As a new Tennessee General Assembly is set to be sworn in over the coming weeks, the first bill for the new legislative session has already been filed, and it’s another effort, after failing last session, from GOP Gov. Bill Lee to pour millions in public dollars into private schools across the state.
While proponents of the bill in the state legislature will call this funding “education freedom scholarships”, placed into a savings account, for selected students, on this page we will call them how they are commonly known — school vouchers.
Yes, there are technical differences, but we shouldn’t get bogged down in the semantics. The legislation being pushed by the governor is, in effect, a school voucher system. At the end of the day, it’s public funding toward private academic institutions.
Calling it a measure for “education freedom” is also a misnomer. As we’ve argued on this page recently, school vouchers, contrary to what those who push for them say, do not give parents and students educational freedom, especially low-income families and those in rural areas.
Showcasing who tends to benefit from such programs, as reported by ProPublica, most of the vouchers under Arizona’s recently enacted system went to students already attending private schools.