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Submitted by Joy Cherrick –
The events of this past week, where a transgender man was allowed unsupervised access to children as a substitute teacher in Hamilton County, add to the growing list of problems plaguing Tennessee public schools.
Parents deserve the ability to hold schools accountable, yet teacher unions and the public school system continue to wield more influence over the education of Tennessee’s children than parents do. As a parent of seven children in Tennessee, I know this problem cannot be resolved without a significant shift in priorities from our legislators.
Priority #1: Parents must have the primary say in their children’s upbringing and education.
Priority #2: Every Tennessee child deserves access to a quality education shaped by their parents’ choices—not dictated by the state and unaccountable school districts.
Earlier this month, a new school choice bill was introduced, but it falls woefully short of these priorities. It’s no surprise that so many people are skeptical of school choice when bills like this seem designed to appease teacher unions and public school administration rather than empower families.
The Tennessee Educational Freedom bill promises to expand school choice but instead reveals significant flaws.
It prioritizes government control over parents’ decisions, assigning the state—not families—the authority to manage crucial aspects like tutoring, transportation, curriculum, and therapy (Pages 6-8). This undermines the very idea of parental choice. Even more frustrating, the bill continues to support testing as a form of accountability, ignoring the proven role of engaged parents in driving better outcomes (Page 7).
Perhaps the most infuriating provision is the guarantee that local education agency (LEA) funding will remain unchanged, even if students leave the public school system (Page 10). This effectively forces taxpayers to pay twice for the same student while shielding underperforming schools from accountability.
Adding insult to injury, the bill includes a $2,000 bonus for all teachers, which does nothing to address the root issues of poor school performance or the need for parents to have true control over their children’s education. Nor does a universal bonus incentivize and reward teacher excellence in the classroom.
There is a better way, Tennessee.
To truly expand educational freedom, we must aim for a universal Education Savings Account (ESA) program where every child has the opportunity to participate.
The first step is removing income restrictions, ensuring that every family—regardless of financial status—can access the resources they need and which the state has provided already, but tied to one educational system.
Additionally, creating an “ESA Home Educator” option would provide a separate legal category for homeschooling families, free from burdensome eligibility requirements or unnecessary oversight while protecting traditional homeschoolers who don’t want to opt-into the ESA program.
We must also ensure eligible expenses continue to include all items that public school districts currently use educational dollars for, such as curriculum, therapy, extracurricular activities, and technology. These funds should be flexible, rolling over year to year within a child’s ESA account, and even covering college expenses if unused during their K-12 education, rewarding sound financial stewardship.
Parental empowerment must also mean removing unnecessary restrictions. Parents should have complete freedom to use their funds for any school or educational provider they choose without state-imposed approvals or accreditations, which only serve to centralize power in the hands of bureaucrats. Adopting an open-enrollment policy, similar to Florida’s, would eliminate enrollment caps and ensure that no family is left out. (Year-to-date they have 136,000+ students enrolled. The most successful ESA program of any state.)
This shift would redirect educational funding from the system to the student, introducing accountability and competition into the educational market. When a student leaves a school or service provider, the funding should follow them, ensuring that underperforming institutions lose the financial support they no longer deserve. This brings education into the free market, empowering families to make choices for each child based on their educational needs.
In addition it creates a new system that rewards excellence rather than funding a system that is hostile to family values and disregards parental authority.
Tennessee has an opportunity to bring educational freedom to every student today. But that requires bold changes that prioritize parents and students over bureaucracy and unions.
It’s time to stop settling for half-measures and start giving families the power they deserve to shape their children’s futures. We have committed to fund the education of children; not perpetuation of a broken system.
About the Author: Joy Cherrick is a mother of seven and a dedicated home educator. She doesn’t see herself as a “do-it-all-yourself homeschooler” but instead recognizes the vital role of laws designed to support families and affirm that parents are ultimately in charge of their children’s education. Joy believes in the power of community to support parents in the challenging yet rewarding work of raising children who are self-governing, fear God, know His creation, and their place in history. She advocates for providing every child in Tennessee with a strong education, emphasizing that it is our duty to ensure this is truly an opportunity for all at her Substack, Tennessee School Choice.
2 Responses
It’s woefully obvious we have no lobbyists and few listening to/representing US.
Joy Cherrick is right on with this article! IF the so called Educational Freedom Act passes, it will be the biggest, welfare program ever introduced in Tennessee, and all by a so called ‘conservative’ majority! How ironic! This should be referred to as the UNACCOUNTABLE PUBLIC EDUCATIONAL AWARD PROGRAM or “UPEAP” for short! UPEAP will not only serve a super minority of Tennessee school children (2%!), it will over tax the Tennessee taxpayer to do it! It will offer ‘incentives’ for schools to get worse…..Public Education system needs accountability, not a blank check! Under UPEAP administrators and teachers of poorly performing school will actually have incentives to continue their poor performance and ‘losing’ students won’t be a shame factor but a reward! Shameful! I hope every reader will write their state representative and senator and express what a disaster UPEAP will be!