"Good school choice done wrong' by Steve

First, so people that aren’t familiar with my patriotic bone fides, I’m not anti-choice.

I’m pro school choice, totally pro-choice, I believe in a student’s right to choose, my student body my choice, right? Like my ‘Get fluoride out of the drinking water’ bill where 88% of the TN drinking water has it and now known to knock IQ points off kids, what’s the point of getting those points back if you can’t teach them well. If you're raised to live and drink water without fluoride let’s not ruin them in failing schools, many graded D or F in Tennessee. 
 

• Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS): 11% of eligible schools received failing grades, the highest proportion of F's among districts with 50 or more schools. 17% in the state received a D.  215 schools were not eligible for letter grade of the 1,905.

I’m anti big government programs that waste money. Since 2000 school administrations have grown 100% while student enrollment has stayed flat, there’s a school in Chicago for example that has 20 students. The whole H.S. 20 students and 30 administrators so the jobs, union jobs programs help the adults that vote and not the kids who’s test scores are awful, like 0% proficient in math and reading places like Baltimore and Chicago, so of course anything that can get even a few kids out of that would be great and I’m all for it…The test scores prove there is a Titanic sized problem in public education.

2023-24 Spring TCAP State-Level Overview:

• English Language Arts (ELA): Overall, 39% of all students are meeting grade level expectations, with proficiency gains in most tested grades, and elementary and high schools continuing to out-perform pre-pandemic levels.
• Math: In grades 3-8, 40% of students are meeting grade level expectations in math, with a nearly three percentage point gain for 5th and 7th graders.
• Science: Overall, proficiency rates held steady for science, with an increase of one percentage point in overall student proficiency.
• Social Studies: Results show a one percentage point gain for all students tested in social studies, showing continued improvements over the last three years.  

But in TN one of the loudest Republican voices against it is Rep Todd Warner (District 92 pop. 61,804), he said there is one private school in his district that is only a year old and has 8 kids…maybe they’ll get 20 next year. Jody Barrett (D69 pop. 66096) same thing, Dickson county west of Nashville I think has none so it’s impossible to be UNIVERSAL like Wyoming just passed and Texas might pass this year or for the $5B Trump’s Department of Education may grant. In 2023, there were 114 charter schools in Tennessee, serving approximately 44,000 students — 5 percent of the state's total student population. In 2022, Tennessee had 1,001,916 students enrolled in pre-kindergarten through grade 12. This was across 1,843 schools in 141 school districts. In 2022, the Census Bureau estimated that 172,000 Tennessee children were enrolled in private or home schools.

The math for the "Education Freedom Act of 2025." is flawed, $400M price tag, they say, with a bonus, some call it ‘bribe’ for 77,000 teachers at $2000 a pop for their approval, that’s $150M by the way, for teachers that vote mostly Democrat.

Randi Weingarden, the current president of the NEA’s predecessor, Albert Shanker once said, “When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children.” Not a nice guy apparently, in the meantime he only cared about his members, the teachers and administrators, same ones that grew 100% in Chicago I spoke of. President Biden had overseen a nearly 6% growth of the full-time, non-seasonal federal workforce during his four years in office, including a jump at nearly every major agency, but particularly health and education. 

During their farewell, Education Secretary Cardona touted what they consider the agency’s K-12 legacy under Biden. As the pandemic receded, they dealt with the continued fallout: issuing grants to bolster school mental health services; funding paid teacher apprenticeships—now an option in nearly every state—to grow the teacher pipeline and break down financial hurdles to pursuing a teaching career; recruiting thousands of tutors; and emphasizing opportunities for multilingual learners.

Back to Tennessee, besides the “bribes”, which teachers have said publicly that don’t want, incidentally, the bill allows the schools that are so bad kids want to leave, and if they are lucky enough to win the lottery and have a school near by to leave for, the school still gets the state money as if they were in attendance. I call that milk carton missing children money and that’s 20,000 kids at about $10k or $200M…so we’re up to $350M and we haven’t even educated anyone yet.

The worst is this federal law from a Supreme Court case called Plyler v. Doe: A state cannot prevent children of undocumented immigrants from attending public school unless a substantial state interest is involved. That’s why classrooms have sometimes over 50% non English speakers. I’ve been told there are like 20 languarges being spoken and no way we have that many interpreters, you also have adult men in k-12 with our kids, gangs, drugs, sexual assaults, its out of control. Plyer DOES NOT say full ride scholarship k-12 + college, so I say use their Biden/Harris free cell phones they’ve been given, download the free Hillsdage college app and call it good. Google translate is free too. That’s $600M did I mention that?

So add it up and it’s $1bln to give away $7000 vouchers; about $1M per kid in year one. 

Last I checked $600M is more than $400M so we give illegals 50% more to educate them when they shouldn’t even be here than our own kids. If Tom Homan and Trump are successful in getting rid of the criminal ones we could use 1/4 ? ½? To build new charter schools to actually educate more kids. That total cost of illegals when you add in everything is $364/household. How do people without kids in the home feel about that?

This week is the ‘special session’ not sure why it’s special since they are in regular session Jan-April already so it’s just a ‘session’ but anyway, they tied relief aid to East TN from hurricane Helene which was 4 months ago, better late than never, but I seriously would call your Chattanooga Reps, email them, Bo Watson is over there, Jason Zachary, Faison and tell them this is untennable.

How about waive property taxes for vets and seniors without kids in the house so they don’t have to pay for these kids in schools in counties that don’t have private schools and stop funding illegals making TN a magnet for people that shouldn’t be here much less get a free education and health care closing your rural hospitals and of course crime like Tren De Aqua and MS13. Usually it does some good to change their minds, but Governor Lee sure seems to want it bad and companies want those admin fees upwards of $5-10M, I read. We’ll see the details and names after it passes because as Nancy Pelosi said, we’ve got to pass Obamacare to see what’s in it. This is the other part of the US economy the feds don’t control yet after healthcare.

States collected more than $1.8 billion in tax revenue from sports betting taxes in fiscal year 2023. $3Bln from tourism from people coming to TN to tour whiskey distilleries, more than Kentucky even and of course hotel, sales taxes on homes from all those CA moving here, like me! and anything else they can think of…stop giving it away to Ford and Elon Musk for EV cars nobody wants would be good idea.

North Carolina built its school voucher program the same way that Lee has advocated for Tennessee. When it launched in 2014, the program was only for low-income families, but in 2023, state lawmakers expanded eligibility to students of all income levels and those already attending private school.
And because of the bill’s loose restrictions on who could receive the new vouchers, a large number of the program’s recipients are expected to come from families who already send, or plan to send, their children to private schools, skipping the 10 year gradual roll out. 

According to reporting by ProPublica, 39 schools that it identified as likely segregation academies have received taxpayer money from North Carolina’s voucher program.
In Arkansas, which approved universal vouchers in 2023 under Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, more than 80% of last year’s enrollees had not attended public schools the previous year.

Editorial comments expressed in this column are the sole opinion of the writer.