Member-only story
Tennessee: A Story of School Privatization and Policy Failure
A 2023 legislative summary
Over at The Education Report, I’ve written about the recently concluded legislative session.
Here are a couple highlights:
As the General Assembly finished its business this week, legislation that would expand the state’s fledgling voucher program (now confined to Memphis and Nashville) to Chattanooga was finally passed.
To be clear, it had been passed in the Senate before.
The House, however, was eager to get vouchers into even more communities — and so added an amendment that would add Knox County to the mix.
Ultimately, Knox County was NOT added — but let’s be clear: The legislature wants full-on privatization of the state’s public schools.
What’s up with third grade?
Tennessee now has a third grade retention law — meaning that students who don’t hit a certain benchmark on the state’s 3rd grade TNReady test MUST repeat third grade OR participate in remediation, including a summer reading program. Some estimates suggest more than 60% of students would be subject to the law’s requirements and around half of those may ultimately repeat third grade.
