The Road to School Privatization is Paved with Gold
The Road to School Privatization is Paved with Gold
Despite pushback, Tennessee moves ahead with charter, voucher schemes
In Tennessee, plans to privatize public education are currently caught up in a debate about Michigan-based Christian college Hillsdale. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced a plan to create 50–100 Hillsdale charters (publicly-funded, privately operated) back in January.
All appeared to be moving apace until Hillsdale’s President, Larry Arnn, was recorded making disparaging remarks about teachers and teacher training at a private event. The entire time Arnn was dissing teachers, Gov. Lee was sitting on stage, not saying anything.
The Arnn incident set off a firestorm, with even many legislative Republicans calling for a pause on Hillsdale’s advancement in the state.
However, it seems the groundwork was paved long ago to allow Hillsdale to proceed despite any objections.
Kathryn Joyce provides some excellent insight into the reasons why Hillsdale may end up operating at least three charter schools in the 2023–24 school year and why privatization in general is not at all dead in the Volunteer state.
Joyce details Hillsdale’s current political style campaign — complete with text messages and glossy mailers:
The mailers arrived last week: four-page glossy brochures containing excerpted articles from The Federalist and USA Today, telling Tennesseans they’d been misled about Hillsdale College. They followed the previous week’s text message campaign, when voters across the state began receiving political spam attributed to Hillsdale chief marketing officer Bill Gray, insisting that people throughout the Volunteer State were clamoring for Hillsdale to open K-12 charter schools, and directing them to a recently-built website where they could learn “the truth” about Hillsdale’s work in Tennessee.
She outlines the controversy and notes that some leading Republicans — including the House Speaker and the Chair of the House Education Committee — have spoken out about Hillsdale since Arnn’s comments.
One might suspect that with such high-profile policymakers speaking out, Hillsdale would be in danger of losing its grip on potentially millions in state funds.
Not so fast.
Joyce then goes on to note the many ways the path has already been paved for Hillsdale — and broader privatization — in Tennessee.
But that’s not the end of the story. In the words of Andy Spears, publisher of TN Ed Report, if people think that “Hillsdale is ‘on pause’ in Tennessee, that’s not what’s happening.” For one thing, said Spears, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville’s Hillsdale-inspired Institute of American Civics — one of a number of “civics” or “classics” institutes announced by red-state governors in recent months — continues apace. Beyond that, all three of the American Classical Academy charters denied by local school boards have filed appeals with the State Charter Commission: an entity created by a 2019 law that was promoted by Lee, who has since appointed all nine of its members.
That sentiment was echoed by a former Republican state Senator:
“Preparations have been made to make this a slam dunk,” said Republican state Rep. Bob Ramsey, in a podcast interview last week with the progressive outlet Tennessee Holler. “Preparations have been made legislatively that there’s really going to be no options but to approve it.”
It’s not just that Hillsdale may have charters approved by a state commission completely appointed by Gov. Lee, it’s also that the state has a new funding formula with big incentives for privatizers — Hillsdale or otherwise.
Tennessee education writer TC Weber argues that the state’s funding plan is based on “the ability to identify just how much investment each child is worth. Something that is important to virtually nobody unless they are looking to siphon off some public dollars into private bank accounts.”
Amid this larger plan, Weber told Salon, the Hillsdale scandal seems almost like a sideshow. “Where the real danger lies is that this governor has been very, very good at shifting public money into private pockets,” said Weber. “While we were all screaming over Hillsdale, they quietly passed the rules for TISA.”
So, it seems Tennessee is headed down the privatization path — and Hillsdale is campaigning heavily to be among the benefactors of public money supporting private education schemes.
Hot Chicken, Vouchers, and Indictments!
From Tennessee Education Report:
That was three years ago. So, what happened? Well, as it turns out, the former Speaker of the House (Glen Casada) and his former Chief of Staff (Cade Cothren) have been indicted in a bribery and kickback scandal related to the voucher vote.
NewsChannel5 reports:
According to the indictment, beginning in October 2019, Casada, Cothren, as well as another conspirator engaged in a fraudulent scheme to enrich themselves “by exploiting Casada and the other conspirator’s official positions as legislators to obtain State approval of Phoenix Solutions as a Mailer Program vendor to provide constituent mail services to members of the Tennessee General Assembly.”
This reportedly began after Cothren’s resignation and after Casada stepped down as the Tennessee Speaker of the House.