TN’s Expanded School Voucher Program Purposely Leaves Out Undocumented Kids

On Wednesday, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) signed into law a bill that expands the statewide school voucher program, which uses taxpayer dollars — ordinarily allocated to public school districts — to provide funds to individual students to attend private, oftentimes religious, schools instead.

The new program also includes an explicit requirement that no funds are spent on children who are undocumented immigrants, which may run afoul of decades of Supreme Court precedent.

The new law expands the number of vouchers available in the state to 20,000 students. Each eligible student will receive $7,000 in funds, derived from public school funds, to use at the private school of their choice. Ultimately, the law will end up costing $447 million.

The law directs the Tennessee Department of Education to deny any student whose family “cannot establish the eligible student’s lawful presence in the United States” from obtaining voucher funds.

Vouchers will be “only available to Tennessee citizens,” Lee said in a statement.

The law, which officially goes into effect on July 1, may be challenged as an illegal use of state funds. According to a 1982 Supreme Court ruling, states are forbidden from denying children who are undocumented immigrants from attending public schools. It’s possible, however, that the current conservative-majority Supreme Court will rule that the Tennessee law is not subject to that precedent, as the law discriminates against undocumented children through private school vouchers.

Voucher systems have historically been discriminatory, and many recent analyses of voucher schools still demonstrate that they typically do not accommodate all children like public schools are legally required to do. A Wisconsin Watch examination of Wisconsin’s voucher program, for example, found that around half of the schools in the voucher program “appeared to discriminate against students who are LGBTQ+ or have disabilities, often citing religious principles or lack of capacity to accommodate certain conditions.”

Even after decades of research and expansion of school vouchers, such systems “have not moved learning in a positive direction,” Josh Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University who has studied voucher programs for over two decades, said in an interview with Truthout in October. “Even worse, state spending on vouchers threatens state budgets.”

Cowen also noted that there’s a Christian nationalist appeal to voucher systems.

“The right is trying to work white Evangelicals into a frenzy, repeatedly telling them they are oppressed,” Cowen said. “It’s worked. Increasingly, we’re seeing vouchers going to wealthy white families whose kids would never, ever, have attended public schools.”

Tennessee Republicans are not only trying to discriminate against undocumented students through the state’s voucher program — they also appear to be readying themselves to directly challenge the 1982 Supreme Court ruling. GOP lawmakers in the Volunteer State have crafted a bill that would allow any charter or public school district to bar undocumented students from attending.

Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC) has condemned the proposal.

“Imagine a parent having to tell their child they can no longer go to school. Imagine your child asking why their teammate is not playing with them anymore. That’s not the Tennessee we believe in,” said TIRRC Executive Director Lisa Sherman Luna. “Together with our members and educators across the state, we will fight for our children’s freedom to learn and for our vision of a Tennessee where everyone can belong.”