A trio of organizations filed an amicus brief in the Tennessee Supreme Court asking justices to accept an appeal of a lawsuit over the educational savings account (ESA).
The American Federation for Children joined Latinos for Tennessee and the Memphis Chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the filing. The AFC is an affiliate of the Alliance for School Choice.
Their amicus brief is available here.
The Tennessee Court of Appeals in September ruled Gov. Bill Lee’s ESA program is “unconstitutional,” The Tennessee Star reported. The decision upheld a lower court’s ruling on the school voucher program, which was being piloted in Davidson and Shelby counties.
The court of appeals ruled that the unconstitutionality of the ESA program is because it “is local in effect, and applicable to Davidson and Shelby counties in their governmental capacity.” This decision references article XI, section 9, paragraph 2 of the Tennessee Constitution.
The three parties make their case by illustrating the struggles that parents have with public schools, including closures from the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in Memphis and Nashville.
Tennessee’s low-income and minority students still lag far behind their peers in other states, despite Tennessee’s general statewide educational progress.
Tennessee’s public schools have improved over the past decade. Since 2011, Tennessee has improved from the bottom quarter to near the middle of all states in math and reading. Unfortunately, schools in Tennessee’s lowest-income areas have not similarly improved. Instead, those schools “have languished in the bottom third of the states for nearly two decades.” That serious problem persists today in the very schools targeted by the Pilot Program.
Equally troubling, these numbers will almost certainly get worse this year, as COVID-19 disproportionately affects lower-income students in more populous urban areas. Lower-income parents are less likely to be able to work from home and to supervise children in remote classes. Re- latedly, lower-income families often lack computers or reliable internet access at home necessary for effective virtual learning.
They also cite media coverage and research from Dallas showing the struggles of black and Latino students in the pandemic compared to white students. For example, the Measure of Academic Progress assessment found that black and Latino students who met grade level projections in math ranged from 7.5 percent in fourth-grade to 17.9 percent in fifth-grade. That compared to white students ranging from 41.8 percent to 61.2 percent.
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Jason M. Reynolds has more than 20 years’ experience as a journalist at outlets of all sizes.
Photo “Tennessee State Supreme Court” by Thomas R. Machnitzki. CC BY 3.0.
