Launched this past fall in Memphis and Nashville-area school districts, Tennessee's education savings account program now has 343 students enrolled at 44 private schools.
The program allows low-income students to use up to $8,200 of state and local money per year for private school tuition and other education-related expenses.
Most of the schools have fewer than 10 students enrolled in the program, but 16 have more than that. In Nashville, the top school for enrollees is Lighthouse Christian School with 33. In Memphis, it's the Collegiate School of Memphis with 32, according to state data released to the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
Over 1,000 families applied for the program, but some were deemed ineligible because the applicants lived outside of the school district, state officials said in a phone call.
With a goal of 5,000 students, the program is in its infancy, launched swiftly after a favorable court ruling. Legislators are considering an expansion into Hamilton County for the savings accounts, known informally by some in the education arena as private school vouchers.
Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R- Chattanooga, sponsor of a bill that would expand the program to Hamilton County, said it's about creating more opportunities.
"We're interested in educating these kids that are not getting a good education," Gardenhire previously told the Times Free Press. "Hamilton County keeps on letting these schools fail."
FUNDING OFFSET
Opponents argue that the program will hurt public schools by taking away funding. But it's too early to evaluate the program's financial impact on Metro Nashville Public Schools, said Sean Braisted, executive officer of communications for the district.
"The voucher program was launched haphazardly right before the start of the school year," Braisted said in an email. "So far, we've received very little information from the state about who has applied for or will be receiving vouchers this school year, so the impact to date has been minimal."
For the first three years, districts will receive a grant to backfill funding lost because of students enrolled in the education savings account program.
"The voucher program was designed as a pilot program and will initially provide offsetting funds for students who apply for and receive the vouchers," Braisted said. "Eventually, the state will eliminate these grant funds, and Nashville's taxpayers will be stuck footing the bill for these vouchers in the form of reduced revenue for public schools."
The Times Free Press reached out to Memphis Shelby County Schools for an interview, but officials did not respond.
Critics of the law question how private schools will be held accountable.
"I'm honestly more concerned with the impact of education on these students," Kendra Young, executive director of the advocacy group UnifiEd in Chattanooga, said in a phone interview. "We're all talking about acceleration and closing gaps and the third grade retention law and reading levels. So, if we're giving up state dollars but we're not assessing them to make sure that they're closing gaps and doing what they're claiming to do, then why are they getting state dollars?"
Gardenhire said there are academic measures in place.
"People have a misconception about this bill," Gardenhire said in an interview. "It can only go to lower-income families and can only go to a private school that will accept all the rules that come with it -- accountabilities and the state standards, those types of things."
Hamilton County Schools Superintendent Justin Robertson said the program's potential impact on students and the district is a big question mark.
"We've got to have a better understanding of how many kids are going to take advantage of this option," Robertson said in a phone call. "The unknown is what kind of impact will it have on us, not just financially, but also for the kids that you're taking out of school, and what impact does that have on the overall performance of those schools?"
BY THE NUMBERS
Of the 44 private schools participating in the education savings account program, the majority are Christian.
Other religious schools include two Jewish schools and one Islamic school, Nashville International Academy.
Three are nonreligious -- two are specialized schools for students with learning disabilities, and the third is Templeton Academy in Nashville.
So far, the state has distributed around $1.3 million under the program, officials said in an email.
When asked how the state is measuring the program's success, officials said they're focused on enrollment.
"I don't know that we're evaluating it in terms of success as much as we are tracking the numbers," Brian Blackley, spokesman for the Tennessee Department of Education, said in a phone call. "And I believe that, as you can see based on the numbers, there is significant interest in the program."
CASE STUDY
Arieale Munson's son is gifted.
"I assumed that my child would start to get lost in the educational world because he would become bored because he was so smart," Munson said in a phone call. "So I decided to look for a school that will cater around to what he wants to do."
The boy, Steven Cole Jr., hopes to become a paleontologist, she added.
Munson lives in the Memphis area and said as soon as applications opened for the education savings account program, she applied.
"I'm not saying he wasn't receiving a great education (in public school)," Munson said. "I wanted him to be around other children that have the same mindset as him. And I wanted him to be provided all the opportunities outside of what public schools offer."
Steven is now in sixth grade at St. George's Independent School. In addition to a challenging curriculum, he's also learning life skills, she said.
"They teach them how to swim," Munson said. "They teach them how to fish. They teach them camping. All of their sports activities come with their tuition."
The tuition at St. George's is around $22,000 a year. And while Munson's son received a scholarship as well as the state funds, St. George's still requires a financial contribution from each family. Munson said she pays $4,000 out of pocket to meet that requirement.
The transition from public to private school has gone well, she said.
"His teachers always brag about his transition, stating he's had a smooth transition," Munson said. "His grades are still straight A's, and test scores are over grade level."
But for some education savings account students, transitioning from public to religious schools has been a bit more challenging.
"Being an established Catholic school, we have some rules, traditions, and simply put, ways of doing things, that may seem new and even awkward to students who are enrolling from a public school," Cathy Armstrong, director of recruitment and enrollment at Immaculate Conception Cathedral School in Memphis, said in an email. "Our faculty and staff have made it a point to explain and assist where needed to be sure our ESA students, and parents, have a seamless transition and feel comfortable that they know the expectations that are being given them."
Immaculate Conception has the second highest number of state-funded students in the Memphis area, a total of 23. Tuition is just shy of $9,000 per year.
"I've seen nothing but good that has come from the program so far. It has been a true win-win as far as I'm concerned," Armstrong said. " I have never thought public schools were ideal for all students, just as I have never thought private schools were the best environment for all students. I think both should be available."
LACK OF DATA
There is no public academic data for parents to consider before choosing a private school because the state doesn't collect it or require schools to report it.
In an open records request, the Times Free Press asked for student performance data for all private schools in Hamilton County over the past five years but was told by state officials that no such data exists.
By law, participating education savings account schools will have to administer the math and English language arts portions of the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program test to its state-funded students, which means there will be some data publicly available in the future.
But the data will be limited because federal student privacy laws limit student performance data that can be released about small groups of children -- such as the fewer than 10 students at many of the private schools participating in the state program. As it stands, 28 out of the 44 private schools participating in the program have fewer than 10 state-funded students.
Patrick Wolf, a researcher and a professor of education policy at the University of Arkansas, has spent years studying the academic outcomes of similar state voucher programs.
"There's this idea of private schools being these super expensive elite academies, and that's just a very small sliver of the private school sector," Wolf said in a phone call. "Most private schools are affiliated with a religious organization and are low-tuition, pretty low resource schools."
In 2012, the state of Louisiana commissioned Wolf and a team of researchers at the University of Arkansas to conduct a study on the state's private school voucher program.
That year, around 9,000 students were eligible, but the number of applicants exceeded the number of seats by over half. The selection was determined by lottery.
Researchers tracked this cohort of students for four years and compared the academic performance of the students who won a seat in the lottery to those who didn't and remained in public school.
"We compared their outcomes with the voucher kids on measures of student achievement and student attainment, attainment in the form of college enrollment," Wolf said.
The findings were mixed. The program showed a negative effect on academic performance for elementary-aged students, especially in math.
However, Wolf said, "For students who participated in the program in high school, we actually saw a small but statistically significant positive effect on their rate of enrolling in college."
Middle school students showed no better academic achievement or college enrollment rates than their nonvoucher peers.
"That mixed pattern of results suggests to me that the problem was low-quality private elementary schools," Wolf said.
RACIAL MIX
One significant impact of Louisiana's program was a boost for racial integration.
"The families who are most attracted to private school choice programs are African Americans," Wolf said. "In a lot of cases, what happens when these programs are launched or expanded is a large number of African American kids leave racially isolated public schools and transfer into more racially integrated private schools."
Officials at Immaculate Conception Cathedral School said they're already seeing this effect.
"We've always been a diverse school, but this has allowed us to grow and enroll a student population that reflects the population of our city, which has always been important to us," Armstrong said.
A more recent study on Ohio's private school voucher program, conducted by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative education policy think tank based in Washington, D.C., also found an increase in racial integration in both private and public schools.
"With such large numbers of Black and Hispanic students moving to the private school sector, the likelihood that public school students are in a racially 'isolated' school has declined," the study said.
Racial and ethnic segregation was approximately 10-15 % lower than it would have been had public school districts not been exposed the voucher program, according to the study.
Researchers also found that vouchers led to "modest" achievement gains in public school districts and suggested that may be due to a more competitive educational environment.
In Tennessee, 56% of students enrolled in the education savings account program are Black.
DO THE RESEARCH
Wolf said that if the voucher program expands to Hamilton County, he advises parents to do their homework.
"Learn about the schools in your community," Wolf said. "Visit the private schools that are participating. There's no substitute for actually seeing a school operating in terms of deciding whether that would be a good environment for your child."
There are 40 private schools serving 11,880 students in Hamilton County, according to the Private School Review. Seventy percent are religiously affiliated. Tuition can range from around $5,000 per year to $30,000 or more.
Contact Carmen Nesbitt at cnesbitt@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6327.