Last month the Hamilton County School Board joined dozens of school districts across Tennessee in formally opposing Governor Bill Lee’s voucher bill. In his vote to oppose, conservative school board member Steve Slater said he’d asked his constituents for their input on vouchers. His vote reflected their strong opposition.
As the Tennessee General Assembly takes up the voucher bill this week, I hope all of Hamilton County’s legislative delegation will be as responsive to the people they were elected to represent.
It’s easy to understand why vouchers are unpopular. We’ve seen the results—both in states that have universal vouchers, and in Hamilton, Davidson and Shelby counties, which offer “educational savings accounts” through Tennessee’s pilot voucher program.
The results have been remarkably consistent. Voucher programs don’t improve test scores, don’t help the families they’re supposed to help, and are characterized by limited accountability and transparency, inviting fraud and abuse.
Universal vouchers, like Lee wants, blow big holes in state budgets and deflect funds from public schools, hitting rural communities especially hard. Regardless of the shell games lawmakers play when they talk about tax dollars, those dollars are finite. No separate opt-in revenue stream will fund Tennessee’s voucher program, the way lottery dollars fund the Tennessee Promise Scholarship.
Most of our state government is funded by our sales tax. The families hit hardest by that high tax—the families vouchers are supposed to help but don’t—will be subsidizing wealthier families’ private school tuition.
If the data were good, vouchers would sell themselves. If people liked the concept of giving their tax dollars to private schools, it wouldn’t have to branded with names that poll well, like “school choice” and “education freedom.” If vouchers were worth the considerable public investment (Lee’s plan will cost $1.1 billion for the first five years), they wouldn’t have been pushed on us relentlessly by the billionaire-backed “school choice” movement.
You don’t need data to know that vouchers are a grift. This tells the story:
“School choice” PACs have poured millions into state-level campaigns in Tennessee to secure support for vouchers.
"School choice” lobbyists have been in Nashville threatening to primary conservative lawmakers who don’t support vouchers.
“School choice” and “education freedom” are being marketed to Tennesseans through expensive ad campaigns.
Tennessee’s pilot voucher legislation was so unpopular in the State House that the former speaker offered to facilitate a National Guard promotion for a Democratic lawmaker if he voted yes. The exchange was corroborated by a Republican lawmaker who witnessed it.
The deciding vote in the House for the pilot legislation came from a Knoxville lawmaker who agreed to support it if Knox County was excluded.
The most outspoken conservative opponent of Governor Lee’s universal voucher bill was just removed from the House education committee by the current speaker.
Governor Lee tied hurricane relief to his universal voucher bill.
Of Hamilton County’s five state reps and two state senators, only Reps. Yusuf Hakeem and Michele Reneau have said that they’ve heard their constituents’ concerns and plan to vote no. Rep. Greg Martin recently published an opinion piece in support of vouchers.
I don’t know where the rest of our county delegation stands. But given their history of falling in line behind the lobbyists, I worry that Hakeem and Reneau will be the outliers.
If you don’t want what the billionaires are selling, contact your state legislators as soon as possible. They might ignore you, but they shouldn’t be able to do it comfortably.
Allison Gorman