The Republican-dominated legislature passed a voucher bill that makes private school vouchers available only to students in Metro Nashville and Shelby County (Memphis), whose Democratic representatives opposed it.
It was a victory for Betsy DeVos, who came to Tennessee to urge psssage of a voucher bill.
Tennessee’s General Assembly passed a compromise education voucher bill on Wednesday targeting only students and districts in Tennessee’s two largest cities and potentially costing $40 million more than was originally announced.
The votes came in the final week of the legislative session and just hours after a conference committee approved the compromise, which also removed homeschoolers from being able to participate in the program.
The passage delivers a major victory to Republican Gov. Bill Lee, who wants Tennessee to start giving taxpayer money to eligible families to pay for private school tuition or related education services. It’s also a win for President Donald Trump and his education secretary, Betsy DeVos, who tweeted their support of Lee’s initiative last week and have urged other states to follow suit….
The program would start in 2021 with up to 5,000 students from Shelby County Schools, Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, and the state-run Achievement School District. It would cap eventually with 15,000 students and could cost taxpayers $165 million by 2024, according to a new fiscal analysis released on Wednesday. The initial price tag was $125 million over three years.
Now, students in these districts will have the opportunity to attend schools where teachers are uncertified and where the Bible is the science textbook. As Trump said during the 2016 campaign, he loves the uneducated. In Tennessee, he will have more of them.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
up at OEN:
https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Tennessee-Voucher-Plan-Pa-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Dept-Of-Education-ED-gov_Diane-Ravitch_Education-Costs_Education-Funding-190503-171.html#comment732827
with this comment which has links at oped:
The Network for Public Education (NPE) site is a place for you to go to seek truth about schools in the 15,880 SEPARATE SCHOOL SYSTEMS in 50 STATES!, in this day of fake news, where the media is ownedby the very people who need to see the INSTITUTION of public education disappear so they can create a ‘market’ to sell education products as a business!
That is why The Network for Public Education has prepared a NPE toolkit, School Privatization Explained . You can download the toolkit here . It is especially important that your “school” representative grasp howeducation tax credits are no more than vouchers in disguise. They are likely to be promoted in this budget.
For an excellent primer on the topic of disguised vouchers, read NEPC’s Kevin Welner’s piece here.
The GOPers just vomited on the spirit of the state constitution.
Tennessee was damaged by big money from the B&M Gates Foundation, about $85.7 million in Shelby County alone, leaving a much wider path of failed experiments. Now the state has elected officials who want to do further damage. I wonder if Lamar Alexander cares.
Tennessee also had the misfortune of winning $500 million in Race to the Top funding. Wasted.
And the fabulously useless “Measures of Effective Teaching” project designed by Harvard economists and funded by Gates.
money which laid waste (is that the right expression)
perhaps a few more words to clarify the inexplicable loyalty of legislators for adding more and more ‘reform’ — “the state has elected officials who want MORE MONEY and don’t care that it will surely do further damage.”
The immorality of this is stunning. The same folks who want, via bills like this, to destroy public schools also show their racism and utter disdain for children and for the law of the land:
“Language intended to exclude undocumented students was viewed as critical to gaining support from House members concerned about creating a government program that could benefit people without legal authorization to be in the country. But it also could land the state in court because of a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that requires states to offer public education to all children, regardless of their immigration status.”
Children are children are children. Have we really become a country in which a significant number of people are OK with locking kids in cages and depriving them of education?
These people sicken me. They are utterly immoral.
Bob,
Yes indeed…Immoral to the core. Thank you. And, where are the “so-called” religious leaders?
I call this “Child Trafficking.”
“Tennessee will be empowering thousands of lower-income and working-class families with the freedom to choose and customize the education that fits their children’s needs,”
This is such a boneheaded statement
Including corporal punishment/child abuse – Tennessee, a Taliban type of nation.
What they say about vouchers:
“Tennessee will be empowering thousands of lower-income and working-class families with the freedom to choose and customize the education that fits their children’s needs,”
Reality:
“The Republicans in the Legislature are diverting money from public schools that enroll 90% of the state’s children so that a small number of religious families can send their children to schools with uncertified teachers to study the Biblical interpretation of Science and history.”
Tennessee public schools were required to teach creationism, by the Butler Act. see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butler_Act
Creationism was taught in Tenn, by public school teachers, paid with public tax dollars.
The act was not repealed until 1967.
Now, families can enroll their children in government-run schools, where scientific truths like evolution must be taught.
Why was it perfectly all right to have public schools teaching Biblical creationism, until fifty years ago?
This is the problem, with a government monopoly, like public schools.
So now you applaud government funding of religious schools that teach creationism and hatred for blacks, Catholics, Jews, and homosexuals? Shame on you. Consistency is not for you.
(You posed a question, here is my answer. I do NOT applaud what you suggest)
Your question is somewhat loaded. Let me answer it this way. The Butler Act, is a microcosm, of having politicians operating educational enterprises. Government/politicians often get it WRONG.
The Butler Act was bad policy, because it required the teaching of a religious superstition, with tax dollars. A clear violation of the 1st amendment prohibition against establishment of religion. And the Butler Act was not repealed until 1967!
What I enthusiastically applaud, is permitting families to opt-out of publicly-operated schools, which, because they are operated government/politicians, sometimes come up with nonsense like the Butler Act.
If families want to entrust their children’s minds and futures to the government, that is their right. If families wish to seek alternate educational opportunities for their children, (and receive financial assistance), they should have that right.
Some religiously-operated schools teach nonsense as well. No school system on this planet, has a monopoly on stupidity.
Families may select colleges/universities which teach that people may become Gods, and that black people are cursed with black skin. This is taught at Brigham Young University in Utah. Students attend this college, and receive tax dollars to get indoctrinated with this garbage.
I have yet to see anyone protest school choice at the university level. Nor has anyone protested the government subsidizing students at schools which teach all sorts of religious superstitions, like creationism (at the college level).
Why the selective outrage?
Charles,
When you support schools and colleges that teach racism and anti-science, you support racism and anti-science.
Charles, government is not a monopoly, because it represents the interests of the majority of the people. A monopoly represents the interest of a single corporation, which means very few people, at the expense of all others.
Vouchers represent the interest of very few people—so as a principle, it’s much closer to support the idea of monopoly.
In general, GOP members use the language of “government monopoly” to advance their programs to support real monopolies, the interest of very few people.
When I listen to what you say, Charles, I simply hear GOP echo, an echo of a voice that that says one thing but hides the real agenda, which, in this case, is supporting religious education.
You can repeat all you want about “I support the freedom of choice”, all I hear is “I support religious education, the choice of less than 10% of the population”.
When we say “we support public schools”, what we say is “we support the choice of the vast majority of the people”.
So if you want to argue and not just echo what other people are saying, use straight language, which would start something like “I support the choice of 10% instead of the choice of 90% because …”.
Fundamentalist schools- the path to 21st century jobs that pay well (sarcasm)
21st cetury jobs are designed to pay less. How else can they give tens of millions to people like our current Governor or billions to people like our previous Givernor?
People in TN love to serve these people, hence they keep electing them. Our Governor wants to make sure, the next generation also prefers servitude, hence redesigns education that flushes kids’ brains with the appropriate chemicals.
The kids are dumbed down by legislative meddling, with one mindless test piled on another. That creates a permanent underclass, just right for the jobless future ahead.
Charter schools are an opportunity for Tenn. legislators to deliver for grifters. Religion is the ruse to hide it.
80% of the state’s crime is drug related. People desperate for cash will take payoffs from charter operators to enroll their kids. It’s similar to the national dental chain that billed the government for unnecessary, harmful dental care for the kids of the poor. The parents were paid by the chain to subject their kids to the chain’s services.