2014, August 29). The Big Money For and against school vouchers in North Carolina. Facing South. https://www.facingsouth.org/2014/08/the-big-money-for-and-against-school-vouchers-in-n.html

Mason, S. (2021, March 17). The ever-present opposition to Home Education. North Carolinians for Home Education. https://www.nche.com/opposition-to-home-education/

McClellan, H. (2023, April 26). Bill expanding N.C. Private School vouchers to all students moves forward in Senate. EducationNC. https://www.ednc.org/04-26-2023-bill-expanding-n-c-private-school-vouchers-to-all-students-moves-forward-in-senate/

Nordstrom, K. (2023, June 16). New analysis shows many private schools in N.C. have more vouchers than students. North Carolina Justice Center. https://www.ncjustice.org/analysis-nc-private-school-voucher-program/

North Carolina Legal Code 115C-562. Chapter 115C – Article 39. (n.d.). https://www.ncleg.net/enactedlegislation/statutes/html/byarticle/chapter_115c/article_39.html

Rhinesmith, Evan (2017) A review of the research on parent satisfaction in private school choice programs, Journal of School Choice, 11:4, 585-603, DOI: 10.1080/15582159.2017.1395639

State Policy Network. North Carolina Passes School Choice. (2023, September 25). https://spn.org/articles/north-carolina-passes-school-choice/

Tennessee Public Education Coalition. (2022, March 10). How charter schools and vouchers harm Tennessee students: Opinion. The Tennessean. https://www.tennessean.com/story/opinion/2022/03/10/tennessee-educaiton-charter-schools-tennessee-public-education-coalition/9422346002/#:~:text=Knowledge%20Academies%20in%20Nashville%20lost,annual%20revenue%20of%20%247.1%20million%3B

                The first book you read from a series often determines whether or not you end up buying a sequel.  You can make a relatively reliable prediction about another book in the series by looking at a prior book.  Likewise, we can make some predictions about school choice efforts in Tennessee by looking at other Southern states whose book we can review first.  North Carolina offers a reasonable example for this school choice book review for several reasons.  As a southern state with a mix of rural and urban counties, it has about a 10-year history with school choice.  Like others including the current path in Tennessee, it started with a smaller program advancing until the decision to go universal and bigger is now underway.  It had its court battles to shape its final product as others challenged different aspects of its design.  Like Tennessee, their design includes a voucher or scholarship form in which the state writes a check to the chosen private school on behalf of the student. All together, this resembles Tennessee’s current and future proposed approach sufficiently for a comparative review to determine if we want to shelve current Tennessee universal school choice proposals.

                Tennessee does not have to be an exact replica of North Carolina to use the latter for comparison as patterns will arise with similar setting and program design.  With some awareness of what Tennessee could get itself into, we can try to avoid similar problems or choose to forgo school choice all together.  At the very least, we can make some informed decisions rather than just on altruistic propaganda and idealism.  We cannot just trust the false advertising that the Tennessee book in the school choice series will be amazingly better than the North Carolina book or any other state we could look at.

                While just reading a book does not require any organization other than reading from end to end, making a comparison of North Carolina’s school choice story requires a little more planning.  First, we should consider if North Carolina in general resembles Tennessee.  Second, we should consider the problems we see in North Carolina surrounding school choice. These include who is driving or funding the movement, instances of fraud, the actual cost of the program, regulations imposed on private schools, and the actual outcomes of the program.  Third, for those of us who homeschool in Tennessee, we should consider direct or indirect effects on homeschool freedoms already enjoyed and potential changes given the opinions and patterns of legislators.  With that in mind, we can better determine if we want this change to come to Tennessee as our Governor proposes.

                Beginning with the general characteristics of North Carolina and its school choice program, we can see many similarities.  As previously noted, both Tennessee and North Carolina are Southern states with a mix of urban and rural counties, each of which experience school choice effects differently.  Beyond that their legislature is strongly Republican controlled such that they can shape the school choice policies to their liking and the Democrats are not to blame for school choice in general.  Having started small in 2013 (State Policy Network 2022) North Carolina’s program initially only included low-income families, but as of September of 2023, became a universal school choice state.  Based on the website for North Carolina Home Educators Association, homeschoolers there are advised to not accept state funding through this program due to potential for increased governmental control of homeschooling.  Homeschoolers already have to administer yearly tests and comply with other rules (we don’t have these requirements yet in Tennessee).  Homeschoolers in that state do not want more strings than they already have. At least in Tennessee, this is an important difference which homeschoolers should seek to maintain.

                As a Southern state seeking to keep the influence of outside forces from excessively impacting legislation and policies for Tennessee citizens, we must look at the funding behind these school choice efforts in both North Carolina and Tennessee.  There are similarities.  In North Carolina, someone analyzed organizations on both sides of the school choice debate and identified significant non-North Carolina sources of money.  We know that money influences politics through lobbying and public relations campaigns on the surface as well as formal and “informal” donations behind the scenes.   Alex Kotch wrote a revealing article in 2014 describing the influence of national organizations like the American Federations for Children promoting school choice while the National Education Association (representing teachers) spent money against school choice.  Mr. Kotch’s article provides further details on organizations within North Carolina who received money from these national organizations and how their money was spent to influence North Carolina elections and legislation.  (more about funding in another WPWL blog).  The State Policy Network website also mentions other organizations they credit with getting the recent 2023 universal expansion passed: “John Locke Foundation, 50CAN, EdChoice, ExcelinEd, and” (again) “the American Federation for Children.”  While Alex Kotch’s article includes the local groups lobbying for school choice, we can see that money outside the state likely played a major role in passing both rounds of North Carolina’s school choice legislation.  We will compare this to Tennessee in a bit.

                Anytime that big money like that associated with school choice programs begins to flow outward from any source including government, the potential for fraud grows.  The sinful nature of mankind will draw those who are seeking to gather some of this money without actually providing the service required for the money.  A report by the North Carolina Justice Center in June of 2023 reported that they found several instances of schools reporting having enrolled more school choice voucher students than they had reported as even enrolled in the whole school (Nordstrom 2023).  There was at least one instance of a school having to return such money confirming an error without addressing intentionality of the error (Nordstrom 2023).  The other concern expressed by school choice opponents has been the potential for fake schools to receive such government money.  If one follows the state reports on which schools are filed as private schools and how many voucher students they receive, you will see that many small schools come and go.  It is not clear if these are truly small schools that simply failed like any other business, or were never real in the first place.  Besides the outright financial fraud that occurs, many have questioned the quality of these schools in flux which is a reasonable question given the varying results reported further below. 

                Another comparison to consider is the cost of any government program, especially one with the sizable price tag attached to school choice.  The initial cost for North Carolina’s initial program for lower income families amounted to around 44 million for the 2017-2018 school year (McClellan 2023).  Now that their program has gone nuclear, I mean universal, the projections for year 2031 are around 500 million dollars (McClellan 2023).  Echoing the prior point about fraud, this amount of money will attract a lot of flies trying to fly away with some government money.  Even for the legitimate parents and private schools, such an influx of available money will greatly influence the economy of private schooling and public education in the state.  Since the idea’s inception, opponents of school choice have argued that removing those dollars from local schools will be devastating.  While no supporter of public education myself, I know that such a gap will be filled somehow from other government money and ultimately taxpayers.  I would like to see the public education system replaced completely, but given that the majority of conservatives and liberals both profess support for educating our future generations, neither side will let the public system ultimately fail or be replaced by something better.  Someone from some governmental office somewhere will be shifting other taxpayer funds to cover the gap.  I await to see what happens in North Carolina with the new Universal program. 

                With government money we always get accountability strings.  This seems intuitively reasonable as the citizen’s tax money deserves such accountability to be sure it is not wasted on fraud or poor outcomes.  Again, echoing the reality of fraud in any money giveaway by the government, we the taxpayers deserve to know that government is spending our money on what they say they are spending it on.  In general, conservatives and liberals can agree on this in principle even not perfectly in application.  For school choice funds, this means that private schools and parents of the children must comply with certain regulations or risk either losing the money or other legal repercussions.  One big debate in North Carolina (Associated Press 2023) centered around whether religious schools could receive government funding without violating separation of church and state.  For now, it was ruled constitutional, and no school is restricted based on teaching religious beliefs in their classrooms.  Time will tell if this freedom continues.  Another debate that is still underway addresses whether participating schools can refuse entry to students who disagree with their worldview regarding issues like gender, marriage, and other cultural dividing points.  This will be influenced by whether or not federal money is used as that money clearly contains thick strings regarding discrimination legalities.  Besides such issues of worldview, the North Carolina legislation does include a few strings explicitly.  All students in North Carolina are already required to take standardized tests so that has not changed with school choice initiation.  The legal code also includes the requirement for a certified public accountant to review the use of voucher money if it exceeds a specified amount.  The school is further prohibited from adding additional charges to voucher students based solely on being a voucher student which means that any increase in administrative costs will be spread over the entire student body, potentially increasing everyone’s costs of enrollment.  Schools with 25 or more students receiving North Carolina school vouchers must report an aggregate score for those students.  With this information, the school can be assessed on its success rate.  (North Carolina 115C-562).

Return in a few days for part 2

Bibliography of Parts 1 and 2:

Associated Press. (2023, April 20). N.C. Lawsuit Over Private School Scholarship Program dismissed. NC lawsuit over private school scholarship program dismissed. https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nc/charlotte/news/2023/04/20/n-c–lawsuit-over-private-school-scholarship-program-dismissed

Candidate survey results. North Carolinians for Home Education. (n.d.). https://www.nche.com/candidate-survey-results/

Egalite, A. J., Stallings, D. T., & Porter, S. R. (2020). An Analysis of the Effects of North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship Program on Student Achievement. AERA Open, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858420912347

Helms, A. D. (2023, June 30). How do North Carolina’s School Vouchers Work? as expansion looms, here are answers. WFAE 90.7 – Charlotte’s NPR News Source. https://www.wfae.org/education/2023-06-30/how-do-north-carolinas-school-vouchers-work-as-expansion-looms-here-are-answers

Kotch, A. (2014, August 29). The Big Money For and against school vouchers in North Carolina. Facing South. https://www.facingsouth.org/2014/08/the-big-money-for-and-against-school-vouchers-in-n.html

Mason, S. (2021, March 17). The ever-present opposition to Home Education. North Carolinians for Home Education. https://www.nche.com/opposition-to-home-education/

McClellan, H. (2023, April 26). Bill expanding N.C. Private School vouchers to all students moves forward in Senate. EducationNC. https://www.ednc.org/04-26-2023-bill-expanding-n-c-private-school-vouchers-to-all-students-moves-forward-in-senate/

Nordstrom, K. (2023, June 16). New analysis shows many private schools in N.C. have more vouchers than students. North Carolina Justice Center. https://www.ncjustice.org/analysis-nc-private-school-voucher-program/

North Carolina Legal Code 115C-562. Chapter 115C – Article 39. (n.d.). https://www.ncleg.net/enactedlegislation/statutes/html/byarticle/chapter_115c/article_39.html

Rhinesmith, Evan (2017) A review of the research on parent satisfaction in private school choice programs, Journal of School Choice, 11:4, 585-603, DOI: 10.1080/15582159.2017.1395639

State Policy Network. North Carolina Passes School Choice. (2023, September 25). https://spn.org/articles/north-carolina-passes-school-choice/

Tennessee Public Education Coalition. (2022, March 10). How charter schools and vouchers harm Tennessee students: Opinion. The Tennessean. https://www.tennessean.com/story/opinion/2022/03/10/tennessee-educaiton-charter-schools-tennessee-public-education-coalition/9422346002/#:~:text=Knowledge%20Academies%20in%20Nashville%20lost,annual%20revenue%20of%20%247.1%20million%3B