The newly elected Republican governor of Tennessee, Bill Lee, wants vouchers, but he can expect pushback from the local media and local school boards that know of the frauds and scams in other states that have endorsed vouchers.
The Daily Memphian warns about the squandering of taxpayer dollars in other states.
Tennessee lawmakers say that if broader school choice options are offered, the Legislature would need to enact restrictions to avoid the kind of education savings account fraud seen in states where public-dollar vouchers are given to parents for homeschooling and private school enrollment.
Reports from across the nation show situations in which private-school officials and parents spent voucher money for items unrelated to education. Cards were used at beauty supply stores, sporting good shops and for computer tech support, in addition to trying to withdraw cash, which was not allowed.
“Absolutely, that’s one of my concerns,” said Rep. Mark White, a Memphis Republican who chairs the House Education Committee.
The Arizona Republic found many parents there put voucher funds into college-savings accounts then sent their children to public schools, among other fraudulent activity, all amid lax oversight. The Phoenix newspaper also reported the state investigated one case in which voucher funds were allegedly used to pay for an abortion after it adopted an Empowerment Scholarship Account program in 2011.
Arizona voters rejected a 2018 referendum to expand the education accounts to make all public-school students eligible.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported in 2004 the principal of a private school used voucher payments to buy two Mercedes-Benz cars, then claimed they were a legitimate expense because he had invested his own money in the school.
The school board in Murfreesboro passed a unanimous resolution against vouchers that would divert public money away from public schools to religious schools and home schooling.
Lawmakers should oppose state money being used for private education, says a resolution approved Thursday by Rutherford County school officials.
The seven Board of Education members also signed the document in opposition to any state legislation allowing vouchers or education savings accounts for private education. The elected school officials represent a district serving 46,772 students from prekindergarten through 12th grade.
Parents and school boards should be aware that the opening bid for vouchers is to authorize one only for students with special needs. That is the camel’s nose under the tent. See what happened in Arizona and Florida, which began with that single group, then added another group, then another group, then another and another. Beware.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane, I lam a NYC teacher and love your work! I am very disappointed in the new progressive movement’s and people like AOC who is my congresswomen, lack of attention to this issue. This issue intersects so much with other progressive issues,concerns; anti-corporatism, labor/unions, upward mobility of women, people of color, immigrants and quality education for all. Why do I hear next to nothing on this important issue from these otherwise progressive leaders? This is much needed since so many main-stream corporatist Democrats actually support Charter schools. Could you please reach out and educate and advocate on this issue. Thank you so much for all you do!
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I am hoping to meet AOC in April to get her to pay attention.
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that is a wonderful thing to hear 🙂
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AOC just recently said she might have become a teacher if she didn’t run for office. She may be receptive. I sure hope she is!
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“The school board in Murfreesboro passed a unanimous resolution against vouchers that would divert public money away from public schools to religious schools and home schooling.”
This is a very revealing statement. There is one place where social conservatives and liberals agree. Neither group wants its public schools to be compromised by the taking of proper funding. A little background.
Murfreesboro is a first generation suburb of Nashville. It is a college town, home to the college where James Buchanan (the subject of Democracy in Chains) matriculated before it was Middle Tennessee State University. It is the largest college campus in Tennessee. The county is rapidly filling up with suburban development ranging from upscale to apartment. Since 1980, the city has swelled from about 20,000 to over 100,000 in population.
Because MTSU is a teacher’s college, the schools there are filled with teachers who grew up in the system and went to college there. The system benefits from the growth of the area monetarily, but faces some of the problems associated with expansion. The population tends to vote conservative, but liberalism exists as well due to the college and its size and diversity. Conservatives and liberals agree that the state should keep its hands off the great public schools in Rutherford County. Thus the action described in the quote above.
The problem is that the representative they elected to the state senate is a question mark. Will he support robbing money from schools in Nashville while making sure his suburban schools are protected? Bet on it. Funding of Tennessee schools is through property and sales taxes. This systems robs from the non retail places and gives to the retail places. A lawsuit by rural counties addressed this and was settled in the day of one of our previous governors, albeit not to my satisfaction.
It is time for suburban voters to realize that their funding of their own education must accompany equitable funding for underserved areas. It should not be your zip code. All communities deserve great schools, and great schools are one of the ways we can transform communities, whether they be in cities or suburbs, or perhaps out in the country.
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Could not agree more. But what is your plan to fix the (BEP) funding sources so that the wealth can be spread? They tried that in Vermont (statewide property tax sharing) and it did not work. I’d love to know your suggestion.
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I do not have a plan. The problem is that poor tennesseans seem to vote with rich ones, much the same as they always have. They identify with the idea of low taxation, but do not understand that the growth of the state will necessarily produce needs for services.
Locally, a needed school was to be funded by a wheel tax. Even the people whose children were being served voted against the wheel tax. Property taxes ended up funding the new school.
Since you are a tennessean, you must recall the republican governor, Sunquist, who tried to enact an income tax and was excoriated for it.
I despair of a solution without a big change in voting habits.
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One big problem in TN is its regressive tax structure that benefits only the wealthiest in the state. A state sales tax is the primary source of state revenue that disproportionately hurts the poor & middle class.
Counties are forced to either raise property taxes or attract retail stores to generate funds. Hence, the proliferation of Walmarts, & strip malls, ad nauseum. Add to that more & more counties are forced to nickle & dime citizens for fees and lay off public workers.
After Haslam was elected (BTW, a billionaire who inherited his wealth), he & the state lege cut corporate taxes to the bone, cut capital gains taxes in half, and ended the inheritance tax.This same group, led by the Milton Friedman zealots in Haslam’s administration, held a constitutional convention & made an income tax illegal in TN He left office by raising the gas tax to make up for the huge tax breaks he gave to his family and his country club of millionaires.
These are the same elected officials who are presiding over unprecedented closures of rural hospitals because they refuse to accept the medicaid expansion from the ACA. Human suffering means nothing to these cruel men.
I have no confidence that TN’s current governor Lee (who is also a millionaire, pretending to be a country boy) or the state lege to do anything about equitable funding for anything in TN. They all are ideologically opposed to taxes and hold deep contempt for government.
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Exactly. I would like to know what anyone really thinks they can do to tilt the table back to something fairer in TN. I just don’t have an answer.
(((Small quibble- Haslam was willing to make a deal on hospitals but the didn’t want to cross the leg and have that on his record. All these guys fancy themselves to be future presidents or something. Sigh. He could have done so much for health care in TN if he’d just gone with his gut on expansion while he had the chance.)))
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Also in TN, the good news is there were more women who challenged Republicans in the legislative elections in 2018. Indivisible and TN Emerge are organizing to get more names on the ballots and engage and energize more voters.
We also have Gloria Johnson in the state house who is an ex-special education teacher from Knoxville (Haslam country). The Republicans spent tons of money to defeat her but she beat the Haslam/DeVos candidate by 2000 votes.
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Let us not forget two sweeping order of Haslam: that he decided to outsource all public building maintenance to an out of state company (Jone Lang LaSalle) he’s had financial ties with, and he personally appointed the boards of all public 4-year colleges, and as a result, these colleges are now all run by businessmen.
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Haslam FAILED to make a deal on rural hospitals despite having a super majority of Republicans in the General Assembly. What does that say about his political skills? Aside from that, he never effectively changed any policies put forth by the extremists in his Republican party.
His outsourcing schemes are going to hurt the TN economy, education K- Post secondary & retirement system for many years. He personally pushed for the Focus Act that reduced the number of trustees & promptly turned over all of the seats to business cronies.
He tried to get TN public universities to conduct tedious, duplicate efficiency audits as a way of getting outsourcing through the backdoor & eliminating programs. The Senate version of the bill stipulated that the audits be used to determine if institutions have “unnecessary course offerings of little benefit to students or the public.” I think we can all imagine where that might end up. Thankfully this legislation died in subcommittee.
However, efficiency audits are high on the Koch agenda for starving public education so I expect them to come back in different forms. With the University boards filled with millionaire business people I anticipate they’ll outsource more & more full time jobs.
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Do you know of any direct relationship between Koch and U of Memphis? I never knew about the Waltons until Laura wrote about it, and my understanding is that so far the Kochs put their cuckoo’s egg only into Middle TN State Univ of the state universities.
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ED reformers all lockstep support vouchers now in the same way and to the same extent they all support charters.
They now all make the argument that public funding = public education, which even ten years ago they wouldn’t have made because it would have been too radically ideological.
They have completely and utterly eradicated the line between “public” and “private”.
Should be interesting. I await the day they argue that defense contractors are “public” because they are wholly taxpayer-funded.
That isnt even the biggest lie they tell. The biggest lie they tell is that public schools will continue to exist under privatization schemes. It’s not true. The public can choose either a menu of contractors they pay with a voucher OR a comprehensive public school system. They cannot have both.
Given that ed reformers utterly dominate government, this choice has already been made. The public system will give way to the privatized system ed reformers prefer. It’s not a “choice” at all.
They don’t invest in or support public schools because public schools aren’t included in their vision of a wholly privatized system. That’s why the echo chamber spend 90% of their time on the schools that 10% of children attend.
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Indeed. Nashville’s seat projections in about 2/3 of the city are for contraction despite the number of people moving in every day. The numbers for charters are on the rise, and all at schools approved years ago that got in under the wire and are building out their grades. The tax base will not support a dual system forever. The damage is done and now every new dollar goes just to charters. In 5 years, it is likely that charter seats climb from 20% to 1/3. In 10 years charter/ASD/voucher seats will outnumber other publicly funded seats. Unless TN changes drastically at the elected official levels, this is where it’s headed.
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It won’t head that way when citizens wake up and decide not to be fleeced by big corporations.
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Ok, well I’ll believe people have woken up to corporate reform when charters start closing in Nashville. I don’t see that happening in the next few years. Literally out of 3 new dollars for next year, 2 are for charters. Tide isn’t turning very fast here. Not at all. We are on pins and needles to hear the budget projections. We all expect only token raises if we are lucky. The area economy has been going great and there has been plenty of money poured into everything but schools. This is one place the uprising has been mighty meek. Vote scheduled next month on the fate of the super. Regardless of outcome…. Check back in a year or two. I suspect the story will not have changed much.
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The charters are scooping up money but they perform NO miracles. They are a parasite draining the host.
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About half the charters “perform miracles” (I.e., with motivated parents they get good growth) and the other half here are no better than any other public school. Occasionally worse. The number that get closed is very very small.
Draining the host indeed. Nashville already has 30 percent mobility during the year —school changes for families that move — and has 30 percent too who do not attend their zones school.. huge number of magnet seats in addition to charters. People are already used to not caring much about their local school. In pockets there are beloved schools but that’s true anywhere. So the host is pretty drained of energy to begin with.
So those “miracles” are pretty easy to sell in Nashville and in tennessee
The current director/dupe has seemingly entered into detente with the charters three years ago and failed to push for them or against. I think he thought he could outgun them on academics. Well, he miscalculated. The number of state-shamed schools (priority list) tripled and now there’s no way to budget around the charter growth.
I foresee some bitter rounds of closures, rezpnibg, and takeovers.
The current elected board stands on a knifes edge and could go either way but lacks the will to viscerally stand up to charters. The state leg may pass further laws to direct-authorize anyway.
I wish I could be more optimistic that the tide will turn here too. Just don’t see it.
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I left out the crucial word “NO”
Charters perform NO miracles.
It all baloney.
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(Former resident of Jackson Tenn). I am delighted that the Volunteer state, is considering permitting families to volunteer themselves out of the public school system. It is not a given, that some of the frauds and abuses that have occurred in other states, will transfer to Tennessee.
With proper oversight, and policing, any school choice program can be operated with a minimum of fraud.
Many (not all) people who receive food stamps, abuse the program. You can buy Cheetos and soda pop with food stamps, instead of nutritious food. The program is not properly policed, and it should be. No one is suggesting abolishing the food stamp program.
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School choice lays out a welcome mat for fraud, waste and abuse.
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Why open the state to that kind of statutory need for regulation? The trade off gain in vouchers is not worth the hassle of the moral trench you dig by providing people a chance to siphon from the trough.
Why do people believe the public system is just that much to be avoided? So tired that this is the assumption anyone with a little means makes in TN. No one should have to help you avoid the public system. Go ahead and pay or homeschool. Don’t expect me to subsidize you.
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Some, not all, people people are dissatisfied with the public schools in their area. They deserve alternatives. Of course, people who have determined that the public school is not providing an adequate education for their children, should be given financial support in locating and paying for an alternate school.
People who send their children to public school expect to be subsidized. People (like me), who have no children pay school taxes. People who select alternate schooling, can and should have a portion of their school taxes, rebated to them, in the form of a voucher.
It is only fair.
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It’s not fair to ask the public to pay for private choices.
I don’t like the police department. I want aprivate security guard. Why should the public pay for it?
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Q It’s not fair to ask the public to pay for private choices. END Q
Why not? A person can get section 8 housing assistance, and rent a private apartment. A person can get a BEOG, and attend a private college. A person can get food stamps/SNAP, and purchase food at a private supermarket. A person can get Medicaid, and get medical care at a Catholic hospital, or a private hospital. and on and on.
The government subsidizes private choices, with public money, in all kinds of venues. Why is it perfectly all right to subsidize these choices, but not at K-12 education?
Explain it to me. I am all ears.
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I don’t know about your neighborhood, Charles, but in NYC, no private apartment building in a good neighborhood takes Section 8 vouchers. No voucher brings poor kids into great private schools or outstanding private housing. That’s horse manure and you know it.
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Well, Charles writes two things about himself at
As we say here at the Pentagon, I am not “tracking” you.
and
I am NOT a federal civil-service employee. I am a professional telecommunications engineer, working on military projects. I perform unclassified analysis of communications and computer systems. I am damn proud of my work. The people of the USA have set up a “common defense” through their constitution. It is much more cost-effective, to have this type of work done by private contractors, than by civil service employees, or uniform military personnel.
I guess this means he is a private contractor paid from taxpayer’s money. So if there are cuts to the military (due to vouchers to maintain private armies), he may be out of a job. But it’s OK since it’s for a good cause: to support the freedom of choice for a small percentage of the population who want to maintain a private military.
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Q I think you want to dumb down America and destroy our national security by advocating for choice so that kids can go to schools where they learn fake science and fake history. END Q
If you truly think this nonsense, then you are wrong. I advocate quality education. If students can receive a quality education through a publicly-operated school, then that is great.
Our nation has a “mix” of public, private, and parochial universities/colleges/vocational schools. Students attend these various educational venues with public assistance, BEOGs, ROTC scholarships, etc. These private choices, are financed with public money, and no one has an issue with it.
All I am advocating, is extending these choices further down, to K-12.
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If you want high quality education, advocate for funding for public schools open to all.
You advocate for taking money away from public schools so that kids can attend backwoods religious schools and charters that may enrich themselves by hiring inexperienced teachers.
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Charles, why is it OK to give freedom of choice to 5% of the population which then screws up the freedom of the 95%? Why does the 5% deserve what the 95% doesn’t? What makes that 5% special for you?
Would you be willing to take a 10% pay cut so that some selected group of people can have their own “charter” army? Or perhaps you are even willing to get fired for these dear freedom-seeking people?
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I do not understand your questions. I favor giving additional educational choices to families. And I mean ALL families. Some states (like Arizona) bring in school choice (ESAs) for military families, Native American families, etc. first, and then, when possible expand the number of eligible families.
States have been hesitant to bring in school choice/vouchers to their entire state, initially. What usually happens, is that a pilot program is started, and then expanded. Indiana started out small, and then grew, to where now almost every family in the state, has the ability to opt-out of the public school system.
Where did you get this 5% number?
And your second paragraph is equally confusing. The federal constitution empowers the fed government to establish military forces to provide for the common defense. I do not work for the Defense department. A reduction in my salary is nonsense.
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Indiana offers vouchers to 500,000 students.
Only 35,000 use them and their scores go down because the religious schools they attend are not required to have verified teachers. The program wastes $153 million a year.
A massive failure.
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“ndiana offers vouchers to 500,000 students.
Only 35,000 use them”
Which is 7%. Freedom for 7% at the expense of 93%. Each one of these voucher students screws up the education of 12 students who chose public schools.
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We went through this before many times: when you seemingly provide school choice to all, you end up screwing up the choice of the 95% who want to send their kids to public schools. Why, because in order to support vouchers, the budget of public schools get reduced—by about 5%. The problem is that the costs of public schools do not get reduced only their budget.
Maybe my memory is bad, but at some point you stated here that you work in the Pentagon, but I could be wrong.
In any case, the argument is that there could be vouchers for those who do not trust our “public” military to protect them properly. So let us support this freedom of choice for these people, and take away from the public military budget so that they can have their own private little army. This, of course, would mean the firing of personnel from the public army—among other things. Maybe the Pentagon would have to be downsized or and even moved to Memphis where the rent and construction are much cheaper.
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Excellent question, Mate.
Why take from The many to benefit the very few?
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The state of Indiana offers nearly every family in the state, the ability to opt-out of the public school system. Only about 3% of families have chosen to leave the public schools (and accept financial assistance). I think this is great. It shows that the vast majority of families are satisfied with the public schools. Public school supporters should be applauding the low participation rate.
Many of the alternate schools in the Hoosier state, have certified teachers, some non-public schools have a mix of certified and non-certified teachers. Very few home-school parents are certified teachers.
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Most of the voucher money in Indiana is a total waste of public money. These kids don’t get a second chance. They are learning that people and dinosaurs co-existed. I didn’t realize you defend waste, fraud, abuse, and miseducation with public dollars.
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So in Indiana to support the freedom of school choice for the 3%, they screw up the freedom for the 97% who choose public schools.
I think people who want to defend themselves, instead of relying on the military and police, should get vouchers to buy guns and other war-gadgets. After all, those who want their own bombs and bombers should have the freedom to do so.
Another idea I have is only those should pay taxes who want to. Why not support that freedom?
The more I play with these thoughts, the more I feel that my freedoms are restricted.
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Do you have documentation that Indiana families are all choosing religious schools, that teach creationism? I would think that some families will choose to have their children attend religious schools, and some would choose private schools and some will home-school.
And why do you think that all religiously-operated schools teach that people and dinosaurs co-existed?
And why do you think that I support fraud,waste, and abuse of educational spending? I certainly do not.
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Yes, Charles. Huffington Post conducted a survey of every religious school that takes vouchers andthe majority were evangelical schools teaching hatred for blacks, Catholics, Jews, and LGBT, using textbooks based on the Bible.
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Q Do you have documentation that Indiana families are all choosing religious schools, that teach creationism? END Q
Maybe you did not understand the question. In the state of Indiana, do you have documentation that reveals that all of the families that are opting-out of the public system, are sending their children to religiously-operated schools?
I believe that some families are sending their children to religiously-operated schools, but some are sending their children to secular, private, non-religious schools, and some are home-schooling.
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Secular private schools typically do not accept vouchers because the voucher money doesn’t cover their tuition.
If the voucher is worth $4,400 and the tuition in the secular school is $25,000, why take the voucher student?
Few, if any, elite private schools take vouchers students.
Do you know of any?
How many voucher students at Sidwell Friends in DC, for example?
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Charles,
I think you want to dumb down America and destroy our national security by advocating for choice so that kids can go to schools where they learn fake science and fake history. Shame!
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Comparing educational services to national defense is ludicrous. It is beyond ludicrous, it is ridiculous. No one is considering offering vouchers to citizens, so that they can set up their own military (or police) forces.
I suggest that you just drop this entire line. Please.
The federal constitution specifically empowers the government to provide for the common defense, and to declare war, and for the states to set up militias.
There is no federal mandate (in the constitution) for education. The states/municipalities are much closer to the people, and therefore much better to provide these services, than Washington bureaucrats.
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How about vouchers for police and Fire services?
Why not have your own private security paid for by the public?
How about your own private highway?
Your own private swimming pool paid for by taxpayers if you don’t want to swim with “those people”?
Private libraries at public expense?
Anything can be privatized if there is profit to be made
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Come on, Diane, your suggestions are ridiculous. In the same way, you could have said, why not privatize prisons? See how frivolous these suggestions can get?
Uh, wait a minute…
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“No one is considering offering vouchers to citizens, so that they can set up their own military (or police) forces.”
How do you know? Have you asked everyone?
This is a capitalist country, where there is a demand, sooner or later there will be supply, and if the demand requires federal dollars there will soon be a politician to lobby for shelling it out. Somebody just has to argue, private armies are more efficient, and people should have the option to be protected by, say, “The American Holy Military”. Hence these people should get back the portion of the tax they paid to maintain the federal military.
I can see this happening, can’t you?
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“The states/municipalities are much closer to the people, and therefore much better to provide these services, than Washington bureaucrats.”
Yet you are paid by the largest of these bureaucracies, the military.
In any case, whatever you claim about funding the military can be said about funding education and vice versa. Arguing based on existing laws is useless. Laws come and go, logic stays.
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The Governor claims to be in his job because it was God’s will.
He will muster support for vouchers for religious schools while proclaiming he is for the separation of church and state.
Note his double speak in this report. He wants to keep government out of the church but thinks his religious values need to evident as he governs the state.
https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2019/01/09/bill-lee-separation-church-and-state-tennessee-governor/2525435002/
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Lee ran his gubernatorial campaign on one issue. He was a Christian. Other than that, he said nothing about policy. In a few interviews when asked about TN public education, he said he wanted “change” and mentioned he was open for vouchers. Outside of his faith, many of us had never heard of him until he ran. There’s no doubt, that like Trump, Lee’s Republican voters believe he was elected by God’s will.
Digging a bit deeper, as a millionaire businessman in the Nashville area, Lee made regular donations to The Beacon Center. The Beacon Center is a think tank that sends out “press releases”
promoting hard core Libertarian, free-market principles.
The Beacon Center bombarded the state with pro voucher propaganda when the Haslam administration tried to promote vouchers. http://www.beacontn.org/issues/school-choice.
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Uh, I didn’t know about this Beacon center.
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I would try to get some transparency about what is discussed in those prayer caucuses. We have sunshine laws, weakened, but still on the books.
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Disturbing article, Laura.
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I understand completely the gloomy comments from Tennesseeans here. What’s promising? For example, the appearance of an article like the one this blog is based on. Do we have more?
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posted at https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Lawmakers-aware-of-fraud-i-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Accountablity_Education-Costs_Education-For-All_Education-Funding-190225-41.html#comment726247
with links to Ed Doerr’s piece on voucher fraud https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Lawmakers-aware-of-fraud-i-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Accountablity_Education-Costs_Education-For-All_Education-Funding-190225-41.html#comment726247
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