The Tennessee Legislature finally has acceded to the request of Gov. Bill Lee and passed a universal education savings account program that would provide all Tennessee parents with state funding to choose the educational model that best meets the learning needs of their children.
The program established, the Education Freedom Scholarship Program (EFS), is a massive and important step forward in improving Tennessee’s educational landscape. However, to be successful in the long term, the program will require a robust statewide private school sector. Our paper, Streamlined: Reforming Tennessee’s Private School Regulatory Environment, describes the current regulatory burdens on private schools in Tennessee and recommends policy changes that can lead to new private school options for Tennessee students.
Because Tennessee’s current private school regulations are so complex and burdensome, many education entrepreneurs are not interested in opening private schools in the state. Allies of ours have worked with several leaders who initially wanted to start private schools in Tennessee but ultimately decided against it because of the difficulty of navigating the state’s private school regulatory environment. In the course of conducting research for this paper, before the passage of EFS, we spoke with several private school leaders from across Tennessee who said that they had declined to participate in the current Educating Savings Account (ESA) program due to regulatory concerns and would continue to do so even if a universal program were created.
Given these constraints on private school growth in the Volunteer State and the establishment of a school choice program that theoretically has the ability to service any Tennessee family seeking to make use of it, we recommend the following changes to Tennessee’s private school regulations:
First, consolidate Tennessee’s private school landscape into three types of schools – church schools; non-church schools; and EFS, ESA, and individualized education account (IEA) schools – and reduce the regulatory requirements for all schools to streamline school approval processes and reduce schools’ compliance burdens.
Second, remove the testing requirement for schools participating in these programs to encourage existing private schools to consider participating in school choice programs.
One major problem with the current ESA program is the provision that participating schools must have their students complete the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP), the state’s testing program, which has been in place since 1988.
Many private schools in the state do not administer this test to their students and have no desire to do so in the future. In this sense, the provision ensures that these schools will not participate in that program regardless of how enticing it may otherwise be. Most of the administrators said that they have no ideological opposition to the ESA program in theory and would like to participate, but they will not do so unless they are certain that they will not need to surrender an inordinate amount of autonomy to the Bureau of Education.
However, the text of HB 6004, which established the EFS, allows participating schools to substitute the TCAP with “a nationally standardized achievement test that is aligned to the respective private school’s instructional plan, as determined by rules promulgated by the state board of education.” The rules to be promulgated have yet to be announced, and it is unknown whether these TCAP alternatives will be more palatable to private school administrators who have autonomy concerns.
Third, it would be prudent to extend the approval term for Tennessee private schools to 10 years to reduce school costs and administrative burdens for both schools and the Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE).
Fourth, rescind the May 2023 Board of Education rule requiring a commercial driver’s license (CDL) for drivers transporting students to school activities in school-provided vehicles to reduce the onerous financial burden on private schools and increase student safety.
This regulation, which was universally condemned by all of the administrators we spoke to, requires schools to either pay for staff members to complete the time-consuming process of obtaining a CDL-P (Passenger) and CDL-S (School Bus) through the state or hire existing CDL license holders, if any are available, to transport students to school activities. These costs are effectively prohibitive for many schools.
Many of the school administrators reported that, because of this rule, their schools had essentially stopped providing students with transportation to school activities. Instead, parents and students had to arrange their own transportation via carpooling. The administrators noted that this decision effectively shifted the costs of transportation from the school to the parents and students, although some schools reimbursed drivers for their mileage expenses.
Finally, we recommend some of the safety guidelines passed in the wake of The Covenant School shooting should be reconsidered to reduce stress and anxiety among parents, students, and school leaders, as well as reducing school costs.
One concrete step that could be taken is to remove the provision requiring an annual armed intruder drill at private schools. Research has shown that these drills can lead to increased levels of anxiety, stress, and depression among schoolchildren. At minimum, parents and students should be forewarned of the day or days on which these drills will be executed.
In sum, Tennessee’s complex levels of regulation for private school requirements are unnecessarily burdensome for school leaders, who should be able to focus on the demanding work of educating students rather than whether their van driver has the right type of license. Additionally, these extensive compliance requirements create additional busywork for TDOE staff and impose barriers to entry for parties who are interested in opening private schools in Tennessee.
The extent to which our recommendations for streamlining private school compliance are implemented will directly correspond to the degree to which administrative costs and burdens will be reduced for both private school and TDOE leaders. Furthermore, these recommendations will not only help to create a private school landscape in Tennessee that grants private schools the autonomy they need to thrive but also provide sufficient regulation for TDOE to ensure that the state’s private schools meet the health, safety, and educational needs of all students.
