Initial version of Governor Lee’s new voucher bill would require participants to be tested

Governor Bill Lee unveiling his voucher plan last year (Photo by Sky Arnold)

Testing didn’t receive a lot of headlines during the debate earlier this year over Governor Bill Lee’s plan to let families use taxpayer dollars to send their children to private school, but it played an important role in why the legislation failed.

Members of the State House and Senate advanced different versions of the Governor’s Education Freedom Scholarship, sometimes called vouchers, and couldn’t come to a compromise on those differences. One of the biggest involved a provision in the House version of the legislation that would reduce the number of tests students in public school are required to take.

Supporters hoped that reducing testing would help garner support for the Education Freedom Scholarship from educators who worried it could divert money from public schools.

The Governor’s new voucher plan unveiled Wednesday includes no reduction in testing and additionally requires participants in grades 3 through 11 to either take a nationally standardized achievement test or the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP). The newly named Education Freedom Scholarship Act of 2025 directs participating private schools to provide that test data to the Comptroller’s Office of Research and Education Accountability who will submit an annual report to the House and Senate.

Lawmakers will use that testing data to measure the success of the program.

The other details of the Education Freedom Act of 2025 are similar to the proposal Governor Lee made with this year.  The program would begin in the 2025/26 school year with a maximum of 20,000 participants. If approved by lawmakers next year, parents would be able to use the Education Freedom Scholarships for private school tuition, books, fees, and other expenses.

At least 10 thousand scholarships would be reserved for students with an economic need, those participating in the existing Education Savings Account program, and students with an identified disability including autism, deaf-blindness, or an intellectual disability.

“For more than a year, I have worked in partnership with the General Assembly to introduce a unified school choice plan that empowers parents when it comes to their child's education and further invests in Tennessee’s public schools and teachers,” said Gov. Bill Lee in a statement. “Every child deserves an opportunity for success regardless of their income or ZIP code, and I look forward to delivering on this promise with the Education Freedom Act.”

Appeasing concerns from teachers and school districts

The Governor’s plan for vouchers played a major role in the recent state elections and the proposal has faced nearly universal opposition from Democrats and a number of school boards across the state.

The new legislation includes multiple provisions to appease opponents, including a one-time $2,000 bonus for K-12 public school teachers and a provision to reimburse school districts that lose money when participating students leave their schools.

The text of the bill guarantees that a school district’s allocated state funding for education “shall not decrease from one year to the next year due to the disenrollment of students.” Under the legislation, the state would allocate additional funding to ensure district’s do not receive less funding than the prior school year because of the program.

School districts would also receive extra funding for school facilities. A provision of the bill would direct 80 percent of the revenue from sports wagering tax into an account dedicated to school facilities aid. 

Democratic party leaders remain opposed

State Senator London Lamar (Photo by the Tennessee General Assembly)

Those provisions were not enough to garner support from leading Democrats. Senate Democratic Party Caucus Chair London Lamar, D-Memphis, released a statement Wednesday calling the new voucher plan a “scam.”

“Once again, Tennessee Republicans are pushing an expansion of their failed private school voucher scheme. This isn’t about improving education; it’s about diverting public dollars away from underfunded public schools to private institutions that are unaccountable to taxpayers and don’t serve every student. Vouchers are a scam — they aren’t working to improve student outcomes here in Tennessee, nor have they succeeded at this scale anywhere else in the country,” wrote Lamar. “The economics of this plan simply don’t make sense. Wherever universal voucher programs have been implemented, they’ve led to runaway spending, benefiting a few at the expense of our neighborhood schools. Instead of funneling taxpayer money into unproven programs, we should be focusing on strengthening our public schools so they can serve every child, in every community, with the resources and accountability they deserve.”