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Funding Schema and Its Possible Effects on Private Schooling

March 18, 2024 Eric Potter Current Inks , ,

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.

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Retractable Leashes in School Choice Legislation Call to Action

March 12, 2024 Eric Potter Current Inks, Legislation Alerts , , ,

(Updated 3/22/24 with Correction at end concerning testing requirements) 

Although having grown up in a rural county meant that I never needed to put a leash on my family pets, I do appreciate whoever came up with the idea of a retractable leash.  You can strap the leash on and grant your pet of choice a feeling of great freedom until you shorten the retractable leash and they hit their allowed limit.  Sometimes you can give them 20 feet of open leash, sometimes you have to shorten it to 3 feet so they don’t cause trouble.

Government regulations often operate much like a retractable leash, attaching accountability measures which initially seem quite permissive, but later get tightened down when they decide you are not doing what they think you should do.  The school choice legislation before us in the 2 houses of the Tennessee General Assembly are a great example of such a retractable leash which will be placed upon the necks of those trying to escape their failing local public school.  Not only will escaping families be held accountable to the program’s rules, but the private schools and homeschool communities which accept them will also have a leash attached to their necks.

Multiple public statements have been made denying the reality that government money always has strings attached.  The strings are euphemistically labeled accountability measures.  On face, this is quite absurd as the explicit content of the legislation in both houses places specific limits on the money’s use:

  • The money cannot go directly to the parent or student.
  • The money can be used only for expenses approved by the Department of Education and require receipts for reimbursement.
  • Expenses without receipts or which are not approved will require parent to return that money.
  • A parent or school which is believed to commit fraud in regard to the expenses may be remanded to civil authorities for criminal prosecution.
  • Schools which are not in compliance with DOE’s promulgated (and potentially changing) academic standards and regulations will lose the right to participate in the program.
  • Testing requirements are attached to HB1183 which comply with the federal ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act). — CORRECTION AT END
  • Compliance with ESSA is required to receive federal funding with its strings.

Parents and their private schools should be concerned about these strings or leashes in their present form, but future prospects for the leash shortening are even more troublesome.  We may (or may not) feel comfortable with the leash length right now, under the current administration and the current General Assembly, but the future holds no promises that future state leaders will allow such leash lengths to remain unrestrictive.  Once the leash is attached to our neck through funding and the regulations which always follow such funding, we will have great difficulty extracting our necks from the leash when it shortens. 

The best option is to avoid the leash being attached in the first place by rejecting the legislation and rejecting the promised money for educating our children. 

Please take a few minutes to contact the House Government Operations committee and share the ideas above in your own words in opposition to this bill.  You can email (good), call (better), or make an in-person / phone appointment (best).  Their committee oversees the regulations written by various state government departments which would eventually tighten the leash.  Tell Legislators that private school parents and homeschool parents DO NOT WANT a leash attached through this legislation, especially one which can be tightened later by future leaders.  Their contact information is below. Parents can further warn their private school or homeschool umbrella program with this information.

Thank you.

Dr. Eric Potter

LINK to the Contact List for the House Government Operations Committee Members

CORRECTION 3/22/24

From details learned during Moms for Liberty legislative day 3/20/24

Posted separately on 3/22/24

You Learn Something New Everyday

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.

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How Could This Affect My Private School

March 11, 2024 Eric Potter Current Inks, Legislation Alerts , , ,

When a student uses ESFA funds to pay for a part of their private school tuition, the schools bring themselves more directly under the DOE and potentially lose their autonomy.

First, the schools will have to deal with testing issues.   In the Senate bill, scholarship recipients must undergo annual testing using a normed referenced test approved by the state board of education as well as administering an English language arts test (TCAP or other DOE approved test) in third grade and a mathematics test (TCAP or other as approved by DOE) in eighth grade.  Then, in eleventh grade they must take the ACT or SAT.  Administering the tests is the responsibility of the schools on pg. 13 (b). 

In the House bill, testing will be required for ESFA students. THIS WAS INCORRECT AND HAS BEEN CORRECTRED AT THE END AS WELL AS IN A SEPARATE POST. ——-ERROR REMOVED———– Right now, this is being set up as a state funded endeavor. The legislation gives the commissioner of education the right to establish the schedule for the statewide tests.  No further information on who administers the test is given in the legislation. If a private school has scholarship students, presumably they will come under the administration schedule of the commissioner of education but this is not clear in the legislation. If federal funding ever comes into play, the schools may be brought under federal guidelines. 

Second, the school is responsible for providing adequate receipts for documentation for all expenses paid with funds (p 14).  They may not refund the parent but only the state account (p 14). Should the school have several students using the funds in various ways, the administrative overhead may increase depending on the rules and requirements established by the DOE regarding this matter.

Third, the senate bill gives the state board of education duty to “promulgate rules allowing the department to suspend or terminate a private or public school from participating in the program due to low academic performance, as determined by the department” (emphasis mine) (pg. 15 (2)).  The school can then be removed from participating in the program.  What other rules come into play regarding the school remaining open are not addressed but probably can be found in other legal codes and rules. The testing that the schools are required to perform is stated to be for information purposes only so it is unclear how the school’s academics will be evaluated.  These rules will be made by the state board after the legislation passes.   Direct oversight by the DOE who perhaps has a different educational philosophy from the private schools should be concerning to independent private schools.

Fourth, fraud protections extend to “any other person” who use funds deposited in an account in a way that is not qualified or “any other person” who misrepresents the nature, receipts, or any other evidence of one or more expenses could be made to pay restitution or may be brought up on criminal charges. The DOE is given the right to promulgate the rules regarding all these issues (pg. 15-16). 

Fifth, for private students with educational disabilities, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) funding uses federal money to provide those services.  One child using this money could bring the entire private school under federal regulations. This is a complicated issue that was left unanswered by the Education Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner, legal counsel for the House, and legal counsel for the DOE.  Both bills include IDEA funding for students with disabilities who leave the public system to go into the private system.  Schools need to be aware of this issue and careful that they do not come under federal regulations. In conclusion, by taking this money, the private schools are taking on the responsibility of annual testing, adding administrative tasks and possibly legal consultation fees to their budgets, putting themselves under direct evaluation by the DOE for academic performance, and possibly opening themselves up to fraud charges if the money is not handled just as the yet to be promulgated rules allow.   They also must be careful with the use of IDEA funds for special education student needs or could end up under federal regulations. Even more important, everyone should be aware that federal ESSA guidelines are being followed for testing schedules which sets the state up for being able to take federal funds in this endeavor in the future which could put private schools under federal regulations. Private schools need to count the costs carefully before accepting this money.

Stay Tuned for a Call To Action March 12th (tomorrow).

CORRECTION 3/22/24

WE LEARN SOMETHING NEW EVERYDAY

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.

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School Choice Infringes on Religious and Parental Rights

March 3, 2024 Eric Potter Current Inks, Legislation Alerts ,

               Behind any legislation, even well-intentioned legislation, which infuses public money into the private spheres of community and family life, lurks many dangers to liberty. This danger is greatest in the education of children because their education goes far beyond the mere transmission of neutral facts and figures floating around outside of meaningful context. Instead, children, as human beings and not mere data crunching machines, always receive facts and figures within a context or framework of meaning. These facts are always communicated- both implicitly and explicitly- in the context of a wider world and life view which answers the larger questions: religious questions of meaning and purpose such as “Why am I here?” and “How am I to live?” Education by its very nature is a religious exercise, which brings concern for the inalienable rights of human beings to bear upon this legislation.

               In fact, it is in the education of children that we find an intersection between the inalienable right of freedom of conscience and of religion and the inalienable right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children. Education is an inculcation or passing along of a world and life view; again it is a religious exercise. Freedom of religion or conscience is clearly delineated in both the First Amendment and in Article One Section 3 of the Tennessee Constitution. Therefore, in the state of Tennessee, parents are guaranteed the freedom to pass along their religious and life view as dictated by their conscience. Opening the door to further governmental mandates regarding parents and their children’s education endangers these rights. This ESA legislation, with its infusion of public money into the private schools and homeschools, opens a door for ever greater government infringement upon the God-given responsibility of parents.   

               Therefore, the interweaving of the inalienable rights of freedom of religion with inalienable parental rights within the arena of education demands that the government refrain from unconstitutionally inserting its power where parental responsibility lies because it is the sworn duty of our legislators to wield their power within the constitutional framework. Those proposing expansion to a universal ESA program in Tennessee must answer for their willingness to open a door regarding state usurpation of these ordained, inalienable rights and responsibilities of parents. Rather than institute tax relief measures for families, this legislation creates another government program, and we all know that government programs cost public money. Inevitably, this public money requires accountability from those involved. In this program, parents and private schools will be held accountable for outcomes measurement, but measurements require standardization for comparison between various cohorts. In this case standardized tests like the TCAP will be required by the state- perhaps first for those taking the money but which could later easily extend to every child in a private institution which accepts any ESA funding. Such bills have already been proposed. We do not yet know if private entities will be forced to take the ESA vouchers, though that measure has been proposed in the past. Universal accountability through universal measurement logically flows from putting public money in private institutions.

               Here the inalienable rights of parents bump up against the public’s right to know the outcomes from the use of their public money. Although parents in the private system may hold significantly divergent worldviews from those appointed to the bureaucratic boards, because of the public money flowing into their private institutions, the door has been opened for government mandates to infringe upon the parent’s inalienable right to direct the upbringing of their own children- such as through mandatory testing which would fail to properly assess children in non-conventional educational settings. Therefore, in order to continually “prove” to the state that they have the “right” to rear their own children, parents will be forced to teach towards a test chosen by the state, regardless of their parental choice or their child’s needs. This use of governmental force upon the family violates freedom of conscience and parental rights.

               Further, public money flowing into private institutions opens the door to government intrusion into the community and family, contrary to the Tennessee Constitution. Section XI Article 12 reads, “The General Assembly shall provide for the maintenance, support and eligibility standards of a system of free public schools.” It does not give the General Assembly the authority to oversee or delegate the oversight of education for those involved in private education- precisely what public money use will demand.

               Much more could be said about the dangers of this type of legislation.  Both my stated and unstated concerns are borne out by evidence from other states and by logical inference. ESA legislation as applied to private schools and homeschools through the infusion of public money into private education opens wide the door to impingement upon the inalienable rights and responsibilities of parents in directing the upbringing and education of their children, especially as inextricably related to freedom of religion. Contrary to the claims of its proponents, this plan fails as Parent Choice legislation; it should instead be called State Choice legislation.  

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A Brief Overview of the School Choice Movement in America

February 19, 2024 Eric Potter Current Inks, Legislation Alerts ,

       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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Show Me the Bill

February 15, 2024 Eric Potter Current Inks, Legislation Alerts , ,

We, the people of the State of Tennessee, as parents, grandparents, future parents, teachers, and if nothing else taxpaying citizens respectfully request that our elected officials temporarily serving us at our voting discretion immediately publish for public consideration the language for the Education Freedom Act.

This proposed legislation was first announced in November of 2023 by our Governor. The legislation filing deadline has passed with only 2 caption bills filed, SB2787 and HB2468. These bills only request a study of this school choice program to be performed, yet through accidental leaks we have seen potential drafts of a full program bill. Per legislative rules, the full bill could be added as an amendment with only 24 hours notice for public viewing before an Education Committee vote occurs in either legislative chamber.

This situation is considered unacceptable by the citizens of Tennessee who will be burdened by at least $140,000,000 per year expense for an unproven program to eventually impact the full population of Tennessee children for decades and change our educational system profoundly.

If our request for transparency and opportunity for dialogue is not granted, we will press our position until our public servants respond.

If you agree with me, go to the Education committee pages for each house and either email this or call their office. Also let others know.

House of Representatives Education Committee

Senate Education Committee

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Open Letter to Tennessee State Legislators

February 3, 2024 Eric Potter Legislation Alerts ,

To our Legislative Representatives,

As Tennessee homeschooling parents, we are writing to inform you of both our stance against school choice and offer bullet points explaining why we oppose Governor Lee’s Education Freedom proposal.  We know that you have many bills to consider and are pressed to delve into each one as deeply as you might want. We have written longer essays on this issue if you want references and more details.

Our Governor has proposed (though the final bill is pending at this time) a plan to extend the current limited school choice program to 20,000 students across the state and then to extend further in future years.  We oppose the legislation for the following reasons:

  1. This legislation will draw public and private education together through a single funding source.  Sharing a single funding source will bring them under the same government control thereby limiting education freedom rather than extending it.
  2. We have reviewed the available literature from multiple scholarly sources and found that the studies evaluating other state programs are not impressive.  There appears to be little return on investment for the large sums of money being poured into this idea.
  3. In other states, the public funding has created religious liberty issues for the religious schools receiving the money.  This resulted in a 2-year court battle for a Maryland school.  The religious liberties of parents may be hindered as well depending on regulations attached.
  4. In other states, school choice bills have been passed only to be later modified by future legislation OR state education departments adding regulations which were not there in the original bill.  This is a reminder of “pass the bill so we can see what is in it” as well as the ways bureaucracy can “mold” the bill to fit their own ideology.
  5. Homeschoolers are generally very leery of government money directly to them or to their category IV umbrella schools that could bring regulatory strings.  Most want nothing to do with this government money nor do they want to be caught up in secondary regulations springing from it.
  6. This is ultimately an entitlement program which has the potential to grow into a monstrous expense for taxpayers as seen in other states we researched.  We should say no now rather than wait until projections of 100s of millions become a burdensome reality on taxpayers.

Parents have been assigned by God the primary role in directing the upbringing and education of their children.  We do not want the government to extend its control any further into parental freedoms to educate our children.  The proposed but unfiled legislation by Governor Lee will ultimately lead to State Choice of children’s education rather than Parent Choice. 

Sincerely,

Dr. Eric and Jennifer Potter

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Homeschooling and the School Choice Black Hole

January 31, 2024 Eric Potter Current Inks, Legislation Alerts ,

               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

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Tennessee School Choice – Part 3 of 3

January 24, 2024 Eric Potter Legislation Alerts ,

(continuing from part 2 where we considered the outcomes of the current limited program)

The Universal School Choice Proposal

The following description will be unavoidably a little vague thanks to the fact that our Governor and legislators have not given us the final proposal in ink as of January 18th, I will provide as many details as have been stated by the Governor and others in his administration.  They propose an expansion of the current pilot program to include 20,000 students in the coming school year who would receive $7075 in an educational scholarship rather than a voucher program (although the actual results are basically the same regardless of what you label them, “scholarships” versus “vouchers”).  In the first year, 10,000 of those scholarships would be allocated for lower income families with the remaining being for anyone who applied. In the second year, the 20,000 scholarships would not have any income limitations but be prioritized for the same students who had already received a scholarship the prior year.  The longer-term goal would be that these 20,000 numbers would be increased in coming years until “all” children who want to change schools would be able to receive such a scholarship.  Currently, no mention is made of whether the $7075 amount would be increased for those who could not afford private school even with this original amount.  While the ink is not even wet, much less dray on a formal bill, these numbers are probably decent estimates of what they will propose.

From there, the facts of the proposal get hazier.  The ideals of these scaling goals must touch down and meet with the reality that such sums of taxpayer money will require oversight and accountability to administer such funds.  No one wants to just start throwing money out the windows of the state capitol for parents and private schools to grab and go.  Any and all government programs will have some rules not only on who can receive the money as noted with income limitations above, but how they spend it and for the private schools who receive the money.  Politicians often call this “accountability” while the recipients may view this more in terms of “strings’ attached to the money.  Logically, we can agree that if we give money to someone, we have some right to influence or even control how they spend it before we give them more money the next year.  Here we get into the hazy areas where we must flush out clear answers before we either move forward with Tennessee universal school choice or a parent applies for a scholarship.  Either way, we must know what strings are attached to that money in the name of accountability.

Several questions regarding the final strings must be answered to determine how tightly the state will control either the parents or the schools receiving the money.  First, what reporting requirements will follow the money to the student’s home or the private school?  Possible reporting requirements for the parents could include receipts from the schools, receipts for school supplies, or invoices for educational services like tutoring or therapy.  Parents also need to know whether they will have to get pre-approval or assume that expenses are covered if they appear to be within the rules.  Therapy service providers should ask whether they will receive payment up front from the parents who then wait for reimbursement or directly from the program at a delayed date.  Possible reporting for the schools will likely include how many children with scholarships did they enroll, but could also include testing scores for those children, how the money was spent (i.e. publicly reported accounting), what curriculum was taught, and what worldviews were taught.  Given that the purpose of accountability is to be sure a parent or a school is using the money in accordance with the program’s rules, this reporting will determine such things as whether a parent has to repay any of the scholarship, the school has to refund any portion, or if either has any penalty such as loss of the scholarship.  With this accountability both parent and school will be tied to the state’s rules which may not align with the parent’s or the school’s goals.  Both parents and schools need to understand what they are agreeing to before supporting this program or participating in it.

The private schools of this state must know what restrictions will be imposed upon them for accepting students and their scholarship money.  Will the schools be able to reject a student who is not academically ready for their school?  Will the schools be able to reject a student with lifestyle practices that do not align with the school’s stated religious beliefs?  Will the school be forced at any point to use a specific curriculum?  Such forcing could be explicit by government legal actions or could be implicit in that the school’s standardized test scores may be at a disadvantage if they do not use a curriculum designed for the test by which they will be measured.  In these and other situations, the private schools may be influenced to change how they run their school and teach their students.

The parents of students already in those private schools must know what this scholarship money accountability could do to affect their children even if they personally never take the government money.  Students in private schools or the homeschool umbrella programs could find themselves having to abide by the same regulations as the scholarship students.  If private schools determine that it is easier and less expensive to operate by one standard for all rather than two standards within their school, they may choose to apply one-size-fits all state regulations to all their students.  Private schools may find that they need to use curriculum which will boost their standardized testing scores in order to continue to receive scholarship funding.  Even homeschoolers could be drawn into this accountability vortex through their umbrella schools despite having run from any involvement in the whole affair.  The homeschoolers could be forced to abide by the one-size-fits-all policy decisions made by their umbrella schools that participate in the school choice program.

Show Us the Money

For an expanded Tennessee school choice program, we the citizens of Tennessee should ask for our legislators to “Show us the money!”.  The motto of TISA has been that the money follows the child.  One impetus behind school choice has been the idea that by taking money from public schools and transferring it with the child to a private school, the public school will be forced to compete and improve their educational programs.  Many on both sides of the political fence have already asked whether public schools would lose any funding when students leave their school.  While TISA’s foundational principles earlier stated would make us think that public schools would lose money, multiple leaders have pledged that our state public school system would not lose any money.  Unless our leaders have some magic trick up their sleeves, they will then have to find another money source to use for this scholarship program.  No longer will this “competition” for dollars be a driver for public schools to compete for student success.  Apparently, each child with a scholarship will drop off their TISA money at the local school district and pick up a scholarship to carry to a private school. 

Since we are now talking about adding to our state’s expenses, we should ask further questions about how much this is going to cost Tennessee.  Currently, the voiced but unwritten proposal is for 20,000 scholarships at $7,075 to be distributed.  That equals over 140 million of taxpayer money.  That is not counting the cost of administering the program.  Tracking 20,000 students at hundreds of schools with countless receipts, invoices, and test scores will not be cheap.  However, this is just the tip of the uncharted iceberg.  Governor Lee hopes to expand the program one day so that all students can choose their school.  This may end up looking more like North Carolina’s universal school choice program projected to reach an over 500-million-dollar price tag in coming years.  Given that the source of these hundreds of millions has not been made publicly clear, serious questions remain to be answered.

Since we have no publicly available written proposal for this program, we are left to our Governor’s marketing and the random comments of legislators willing to comment.  A list of their comments is daily changing as they speak at events or to the media and can be found with an internet search.  The short answers from such a query include the following.  None admit to having seen a formal bill and therefore say they cannot answer in specifics until they have specifics to comment on.  None openly want to harm the children remaining in the public school system by taking money from public schools.  None advocate giving away money without some measure of accountability for it’s use. Ultimately, we get a lot a vague opinions and general principles, but still little real information to go on.  Asking our legislators for answers so far has not been productive.

In Conclusion

Tennessee has an opportunity to choose wisely or foolishly.  We the people could be left paying a hefty price tag for a government program that not only has yet to prove its efficacy, but could bring undesired strings for not only scholarship recipients but also students in private schools as well as homeschools.  Our state could be saddled with increased spending without a predictable and reasonable return on investment for children’s education.  Our governor hastily seeks to move far beyond a pilot program without giving us either clear proof of the current pilot program’s success or clear plans for what this larger scale program will mean for parents and private schools.  So far, I just see shallow advertising without anything to back up their desire for launching the pilot program into a full scale operation.

Bibliography:

Aldrich, M. W. (2023, July 26). Teachers sue over Tennessee law restricting what they can teach about race, gender, Bias. Chalkbeat. https://www.chalkbeat.org/tennessee/2023/7/26/23808118/tennessee-teachers-lawsuit-tea-prohibited-concepts-crt-bill-lee-race-gender-bias/.  Accessed January 17, 2024.

COVID-19 School Data Hub. (2023). 2023 state test score results: Tennessee. State Brief 2023-01-TN-01. Providence, RI: COVID-19 School Data Hub. https://www.covidschooldatahub.com/.  Accessed January 17, 2024.

Hanson, Melanie. “U.S. Public Education Spending Statistics” EducationData.org, September 8, 2023, https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statistics.  Accessed January 17, 2024.

Kelly, M. (2023, March 3). Parents concerned about bullying at Stewart County Middle School after student’s death. WKRN News 2. https://www.wkrn.com/news/local-news/parents-concerned-about-bullying-at-stewart-county-middle-school-after-students-death/.  Accessed January 17, 2024.

Ohm, R. (2017, December 15). Keaton Jones bullying case highlights problem in Tennessee schools. Knoxville News Sentinel. https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/education/2017/12/15/keaton-jones-bullying-case-highlights-problem-tennessee-schools/952235001/.  Accessed January 17, 2024.

State of Tennessee. (2023). Education Freedom. Tennessee Education Freedom One Pager. https://tneducationfreedom.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Education-Freedom-One-Pager-1.pdf.  Accessed January 17, 2024.

State of Tennessee. (2023, November 28). Parents Choose, Students Succeed. TN Education Freedom. https://tneducationfreedom.com/#section-accodion-7’.  Accessed January 17, 2024.

Tennessee Department of Education Report Card. Tennessee Department of Education. (2024). https://tdepublicschools.ondemand.sas.com/grades  and https://tdepublicschools.ondemand.sas.com/.  Accessed January 17, 2024.

Wethington, C. (2024, January 10). Former Lebanon High School teacher behind bars for statutory rape of student. WSMV4. https://www.wsmv.com/2024/01/10/former-lebanon-high-school-teacher-behind-bars-statutory-rape-student/.  Accessed January 17, 2024.

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Tennessee School Choice – Part 2 of 3

January 22, 2024 Eric Potter Current Inks, Legislation Alerts ,

(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:

Aldrich, M. W. (2023, July 26). Teachers sue over Tennessee law restricting what they can teach about race, gender, Bias. Chalkbeat. https://www.chalkbeat.org/tennessee/2023/7/26/23808118/tennessee-teachers-lawsuit-tea-prohibited-concepts-crt-bill-lee-race-gender-bias/.  Accessed January 17, 2024.

COVID-19 School Data Hub. (2023). 2023 state test score results: Tennessee. State Brief 2023-01-TN-01. Providence, RI: COVID-19 School Data Hub. https://www.covidschooldatahub.com/.  Accessed January 17, 2024.

Hanson, Melanie. “U.S. Public Education Spending Statistics” EducationData.org, September 8, 2023, https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statistics.  Accessed January 17, 2024.

Kelly, M. (2023, March 3). Parents concerned about bullying at Stewart County Middle School after student’s death. WKRN News 2. https://www.wkrn.com/news/local-news/parents-concerned-about-bullying-at-stewart-county-middle-school-after-students-death/.  Accessed January 17, 2024.

Ohm, R. (2017, December 15). Keaton Jones bullying case highlights problem in Tennessee schools. Knoxville News Sentinel. https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/education/2017/12/15/keaton-jones-bullying-case-highlights-problem-tennessee-schools/952235001/.  Accessed January 17, 2024.

State of Tennessee. (2023). Education Freedom. Tennessee Education Freedom One Pager. https://tneducationfreedom.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Education-Freedom-One-Pager-1.pdf.  Accessed January 17, 2024.

State of Tennessee. (2023, November 28). Parents Choose, Students Succeed. TN Education Freedom. https://tneducationfreedom.com/#section-accodion-7’.  Accessed January 17, 2024.

Tennessee Department of Education Report Card. Tennessee Department of Education. (2024). https://tdepublicschools.ondemand.sas.com/grades  and https://tdepublicschools.ondemand.sas.com/.  Accessed January 17, 2024.

Wethington, C. (2024, January 10). Former Lebanon High School teacher behind bars for statutory rape of student. WSMV4. https://www.wsmv.com/2024/01/10/former-lebanon-high-school-teacher-behind-bars-statutory-rape-student/.  Accessed January 17, 2024.

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