Benjamin Franklin, a Founding Father and inventor, once said, “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” As Tennesseans, how can we ensure our children reap that interest and have the opportunity to succeed in this world? I believe our support for public education and the Education Freedom Act of 2025 is a first step to making this investment a reality for our children today and into the future.
Parents have the greatest responsibility and ability to shape their children’s academic futures. Too often, their role is limited by access and resources to provide the best education for their children. Instead of empowering parents, we restrict their options, particularly when it comes to education.
Monopolies are rarely a good thing. Yet, we have allowed a government monopoly to control K-12 education for decades. The people most resistant to losing this monopoly are those who control or benefit from it. But education is not about preserving a system – it’s about the child, and about empowering parents to provide more educational opportunities for their children.
Our state does not have monopolies in higher education. For 20 years, Tennessee’s HOPE Scholarship has provided opportunities for both public and private colleges. Federal programs like the Pell Grant and the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 have helped students attend the universities of their choice – from prestigious institutions like Harvard to schools closer to home, like the University of Tennessee, Covenant College and Lee University. The success of this model is clear. More international students come to the United States for higher education than to any other country, with the United Kingdom a distant second. Competition in higher education is not only acceptable – it’s widely embraced.
So why are we resisting competition and choice in K-12 education? When I was a child, my grandfather worked for the U.S. Post Office. There weren’t many choices for how to send or receive mail. The system worked, but it was also a monopoly and was not always the most effective way to send or receive mail. Today, we have choices: email, online payments, FedEx, UPS and other delivery services. The American people have chosen alternatives to the government-run postal system. Whether it’s more efficient now than it was decades ago is up for debate, but the fact remains that we embraced choice and competition.