A National Movement
Tennessee's embrace of American exceptionalism in education is part of a broader attack on public schools
Annie Abrams in The New Republic highlights Tennessee’s embrace of Hillsdale College’s “classical” curriculum and notes it is part of a national movement by those on the political right to reshape America’s public schools. As Abrams notes:
The state’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, was negotiating plans to open 50 new “classical education” charter schools. An expansion of an initiative associated with Michigan’s Christian Hillsdale College, the schools will follow an educational philosophy that rests on the sanctity of Western literary and theological traditions; administrators promise to direct students’ “souls such that they become men and women who love the right things”—namely “the true, the good, and the beautiful.” The Hillsdale network isn’t alone in its mission to shape students into “a certain kind of human being,” and Tennessee is far from unique in its embrace of this vision. In fact, classical education charters that espouse “character development” and “stewardship of Western tradition” have lately been popping up all around the country, from Oregon to Florida.
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Meanwhile, West Virginia parents fight a state voucher scheme
Public Funds for Public Schools reports on the fight in West Virginia over that state’s new school voucher program:
The parents in a lawsuit challenging West Virginia’s expansive 2021 voucher law have asked the Kanawha County Circuit Court to block the State from launching the voucher program and prevent the diversion of public dollars from their already under-resourced public schools. The preliminary injunction motion was filed today in the lawsuit, Beaver v. Moore, originally filed in January.
“The programs and services my children benefit from in school every day are threatened by the possibility that millions of public dollars will leave our schools because of this voucher plan,” said Travis Beaver, plaintiff and parent of two children in West Virginia public schools.
The voucher law, according to the lawsuit and injunction motion, violates several provisions of the West Virginia Constitution, including the clear language of the Education Article, which requires the state to provide and maintain a system of public schools. The Legislature therefore can only provide for a system of free public schools and cannot support a separate system of private and home schooling. In addition, the Legislature can only reduce funds available for public education for a compelling, narrowly tailored purpose. The State has no interest in funding private schools, and the extremely broad voucher law is the opposite of a narrowly tailored measure.
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