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Voucher Bill

Photo: CDC | Unsplash

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, who never lets a chance to try to steer public funding to private schools pass him by, is having a good week. State Senate and House majority leaders filed identical bills to create “Education Freedom Scholarships” that would give $7,075 in public funding for a private education to 20,000 Tennessee students, beginning in the fall of 2025. The plan would grow in scope in subsequent years.

The bill has been opposed by the state’s large city school systems and by legislators in many rural districts, where there are often no private school options, and where getting adequate funding for public schools is often difficult. The voucher bill is also opposed by the vast majority of the state’s public school teachers. 

That’s bad enough, but later in the week, Voucher Bill (see what I did there?) got more good news. In case you haven’t been paying attention, GOP luminaries of all stripes are now urging the abolishment of the federal Department of Education. See, that way, supporters say, the money from the feds would come directly into the state’s coffers, to be dispensed under the supervision of, well, Bill Lee. Shocker, right? It should come as no surprise that Lee is all for killing the education department.

“We know Tennessee. We know our children,” Lee said. “We know the needs here much better than a bureaucracy in Washington, D.C., does.”

No you don’t, Bill. What you know how to do — and what you have tried to do for years — is slide public tax dollars into the coffers of private education firms that will then grease the palms of pols such as yourself. If you cared about Tennessee’s children, you wouldn’t want to funnel our tax dollars to well-off Tennesseans who will use it for tuition fees for little Bradley’s third-grade year at Hillbilly Bible Kollege. 

Lee and the GOP have been fighting for vouchers to become law for years, and this time around, given the upcoming change in the White House, they might have the juice to pull it off. If the last election proved anything, it is that the average American is anything but well-informed and well-educated. One of the most googled questions on Election Day was, “Did Joe Biden drop out?” Lawd, help us. 

Here are a few numbers to ponder (and weep over): 21 percent of adults in the U.S. are illiterate; 54 percent of adults have a literacy below 6th grade level; 45 million read below a 5th grade level; 44 percent of American adults do not read a book in a year. So yeah, let’s fix that by cutting public school funding and giving people money to send their kids to private schools. 

My parents weren’t rich, but I grew up privileged. Only we didn’t call it privilege back then because it was so ordinary. In the small Midwestern town where we lived, everybody I knew — Black, white, brown, poor, middle-class, or wealthy — went to the same public schools and attended the town’s single public high school. 

It was a great equalizer, and kids learned — sometimes the hard way — not to get too snooty. I’m not so naive as to think that my Black classmates didn’t suffer negative experiences that were beyond the experiences I had, but we did all manage to get along. And we all had the same opportunity to learn with the same teachers, using the same facilities in the same classrooms, no matter a family’s income level. That is a great and powerful thing about public education — it’s an equalizer. But it needs to be funded and nourished. An investment in educating our youth is one of the best possible uses of our tax dollars. Instead of destroying the Department of Education, we should be funding it better and putting it in the hands of someone with creative ideas to support teachers and inspire students.

I’m not holding my breath, though. I’d put the odds at 50-50 that the Education Department survives the coming administration. And if it does, given the clown-car level of cabinet appointments thus far, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Trump appointed the My Pillow guy to the job. 

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Gov. Lee Backs Trump Plan to Abolish U.S. Department of Education

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, who has criticized the federal government for "excessive overreach," said Wednesday that the U.S. education department should be eliminated during Donald Trump's second term as president. (TN.gov)

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters

Gov. Bill Lee said Wednesday that he’d welcome closing the U.S. Department of Education under President-elect Donald Trump’s administration, adding that states can do a better job of deciding how to spend federal dollars on students.

“I believe that Tennessee would be more capable than the federal government of designing a strategy for spending federal dollars in Tennessee,” Lee told reporters when asked about the prospect.

“We know Tennessee. We know our children. We know the needs here much better than a bureaucracy in Washington, D.C. does,” Lee said.

The Republican governor’s comments come as Trump assembles his cabinet after defeating Vice President Kamala Harris last week to win a second term in office. As of Wednesday, he had not named his choice to be U.S. Secretary of Education.

During his campaign, Trump said one of his first acts as president would be to “close the Department of Education, move education back to the states.” The Republican Party’s platform also calls for shuttering the federal agency, as does the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.

Tennessee’s governor called it “a great idea” to dismantle the agency, which was created under a 1979 federal law during President Jimmy Carter’s administration.

“I think the federal bureaucracy that was built into the Department of Education starting in 1979 has created just that: a bureaucracy,” Lee said.

Tennessee has a template for spending federal funds

Trump has not provided a detailed plan for what would happen to federal funding or particular programs if the U.S. Department of Education were shuttered — a move that would require an act of Congress.

Lee suggested that education funding could be distributed to states similar to how Tennessee negotiated a Medicaid block grant waiver program with the first Trump administration, giving the state government more control over how it spent the money.

“We saved Tennesseans a billion dollars in taxpayer money over four years,” Lee said, “and we split the savings with the federal government.”

Federal funds typically make up about a tenth of a state’s K-12 budget. For Tennessee, that amounts to about $1.8 billion distributed to local districts for its public schools, most of which supports students with disabilities, from low-income families, or still learning English.

Lee said Tennessee would continue to spend that money to support its neediest students.

“I think that Tennessee is incredibly capable of determining how dollars should be spent to take care of kids with disabilities, to take care of kids that live in sparse populations, or with English as a second language,” he said.

Asked about the federal agency’s enforcement of civil rights protections — which some have suggested could pivot to the U.S. Department of Justice — Lee said the state would have a role in that work, too.

“The complaint process could and would still exist,” Lee said. “We would make sure that it happens in this state.”

Critics question the state’s commitment to special student groups

Tennessee doesn’t have a very good track record of educating and caring for its students who need significant additional support.

It was one of many states, for instance, that once had laws excluding children with disabilities from public schools. The premise was that those kids would not benefit from a public school education. Before the passage of a 1975 federal law establishing the right to a public education for kids with disabilities, only 1 in 5 of those children were educated in public schools.

Recently, the Tennessee Disability Coalition gave the state a “D” grade on its annual performance scorecard that includes education services.

Students with disabilities comprise a significant part of Tennessee’s public education system.

About a tenth of the state’s public school students use an individualized education plan, or IEP, that’s intended to ensure that the student receives specialized instruction and related services for their disability.

Federal laws protecting students with disabilities would remain on the books even if the education department went away, but it’s not clear how enforcement would work or what would happen to funding. The authors of Project 2025 suggested that funding be turned into something resembling a voucher and given to families.

Federal education funding has been hotly debated in Tennessee

Tennessee has gone further than any other state in recent history in rethinking its relationship with the federal government.

A year ago, after House Speaker Cameron Sexton suggested that Tennessee should look into the idea of rejecting federal funds, a legislative task force spent months studying the feasibility of such an idea.

Citing testing mandates, Sexton had complained of federal strings attached to those dollars. And the governor voiced support for the panel’s work and complained of “excessive overreach” by the federal government.

But some critics said the bigger issue was the U.S. education department’s role in enforcing constitutionally guaranteed civil rights protections for students.

Ultimately, the panel’s Senate and House members disagreed about their findings and issued separate recommendations. The Senate report highlighted the risks of taking the unprecedented step of rejecting federal funding, while the House report recommended taking incremental actions to further explore the idea. Nothing specific happened in the ensuing months.

Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Memphis Democrat who served on the panel, said the Senate’s conclusions should give the governor pause.

“There are reasons why we have the U.S. Department of Education — to make sure that all kids have the opportunity to receive a public education and to have their civil rights protected,” Akbari said.

She noted that segregated schools existed less than 75 years ago across the nation.

“It’s unthinkable that we would move away from these very sacred and important protections, not just regarding race but gender, children with special needs, the handicapped community,” Akbari said.

Alexza Barajas Clark, who heads the EdTrust advocacy group in Tennessee, said the federal role in education is “to level the playing field for all students,” especially those from rural communities and low-income families or who have a disability.

“Let’s not lose focus about what is at stake,” Clark said. “At the center of every education policy decision is a student.”

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

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

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Teachers Scoff at Bonuses In Gov. Lee’s School Voucher Plan

Credit: Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, who’s trying again to enact his statewide private school voucher plan, is hoping to win over critics and skeptics with a $2,000 bonus for public school teachers. But many educators who would be eligible for the extra cash are dismissing it as a diversion tactic.

Some are calling Lee’s bonus offer an attempted bribe, or “hush money,” as he seeks to expand policies that provide public funding for students to attend private schools. Others say it’s insulting to teaching professionals who have spent their careers advocating for their students, and for more funding to support them.

“It’s a one-time bonus that’s basically asking us to sell out our public schools,” said Liz Marable, a longtime Memphis educator who is currently president of the United Education Association of Shelby County. “But we are not for sale.”

Details of the latest universal voucher proposal, reached during months of negotiations between the governor’s office and legislative leaders, emerged last week after Election Day. House and Senate Republican sponsors filed identical bills in an effort to avoid disagreements between the two chambers that killed their first attempts this spring in committees, even though Republicans held a supermajority in the legislature.

Some concerns that critics raised about the earlier bills apply to the new package, too. Among them: The program could create long-term funding uncertainty for public schools and set uneven standards for accountability through testing. It wouldn’t guarantee accommodations and services for students with disabilities and would bar undocumented students from participating, in violation of federal law.

The one-time bonus for approximately 86,000 public school teachers is new to the mix. It would cost about $172 million, which could itself be a concern during a fiscal year when state economists project declining or stagnant revenues.

The bonuses, and other public school benefits in the legislation, aren’t intended specifically to win over teachers, of course; they won’t get to vote on it. Rather, they’re aimed at winning over Republican lawmakers, mostly in rural Tennessee, who are wary of vouchers’ impact on their public schools.

These lawmakers have to answer to constituents in areas where public schools are often the only educational option, the largest employer, and the hub of their communities. Lee and Republican legislative leaders are betting that the bonus will make a vote for vouchers more politically palatable.

Lee’s Education Freedom Act also proposes new money to help local districts pay for school maintenance and construction. And it includes “hold harmless” language that pledges the state will reimburse school systems for any lost funding tied to students who withdraw from public schools to accept vouchers and attend private schools.

Educators interviewed by Chalkbeat said that they believe the promised reimbursements would be short-lived, and that the funding would be eliminated from future state budgets, ultimately draining resources from their public schools.

“Teachers aren’t fooled by the promise of a small bonus in exchange for a bill that would lead to public schools closing across the state,” said Tanya T. Coats, a Knox County teacher who is president of the state’s largest teacher organization, the Tennessee Education Association.

The one-year bonus would barely address pay disparities between teachers in Tennessee and those in other states. The average teacher in Tennessee made below $58,000, compared with $69,597 nationally, during 2022-23, the latest year for which national data is available, according to an analysis by the National Education Association.

The governor is budgeting next year to increase the state’s minimum salary for teachers from $44,500 to $47,000, in accordance with his plan to get base pay to $50,000 by the time he leaves office in 2027.

But critics say those increases aren’t rewarding experienced teachers, keeping up with inflation, or attracting high-quality candidates to the teaching profession, which is suffering from sagging morale.

Kathryn Vaughn has been a full-time teacher in Tennessee for 20 years and works two other jobs to make ends meet. She’s unimpressed by the idea of a $2,000 bonus, which likely would be closer to $1,400 after taxes. The underlying goal of Lee’s voucher plan, she believes, is to defund public education.

“If you’re really serious about helping teachers, why not make some sort of systemic change to teacher pay to alleviate the starvation funding we’re operating under?” said Vaughn, an elementary school art teacher in Tipton County.

Linking benefits for teachers to school choice agenda

It’s not the first time the governor has sought to package benefits for teachers with more controversial education proposals.

In 2023, Lee pressed for a bill to guarantee gradual minimum pay boosts for teachers during his second term in office — and also to ban school districts from making payroll deductions for employees’ professional association dues. Teacher groups and many lawmakers objected to the tactic, but the bill eventually passed.

Similarly, Lee’s bonus proposal is tied to the creation of a statewide program to give $7,075 each in public funding toward the cost of a private education for up to 20,000 Tennessee students, beginning next fall.

Lee has pushed for more education choices for families, while also investing hundreds of millions of dollars in public schools, since taking office in 2019. He remains adamant that both policies can complement each other.

“This piece of legislation represents a commitment to education for all children in the state, and that includes public funding, teacher funding, parental choice,” said Lee, when asked by reporters last week why the voucher and teacher bonus measures aren’t decoupled so lawmakers can vote on them separately.

Other governors, especially in predominantly Republican states, have used a similar playbook when pressing for vouchers.

In Arkansas, for instance, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a 2023 law to increase beginning public school teacher salaries from $36,000 to $50,000, while also creating a statewide voucher program to cover the costs of private school tuition, homeschooling expenses, and other educational expenses.

Teachers fear that vouchers will hurt their students

Many Tennessee teachers are skeptical about the new proposal to give them a bonus, viewing it as a ploy to push a policy agenda that they say will ultimately hurt their profession, public schools, and students in general.

“Teachers I am hearing from are very insulted that the sponsor of this bill thought any devoted Tennessee teacher would be willing to erode the future of public education for a one-time, taxed bonus of $2,000,” tweeted National Teacher of the Year Missy Testerman, who works for Rogersville City Schools in northeast Tennessee.

Like Testerman, Siema Swartzel teaches students who live mostly below the poverty level. More investments in public education would help, she said.

“I don’t see how creating a voucher program and adding $2,000 to my bank account is going to make sure my kids have all the things they need to be good learners,” said Swartzel, who teaches music at an elementary school in Cleveland, near Chattanooga. “They are our future, and I’m very afraid that vouchers will interfere with that.”

In Clarksville, near the Kentucky border, Karel Lea Biggs doesn’t think vouchers, as they’re proposed, would end up benefiting any of her middle schoolers, many of whom are considered economically disadvantaged.

Under Lee’s proposal, half of the first year’s vouchers would be subject to limits based on family income, but those limits would still be high: three times the threshold to qualify for free and reduced price school meals, or about $173,000 for a family of four. The remaining 10,000 slots would have no income restrictions.

Lee’s administration acknowledges that many enrollees would be the children of parents who intended to send their children to private schools anyway, and already had the resources to do so.

Meanwhile, Biggs says her public school desperately needs more resources to support students experiencing post-pandemic anxiety and other mental health issues. “A teacher bonus and vouchers,” she said, “just aren’t going to help my kids.”

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

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

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Tuition Could Rise Again at Tennessee Universities Next Year

Credit: University of Memphis via Facebook

The cost of tuition at Tennessee’s public universities could rise again as the Tennessee Higher Education Commission (THEC) reviews the topic in a meeting slated for next week. 

Commission staff said the state’s university system needs $75 million in new funds each year going forward. Most of the new funds — $40 million — will fund operations. The other portion — $35 million — will go to a 2.5 percent increase in raises for university staff. That figure is indexed to the state’s salary increases. 

THEC gets about $1.5 billion from the state each year. The system will will ask for those new funds in next year’s state budget. 

But the system’s total budget is about $3.3 billion. State schools get 57 percent of their money from student tuition and fees at universities. Tennessee community colleges get 40 percent from them and colleges of applied technology get 33 percent, according to THEC. 

To cover revenues here, THEC staff will suggest commission members consider a tuition and fee increase between 0-5 percent for the next school year.  

With a 1-percent increase suggested for next year, tuition at the school would increase by $107 to $10,835. Tuition and fees at the University of Memphis (U of M) have risen 8.1 percent over the last five years. Tuition and fees now cost students $10,728 at U of M. That’s up from $9,924 in the 2019-2020 school year. 

Tuition at Tennessee Technological University (TTU) increased 22 percent over the last five years, the largest of any THEC school. University of Tennessee Chattanooga (UTC) has raised tuition by nearly 13 percent in that time. 

Tuition at University of Tennessee at Knoxville (UT) remains the highest in the THEC schools at $13,812.

The THEC will meet on Thursday to review a change to the tuition increase range. They’ll likely set concrete rates in a future meeting.     

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School Voucher Bills to Be First Filed Ahead of Next Legislative Session

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, flanked by Republican legislative leaders, speaks with reporters after the 2024 General Assembly adjourned on April 25 in Nashville. The defeat of Lee's universal voucher proposal was a major setback for his administration. (Courtesy of State of Tennessee)

A new universal school-voucher proposal will be the first bill filed for Tennessee’s upcoming legislative session, signaling that Gov. Bill Lee intends to make the plan his number-one education priority for a second straight year.

Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson (R-Franklin) said last week that he’ll file his chamber’s legislation on the morning of Nov. 6, the day after Election Day. He expects House Majority Leader William Lamberth (R-Portland) will do the same.

The big question is whether House and Senate Republican leaders will be able to agree on the details in 2025. The 114th Tennessee General Assembly convenes on Jan. 14 as Lee begins his last two years in office.

During the 2024 session, the governor’s Education Freedom Scholarship proposal stalled in finance committees over disagreements about testing and funding, despite a GOP supermajority, and even as universal voucher programs sprang up in several other states.

Sponsors in the Tennessee House, where voucher programs have had a harder time getting support from rural Republicans and urban Democrats, attempted to woo votes with an omnibus-style bill that included benefits for public schools, too. But Senate Republican leaders balked at the scope and cost of the House version.

On Monday, Johnson gave a voucher update to school board members in Williamson County, which he represents, on the development of new legislation.

Similar to last year’s proposal, the new bill would provide about $7,000 in taxpayer funds to each of up to 20,000 students to attend a private school beginning next fall, with half of the slots going to students who are considered economically disadvantaged. By 2026, all of Tennessee’s K-12 students, regardless of family income, would be eligible for vouchers, though the number of recipients would depend on how much money is budgeted for the program.

“The bill is not finalized, but we’re all working together with the governor’s office to come up with a bill we all can support,” Johnson told Chalkbeat after the presentation.

Testing accountability is among chief issues to settle.

Johnson said the Senate’s 2025 bill will again include some type of testing requirement for voucher recipients — either state assessments or state-approved national tests — to gauge whether the program is improving academic outcomes.

However, the Senate bill would eliminate a previous provision that might have allowed public school students to enroll in any district, even if they’re not zoned for it. That policy proposal had been included at the insistence of Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg (R-Bristol), who lost his reelection bid in the August primary.

Lamberth, the House leader, did not respond this week to multiple requests for comment about his chamber’s plan, which in 2024 had no testing requirement for voucher recipients. Instead, the House version sought to dramatically reduce testing and accountability for public school students, including replacing high school end-of-course assessments with ACT college entrance exams.

The House bill also included numerous financial incentives to try to garner support from public school advocates. One idea was to increase the state’s contribution to pay for public school teachers’ medical insurance by redirecting $125 million the governor had earmarked for teacher salary increases.

Johnson told school board members the governor is planning a “substantial” increase for public education funding in 2025 but didn’t specify how much or for what.

“I think we’re going to have some things in there that will be great for all public education,” he said when asked later about including costly incentives such as teacher medical insurance funding. “Whether it’s in that (voucher) bill or if it’s in a separate bill is a great question. We will see. I don’t know the answer.”

Williamson County school board rescinds earlier anti-voucher resolution

Johnson told board members in his home district that he expects “nominal” impact to Williamson County’s two suburban school systems south of Nashville, if the bill passes the legislature in 2025. Most enrollees, he said, would be in urban areas that have more low-performing schools and private school options.

Later Monday, Williamson County’s board, including four newly elected members whose campaigns were supported by a conservative out-of-state political action committee, voted 10-2 to rescind a resolution passed by the previous board opposing Lee’s Education Freedom Scholarship Act.

The governor is from Williamson County and graduated from a public high school there in 1977. So it was significant when his local board voted in March to join more than 50 other school boards across Tennessee on record against his signature education proposal.

But Dennis Diggers, a new board member, argued that it was appropriate to revisit the issue given the recent election, and proposed rescinding the resolution.

“Four of the six candidates who won their election ran publicly for more than six months on this issue, so it was out there,” Diggers said. “I am not going to deny the parents in Williamson County the chance to help their kids.”

Meanwhile, a Tennessee policy organization that supports vouchers released a new poll showing 58 percent of the state’s voters are more inclined to support a candidate who supports letting parents collect public funding to choose where their child is educated, including public, private, charter, or home schools. The Beacon Center poll did not use the word “vouchers” in its question to voters, which tends to poll worse than language about “school choice.”

Universal vouchers would mark a major expansion of vouchers in Tennessee, where lawmakers voted in 2019 to create education savings account options for students in Memphis and Nashville. That targeted program, which has since expanded to the Chattanooga area, has 3,550 enrollees in its third year, still below the 5,000-student cap, according to data provided by the state education department.

A spokeswoman for the governor said his administration continues to work with both legislative chambers on a “unified” universal voucher bill to kick off discussions for the 2025 session. She also noted that $144 million remains in this year’s state budget for the program, even though lawmakers didn’t approve the bill.

“We remain grateful for the General Assembly’s continued commitment to deliver Education Freedom Scholarships to Tennessee families by keeping funding for last year’s proposal in the budget,” said Elizabeth Johnson, the governor’s press secretary.

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

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

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Report: Tennessee Policies, Not Students, Root of Classroom Discipline Problems

Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

Tennessee schools are increasingly punishing and excluding special education students with behavioral issues instead of providing them with evidence-based interventions to support their academic and behavioral growth, a new report says.

And it’s not the fault of teachers, school staff, or the students themselves, the author says.

In its report, released Friday, the Tennessee Disability Coalition blamed state policymakers for setting priorities and adopting policies that are ineffective at best, and likely harming thousands of the state’s most vulnerable students.

As a result, the coalition says, educators are using “ineffective, dangerous, counter-productive, and rights-violating practices” in the classroom.

The criticisms come after Tennessee enacted a string of increasingly stringent laws aimed at tightening discipline in the classroom — from the 2021 Teacher’s Discipline Act empowering teachers to remove chronically unruly students to a 2024 law requiring a one-year suspension for students who assault teachers at school.

Such policies, the report says, disproportionately affect students with disabilities, particularly those with behavioral issues, thereby restricting their educational opportunities.

“These policies not only sweep students with behavior needs into more restrictive settings, alternative school placements, and the juvenile justice system, they cast a net over other marginalized communities, including students of color and students in poverty,” the report says.

Jeff Strand, the coalition’s public policy director, said recent Tennessee laws also show a lack of understanding about special-needs students with behavioral challenges, leading to policies that are poorly suited to address the root causes of disciplinary issues.

“Good teachers know behavior issues are a child’s cry for help,” said Strand, a former special educator who authored the report. “What we’re doing in Tennessee is only making the problem worse.”

Specifically, the report calls out a shortage and high turnover of special education teachers; systemic gaps in training and support for special and general education teachers and administrators on the needs of students with behavior issues; a trend toward punitive and exclusionary practices; and a lack of student access to effective school-based supports and therapies, including enough school psychologists, counselors, speech-language pathologists, and board-certified behavior analysts.

Families: teachers are under-trained and overwhelmed

Chris and Angela Powell’s family has experienced gaps in school services firsthand as parents of a child with autism and ADHD.

They describe their son Charlie as intelligent, caring, and kind. But his behaviors — whether shouting out answers, failing to complete worksheets, or fighting — often resulted in lost recess, hours in the principal’s office, or even being physically restrained or placed in a padded room during his first few years of elementary school in Williamson County, south of Nashville.

“These are invisible disabilities, and his behavior was his form of communicating. But he was being excluded and punished based on his disability,” said Angela Powell, now a special-needs advocate. “His general education teachers didn’t seem to understand how to work with children who have needs like ADHD or autism.”

The Powells say Williamson County’s two school districts lacked qualified therapists and other specialized support staff, leaving teachers with few tools to tackle classroom misbehavior. Charlie eventually was placed on homebound instruction, receiving his lessons in a home setting and missing out on the opportunity to attend school with his non-disabled peers. Now 12, he is being homeschooled.

“If the richest district in Tennessee can’t help my son learn,” said Chris Powell, “I shudder to think what families deal with in the other 94 counties.”

Meanwhile, the report identified only three of the state’s 10 largest teacher training programs — at the University of Memphis, University of Tennessee-Knoxville, and University of Tennessee-Chattanooga — as offering more than two courses on teaching students with disabilities.

Also, while the state recently switched to a new K-12 education funding formula to provide more resources for students with higher needs, such as students with disabilities, the change did not require that districts designate such extra funds for special education services.

And while the state promised to inject an extra $1 billion annually in the K-12 funding pool, Tennessee remains in the bottom fifth of states in per-pupil funding.

Exclusion policies gave way to inclusion movement

Tennessee was once one of the many states that had laws formally excluding children with disabilities from public schools, on the premise that those kids would not benefit from a public school education. Before the passage of a 1975 federal law establishing the right to a public education for kids with disabilities, only 1 in 5 of those children were educated in public schools.

The expanded Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1990 marked the advent of the inclusion movement and the belief that children with disabilities, with some individualized support, can thrive in educational settings with their non-disabled peers.

But despite clear research on the benefits of inclusion for students with disabilities, surveys show general education teachers feel ill-prepared to work with them and struggle especially with special needs students with behavioral issues.

In Tennessee, about a tenth of the state’s public school students use an individualized education plan, or IEP, intended to ensure that the student receives specialized instruction and related services for their disability.

But according to data from the state education department, those same students receive a disproportionate share of formal disciplinary actions that include in-school and out-of-school suspension, expulsion, and transfer to alternative settings. In 2021-22, the most recent school year for which data are available, 12.5% of students with disabilities were removed from their classrooms, even though federal law limits excessive exclusionary discipline.

In addition, informal exclusionary disciplinary practices — which are difficult to quantify — are almost exclusively directed toward students with disabilities, the coalition says. They can include directing parents or guardians to take the student home for the day, inappropriate homebound placement, excessive use of threat assessments, inappropriate use of in-school suspension, and exclusion from school transportation.

Pending review of the report, a spokesperson for the state education department declined to comment on its assertions.

The leader of Professional Educators of Tennessee, which lobbied for the Teacher’s Discipline Act, acknowledged the challenges and nuances of disciplining students, especially those with special needs.

“We have seen since the pandemic an increase in mental health issues. That is why we at Professional Educators of Tennessee have worked hard to get additional funding for mental health in Tennessee,” said executive director JC Bowman.

He added that he’s open to new ideas that “ensure classrooms are safe and orderly, and every child has an opportunity to learn.”

The state comptroller is looking into the “informal removal” issue, also called “off-book suspensions.” Its Office of Research and Education Accountability has commissioned a report, which is expected to be released later this year, to better understand the use of informal removal, which often violates the rights of students with an IEP.

Strand says both pathways — formal and informal — can allow schools to avoid developing effective plans to correct bad behavior so they can stay in class and learn.

He recommends that Tennessee parents learn as much as they can about the rights of children with disabilities, including those with behavioral issues.

The coalition is hosting a free webinar at 5:30 p.m. Central time on Tuesday, June 25, on Facebook.

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

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

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Video: Literacy, Teacher Shortages Priorities for School Board Candidates

About 200 people braved flash-flood warnings and a downpour to attend a Memphis-Shelby County school board candidate forum at Idlewild Presbyterian Church on Monday, June 17, 2024. (Caroline Bauman / Chalkbeat)

Improving literacy rates, preparing students to compete globally, and combating teacher shortages are among the top challenges facing Memphis-Shelby County schools, candidates for the school board said at a forum Monday night.

About 200 people braved flash-flood warnings and a downpour to attend the forum at Idlewild Presbyterian Church. It was organized by Chalkbeat Tennessee and the Memphis Interfaith Coalition for Action and Hope, and co-sponsored by the Memphis Education Fund and the Urban Child Institute.

Five of the board’s nine seats are up for election on Aug. 1. Four of the candidates — board Chair Althea Greene, Stephanie Love, Frank Johnson, and Mauricio Calvo — are incumbents.

They and 15 other candidates took questions from Chalkbeat and the audience on how they would guide Tennessee’s largest school district if elected.

Besides prioritizing boosting student literacy — nearly 80 percent of MSCS students aren’t proficient in reading, based on standardized test scores — some of the candidates said they would also focus on curbing teacher shortages and approach the city of Memphis about helping to fund the school system.

An audience question about what the candidates would do to listen to teachers’ concerns without their fearing retaliation sparked a number of responses. Most said that they would do that by fortifying relationships with the teachers’ unions.

Natalie McKinney, who is vying for the District 2 seat currently held by Greene, said that teachers must trust the process, but they “don’t have a process in place that they believe they can trust.”

The election comes at a time of transition for Memphis-Shelby County Schools. A new superintendent, Marie Feagins, took over in April, and is dealing with a number of looming challenges, including navigating the end of federal pandemic relief funds, budget cuts that will impact staff and programs, aging facilities, and new state accountability systems.

The current board sparred with Feagins last week over proposed staffing cuts that were communicated ahead of a budget deadline.

To see what the candidates said at the forum, watch the full video recording. And to learn more about the candidates, check out Chalkbeat’s school board candidate voter guide.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Reach her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

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Judge Halts New Trans Protections In Tennessee Schools

(Credit: Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash)

A federal judge will temporarily allow some transgender discrimination in Tennessee and other states, skirting new changes to Title IX. 

Those changes came in President Joe Biden’s first day in office with an executive order that added gender identity and sexual orientation to the anti-discrimination law. Biden later extended those protections to educational environments. The rules are set to go into effect on August 1. All of these changes came after the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that prohibited companies from firing a person on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation. 

In April, Tennessee led a coalition in a lawsuit to block Biden’s new additions to Title IX. The group included Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia, Virginia, Christian Educators Association International (CEAI), and “A.C.”, a 15-year-old high school girl who lives in West Virginia. 

The states argued that the new law would chill free speech and religious freedom because teachers would, under the new rules, have to use a student’s “preferred pronouns,” according to the suit. The law would also mandate schools to open up bathrooms and locker rooms to all genders. The states also argued that the new rules subverted Congressional review and overreached into states’ powers to make such laws. 

CEAI opposed the rules on grounds of free speech and shared private facilities. Its members — particularly educators in K-12 public schools —  wish to “live and work consistent with their shared belief that God created human beings as male and female and that sex is an immutable trait.” 

A.C., the 15-year-old student, said a transgender female was allowed to compete on her middle-school track team. The other student’s biology is an unfair advantage, A.C. said, and she did not feel comfortable dressing in front of the other student.

A federal judge agreed with the plaintiffs in a Tuesday ruling.

“There are two sexes: male and female,” wrote Chief Judge Danny Reeves, United States District Court of Eastern Kentucky. But Reeves said in a footnote that the statement was conceded by U.S. Department of Education officials in oral arguments. “The parties have agreed to little else.”

Reeves ordered a preliminary injunction against the new rules but only in those states who joined in the lawsuit. The stay extends to the Christian educators group and A.C. in those six states. 

Tennessee schools and universities would have to let boys into girls’ locker rooms and other private spaces.

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti

“If the rule we stopped had been allowed to go into effect on August 1 as scheduled, Tennessee schools and universities would have to let boys into girls’ locker rooms and other private spaces,” Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said in a statement. “If the rule went into effect, our schools would have to punish teachers and students who declined to use someone’s preferred pronouns.

“These are profound changes to the law that the American people never agreed to.  This rule was a huge overreach by federal bureaucrats, and the court was right to stop it.”

Chris Sanders, executive director of the Tennessee Equality Project, said, “We have a state government going into battle against trans and non-binary students via their pronouns,” in an opinion piece in The Tennessean Monday. 

Government employees should not have more of a right to define a student’s identity than the student does.

Chris Sanders, executive director of the Tennessee Equality Project

“Students are better served by policies that respect their identities,” Sanders said. “They are at school to get an education without barriers, not to serve as an opportunity for adults to exercise virtue by choice. 

“Experiencing an agent of the state using the wrong pronoun in front of one’s peers day after day is something students should not endure. Government employees should not have more of a right to define a student’s identity than the student does.”

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GOP Candidates Quiet On School Vouchers in Election Season

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

While Gov. Bill Lee’s universal school voucher proposal is clearly a key issue this election year, there is less agreement on where Tennessee voters stand on the contentious education policy, incentivizing many state legislative candidates to avoid discussing the matter.

Numerous voter polls have generated wildly different results this year, depending on which organization was behind the survey and how the questions were asked.

As a result, rural Republican candidates, whose legislative votes would be pivotal in deciding the issue, aren’t generally trumpeting their positions on what would amount to a major policy change.

And when they do comment, the candidates are choosing their words carefully by using the language of “school choice” over “vouchers,” even though they’re essentially the same thing when it comes to letting parents use taxpayer money to send their children to private schools.

The divergent poll results, based on representative samplings of voters, underscore that vouchers remain a hot-button education issue as Tennesseans try to understand a complex idea that was the most divisive of the recent legislative session.

Supporters say the statewide voucher proposal, which the governor vowed to bring back to lawmakers next year after it failed to reach the Senate and House floors in April, would put parents in charge of their children’s education by giving them more choices. Critics say it would destabilize public education, bust the state’s budget, and further segregate schools by race, income, and students with special needs.

Now in his second term, Lee has characterized GOP support across Tennessee as solidly favoring his proposal, which is especially important in a red state where the winner of the Republican primary typically wins the general election.

The Republican governor, who campaigned on the promise of giving parents more education choices for their children, recently told Fox News that school choice is “a very popular idea among Republican primary voters.” He added that voters support it “by an overwhelming margin.”

“Legislators understand that; they know their voters want this,” Lee said.

But while vouchers have steadily gained support through the years, surveys of voter attitudes don’t necessarily bear out Lee’s claim.

Three pro-voucher groups — The Beacon Center, Americans for Prosperity, and the American Federation for Children — released findings early this year declaring broad support for expanding school vouchers in Tennessee as they sought to build momentum ahead of critical voucher votes in the General Assembly.

During the same period, the Tennessee Education Association, the state’s largest teachers organization and a voucher opponent, released results of its own poll showing only 30 percent of Republican primary voters supported the governor’s plan.

Most recently, Vanderbilt University’s poll found Tennessee voters evenly split on the matter.

When asked if they approve of the policy, 45 percent were in favor of vouchers, 46 percent opposed them, and 9 percent said they neither supported nor opposed the idea.

“These results show that vouchers remain a controversial issue,” said John Geer, the Vanderbilt poll’s co-director and a distinguished professor of political science.

“It is a complex and complicated topic,” he added. “That makes the issue difficult to measure in a poll.”

The uneven findings of various polls stem, in part, from how the questions were framed.

For instance, Americans for Prosperity asked voters: “Governor Lee is proposing a school choice program that will enable parents to take back control over $7K of their education tax dollars to educate their child in a private or home school environment if they choose to, giving parents more control over how and where their children are educated. Do you agree with the program Governor Lee is proposing?”

More than 70 percent responded ‘yes.’

By contrast, the TEA’s survey asked a series of questions delving into the structural and financial impacts that universal vouchers would have on the state’s public education system.

Among them: “Other states that have enacted statewide vouchers saw that 95 percent of students who benefitted were from wealthy families who had the resources to send their children to private schools or already attended private schools, mostly in rural areas, instead of providing resources to middle-income families and students from across the state. Does knowing this make you more or less likely to support school vouchers?”

More than 70 percent responded that they were less inclined to support the policy.

The Vanderbilt poll, which also examined issues such as abortion, vaccines, and gun control, was conducted this spring, soon after the legislature adjourned.

On vouchers, Vanderbilt pollsters asked: “Do you support, neither support nor oppose, or oppose Tennessee giving all parents tax-funded vouchers they can use to help pay for tuition for their school-age children to attend private or religious schools of their choice, instead of attending local public schools?”

“We don’t have an ax to grind, so we tried to be as straightforward as we could,” said Geer.

About 49 percent of responding voters also said they were likely to use vouchers if they became available, and 50 percent said they would not. By a wide margin, Republicans who support former President Donald Trump were the group most likely to use them, while only 26 percent of Democrats said they would take advantage of the option.

“The outcome of the poll on vouchers was very partisan in nature,” Geer said.

That partisan lens, he added, was more significant than whether the voter lived in a rural, urban, or suburban district, where access to private schools varies significantly.

“I think it’s another statement about our political climate and the polarization of our country. We really weren’t able to get past the partisanship,” he said.

This year’s uneven polling results may help explain why many rural Republican candidates aren’t discussing vouchers or promoting where they stand on the issue when seeking to secure their party’s nomination. In suburban and urban districts, which are home to more private schools, both Republican and Democratic candidates are more likely to weigh in or use vouchers as a campaign issue.

“Rural Republican legislators got some pushback over the governor’s voucher proposal, so I can understand why they would skirt the issue with primary voters,” Geer said. “I can understand why they would just say: ‘I’m for public education because that’s what’s important to my rural district.’”

Debby Gould, president of the League of Women Voters in Tennessee, said legislative candidates can easily cloak their voucher stance by saying they support public education, especially since the House’s 2024 voucher bill bundled the creation of a statewide voucher program with public school reforms.

“That muddied the waters a bit, but voters deserve a clear answer to whether they plan to vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on universal vouchers,” Gould said.

“Vouchers aren’t a secondary election issue,” she added. “Gov. Lee has said it’s a priority for his administration, so it will be front and center next legislative session.”

All 99 seats in the state House and half of the Senate’s 33 seats are on the ballot this year. Aug. 1 is Tennessee’s primary election day, with early voting July 12-24. The general election will be on Nov. 5.

You can find more voter information on the Secretary of State’s website.

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

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

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School Voucher Plan Dead for the Year

Gov. Bill Lee made passage of education savings accounts, a type of school voucher, the signature legislative goal of his first year in office and proposed creating a statewide school voucher program in 2024. (TN.gov)

In the end, the gulf between competing school voucher bills in Tennessee’s legislature was just too wide to cross.

Gov. Bill Lee acknowledged Monday that his push to create a universal school voucher program — which had been on the ropes for more than a month — was dead for the year after Republican leaders in the Tennessee House and Senate were unable to break through disagreements about testing and funding.

“While we made tremendous progress, unfortunately it has become clear that there is not a pathway for the bill during this legislative session,” Lee said in a statement Monday.

The Republican governor vowed to return with another plan next year and added that he’s disappointed for families “who will have to wait yet another year for the freedom to choose the right education for their child.”

The proposal’s failure this year hands Lee one of the biggest defeats of his administration, now in its second term.

It also signals that for all the momentum vouchers have in Tennessee — including a string of victories in the courts and legislature — Lee’s statewide proposal remains a divisive policy because of its potential to destabilize urban, suburban, and rural public school districts, and add a new burden on state finances.

For now, Tennessee only has its targeted voucher program in three urban counties, which provides taxpayer funding to 2,095 students to pay toward private school tuition, plus a smaller voucher program for students with certain disabilities.

As part of his broader school-choice agenda, the governor wanted his new voucher program to eventually become available to every K-12 student across Tennessee, regardless of their family income, and lawmakers took up two vastly different bills from the House and Senate.

But the chambers deadlocked on two issues, according to Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg, the Bristol Republican who worked with House Republican leaders for weeks to try to reach a compromise.

First, in addition to creating a new private school voucher program, the more expansive and expensive House version sought to dramatically reduce testing and accountability for public school students.

“We had worked really hard to get those measures into place,” Lundberg said, “and believe it would be a step backward for our state.”

Second, the House version proposed increasing the state’s contribution toward public school teachers’ medical insurance coverage from 45 percent to 60 percent — and paying for it with funding earmarked for teacher raises.

That funding pathway closed last week when the legislature approved a 2024-25 budget that retained the $125 million that Lee had set aside to increase the annual minimum salary for public school teachers from $42,000 to $44,500, as promised last year by the governor.

“Ultimately, the House and the Senate had looked at education freedom scholarships through two different lenses,” Lundberg told Chalkbeat on Monday. “We looked at it as school-choice legislation. The House looked at it as a way to achieve both school choice and education reform.

“Our perspectives were just so different that we could not come together at the end,” he said.

Timing and cost were factors

As the legislature entered what’s expected to be its final week of the 2024 session, lawmakers worried about the timing of creating an expensive new program in the midst of flattening revenues and during an election year in which most of their names will be on the ballot.

The voucher program would have been expected to grow over time, likely subsidizing tuition for families who would have chosen private schools anyway. In the program’s second year, according to financial analysts, the Senate version’s projected cost was $287 million, while the House version was projected to cost $384 million.

In addition, more than 50 Tennessee school boards were on record opposing the plan. And the research shows little recent evidence that vouchers improve test scores.

The hurdles were especially problematic in the House, where voucher proposals have historically been harder to pass. To win more votes in that chamber, GOP leaders added enticements aimed at public school supporters to reduce testing time for students, require fewer evaluations for high-performing teachers, and give districts extra money to help with their building costs, as well as more funding for teachers’ medical insurance costs.

On Monday, House Speaker Cameron Sexton framed the debate as helpful for future talks even though it didn’t produce a consensus this year.

“Universal school choice came closer to a full vote than it had ever been in the past,” Sexton said in a statement. “We will continue working until all parents have the same opportunity to use their tax dollars to choose the best school for their child.”

Democrats, who were united in their opposition to vouchers, said the governor’s proposal ultimately crumbled because many Tennesseans pushed back on a plan that generated more questions than answers.

“From the start, the governor’s proposal was heavy on talking points and light on the substance of how it would work and how much it actually would cost,” said Sen. Jeff Yarbro of Nashville. “The funding and the accountability pieces were always going to be the sticking points,” he added, “because voucher proponents really want the funding without the accountability.”

Even as voucher supporters quickly promised to try again next year, groups representing the state’s teachers hailed the governor’s loss as a win for Tennesseans.

“Governor Lee’s proposal was poorly written, arriving late in session, and had zero accountability in the plan,” said JC Bowman, executive director of Professional Educators of Tennessee.

The leaders of Arlington Community Schools near Memphis, who issued a fiery statement in December denouncing Lee’s voucher plan as part of a systematic attack on public schools, said they were exhilarated by the legislation’s defeat — and troubled that the governor is already talking about next year.

“He hasn’t even taken a day to understand why his signature bill failed,” said Superintendent Jeff Mayo. “That tells me he doesn’t care to listen to our concerns. The end-game is to ultimately usher vouchers into Tennessee to fund private schools, despite the lackluster evidence that it will actually help students.”

Voucher policies have advanced under Lee

For years, school voucher advocates had watched their policy dream come up short in Tennessee before racking up a string of victories after Lee took office in 2019 amid significant turnover in the GOP-controlled legislature.

Lawmakers passed a bill on a narrow, controversial vote in the House of Representatives during Lee’s first year in office to help create an education savings account program.

The targeted program rolled out in 2022 in Memphis and Nashville for students from low-income families attending low-performing schools. Voucher opponents challenged the law in court and had some early legal wins, but the Tennessee Supreme Court declared the law constitutional in 2022.

After the program’s accelerated rollout and the addition of Hamilton County during its second year, the governor took another big step: proposing a separate statewide Education Freedom Scholarship program to launch this fall with up to 20,000 students, and eventually to eliminate all the geographic and family-income restrictions.

Dueling bills from the House and Senate easily advanced through education committees, but stalled for four weeks in finance committees before the governor accepted defeat.

In his statement Monday, Lee reiterated his reasons for pressing ahead, adding that he’s “never been more motivated.”

“It’s very simple,” he said. “This is about every Tennessee student having the opportunity to succeed, regardless of their ZIP code or income level, and without question, empowering parents is the best way to make sure that happens.”

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

Memphis reporter Laura Testino contributed to this report. Contact her at ltestino@chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.