If you missed the Legislative Update Saturday, you may want to go back and review the content about the ‘voucher’ bill. That section included a picture of the 11 amendments that have been written for the two caption bills (SB2778-HB2468 and SB503-HB1183) most of which have been used to move this effort forward.
Of course, there have been endless discussions about what ‘the bill’ does and does not do, and the truth is, WE DON’T YET KNOW what it will and will not do because there has been no agreement.
As the debate over the Education Freedom Scholarship Act continues, I think it might be helpful for us to review what could take place if the two bodies CANNOT agree on the details of the bill.
On the respective chamber floors, if each body refuses to ‘conform’ to the bill before them, then the bill is sent to a ‘conference committee’. Each speaker appoints the members of that committee – usually made up of three or five lawmakers from each body.
When that happens, the content of the bill can be COMPLETELY REWRITTEN. Then the agreed upon content is sent back to the respective chambers for a vote. NO changes, NO amendments – just a straight UP or DOWN vote.
If it does go to a Conference Committee, one wonders how much time the other legislators and the public will be given to study and understand the results of the agreement before the floor votes are taken and decide if the end result is something that should be supported.
Inquiring minds want to know!!
Senator Adam Lowe – District 1 – wrote a thoughtful piece on his Facebook page and said we could use it.
TENNESSEE SCHOOL “VOUCHER” UPDATE: 5 Things to consider
I am making this post on my personal page because it is a personal observation about what I have witnessed over the past few months. Regardless of your opinions regarding the educational freedom scholarship being considered by our state legislature, you might find some of this “inside baseball” valuable. When elected, I promised to pull back the curtain so here goes…
1- For an academic topic, as a whole, this process has been very unacademic. Of the dozens of forums, none have been a balanced presentation of the pros and cons of school choice or the legislation. In the past, this was usually a public service ideally offered by our universities. Today, places like Vanderbilt result to one-sided push polls and slanted op-eds by faculty. Couple this with the campaigns of agenda-driven organizations and you get a battle of propaganda not educated consideration.
2- School choice is a big umbrella that encapsulates open enrollment, vouchers, magnet schools, charter schools, privates, publics, etc. The goal is always to create more options for parents to meet the nuanced needs of students. What is often different is who stewards those options. When those reforms are forced in from the outside, public systems get defensive. But many public systems have incubated and embraced choice initiatives on their own. These internal programs are most often open enrollment and magnet schools but can easily extend to charters and voucher systems. There is nothing stopping our public schools from leading these innovations and in our area, several have.
3- Parents more often do not make “choices” for strictly academic gain. To merely measure program success through test scores and achievement is lazy analysis. Parents who engage in school choice seek fit. This fit includes the social and emotional well-being of students. This is why parental satisfaction outpaces achievement.
4- The proposed opportunity scholarship (voucher) is not a magic pill to fix all educational issues. In fact, there is no present consensus on what the legislation should look like because the bill has grown to address a myriad of issues beyond choice. I am not confident anything could pass at the moment.
5- I have seen at least 4 different public polls in our area with 4 different methodologies and they are all within a considerable standard deviation of each other. The polling is clear that there is a disconnect between parental opinion and school institutional opinion. You may contend with that as you will but the disconnect is there although not vitriolic. It begs the question, how do we bridge the gap of understanding and action for the benefit of students? The past few months of campaigning around this legislation seems to have done little to answer that question.
Click here to watch*
Remarks as prepared for delivery:
In order to consider my very simple and reasonable amendment, it is vital that the Senate move the Democrat Leader’s blocking amendment out of the way—in order to move forward with my amendment.
