Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee’s Education Freedom Scholarships program apparently will head to discussion next week in at least state Senate committees without the requirement of annual Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) testing or Department of Education-directed accountability.
Though that is what a draft of the bill accidentally released in January said, we hoped a final version of the proposal that would dole out public money for students to attend private schools would be altered to add such measures. That the Senate version filed Wednesday does not continues to be troubling. And we’re avid believers in school choice.
However, House Majority Leader William Lamberth, R-Portland, told the Nashville Tennessean that the House bill will not match the Senate’s bill, though he declined to supply details. And there is also this: Sen. Jon Lundberg, R-Bristol, the chairman of the Senate Education Committee, told the Tennessean he will file a 17-page amendment to the Senate bill that will add testing requirements.
That tells us, then, some Republicans — perhaps many — are, like us, concerned about the lack of accountability measures, and that the governor’s bill is unlikely to pass unscathed.
Lundberg’s amendment, according to the Nashville paper which obtained a copy of it, would require scholarship program recipients to take annual tests approved by the state Board of Education, would mandate third and eighth graders to take TCAP tests, and would require 11th graders to take a postsecondary readiness exam like the SAT or ACT (given free in Tennessee public schools).