The Tennessee General Assembly adjourned sine die last night, and we can all breathe a sigh of relief. Every minute the legislature remains in session is an opportunity for them to do something for us and something to us.
Unfortunately for public education, it’s the latter. The doubling of private school vouchers this session, before the ink of the Governor’s signature from last session dried, diverted $300 million that could have supported improving public schools. Under the program, families who receive the voucher are awarded $7,500, which they can use to enroll their child in a private school or offset the cost of the private school for which they are already paying.
A report by the Republican State Comptroller showed that most of the voucher recipients come from middle and upper-income families who are using the funds to cover a portion of private school tuition. Initially, vouchers were sold as a means for low-income families to provide a higher-quality private school education, though the program fails to address common issues of low-income families, like transportation and after-school care. Early reports also revealed that kids using vouchers were not faring better on the state’s standardized test than kids without a voucher.
The legislature said, “We’ll fix that.”
And in the 11th hour of the session, the General Assembly passed a law removing the requirement that children using a voucher must also take the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) test – the standardized state test every child in public schools has taken since 1989. Proponents of the measure argue that students still must sit for a nationally recognized test, but any credible “apples to apples” comparison between traditional public school students and voucher students has been eliminated. This, of course, is by design since the legislature and the Governor implemented the program and doubled it with no data to support that vouchers improve student outcomes.
Almost simultaneously, the legislative supermajority overwhelmingly voted for the state to take over the largest and poorest school district in the state. Leveraging low literacy proficiency, high absenteeism, and the results of an $8 million overbudget audit commissioned by the state, legislators bloviated about “making Memphis matter” and then voted for draconian accountability measures for the system.
Virtually everyone agrees that the Memphis Shelby County Schools require evidence-based interventions and operational accountability. Yet, the state saw fit to institute accountability measures on local leaders but removed minimal accountability for itself by eliminating the testing requirements for the voucher program. Justification for the MSCS takeover stems from a history of schools and students failing to meet state academic standards, yet the voucher program so far has not proven to improve academic outcomes – an impetus for sure to measure results moving forward. Perhaps most troublesome is that more than 90% of the students in the Memphis Shelby County School system are African American or Hispanic, but 75% of voucher recipients are white. Heavy-handed accountability measures for students of color and the system that teaches them, but none for middle-income white students and the organizations that teach them.
The takeover and related accountability may be headed to court, and the number of students receiving a voucher will double before schools reconvene in August. In other words, we must live with accountability disparity. However, there is one legislative accountability measure available to citizens. It’s an election, and we have them this August and November.