Is Public Education on Its Deathbed? You Decide!

Courtesy of The Tennessean (Nashville): Tennessee Changes Policy on Teacher Licenses

by Jonathan Henderson 

Subject: Is Public Education on Its Deathbed? You Decide!

In honing my inner Thatcherite ideologically, I have now realized for the past two years how not only is our system of public education broken, it is in the style of Baroque classical music that cannot be fixed. For those unaware, my original major in college when I entered originally the University of Tennessee in August 2000 was Music Education, and I was a very skilled trombonist; one of fewer than 100 applicants who auditioned for the School of Music and was accepted out of several hundred who engaged in the same processes and failed to make the cut. Very briefly, I was a member of the Pride of the Southland Marching Band, one of the elite such programs in America, and during the 1970s through the early 1990s under the direction of Dr. W. J. Julian was the very best marching band in America. For your entertainment, even though this has little to nothing to do with the actual blog's subject, I will provide for you a series of YouTube videos of the Pride's legendary Pregame performance plus its still-cutting edge halftime production of the Tennessee Circle Drill. You might also feel privileged to listen to the greatest unofficial fight song in the land, Rocky Top, the Salute to the Hill as well as other great band traditions:

Now, to segue into the crux of my intended topic. I will inform you, however, that a future article will address the issue of decreasing state university enrollments and why this is likely occurring, including that of the University of Tennessee system statewide.

Gov. Bill Haslam Signs into Law New Standards for Evaluating Teachers and Licensures

Above: Bill Haslam, Governor of the State of Tennessee

I no longer consider the Democratic Party as one comprised primarily of liberals because, in fact, liberalism as we knew it to have existed died upon the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. Today, America is now a eurocentric-style of state governed under socialism, not even of the typical European variation of democratic socialism, but of what now is appearing to be Obama metastasizing our country from one governed by constitutional law and statutes to now a nation akin to the Apartheid which existed in South Africa from 1948 to 1994 and which today Sec. of State John Kerry, in his best impersonation of Charles De Gaulle (ironically, De Gaulle was a right-wing French politician), compares the Jewish state of Israel to despite the majority of the 8 to 9 million Israeli citizens practicing Judaism whereas some 400 million civilians residing in the Arab League of states alone are nearly all Muslim under the threat of violating Sharia law post revolutionary stages in the Arab Spring dating in time to 2010. Do keep in mind that Nelson Mandela was a renowned supporter of communism and Marxist states globally.

For a bit of comic relief in light of the recent string of domestic and geopolitical crises we face, I want to ask each of my readers who John Kerry looks most like?

Does our fearless Secretary of State favor Herman Munster?

What about Mr. Munster's main competition from the 1960s, Lurch from The Addams Family?

And of course, my favorite question with regards to whom Sec. Kerry bears a striking facial expression to world leaders past and present as with the late French revolutionary leader and founder of the Fifth Republic, Charles De Gaulle?

Ladies and gentlemen, the answers will never be the same between any two individuals since any which way you reply, John Kerry still looks like Droopy the Dog of classic cartoon lore!

Above: Droopy the Dog

Today, the Arab Spring has advanced to such an extreme with the rise of ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria - Levant) having resulted in the toppling of practically all of Iraq and are on the cusp of finishing off Syria and invading Jordan, Lebanon and likely Turkey before expanding into Sinai Peninsula and on across northern Africa. There are well-justifiable fears that should this declaration by ISIS be true regarding this alleged new formation of a caliphate with Iraq and Syria as its first two pieces, the matter that Turkey is separated from the Balkan Peninsula of Europe by the small gap of the Bosporus Strait is most disturbing. But again, I am discussing an issue not pertinent to this article, and I therefore will redirect my attention to public education in Tennessee while pledging to state my peace very bluntly in the next few days.

Tennessee remains officially a holdout in its official support for the president's Common Core nationalized public educational program. As is well-known, Common Core has proven most controversial and divisive, and I can state to you that as I was employed by Knox County (TN) Schools for over one year as a substitute teacher following my graduation from UT in May 2012, the system is not only manifesting enormous stress for my teacher friends both young as well as those at my high school alma mater who still taught there from my time, but is regrettably for me running off good educators who are not being permitted to teach the way they know how best to, what they know is the appropriate material to cover and how rather than the state's standards which are required to be inscribed on the whiteboards or PowerPoint slides, and finally due to the micromanaged variation of regulations in how to teach by the state's standardsverbatim as if pre-scripted that teachers are resigning or retiring earlier than originally planned because of the extraordinarily draconian measures for their evaluations. Having witnessed multiple teachers in the lounge sobbing - not weeping - after receiving a poor evaluation score sheet inconsistent with the ones previously delivered despite teaching to the same set of standards in the exact specified manner, I decided by March last year that I could never teach in today's public school climate, with my inspirations as a potential professional in grade school pedagogy lending myself to acceptance of the principles upon which three of my Honors/AP English teachers who each taught uniquely and never to the same beat as other educators within the school employed. (Keep in mind when I say to you that as my English IV AP teacher used to discuss very openly with my class her philosophy behind the word shit, she would likely be harshly reprimanded or even forcibly moved or terminated for her offending someone should she have been reported.) My U.S. History AP teacher who like me was a former trombonist in the UT band program and also a staunch conservative openly critical of former President Bill Clinton most especially when he conducted Scholars' Bowl practices for which I was the leading scorer when he told the joke about Monica Lewinsky walking into a laundromat to have her blue dress dry-cleaned, how the old man who was the shop's proprietor was hard of hearing when he asked her "Come again?" after she asked him to remove a spot and Lewinsky replied, "No. It's just a mustard stain this time", was rather unique and with a very perverse sense of humor, and unapologetic about this too. The gay website joke in lampooning the highly-controversial and now-defunct law directed at our armed forces a few years after the passage of Don't Ask/Don't Tell - C: ENTER: ### - was timeless too, and would never be permitted in today's climate where students now casually refer to white students regardless of their own race as racists as if it to them is a sport. Political correctness rules the public schools today as well as all of the American framework and stream of conscience, and as my now-retired former Physical Education teacher and the school's ex-boys basketball coach stated, "I can't joke around with my students anymore because I would likely be fired for it."

As Gov. Haslam managed to cut all forms of teacher bonuses and raises out of this year's budget while granting Knox County Schools superintendent Dr. Jim McIntyre a large one to increase his contract-extended pay increase that virtually no parents nor teachers in the system wanted him to be granted except for our county sheriff (J.J. Jones), Knoxville City Police Chief David Rausch and Knox County Mayor Tim Burchett very vocally stated he deserved. In Tennessee, no superintendent is appointed due to winning a popular election, and this has not been the case since about 1992, when the former principal from my alma mater, Allen Morgan, was the last candidate to be elected popularly to the position. Having yet to research what exactly was the hidden agenda prompting this very unpopular change since each successive superintendent has proven extremely unpopular and more despised than his predecessor, I can inform you that this was altered by former Gov. Ned McWherter (D), who also rammed through the state legislature TennCare, our state socialized health care program for indigent or disabled peoples. If you wish to read of how this all came to pass, it is available in the following link, titled Superintendent Selection: The Case for Appointed District Leaders.

Parents and teachers alike are initiating responses to Common Core, and for teachers especially, the systems for evaluating them which are never consistent, subject to an administrator's or lead teacher's personal interpretation, and finally are discouraged to the point of county inquiries leading to months-long investigations into why a teacher may have received any "5" scores or too many "4" denotations since their goal is to improve teacher quality at the cost of teachers never officially being recognized as possibly improving or considered proficient even if they following the guidelines for doing so by a past evaluator. Teachers are promisedabout $2,000 for a solid evaluation which meets a minimum scoring standard, but will often not receive them due to the county and state boards of education strongly discouraging this for budgetary concerns. Often as is the case with so many public sector jobs, those who rub elbows with authority figures in the school system often are the beneficiaries of the superintendent's or perhaps our county or city mayors' spoils system, as one such teacher at my alma mater received a bonus despite widely being considered incompetent at his position in any academic area; and not coincidentally, his older sister was the former Deputy Superintendent and is now the superintendent in a large, affluent suburban area near Nashville. Sadly as this is too often the case, the old idiom "It's not how well you do your job that gets you promoted or a raise, but rather who it is you know" is true. It not only applies to adults, but for me when I was in my high school band program which comprised of 200 or so students, to youth, to students as well.

Politics are both a blessing and a curse to those who play the game. If you play your cards well and do not have your bluff called or slip up in playing your hand, you will be very richly rewarded. Otherwise, if you do make a mistake or more than one or, also, someone with more money or influence socially buys their way into power, the consequences may be dire, the chances you will achieve your goals are greatly diminished. And as public schools no longer permit Christian symbols as they are considered offensive to those within the school, nearly always a small minority, who will take issue, still at my high school you will find some who are Middle Eastern showing signs that they indeed are openly Muslim, or are openly homosexual, are very brazen to exude their blackness or Hispanic heritage as the poorest two demographics on campus even as three weeks into my time employed at my high school alma mater, a pair of local Hispanic gang members assaulted an English teacher adjacent my location in the hallway outside the teachers' lounge where I was sitting on my plan period conversing with my former English II Honors teacher still employed at that time (she is now retired). As Dr. McIntyre dramatically rezoned the Powell community schools to culturally integrate what to him was a segregated trio of student bodies, the irony is in how 90% of the black students congregate among themselves and have little to do with any other race of students, as well of course how Hispanics do largely the same. The most openly gregarious and accepting of all races are the two-thirds of the 1,500 students who are white who often intermingle with those among the racial minorities who are open to associating with them, and when this occurs, it is beautiful to witness, and why in spirit this was done it should work. Academic achievement at the school, unfortunately, suffered greatly since many of the minority students resided in closely proximity or within housing projects far distant from the community in what at one time was considered the Knoxville, not Knox County, city limits. As many of these students reside in broken homes inhabited by impoverished families where the core unit is often dysfunctional, that type of environment lends itself to students falling prey to circumstances every bit as prohibitive as the genetic variations determinant of learning disabilities.

As Gov. Bill Haslam, a Republican former mayor of the City of Knoxville and brother to Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam, signed this measure into law, did so to attempt to soften the blow caused by Common Core and these evaluations, he also approved those measures with Dr. McIntyre constantly at his ear encouraging him to support a policy where students are no longer encouraged to learn about our world or the life skills necessary to survive in it, but rather how to take a test and pass it to reflect favorably upon little Johnny or Susie's school and the actual district in which that campus is located. I will also state to be fair in defense of Gov. Haslam that he is under enormous pressure as are all states to abide by the Obama administration's policies within the Common Core and evaluation mandates since the state stands to lose a substantial amount of federal funding if he chose to simply cut out Common Core as did Bobby Jindal in Louisiana. The report I will provide for you from the Nashville-area newspaper The Tennessean will discuss this in grand details:

Tennessee changes policy on teacher licenses

Joey Garrison, jgarrison@tennessean.com 9:21 p.m. CDT June 30, 2014

The Tennessee State Board of Education cut ties Monday with a highly controversial policy that would have allowed poor student growth on tests to be a reason to pull teachers' professional licenses.

In its place, commissioners advanced an alternative plan on first reading that would instead provide easier paths for Tennessee's highest graded teachers.

That proposal, set for a final vote in July after clearing the state board unanimously Monday, would let teachers who earn a high score of "5" on annual state-mandated teacher evaluations over consecutive years earn up to 20 of the required 60 professional development credits needed to renew professional licenses.

Fifteen development credits would be on the table for teachers who earn a "4," and 10 credits for those who net a "3." Teachers could also get credit for attending professional development seminars, taking college-level coursework and earning National Board Certification.

Though billed by state education officials as a move to streamline the licensure process for high-performing teachers, Tennessee Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman suggested that while it satisfies a new state law, the plan does little to ensure quality instructors. He said he doesn't want people to be "confused" that the revamped proposal guarantees all teachers who are renewing their license are performing at high levels.

"If you're performing in the classroom, that's great — you shouldn't have to do some of the paperwork that you otherwise would have to do," he said.

"But just being pretty blunt about this: This isn't a statement of quality of anything in terms of renewing a license. It's just sort of where we wound up throughout the whole process."

Directed by the state legislature, the board took a final step Monday to withdraw from a policy enacted last August that would have allowed the non-renewal of licenses of teachers who scored poorly on annual evaluations.

Huffman had pushed the change last year to establish a new minimum bar for teachers to advance professionally, noting only 100 to 200 licenses wouldn't be renewed each year because of chronically poor teacher evaluation scores. It was met with widespread criticism among lawmakers of both parties, however, who argued stripping teachers of their ability to work went too far.

A bill that cleared the legislature, which Gov. Bill Haslam signed into law in April, specifically prevented non-renewal from being based on teachers' value-added data.

Other parts of the revamped teacher policy plan, which would go into effect in September 2015, are much the same as the rescinded policy from August, Those include consolidating multiple license types into practitioner and professional licenses for the majority of teachers, and reducing the validity period of professional licenses from 10 years to six.

The first professional license teachers receive, the practitioner's license, would retain the current three-year validity period.

Although evaluations will no longer be tied punitively to teacher licensing, Huffman said parents in communities with chronically poorly graded teachers "have the right to know." The state has other ways of intervening, such as mandating additional in-class observations for teachers who habitually score "1" or "2" on evaluations. Local districts are relied on to come up with improvement plans, however.

Sara Heyburn, assistant commissioner of education, said the department is weighing a new star system that would recognize which teachers are consistently performing well on evaluations. Whether that would be part of a licensure policy isn't clear.

"We need to do everything we can to recognize our outstanding teachers," board chairman Fielding Rolston agreed. "They're out there. The challenge is to figure out exactly how to do it. We need to do more than we're doing."

Reach Joey Garrison at 615-259-8236 and on Twitter @joeygarrison.

In other words, all Gov. Haslam has accomplished by signing this bill is to pay lip service as a politician and, by dent of this classification, a master bullshitter. However, I am well adept at a little buffaloing myself, and as Dad is so fond of stating, you can't bullshit a bullshitter. Thankfully, very few teachers fall for such traps as what the governor planted of paying lip service to an issue not really being intended to truly solve a major crisis plaguing the state's students, our future, worse than even the teachers who are punished for actually doing their jobs by attempting to individualize off the record various curricula standards from which are prohibited by the state to ever be deviated. And as I discussed this topic so many times in comprehending why official graduation rates and grade point averages (GPA) are on the rise, each teacher tells the same story: when the former principal at the high school stated during his weekly staff meeting, "The minimum grade to pass in Knox County Schools is a 70 average, which means you have to find the means to avoid the 69% of the times each student can fail",the matter of artificially inflating statistical figures by giving grades as some stated they do very subtly is frightening, especially in how my high school still graduates today no more and likely fewer students by percentage than it did when I graduated in May 2000. In the end, though, graduating high school from a state-honored campus is just like earning a degree in microeconomics from Harvard or Yale University: on paper you officially know your subject matter, but it means little to nothing regarding how intelligent you might be, how capable of articulating thoughts and implementing them into action or how to simply use common sense in carrying two inanimate object across a room. Papers are nice to show you achieved a milestone, but they do not reward one's capacity to logically problem solve or how to be self-reliant and a responsible adult, which is why Common Core exists. President Obama wants to imprint upon our nation's future generations how it is perfectly acceptable and to him, preferable, that they each learn to love Big Brother and to lean upon Uncle Sam for any and all necessities in life, taking care always to clandestinely subvert the teaching of self-reliance.

As Gov. Haslam publicly supports Common Core due to his being tied by the president's policies to do so or face losses in federal funds, he is working diligently to achieve the right for parents tochoose where their children attend school, and the means towhere is most intriguing. He is spearheading the School Choice NOW program, an interest group pushing for what essentially would be the dissolution of the present public school establishment in the U.S. as we have traditionally known it to exist. Whereas No Child Left Behind encouraged parents to choose other public schools which are earning passing test scores campus-wide and, by this, meaning that the teachers are better there than at other places, the governor is proposing granting each family with student(s) so much money out of their taxed purchases (Tennessee has no state income tax, only a 9.25% sales tax) to pay tuitions to attend private schools of their choosing within reasonable price ranges. As a carrot he used to dangle ahead of the party of jackasses in the state legislature, Haslam's plan called for in the first year 5,000 students statewide to receive this money, with the first to be served being the poorest families on higher into the wage bracket. This would expand as you might expect over a period of years until it is fully installed the law of the state. What his plan infers and did so with me immediately was the signifying the eventual dissolution of our state's failed public education system. As many are aware, the ugliest term in public affairs is the word reform because it rarely is achieved but always the problem stands to easily to be further exacerbated. Some, though, will behave like newborn babes born of a moment just past and believe that real change is transpiring...

... and that, my friends, is why Barack Obama is sitting as our acting president like his Hollywood supporters before him, with his feet propped atop of his desk in the Oval Office while wearing his skinny lady jeans and awaiting the real power behind the presidency Valerie Jarrett's directions on how best to destroy our country next. In the nation with one of the highest standards for living and literacy rates on the planet, it really does appear that what babies not aborted are truly born every minute sans any vision at all as if one of the Three Blind Mice. Do not think for a second that our public education system, as with every nation, was designed to engender an infinity of future generations of adults who are descriptive of the "Three D's": deaf, dumb and dependent.

The Long Overdue Discourse Over School Choice: Will This Lead to the Total Abolition of Public Education as We Have Always Known It to Exist?

As stated at the beginning of this article, as a conservative with libertarian leanings, a great deal of my core principles in how best our society will subsist off our labors is by the state remaining aslaissez faire about our affairs as possible. We of course know the term laissez faire from the writings of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776) as inferring an economic policy of the "invisible hand." What it translates from the French tongue directly as simply "let be", and I would almost chuckle heartily at the idea that if in 1970 a person purchased The Beatles last full album released Let It Be, you might possibly reasonably assume how it might be titled exactly that in Paris.

Live and let live. The idea of we the people living within a property-owning democracy is rather encouraging, and yet most of our open range acreages are owned by the federal and state levels of government, paid for by we the taxpayers, and yet much of it is either restricted access or closed to the general publicexcept for government officials. Only in the past two years have we listened to Obama, whether in vain attempt to appear humorous or not, disclose publicly that there are no experiments at Area 51 in Roswell, New Mexico on any extraterrestrials nor have there ever been anal probes of reprobates such as himself who probably could have his tailpipe unclogged from being backed up with bullshit. All kidding and what is now a record number of not-quoted curse words aside, we only know that we have limited access to what we subsidize, that our capacity to fully-maximize our vastly undermined and more perniciously underestimated potential as a free people in a democratic society to live off the land as a liberated people must to survive has been subverted for decades since the vestiges of socialism landed on the doorsteps of American politics with Theodore Roosevelt initiating the National Park Service's genesis with his signing the Antiquities Act of 1906. Today, the NPS is part of the Department of the Interior, which in a rather humorous twist in irony reads to me as if by Interior, the federal government has always been intent upon consolidating and maintaining absolute power from within while the general public electing these politicians who then appoint bureaucrats to operate such monstrous public expenditure programs will stop at nothing, including shooting to kill upon the sight of trespassers, to keep what butters their bread on the outside looking in. And why must we fund what we have no legal right to fully use or to even set foot upon? To directly influence how the general will of the popular sovereignty demands it be best applied or used? And just as with how we have little access as to what all our taxed incomes or what is collected via excises or sales taxes are spent upon, why should the general public who today is too afraid to simply bark mild-manneredly continue to cower before a rabid minority of mongrels as Far Left socialists are bent upon denying American children who desire to pray or wear a cross for a necklace, to carry or keep within their lockers a likeness of Jesus Christ and are winning more absolutely than ever before in our history? I do not believe Madelyn Murray O'Hair could have fathomed such a total abdication of sovereignty by a public still comprised of 62% who are adherents to some faith, and of course, she was among the cabal of social subversives who through filing such lawsuits as Abingdon School District v. Schempp (1962) and her own coup de gras in Murray v. Curlett (1963) which between the two effectively destroyed the presence of religion in schoolsexcept for those not primarily of the Christian persuasion. And what exactly may we define for a Christian as offensive? Just a few months ago, a lady I know from high school posted on Facebook how her seven year daughter was told by her teacher to remove a picture likeness of Jesus in her locker because it would offend others, and I never felt so terrible for someone as this little precious girl in my life. To be denuded the right to simply observe your faith if you are Christian while public schools in Colorado are requiring of their students to pledge allegiance to the flag using under Allah and not under God is rather grotesque perversion of the modern public discourse of what for nearly 50 years appeared to be our nation meandering down the path to atheism and amoral decadence. Today, our nation faces two choices as to what the president is intent upon transforming our nation fundamentally with regards to the issue of faith: He will either manage to have America formally declared a secular state, disavowing all links or references to God of Christianity; or he will continue the Islamification of the nation not as we are seeing it in Europe by massive numbers of Islamic immigrants legal and not moving onto our native soil, but rather by force as with Florida's recent law passed permitting Sharia law to be observed in the courts and other public venues. Either way, we lose. Either way, we are doomed to one fate: Barack Obama exalting himself into the role as the prince and arbiter of either godlessness or, in only half-kiddingly my proclaiming this as so, as the Twelfth Imam or the Mahdi of the end of times recorded in Islamic lore. And while our youth are being taught in public schools very inappropriate concepts not considered by most as needed to be taught until later years in their teens, Common Core is teaching one and all in our public schools such assigned materials as the following in photographs I will warn you to maintain a proper perspective on the current public discourse with what your child may be learning in the classroom today:

Considering the appalling idiocracy which today governs our nation, it does not surprise me in the least when I read once how students in a high school health science course were taught how to grind during sexual intercourse.

You now understand why I firmly am committed to the cause of privatizing all public education, and how this is not a matter of if it should be done, but how it must be achieved and the sooner, the better. In my opposition to the intent behind Gov. Haslam's signing the bill into law altering the nature of teacher evaluations and how they are scored, I have to be fair and state too that I believe he honestly is trying to buy as much time as possible as the state voted in favor of postponing the full implementation of Common Core by two years earlier in 2014 - conspicuously well after the GOP is poised to sweep both houses of Congress and perhaps gain a supermajority - and ban the program in Tennessee entirely. The initiative for School Choice NOW will be provided for you in several copy-and-pasted details from articles describing how the measure passed in the State Senate but did not garner enough support in the House even with a slight GOP majority to put it up for vote on the floor, and what and how exactly the bill was supposed to be implemented in principle and practice. 

The crux of the initiative is briefly discussed on School Choice NOW's official website:

What Are Opportunity Scholarships?

Education vouchers, better known as opportunity scholarships, allow parents to choose the appropriate school environment for their child. Think of it this way: When it is time for a student to go to college, they shop for the best school to suit their needs according to potential major, location, finances, class size and activities. The parents and student choose the best school for their needs.

Opportunity scholarships would essentially allow parents of K-12 students to choose the appropriate alternative, or let the child remain in public school. A scholarship for a set dollar amount would be issued and follow the child to the selected school.

There are many learning styles, and children all learn differently. While it serves the needs of many students, the public school environment does not serve the learning needs of all students. A scholarship program allows parents trapped by their zip code to give their children an opportunity to receive a high-quality education and escape the one-size-fits all education model.

Opportunity scholarship programs are typically extended to parents of low-to-middle income. The program is funded by tax dollars, so the money follows the child. This does not hurt public schools funding, because the expense of educating the child is removed from the system.

Let’s say the average cost to educate a child is $10,000. The issued scholarship amount would be for $8,000 leaving $2,000 in the public school system, but taking the education expense of the child out of the system. These funds can be appropriated for quality programs for public school children.

There have been more than 20 empirical studies done of scholarship programs throughout the country. Research shows that scholarship programs increase student achievement, boost graduation rates, and help public schools, and parental satisfaction, improve.

Next, the website will discuss facts and figures of studies conducted, as well as provide sources of where these cases were studied and by whom:

Get the Facts

• There are 16 states, plus the District of Columbia and Douglas County, Colorado, with voucher programs, serving 81, 590 students during the 2012-2013 school year.
• Programs like the D.C. scholarship program reflect that students with opportunity scholarships have a graduation rate 21 percent higher than their public school counterparts.
• In Florida, scores of public-school students dramatically improved by 15 points in math and reading with the installation of a scholarship program.
• Milwaukee is home to the oldest scholarship program, which has been in place over 20 years. In the fiscal year 2010, they saved over 46.7 million.
• According to a study conducted by Dr. Susan Aud, U.S. Department of Education, scholarship programs have saved state and local districts 422 million between 1990 and 2006.
• An opportunity scholarship program in Tennessee would allow low and middle-income children to attend the private school of their choice.
• The goal is to create a system of quality public education based the needs of individual children and less so on which school a child is zoned to attend.
• An opportunity scholarship bill will help to provide hope and opportunity for thousands of families across our state that are trapped by their zip code and cannot afford to relocate or pay for a private school education.
• Private education institutions participating in the program would be required to report student progress based on nationally-normed tests administered to their own students. Low performing private schools that fail to show student improvement will be removed from the program.
• More than 20 credible studies conducted on the issue have demonstrated an increase in competition among both private and public schools to attract and retain students.

This is subsequently followed by testimony, again appropriate if like any business venture or political campaign one is intent upon relating how this measure is more effective than the old alternative, which I will provide to you in a link as it is an extensive list and would require a great amount of space to copy-and-paste:

Knoxville News Sentinel Op-Ed: School choice would put focus on what is best for each student

February 17, 2014

Knoxville News Sentinel

By: Harold Black

“On Jan. 28 a school choice rally was held in Nashville. Caravans from Memphis came to show support. Earlier some of these parents had camped out in sub-zero weather at Shelby Country School District headquarters to register their children in optional schools designed to meet a child’s specialized interest and needs. Speaker Rev. Dwight Montgomery, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Memphis chapter president, asked: “They use public funds to bail corporations out. So what’s wrong with bailing our children out?” Why not indeed? Little of the dialogue regarding K-12 has been centered on our children. Rather, the focus has been on curriculum, facilities and increased funding. While these are important, they are not more important than an analysis of what is best for parents and their children. It actually may be more cost efficient to let parents avail themselves of opportunity scholarships than to continue increasing funding to failing schools.

“A basic axiom of economics is that people receive better, and in many cases cheaper, goods and services when markets are competitive. If a product is inferior and does not meet consumers’ standards, then it is forced out of the market. The continuing existence of a poor quality product generally means that the market is not characterized by competition and that consumers have no choices for substitute goods. As a result, economists note that the net well-being of consumers is reduced.

“There is perhaps no better example of that axiom than education in Tennessee. In East Tennessee parents have little choice where they can send their children to school. Private schools are not affordable for most families. As a consequence, parents are in essence forced to consume a product that they might otherwise reject.

“It’s time we put children first in the education reform dialogue. The best way to do this – and to ensure that every child has access to a quality education, regardless of his or her means – is to empower parents with school choice. Options like opportunity scholarships will empower parents to choose the best alternatives for their children, whether public, private, charter or homeschool. In so doing, the public school system will face competition that will compel it to improve its performance.

“Instead of funding schools and systems, we should be funding children. We already spend designated dollars on each child (in Knox County it’s roughly $8,500 per pupil), so let’s pin a portion of that money to each child’s backpack and let it follow him or her to the school that’s right for them. This approach corrects a major obstacle facing many Tennessee children: a one-size-fits-all approach. Every child is unique, but our education system treats them all the same. Children are zoned for schools based on their ZIP Code. The wishes of the parents and unique needs, skills and interests of their children are irrelevant in this process.

“Education is the most important factor of upward social mobility and lowers societal costs by preventing school dropouts. Most parents understand this and desire a better future for their children. The discussion in Nashville centers on the best approach to providing opportunity scholarships to tens of thousands of Tennessee children. Providing leadership on this important issue can ensure that we begin to view education through the proper lens – focusing on what is best for the child.”

Harold Black is a professor emeritus at the University of Tennessee and a senior fellow with the Beacon Center of Tennessee.

The above op-ed within my hometown's newspaper The Knoxville News-Sentinel addresses, politicized of course using the obligatory emotional appeal, why Tennessee's parents should support absolute autonomy in where they send their children to school, that it should be a matter of choice, not zoning. Below are two reports of how the bill has passed through the state legislature in Nashville with detailed results including the failure of the bill in the House:

School voucher bill advances in TN House

Posted: Mar 05, 2014 5:58 PM EST

Updated: Mar 19, 2014 6:04 PM EDT

By LUCAS L. JOHNSON II Associated Press

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - A proposal to create a school voucher program in Tennessee is advancing in the House.

The measure proposed by Gov. Bill Haslam passed the House Budget Subcommittee 7-6 on Wednesday.

The legislation is slightly different than an original measure brought by the Republican governor that was limited to students from low-income families attending the bottom 5 percent of failing schools.

The measure that passed would expand eligibility to the bottom 10 percent of failing schools if slots are left.

Haslam withdrew his initial legislation last year when Senate Republicans sought to expand to a larger number of children.

The Senate version of the voucher proposal was to be taken up in the Senate Education Committee later Wednesday.

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Keep well in mind that Gov. Haslam is a Republican from a family of billionaires who own Pilot/Flying J Travel Centers (which has been under federal investigation over the governor's brother Jimmy's involvement in a fraud scandal which cost the job of a girl with whom I attended high school as well as having jeopardized his brief ownership of the Cleveland Browns), and as such, they are the major financial benefactors within the private sector as well as among alumni of the University of Tennessee, which again is my collegiate alma mater. He is trying to soften the impact upon our public education system as best he can since it will inevitably have a major shock effect to the system and the status quo. At times, radical implementation of policies are imprudent and impractical, and will cause more harm than it will good. It is akin to why my psychiatrists have always gradually added strength to my prescriptions until I reach full body tolerance and metabolism of the drugs as well as when I am weaned off them for safety purposes.

Again from The Knoxville News Sentinel, there is the report of how it passed the Senate and was sent to the House for the final vote:

Knoxville News Sentinel: Senate panel OKs voucher bill

April 10, 2014

Knoxville News Sentinel

By: Tom Humphrey

Limited system set for 5 counties, including Knox

“NASHVILLE – The Senate Finance Committee approved on Tuesday Gov. Bill Haslam’s plan for launching a limited school voucher system in five Tennessee counties, including Knox.

“The committee voted 8-2 for the bill (SB196), an indication it has enough support to clear the full Senate, though many believe support is considerably softer in the House. There, the measure still awaits a House Finance Committee vote – tentatively scheduled for today – with legislative leaders pushing for adjournment by next week.

“The ‘Tennessee Choice and Opportunity Scholarship Act,’ as the bill is named, would authorize state payments to private schools for up to 5,000 students in its first year of operation, expanding each year to a maximum of 20,000 statewide in the fourth year.

“The students receiving vouchers would have to live in a school district with at least one ‘failing school,’ or an institution ranked in the bottom 5 percent of schools statewide, and just five districts meet that standard – the Davidson, Hamilton, Hardeman, Knox and Shelby school systems.

“The students would also have to be from low income families entitled to receive free or reduced price lunch under federal standards.

“Under Haslam’s original proposal, introduced last year, only students from a failing school would be eligible.

“Under the bill as modified this year, other students from low-income families within the same school district – for example, anywhere in Knox County – will become eligible on a first-come, first-served basis if the ceiling on numbers has not been reached in a given year.

“Statewide the average state payment would be about $6,400 per student, though that would vary from district to district, Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman told the committee.

“Senate Democratic Leader Jim Kyle of Memphis told Huffman that vouchers appear to be creating a situation for the state where ‘we are competing against ourselves.’ He noted that Memphis already has the state funded Achievement School District in place for students attending failing schools and the state is at the same time paying charter schools for each student enrolled and paying out-of-county virtual schools for each student enrolled.

“All will be taking money from a public school system that will not see any substantial reduction in operating expenses. And some private schools are also seeking such students, he said.

“‘And what are they leaving behind?’ he asked, suggesting there could be a ‘calamity’ with taxpayers statewide sharing the burden of underwriting costs for Shelby County schools, where the state’s largest concentration of eligible students is found.

“As far as competition for students among many entities, Huffman said, ‘We are substantially putting our money where our mouth is. We are not afraid of the competition.’ ‘I believe we are starting down the road without knowing where we are going to end up,’ Kyle said. “There has got to be an end game so that we know what we’re doing.” Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris, R-Collierville, who is sponsoring the bill for the Haslam administration, conceded that the ‘end game’ is not clear on vouchers.

“‘But there also has to be a point of beginning,’ Norris said, adding that children who could be positively impacted are ‘aging out and moving on’ the more time legislators spend in launching a program.

“‘The period of time anyone has to work with a child’s life is very limited,’ he said. ‘Either we have been able to touch them in a positive way or we haven’t.’ The bill is ardently pushed by several national education reform organizations that have hired lobbyists. Last year, those organizations pushed a much broader bill and both that measure and the governor’s bill failed. This year, most have united behind the Haslam bill as amended.

“The companion bill in the House would expand eligibility, if slots are left, to the bottom 10 percent of failing schools. That version has stalled in a committee, mainly because of opposition to expansion.

“The Associated Press contributed to this report.”

Of course, the Democrats in Nashville balked at the idea because, as Senate Minority Leader Jim Kyle of Tennessee's lone socialist stronghold in Memphis stated, "We are competing against ourselves." Well duh, Senator! That is the entire point, and yet he sat and told the reporter how private schools are already engaged in this process, but he never once named which ones were and if they actually were footing the bill for this measure. He would be all too willing to increase subsidies for TennCare or measures for tweaking Common Core, and yet while Gov. Haslam is intent upon focusing on the disadvantaged students initially by gradually increasing the number each year to receive funding to attend private schools, Sen. Kyle insists that the state continue to pour money into a failed system that has been broken for years and like any broken glass, can never truly be glued back together in one piece again. In the case of public education, however, even W.E.B. DuBois and Horace Mann who were the most influential Progressive figure in the late 19th/early 20th Centuries to launch the modern public school movement as a secular socialist policy for indoctrination intent upon the false solution that absolute social equity by means of absolute leveling of the playing field through degrading the talents or capacities of some students capable of succeeding at higher levels to meet the lowest common denominator at the bottom rather than attempting to cater to the individual needs of all is best, or to imply, if all are dumb, no one is too smart to challenge the ruling establishment.That is the socialist policy, and yes, it came out of Sen. Kyle's mouth and was printed by the state newspapers out of the mouth of this babe!

Finally, the sobering news of how it failed in the GOP-controlled House and why from Knoxblogs.com:

TN school voucher bill dead for another year

Despite backing from well-financed national lobbying organizations and Gov. Bill Haslam, legislation to implement a school voucher system in Tennessee is dead for another year, the bill’s House sponsor said today.

“The system won. The children lost,” said Rep. Bill Dunn, R-Knoxville, after annnouncing in the House Finance Committee that he was abandoning efforts to win approval of the Haslam-drafted “Tennessee Choice and Opportunity Scholarship Act” (SB196).

The bill had won approval of the full Senate on a 21-10 vote last week. But Dunn said the bill lacked support to clear the key House committee and he decided not to push for time-consuming debate and a vote in the waning hours of the 2014 legislative session.

He said the quest for passage would resume next year because vouchers are “a wonderful tool for a child on a trajectory for failure” in public schools.

The bill, as amended, would have autorized state payments to private schools for up to 5,000 students in its first year of operation, expanding in stages over ensuing years to a maximum of 20,000 statewide in the fourth year. Only students in school districts having one or more “failing” schools – defined as being in the bottom 5 percent of schools statewide in student test scores – would have been eligible.

Only five counties in the state would have been covered under the criteria – Davidson, Hamilton, Knox , Shelby and Hardeman.

Also, applying students would have to be from low-income families and eligible for free or reduced-price lunch under federal guidelines.

A similar proposal from the governor failed last year.

National groups such as StudentsFirst and American Federation for Children have lobbied heavily for passage of a voucher bill and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in political contributions to legislative candidates. Dunn said their efforts helped because they provided research and information showing benefits of vouchers.

“But in the end, it always came down to protecting the system, the status quo,” he said.

Voucher critics in general contend it is unwise to siphon money from public school systems, already underfunded in Tennesee, to benefit private or church schools. There was also criticism that the governor’s limited proposal did not go far enough from those who felt a broader, statewide program is warranted.–

From the AP:

Haslam spokeswoman Alexia Poe said the governor has always known that passing the legislation would be tough because “some legislators wanted a broader bill and some didn’t want a bill at all,” but he’s nonetheless disappointed the latest version had to be withdrawn.

“The governor has said all along that the proposal wasn’t a silver bullet but a piece of a larger strategy to offer more options for choice to families,” Poe said. “The governor is disappointed that a bill that made it further than any other voucher proposal has didn’t make it to the finish line.”

When asked why the proposal has had trouble, Dunn alluded to it being an election year and that lawmakers are probably being influenced by constituents — particularly in rural areas — against the legislation.

“We’re now in campaign season, and we just have to recognize that,” said the Knoxville Republican.

"The system won. The children lost."  "We're now in campaign season, and we just have to recognize that." Rep. Bill Dunn (R-Knoxville) at least came about this comment honestly. He stated the obvious, and he himself is playing the game: politics defeated what is the right of the parents to determine the course for their children's futures. The comments which were all printed in the same article are a masterful application of the art of skillful political capital, and in this case, Rep. Dunn simply stated that the Democrats, representative of statism and institutional systematic absolutism, placed their desire to indoctrinate per the status quoahead of students' parents natural right to raise their child. Already, government is too involved in everyone's daily lives: how we are to subsist, what our pay rates will be, and finally this, how we will be educated since it crafts the curricula at all levels. When Lamar Alexander was elected governor of Tennessee over thirty years ago, he pledged to greatly strengthen our state public education system and expanded its standards to compete better on the national level. In the U.S. Senate, he has done nothing more than to serve as a puppet within the GOP caucus for socialist Democrats' agendas in championing amnesty and voting to slash dramatically veterans' benefits and current military personnel pay. He is expected to be challenged extraordinarily by the Tea Party as a targeted GOP establishment politician considered out of touch with Tennessee and America in general. Our junior senator, Bob Corker, is worse in his support for a hike in minimum wagewhen one should never exist period, while serving as a co-sponsor for raising a tax to pay for road and highway improvements and construction. If you ever visit Tennessee, you will quickly notice how our Interstate system is one of the best manicured and well-maintenanced nationally.

Conclusion: We the People Spend Better, More Wisely and Well Than the State

The last thing needed is to fund what essentially would be nail polish by comparison. And if funding additionally each of these measures historically has proven to be non-correlative to the results yielded, what in the end do we see as evident of the results aside from a retraction in the previous poor standards to worse ones post funding and tax hikes due to the snowballing of expanded red tape? It really is quite characteristic of socialists. They are usually very poor with math and spend money beyond what was allotted in budgets provided. Simply ordering another checkbook cannot cure a problem caused by an idiocracy who claim to have a near-endless in public money. In fact, there is no such thing as public money, and it does no one good to support these delusional claims nor to simply claim how someone else will pay. That someone else is you and me, the taxpayers. I dare state that I am a more astute steward of my money in how I spend it upon the necessities life demands rather than the pork barrel wasted expenditures which Sen. John McCain publicly laments occurs, but in which he himself is always engaging in the practice. And in hearkening again upon my very profound admiration, love and respective for the late Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady who changed the world alongside her dear friend Ronnie for the better, in the video clip below from her address before the 1983 Conservative Party Conference in Britain: