Tennessee's "Educational Freedom" Bill can be stronger
Parents are the only persons qualified to decide where educational dollars are spent
You may or may not be aware that the Tennessee House just proposed a bill pretending to offer "Educational Freedom." You can read the whole bill here.
This bill discusses "school choice" and offers a voucher for parents to send their children to private schools. It does not include a home education option (more on that separately).
To be clear, I love school choice and want Tennessee allow parents have full control over how educational dollars are spent for each child with no strings, tests, or regulations attached - just like Arizona does. But this bill, as it is written, does not honor parents as the authority over their children AND doesn’t even have a hit of considering what is best for the children of Tennessee.
If you don't have time to read the whole bill, my objections to it are as follows:
Page 1: “Whereas, parents should be free to choose the school that best fits the educational needs of their specific child;” - This statement is both true and misleading. There is no place in this bill that shows the writers of this bill actually believe parents have the authority to direct their children’s education dollars, in fact, as I will point out the entire document shows that the authors do not truly want nor trust parents to be apart of the educational process and are more trusting of nameless persons who write regulations.
Page 1: “Whereas, Over the past six years, Tennessee is invested in record $2 billion annually in additional state dollars for public education;” We can prove that at least in Hamilton County, we waste money on education. We create giant campuses, have huge class sizes, stuff our administration, burden teachers and counselors with paperwork when they ought to be spending time with children and all research says smaller classes and schools are better. We always do the opposite. To include this statement as if more money for “education” is a benefit, is infuriating. Then why are students still being passed without hitting grade level marks? Why do we spend more money to build new schools when the smaller current schools are better for teachers, parents, children - everyone?
Page 2: “Eligible students”- homeschools would benefit from a school choice bill that distinguishes between “homeschool” and “ESA home educated.” (Stay tuned for what this CAN look like in Tennessee.)
Page 6: points 3-8 prove that writers of this bill don’t actually believe “parents should be free to choose a school…” each point on this page opens the door up for government regulations and NOT parents to determine the best “tutoring, transportation, technology, curriculum, post secondary, and therapy.” These statements are an insult to the authority of parents over their children.
Page 7: More state testing is not the accountability that is needed. Engaged parents. That’s always been the answer to better educational outcomes.
Page 10: (I) “an LEAs allocated education funding shall not decrease from one (1) year to the next due to the disenrollment of students from the LEA.” So this means that the state pays twice for each student and underperforming public schools remain unaccountable to parents.
Page 10: “$2,000 to teachers” - Again, this does not address the issues at hand (poor school performance and the need to give parents the ability to direct their child’s educational dollars to support each child’s unique educational needs.) This looks like an attempt to buy votes from the teachers unions.
In conclusion, this bill pretends to offer “parents the choice” to select the best school that fits the needs of each child, but the bill is set up to fail because it keeps the power in the hands of nameless bureaucrats and administrators to have control over the educational decisions of each individual child from tutoring to therapy regulations. This bill doesn’t functionally trust parents to direct the educational needs of their children. Period.
If the legislature truly believed that parents are the authority over children and ought to have true “educational freedom” then they would structure the law to protect the rights of parents and the education opportunities Tennessee children deserve.
We can do better, Tennessee.
If you live in Tennessee and are interested in learning more about school choice, you can join the movement to advocate for parents rights in Tennessee and follow the state-wide conversation here:
We are in collaboration with Love Your School to get the word out to Tennessee families about what true educational freedom can look like in Tennessee. We are passionate about getting ALL children an excellent education- as determined by their parents.