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Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee defended the state’s new private school tuition grant program amid questions about its application process, which does not require families to report where their students went to school before.
“It’s not required by the legislation, so it’s not necessary to have,” Lee said Tuesday, reaffirming comments his office made last week about the legislation that established the program. “What we hope for is universal school choice where every family, regardless of their child’s past education history, has access to a scholarship. Ultimately, that would be the goal.”
But it will be nearly impossible for Tennessee to determine whether the new program, a longtime passion project for Lee, is actually expanding access to private schools for all Tennesseans or providing taxpayer funds mainly to families whose children are already enrolled in private schools.
Chalkbeat Tennessee reported in late June that Tennessee is not asking families to report their student’s prior enrollment. This is a frequently asked question in other state tuition grant programs and was a required question on the application for Tennessee’s first initiative, the Education Savings Account program.
Tennessee is also not collecting data on the household income of tens of thousands of applicants vying for a “universal” grant, those open to any Tennessee resident, regardless of family income.
In the first year of the program, half of the state’s 20,000 grants are subject to income limits. They are reserved for families who make under 300% of the federal income threshold to qualify for free or reduced price lunch. A family of four, for example, would be eligible for the income-capped subsidy if they made less than $173,160.
When asked how he would respond to criticism that a lack of data could hamper accountability and oversight measures of the program, Lee said he didn’t think it would be an issue. He also said he wasn’t concerned about tracking whether the program is indeed expanding access to private schools for families who had previously been enrolled in public schools, which has long been Lee’s stated goal for the program.
“With half of the families being low-income families, I think that problem is being solved,” Lee said.
Lawmakers who opposed Lee’s plan have raised questions about the data collection. State Rep. Jody Barrett, a Republican from Dickson, has called for an independent board to oversee the program, according to a Tennessee Lookout report.
Meanwhile, Rep. Caleb Hemmer, a Nashville Democrat, has been seeking answers and data from the department about the program. Hemmer sharply criticized the department on Tuesday and said that the grants should be called “Education Fraud Accounts.”
“We are distributing over $125 million in taxpayer funds in $7,300 increments, yet there appears to be no meaningful oversight or basic data collection,” Hemmer said. “Common sense would dictate that we ask fundamental questions and track how this money is being used and who really is receiving it.”
Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds last week declined Hemmer’s request for demographic information on students who had applied for the program.
Though Lee on Wednesday said he was encouraged that “Tennesseans of multiple backgrounds and economic diversity” want to participate in the program, the department has released very limited information about the program so far.
It is not yet clear how many applicants have been accepted into the program. The state Department of Education has not responded to multiple Chalkbeat Tennessee requests this summer asking how many applicants have been accepted or provided specific information on whether the department has filled 11 positions the legislature funded to help administer the program.
“We’ve already seen the consequences of unchecked voucher programs in other states — most recently in Florida, where funds were used to purchase more than 5,000 theme park tickets, including to Disney World,” Hemmer said. “I am currently working with the Legislative Attorney’s Office to explore all legal avenues to access this publicly available data and ensure this program is operating within the bounds of the law and in the best interest of taxpayers.
Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.