(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 18^th, 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.

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