Governor Bill Lee signed the measure, opening Tennessee families to use taxpayer dollars for private school expenses, regardless of how much money they earn.
Another key part of the new law -- Tennessee's Department of Education can "deny" any school voucher application if the student is not in the United States legally.
Corey DeAngelis is Senior Fellow for American Culture Project. He told AFN this law is a huge win for school choice both in Tennessee and nationally.
"Tennessee just became the 13th state in the last four years alone to pass universal school choice available to all families regardless of income, background, or zip code. In the past four years, we've seen more advancement on school choice than in the preceding four decades."
But why? He said the teachers’ unions overplayed their hand during the Covid era.
“They fought to keep the schools closed as long as possible. They held children’s education hostage to secure billions of dollars in ransom payments from taxpayers,” DeAngelis said.
What the unions failed to account for was the transparency afforded by online learning.
“Their plan backfired because families got to see what was happening in the classroom, and conservatives in red states like Tennessee in particular were really upset about the curriculum that they saw in the classroom that wasn't aligned with their values,” DeAngelis said.
DeAngelis said the radical Left has "infiltrated the government-run school system for far too long, and remote learning during the Covid era exposed the rot that was already in the public school system."
That became the impetus for change. Some red states, including Tennessee, pushed to ban critical race theory and other divisive concepts.
Ban only as good as enforcement
But passing a ban wasn’t enough for some education mavericks.
“We found with undercover journalists at an organization called Accuracy in Media, that although the concepts were banned, the public school administrators were admitting on camera that they were going to do it anyway. They were still going to teach the same concepts. It was a never-ending game of whack-a-mole of administrators moving the goalposts to try to circumvent the intent of the law,” DeAngelis said.
Because, he said, at the end of the day, when no one was looking, a lot of these teachers continued to do what they wanted.
"And that's why school choice is so important even in red states, because the problems aren't only in places like California and New York. The Left has taken over the public school systems in the red states, too, including in Tennessee.”
Now unhappy parents have a choice.
DeAngelis said he expects Texas to be the next state to go all in on school choice.
