.png) This is 'must listen' material!! |
SB 6001 by *Johnson – HB 6004 by *Lamberth
Education - As introduced, enacts the "Education Freedom Act of 2025." - Amends TCA Title 4, Chapter 49; Title 8 and Title 49.
THIS IS ALSO VERY IMPORTANT TO READ: SB 6001 – HB 6004 FISCAL NOTE
House Schedules and Calendars.
Vouchers researcher casts doubt on Tennessee governor’s plan
Author says 75% nationally go students already in private schools
By: Sam Stockard - January 25, 2025 5:00 am
As Tennessee lawmakers prepare to take up the governor’s $424 million private-school voucher plan in a special session, a national researcher says such “voucher schemes” hurt public schools, “devastate” student learning and hit states hard financially.
Josh Cowen, an author and professor of education policy at Michigan State University, told reporters that 75% of the students who use vouchers in other states are enrolled in private schools already. The other 25% suffer academically, he said, because they attend “subprime” schools that pop up when states offer new subsidies.
After years of study, Cowen described private-school voucher programs as the “education equivalent of predatory lending.”
Lawmakers will convene for a special session starting Monday to take up Gov. Bill Lee’s proposal to send up to 20,000 students to private schools using state funds, more than $7,000 per student. It will be considered along with Lee’s immigration enforcement package, which has no cost attached yet, $450 million for Hurricane Helene relief in East Tennessee and creation of a transportation authority to handle public-private projects.
In addition to $144 million for vouchers, the governor’s plan contains money to give teachers a $2,000 bonus and $77.2 million from the state’s sports wagering revenue to pay for school construction, instead of Tennessee’s Lottery account. Lee has said the state will also make school districts “whole” if they lose students, though the legislation simply makes sure state funding for school districts remains the same from one year to the next if a district loses students.
The governor is taking a second stab at statewide private-school vouchers after failing to push them to passage in 2024.
“What’s most important to me is that the taxpayer gets the opportunity to determine where their taxpayer dollars are spent,” Lee said recently.
Cowen, author of “The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers,” said he supported private-school vouchers some 20 years ago when they started making their way into states nationwide.
Over time, his outlook changed because of poor results for voucher students and schools.
In Florida, Louisiana, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin and Washington, D.C. where lawmakers enacted private-school vouchers, as programs grew, the impact on students worsened, he said.
“Pop-up” schools run by out-of-state private equity firms or through offshore companies make up many of Florida’s voucher schools, he said. Forty percent of the schools that received voucher funds in Wisconsin have closed, according to Cowen’s research.
“It’s expensive to run a school. They come in and many of them can’t make it,” Cowen said. He added that fraud is one element that leads to the closing of schools that take voucher funds.
But the biggest shortcoming for students who use vouchers is their academic performance, according to Cowen, who compared their test scores over the last decade to decreases after the COVID-19 pandemic and Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana.
“What we’ve been able to observe is academically disastrous,” he said.
Special Session costs approach $1 Billion
Tennessee lawmakers could be looking at a nearly $1 billion special session slated to begin next week after Gov. Bill Lee directed legislators to cram in voucher legislation, disaster relief and immigration enforcement before returning to a regular session.
Republican leadership hopes to allocate $447 million toward Lee's signature voucher proposal, in addition to $470 million across several disaster relief programs that have been proposed, per a leadership appropriations bill filed this week
A $917 million price tag for lawmakers to consider and vote on within a matter of days is already quite high, but it's likely appropriations will be rise even higher.
If lawmakers want to pass Lee's immigration enforcement plans, they'll need fund an entirely new office and pay local governments to assist federal enforcement authorities, among other funding items.
The appropriations bill does not currently include any funding for the immigration proposal, which hasn't yet been filed.
The appropriations bill also makes clear Lee and leadership are seeking to explicitly tie together disaster relief funding, which both parties have called for, with his previously failed voucher bill.
Though lawmakers will be able to vote on separate bills to establish the voucher and disaster relief programs, the appropriations bill to fund them will require a single up-or-down vote.
Senate Bill 6005 calls for:
Trump administration gives green light to start firing federal workers in DEI roles
An earlier memo from the Office of Personnel Management had asked agency heads to submit written plans by Jan. 31 for dismissing employees.
an. 24, 2025, 9:26 PM CST
By Yamiche Alcindor and Zoë Richards
The Trump administration is stepping up its timeline for terminating federal employees in diversity, equity and inclusion roles.
In a memo Friday, the acting head of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management said agency heads “shall take action to terminate, to the maximum extent allowed by law, all DEI, DEIA, and ‘environmental justice’ offices and positions within sixty days.”
It’s still unclear how many workers would be affected. The White House has not provided detailed estimates. Termination efforts could also be hampered by workplace protections for many career government employees.
The directive accelerates earlier plans from the administration that had called for government agencies to submit written plans by Jan. 31 for dismissing workers at some point in the future.
The updated guidance says agencies “can and should” start issuing layoff notices “to employees of DEIA offices now.” An order issued Tuesday told department heads to inform all workers in DEI roles that they would be put on paid leave the following day.
NBC News reported this week that federal employees had received emails warning that they could face “adverse consequences” if they do not notify the Office of Personnel Management about efforts to “obscure” DEI initiatives.
The memos follow President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order Monday to shut down what he called “radical and wasteful” diversity, equity and inclusion offices and programs in federal agencies.
Trump this week also revoked a decades-old executive order that banned discrimination by federal contractors.
DON'T MISS THIS - IT IS 'DELICIOUS' -- By my friend Tim!!
A GOP Rep Just Delivered a Haymaker on CNN
Matt Vespa | January 23, 2025 6:50 AM
I’m sort of liking this: Republican members of Congress going on CNN to beat the on-air talents’ faces in. I’m for it. It’s good practice since you’re likely not going to get a better practice field regarding sparring with a hostile press
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) decided to test his skills against Jim Acosta, and it did not disappoint. Burchett delivered a haymaker, mocking the network’s low ratings which is undeniable. The segment was obviously about the January 6 defendants getting pardoned which the liberal media must get over because we won, and they lost.
"Jim Acosta: "This is this is not Fox, congressman. You can't just spin a tale and pull the wool over people's eyes. This is CNN. This is the news. We are asking you to come on and tell the truth."
Tim Burchett: "And that's why more people are watching the Cartoon Network, SpongeBob reruns right now. Jim, look, I left the White House during a riot. My life was threatened. My life has been threatened within the last few weeks, yet there's no coverage of that. And you all continue this, this narrative of attacking Trump. You just can't stand the fact that he won and that America spoke and that your view is very diminished."
Acosta: "That's not the case at all!"
Burchett: "And your view is very diminished! "
“This is CNN. This is the news”—did Acosta say that? Jim, you do know CNN, God’s gift to news, lost a bombshell defamation suit last week because you and your people went after a Navy veteran in 2021 with actual malice. You accused Zachary Young of exploiting Afghans who were trying to flee the Taliban. He was awarded at least $5 million, with an undisclosed sum being agreed upon before the jury was about to hand down punitive damages which could’ve been devastating to the network.
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