WILL PRIVATE SCHOOL VOUCHERS HELP OR HARM HAMILTON STUDENTS?
As if Hamilton County schools didn’t face enough of an uphill battle, the climb is likely to get steeper still with a bill introduced by Tennessee Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga, to expand the state’s private school voucher law to include our students.
The law — which allows low-income families to use up to $7,300 of public tax dollars for private school tuition and other fees — is currently restricted to students in Shelby County and Metro Nashville school districts.
The program, which Gov. Bill Lee pushed hard in his first term and which Gardenhire then resisted, opting to keep Hamilton County out, is still a pilot program. It is so new that the state comptroller will not report on its efficacy until after its third year of enrolling students. Because recently ended litigation delayed the program’s launch, that review isn’t due until Jan. 1, 2026.
If it’s just getting started and hasn’t been tested and reviewed, we can’t know if it will help our students — or any students. Worse, we can’t know if it will cause still more harm.
And that’s why Rep. Yusuf Hakeem, a Chattanooga Democrat, says Tennessee should not expand the program so soon after rolling it out.
“Good policy means studying something for several years before you start trying to change it,” Hakeem told Chalkbeat. “We don’t even have a year of data yet to track.”
Hakeem also told the Chattanooga Times Free Press: “What we’re talking about doing is taking money from the public schools and putting it in private schools, and what does that do to the quality of education we’re trying to provide in public schools?”
It’s hard to argue with that.
In Hamilton County there are 40 private schools (75% of which are religiously affiliated) serving 11,880 students — higher than statewide average.
Our 79 public schools serve more than 44,550 students. The average private school tuition cost here is $14,026, which is higher than the state’s private school average tuition cost of $10,633.
Hamilton County public schools’ per-pupil expenditure was $11,286 in the 2021-2022 school year, according to the Tennessee State Report Card.
On the other hand, it’s also somewhat hard to argue with Gardenhire’s changed perspective.
He said when he opposed the vouchers in Hamilton County, he felt our public schools were headed in the right direction, especially in terms of improving our lowest performing schools. He said the state had issued an additional $20 million in funding for those schools and an advisory board had been formed.
But things changed, he said.
“We went from five failing schools to nine failing schools,” Gardenhire told the TFP. “Since that time, the opportunity zone [designed to boost those schools] has imploded.”
He told Chalkbeat: “We’ll know in a few years if the [state’s Education Savings Account] program works. But we know what we’re doing now in Hamilton County is not working. It’s a total disaster.”
Gardenhire said he disagrees with opponents of the bill that funds are being taken from public schools.
“We’re keeping the funds for the student, and that’s where the money belongs,” he said. “It belongs to the students, not to a school system, not to an education establishment. Money follows the student. We’re interested in educating these kids that are not getting a good education. And the proof is that Hamilton County keeps on letting these schools fail.”
The reality is that almost everything about our schools has changed in recent years.
Three years of pandemic have ping-ponged students in and out of classroom learning and remote learning. The state has changed the way all state money flows to schools. Learning and curriculum programs have changed. Even the way library books are available to students has changed with bans and parental reading opt-outs.
It seems the more we tinker with teaching — instead of just letting teachers teach and children learn — the more possible harm we do.
Time will tell on this plan. With the backing of Gardenhire and state Sen. Bo Watson, R-Hixson, it’s likely to pass.