The Tennessee General Assembly passed the Education Freedom Act of 2025 (EFA) Thursday with a 54-44 vote in the House and a 20-13 vote in the Senate after hours of passionate debate from Republicans and Democrats. Gov. Bill Lee is expected to sign it into law in the coming days.
Over a dozen House Republicans broke rank and voted against the bill, which offers a $7,200 voucher to at least 20,000 Tennesseans for private school tuition.
“Once again, I am very disappointed in Tennessee’s leadership,” MTSU junior Alexis Smith, who had protested the bill at the state capitol in Nashville days earlier, said. “This was never about offering those less fortunate a better opportunity or granting ‘freedom of choice’ to parents. It was an attack on education, and this time, they were successful.”
Vickie Harden, a professor and interim chair for the Social Work department at MTSU, echoed this sentiment and is worried about the impact on social workers and the students they serve in public schools.
“We’re gonna have to be stronger advocates for our students,” Harden said. “[School social workers] are going to have more work as far as looking for resources for their students. They already work with a lot of very vulnerable students, and I feel like there will be even more vulnerable students in the public school system.”
However, republicans in the Senate saw the bill as a new horizon for education.
“This is an opportunity for [parents] to send their children to a school that’s in line with their own values,” said Republican Sen. John Stevens during the debate. “I’m proud to give them this opportunity…this is a historic day for the state.”
Statewide support for vouchers varies, as do polls attempting to understand how Tennesseeans feel about the subject.
The Beacon Center of Tennessee, a conservative think tank, polled 1,200 Tennessee voters on vouchers and found 67% of respondents supported Lee’s statewide educational choice program while 13% opposed it. The think tank did not provide what the other 20 percent of respondents said.
This is a significant leap from Vanderbilt University’s November post-election poll, which found that only 47% of the 955 registered Tennessee voters polled supported private school vouchers.
The EFA goes into effect as soon as Lee signs it, and the vouchers apply to the 2025-26 school year.
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