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Most Tennessee public school students who use Education Savings Accounts aren’t leaving low-performing public schools, while these students overall are underperforming their public school peers in both academic achievement and growth.
Tennessee Comptroller Jason E. Mumpower’s office released these findings Monday in the first comprehensive review of the program.
The comptroller’s report also found that the Tennessee Department of Education has not yet established parameters for removing private schools with repeated low academic performance, nor could it provide documentation “used to measure schools’ performance or counsel schools that have multiple years of low academic performance.”
Republican lawmakers passed the Education Savings Account program in 2019, though legal challenges delayed implementation until 2022. The program was the precursor to the 2025 universal program, which GOP lawmakers are already looking to expand this year after 20,000 students were enrolled last fall.
The original program could be limited to 12,500 enrollees under state law this school year, with a cap of 15,000 set to kick in next year. But the program has never been fully utilized, with just 3,693 students enrolled in the current school year.
The program was designed to benefit public school students: First-time applicants in 2022 had to be moving from a public school, entering kindergarten or transferring into Tennessee from another state.
In 2022, 66% of program students came from a public school, and 33% were entering public school.
By the next school year, lawmakers had made a change to “grandfather” some students into the program who had attended public school at least one year since 2019, the year the law was passed. Those students accounted for 31% of the program’s students. Overall, 15% of 2023 ESA students were entering kindergarten, 38% were coming from public schools, and 14% had reenrolled in the program.
In 2024, nearly half of all savings account students had reenrolled in the program, 28% came from public schools and 14% were entering kindergarten.
The program was a signature issue for Gov. Bill Lee, who has supported additional school choice policies as a way for parents to choose higher-achieving schools.
The comptroller’s report indicates this is not necessarily happening. The program was targeted at districts with a relatively high number of priority schools, a federal designation for schools that underperform in certain categories. In practice, that meant the savings account program could only be implemented in Shelby, Davidson and Hamilton counties, large districts that often have as many high-ranking, or reward, schools as priority schools.
A local look
Previous public school attendance
In Hamilton County, students participating in the Education Savings Account program are more likely to come from low-performing schools than their peers in Nashville and Memphis. Around half of the participating students locally previously attended schools that received a D or F under the formula Tennessee uses to assign letter grades to every public school.
When just looking at the highest and lowest ranked public schools in the state, though, Hamilton County matches the trends in the other two counties. More students participating in the tuition grant program locally previously attended a reward school than a priority school. Reward schools rank among the top performing public schools in Tennessee, while priority schools fall in the bottom 5% of schools statewide.
Academics
Public school students academically outperformed those receiving tuition grants. In Hamilton County, the difference in the percent of students testing proficient on the English language arts and math state tests during the 2024-25 school year was statistically significant. That indicates that the public school’s higher proficiency rates were due to a tangible input, such as the strength of instruction, according to the state comptroller’s report.
Locally, 33% of tuition grant students demonstrated growth at expected or higher levels compared to 60% of public school students. Proficiency looks at the number of students who met state standards, while growth examines how much students learned compared to where they started.
Source: Tennessee Comptroller
“Most schools that students are leaving to participate in the ESA program are neither reward nor priority schools, which would indicate their performance is neither among the highest or lowest of public schools in the state,” the comptroller’s report states. “When considering schools that have received state and federal designations, more ESA students are leaving reward schools than priority schools.”
This varies significantly by county, though. In Davidson County, 80% of program students who previously attended public schools attended schools with A, B or C letter grades, and 18% of students came from schools that received a D or F letter grade. In Memphis, 58% of students previously attended A, B or C-graded schools.
In Hamilton County, 50% of program students previously attended public schools with D or F grades.
The comptroller’s report also found the state education department did not do enough to advertise the savings account program to low-income students, a requirement in state law.
Overall, students receiving savings account money performed worse on the state’s standardized tests than students in public schools, although savings account students outperformed their peers in Memphis-Shelby County schools last year. The comptroller’s report also notes that scores from students receiving savings accounts have increased over time.
Meanwhile, virtual schools participating in the program for the first time last year performed worse than both private schools with savings account students and local public schools. Just 20% of program students enrolled in virtual schools were proficient in English language arts, and just 17% were proficient in math.
Parent satisfaction with the program remains above 95%, but the comptroller notes only 15% of participating families actually provided feedback on the program last year.
There could be major changes to the savings account program this year. The comptroller report suggests lawmakers reconsider eligibility requirements and where the program is targeting, noting other districts like Knox County Schools could be drawn in.
Meanwhile, House Speaker Cameron Sexton wants to eliminate the income limit and enrollment cap altogether for the program and open it up to all students in the current three counties.
This current income cap is 200% or less of the federal income eligibility to receive free school lunch, which would be $83,590 this year for a family of four. Around 76% of families in ESA-eligible counties are already eligible for the program, according to an EdChoice analysis.
The program this year provides around $9,747 per student, which fell below the average tuition cost by about $3,000 for participating private schools, the majority of which were religiously affiliated.
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.