One of the stranger issues the GOP focused on during the last election cycle was “school choice.” There was a big push for taxpayer-funded vouchers that essentially act as scholarships for private schools. Given that this is the party down with pulling funding for free school lunches, it was a little sus that they suddenly wanted to use taxpayer money to pay for students to gain a private school education. The controversy surrounding Tennessee’s school voucher program over its alarming lack of transparency could be the key to understanding why the GOP has been so insistent on “school choice.”
According to Chalkbeat Tennessee, the application for Tennessee’s Education Freedom Scholarship doesn’t require parents to list where their children previously went to school. This absence is unusual as the question is regularly asked in several state voucher programs. The absence of the question has raised concerns that the scholarship is mostly going to people who already have their children in private schools. Governor Bill Lee (R) has dismissed these concerns by pointing to the legislation that created the scholarship.
“It’s not required by the legislation, so it’s not necessary to have,” Lee said Tuesday. “What we hope for is universal school choice where every family, regardless of their child’s past education history, has access to a scholarship. Ultimately, that would be the goal.”…