Conservative Org Launches Push To Get School Choice Across Finish Line In Tennessee

The Club for Growth will back a new school voucher proposal backed by Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, the organization told The Daily Wire on Friday. 

The organization said that it would be rolling out a major TV and digital advocacy campaign in favor of Lee’s latest school choice proposal, which includes 20,000 scholarships that can be used for tuition at private schools. The Club for Growth is a free enterprise advocacy group that backs limited government.  

“Club for Growth and our affiliated organizations will be supporting Gov. Lee’s school freedom legislation with a major advocacy campaign including TV and digital ads,” Club for Growth President David McIntosh told The Daily Wire. “This is a continuation of our School Freedom Fund’s $15.7 million winning campaigns last year in Tennessee and Texas that successfully defeated 14 so-called Republicans. Now, kids all over Tennessee will be the winners!”

The campaign is expected to target Republican legislators who may be undecided about supporting the legislation. 

Across the country, the Club for Growth Action and its affiliated School Freedom Fund super PAC have backed primary challenges to 14 Republican lawmakers in Texas who opposed school choice legislation, defeating 10 of the targeted lawmakers. The group also opposed Republican lawmakers in Tennessee who did not support Lee’s push last year for similar legislation. 

Lee’s proposal this year, known as the Education Freedom Scholarship Act, comes after similar legislation failed last year when Republicans in the state House and Senate could not agree on the proposal’s language. 

In November, Tennessee Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson (R-TN) and House Majority Leader Rep. William Lamberth (R-Portland) introduced identical legislation in the Assembly in line with Lee’s scholarship proposal. 

“A quality education can change the trajectory of a child’s life, and that’s why the vast majority of Tennesseans support empowering parents with school choice,” Lee told The Daily Wire. “I remain grateful for legislative leadership’s commitment to passing the Education Freedom Act early in the next legislative session and appreciate Club for Growth’s continued support.”

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The proposal would create 20,000 scholarships worth an estimated $7,295 that parents could apply for and use for things like tuition at private schools and textbooks. Half of the scholarships would be reserved for students in households with annual incomes of less than 300% of the amount needed to qualify for free or reduced lunch. The second 10,000 would be universally open. 

In the second year, an additional 5,000 scholarships would be made available if 75% of the available scholarships are taken the previous year. In this year, the scholarships are prioritized based on current recipients and income levels if there is more demand than supply. 

Scholarship recipients would have to be administered a nationally standardized achievement test or the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program. The measure would also give all current public school teachers a $2,000 bonus and guarantee that public schools would not lose state funding based on disenrollment from their schools.