Beacon Center of Tennessee » education

An Idea a Day: 51 Ideas for a Prosperous Tennessee

editor — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 19:00:18 +0000

Beacon Center Provides Legislature with 51 Ideas for a Prosperous Tennessee
Pamphlet offers a free market idea for each remaining legislative day of the General Assembly

NASHVILLE – The Beacon Center of Tennessee, founded as the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, today made available in electronic version its most recent publication, An Idea a Day: 51 Ideas for a Prosperous Tennessee. The second of its kind, the pamphlet offers one innovative free market idea for each remaining legislative day of the 107th General Assembly. Each idea is surmised in one brief sentence, followed by a link to original work published by the Beacon Center or contact information for more details.

Hardcopies of the pamphlet will be provided to each member of the General Assembly upon their return to session in January. The electronic version was sent to members and their staff today as the Legislature prepares for the second session of the 107th General Assembly.

“When lawmakers look for solutions that will expand individual liberty, return taxpayers’ hard-earned money to their pockets, and reduce the size and scope of government, they now have a place to turn,” said Justin Owen, the Beacon Center’s president & CEO. “We hope members of the General Assembly will frequently turn to this simple, concise resource as they conduct the people’s business.”

A new feature was added to the second edition of An Idea a Day, with a special emblem marking ideas that will create jobs and/or save taxpayers money. This makes it easier for lawmakers to identify those issues that are a top priority for taxpayers: job creation and tax cuts.

The electronic version of the pamphlet, complete with links to original Beacon Center work on the ideas offered, can be viewed by clicking here or visiting http://www.beacontn.org/wp-content/uploads/An-Idea-a-Day-2012.pdf.

The Beacon Center of Tennessee’s mission is to change lives through public policy by advancing the principles of free markets, individual liberty, and limited government. The Center is an independent, nonprofit, and nonpartisan research organization committed to providing timely free market solutions to public policy issues in Tennessee.

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Farragut earned business-friendly ranking

editor — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 23:43:41 +0000

Justin Owen, president & CEO of the Beacon Center, praises Farragut for its low taxes, strong education results, and job and population growth, leading it to the top of the Center’s 2011 Business-Friendly Cities rankings. This article originally appeared in Sunday’s Knoxville News Sentinel.

by Justin Owen

For the past six years, the Beacon Center of Tennessee (founded as the Tennessee Center for Policy Research) has ranked the state’s 50 most populous cities according to their business climate. The categories we choose reflect cities’ commitment to creating a business-friendly atmosphere based on strong economic vitality and community allure, and free of stifling taxes and restrictive regulatory burdens.

Cities with low tax burdens, less regulation, quality education systems and low crime rates fare better at attracting and retaining business than those with high taxes, burdensome red tape, poor schools and high crime. Since people “vote with their feet,” these factors often lead to population and job growth, which more directly signal a city’s commitment to economic strength.

Each year, cities are ranked by data compiled and placed into three categories: Economic Vitality, Business Tax Burden and Community Allure. These categories included factors such as job and population growth, tax burdens, household income, cost of living, crime rates and education statistics, all important measures for determining how friendly a city is to business growth.

After culling data from various reputable sources, including the U.S. Census Bureau, the FBI and the Tennessee Department of Education, our rankings indicate that the Town of Farragut is Tennessee’s Most Business-Friendly City.

The Knox County city has consistently scored high in the rankings due primarily to its low tax burden — it lacks a city property tax and is the only top 50 city that chooses to impose no gross receipts tax on businesses. It also posted strong job performance, a low crime rate and higher than average median income levels, leading it to a first place finish in 2011.

Four Middle Tennessee cities round out the top five. Brentwood, Franklin, Mt. Juliet and Spring Hill follow Farragut’s lead with low tax rates and positive job growth over the past year.

On the flipside, Memphis finished dead last for the second consecutive year. The Bluff City has consistently failed to address its education woes and has an abhorrently high crime rate. It also imposes a property tax that is nearly 16 percent higher than that of any other city in the state.

Other cities ranking toward the bottom posted similarly high tax rates, low income for residents, and low education results. Taken together, these factors can drive away businesses seeking to expand or relocate.

Cities that want to attract new business development while also nourishing existing enterprise should follow the lead of Farragut by limiting their tax burdens, addressing crime, and maintaining a quality education system. This will attract new residents and thereby business growth regardless of the overall economic outlook.

As Farragut has proven, a city can be business-friendly even during periods of economic malaise. For that reason, the Beacon Center is proud to bestow the town with the honor of being Tennessee’s Most Business-Friendly City in 2011.

TCPR leads the way on opportunity scholarships

editor — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 14:34:19 +0000

July 6, 2011

The Heartland Institute’s “School Reform News” notes the Tennessee Center for Policy Research’s involvement in the effort to provide opportunity scholarships to low-income Tennessee children.

“Studies of voucher programs show that they save local school systems money, and there’s no greater accountability than choice, so this bill has a very good shot of passing next year,” said Ryan Turbeville, TCPR’s policy & outreach coordinator.

Read the entire article here.

TCPR discusses education reform

editor — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 20:44:33 +0000

The Heartland Institute’s School Reform News talks with Ryan Turbeville, policy & outreach coordinator for the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, about recent education reforms adopted in Tennessee. Among them, linking teacher pay to evaluation results and ending teachers’ union collective bargaining.

Turbeville believes [terminating collective bargaining] would be a justifiable improvement, and would help facilitate a move to compensate teachers based on classroom performance. “Historically, the [Tennessee Education Association] has been very adversarial to many types of reforms,” he said. “When a union gets that big and powerful, it will put its needs and its interests over the needs of the children.”

Read the entire article, titled “Tennessee links teacher evaluations to pay,” here.

Setting the record straight on collective bargaining

editor — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 18:09:18 +0000

This morning, the House Finance Subcommittee voted 7-6 to pass HB130, the bill to limit collective bargaining by teachers’ unions. Speaker Beth Harwell used her prerogative to cast the tie-breaking vote, keeping the measure alive. Tennessee Center for Policy Research president Justin Owen issued the following statement on the issue, which has received a tremendous amount of attention in the past few weeks.

The Tennessee Center for Policy Research has worked since its founding in 2004 to bring about meaningful education reforms in this state that will give parents a seat at the table and children a chance to succeed. As a part of those efforts, since 2009, we have called upon the Tennessee General Assembly to reform our state’s system of teacher collective bargaining, allowing teachers to be paid based on their performance and skills like the professionals they are.

We are therefore grateful for Speaker Beth Harwell’s leadership today in voting to send HB130 to the full House Finance Committee, which ensures that the important discussion of placing limits on collective bargaining continues. But for Speaker Harwell’s tie-breaking vote, we would be talking about the collective bargaining bill that died on the operating table. Fortunately, we still have the opportunity to return control to individual teachers by limiting the teachers union’s ability to stake its claim as the monopoly negotiator in school districts across our state.

This is a very important issue for anyone interested in bucking the status quo that has failed our teachers, our parents, our taxpayers, and most importantly our children, for decades. Collective bargaining is the main weapon used by teachers’ unions to thwart meaningful education reforms in our state. The Tennessee Education Association—the chief lobbying and political arm of the teachers’ unions—has consistently stood in the way of improving our education system.

The TEA has frequently urged lawmakers to press for more “parental involvement” in education. Yet, when a parental choice scholarship bill was proposed just last year to allow parents to choose where to send their children to school, the TEA characterized such measures as “destroying public education,” further attacking school choice advocates like Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, saying they “would be perfectly happy to turn public schools over to some corporation and just let them run them.” This empty rhetoric in defense of the failed status quo has become all too common with the teachers’ unions.

But don’t think the unions oppose every cause on Capitol Hill. While they are always on the wrong side of effective education reforms, the unions believe strongly in other things, such as imposing a state income tax on Tennesseans, a measure they supported during the income tax battle a few years ago. Rather than spend their members’ hard-earned dues on improving education for both teachers and students, they are wasting these resources on a radical political agenda that the vast majority of Tennesseans diametrically oppose.

Our education system is in desperate need of reform, and the collective bargaining legislation voted out of subcommittee today will pave the way for reforms that benefit our teachers, our parents, our taxpayers, and above all, our children. Meaningful education reform should not be left to the whim of one political organization more interested in its own posterity than that of Tennessee’s children.

The Tennessee Center for Policy Research applauds those, including Speaker Harwell, for keeping the education reform dialogue open with their votes today.

Justin Owen, TCPR President

TCPR leads charge against teachers’ union

editor — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 22:12:05 +0000

The Commercial Appeal highlights how the Tennessee Center for Policy Research and other groups laid the groundwork for the current efforts to terminate collective-bargaining for teachers, a tool the Tennessee Education Association has used to wield tremendous power in the state legislature and thwart numerous education reforms. Read the article here.

Parents should have choice in education

editor — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 16:10:38 +0000

Dr. Matthew Ladner, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Educational Choice, highlights some amazing data from a new study co-published by the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. This article originally appeared in the Tennessean.

by Dr. Matthew Lander

A vast majority of Tennesseans believe their public school system needs changing, as found by a recent Vanderbilt University poll. Thankfully, state leaders don’t have to play a guessing game to determine which reforms would best serve Tennessee’s children.

The overwhelming success of a nearby state has the educational record to prove changes need not be rooted in uncertainty. Since 1998, Florida’s student body, particularly minority, low-income and special-needs children, has made impressive gains on the National Assessment of Educational Progress’ (NAEP) fourth-grade reading test. Performance on that particular test is critical, for in students’ early years they are learning to read; in their later years, students read to learn.

Over the past decade, all Tennessee students, on average, improved five points (to 217 from 212) on NAEP’s fourth-grade reading exam. By comparison, all Florida students improved 20 points (to 226 from 206) — the equivalent of two grade levels. Florida is now outperforming Tennessee by nearly one grade level even though it started with lower scores. Even more significant, from 1998-2009, Florida’s Hispanic students improved to 223 from 198 on the exam, meaning they are outperforming all Tennessee students by half a grade level. There’s more. In 1998, Florida’s low-income students trailed all Tennessee students by 22 points — more than two grade levels. Today, those groups are tied academically. Also in 1998, Florida’s African-American students were seven points behind their Tennessee peers. In 2009, Florida’s African-American students surged ahead of Tennessee’s by 14 points.

Importantly, such gains are not limited to reading. In the Report Card on American Education, Florida ranked third for its low-income students’ performance and progress on NAEP’s fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math exams. How did Florida do it? Its formula for success was twofold: Strong leadership and aggressive reforms that introduced accountability and incentives into public schools and greater parental choice for students in need of education outside traditional public schools. Specifically, Florida increased school accountability by creating truth in advertising.

Often school performance labels are hard to understand. Florida changed that by grading its public schools A, B, C, D, or F, which parents can easily interpret. Florida banned social promotion; i.e., the policy of moving illiterate students up grade levels. State leaders raised academic standards and rewarded teachers for improving student achievement. Florida implemented a tax credit scholarship program, which currently is allowing 28,000 low-income students to attend the private schools of their parents’ choice.

Lawmakers also created the McKay Scholarships for Students with Disabilities Program, which gives vouchers to more than 21,000 students with special needs to attend private schools. Additionally, charter schools and virtual learning expanded during Florida’s decade of reform, further widening educational opportunities for residents. These reforms taken collectively are making Florida a leader in providing learning environments tailored to their needs. Other states are catching on to Florida’s story; so should Tennessee. Last year, Oklahoma improved its charter school law and passed a scholarship program for students with special needs.

As research of Florida’s special-needs scholarship program has proved, participating parents will be more satisfied and students will be safer and better off. Tennessee families who desire more personalized, high-quality learning opportunities for their children can look to Florida’s reforms to ensure a culture of academic success. Their record against Tennessee proves it.

Matthew Ladner is a senior fellow with the Foundation for Educational Choice and author of Lessons for Tennessee from Florida’s Education Revolution. The foundation is the legacy foundation of Milton and Rose Friedman and the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation.

TCPR’s support of collective bargaining reform cited

editor — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 16:07:48 +0000

The Memphis Commercial Appeal notes that the Tennessee Center for Policy Research supports a ban on collective bargaining by teachers’ unions, a reform that will allow teachers to directly negotiate their salary and benefits without having to pay a middle man to handle it for them. Read the full article here.

UPDATE: After passage of the collective bargaining bill by the Senate Education Committee this morning, the Commercial Appeal offers a round-up.

TN should follow FL’s lead on education reform

editor — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 18:16:01 +0000

NASHVILLE, TN – Tennessee K-12 education has experienced a “lost decade”, while by comparison, a decade of revolutionary reforms has led to extraordinary K-12 achievement gains in Florida, according to a new study released today by the Indianapolis-based Foundation for Educational Choice and the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. “Lessons for Tennessee from Florida’s Education Revolution” is a primer for state leaders who want to improve education results, better serve families, and close the academic achievement gap.

The study compares critical fourth-grade reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). It found that Florida’s students, who ranked behind Tennessee in 1998, gained 20 points – the equivalent of two grade levels – to best Tennessee’s scores by nine points. Key among the study’s findings is that Florida’s Hispanic students on average are outperforming the statewide average of all Tennessee students on that test.

“Through its revolutionary, yet common-sense reforms, Florida has created a path to improvement that can work in Tennessee,” said Dr. Matthew Ladner, the study’s author, who noted that fourth-grade reading results are a reliable, commonly accepted predictor of students’ future academic trajectory. “Florida established high standards, implemented innovative testing, ended social promotion of illiterate students, rewarded effective teachers, and increased parental choice in schooling. Tennessee has done none of these, a fact that is sadly reflected in the state’s academic performance.”

In his research, Dr. Ladner found that Florida’s Hispanic students outperform or tie the statewide average of all students in 30 states, including Tennessee.

“This study and the state of Florida prove that it’s time to enact the reforms necessary to equip our children to succeed,” said Justin Owen, president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, a free market think tank in Nashville. “Florida’s example shows that remarkable gains across demographic and economic lines are possible when policies are in place that empower parents and teachers and hold schools accountable.”

In addition to gains by the state’s Hispanic students, the academic growth of Florida’s African American students is equally impressive. Over the past decade, African American students in Florida, on average, realized a 25-point gain in reading achievement, whereas African American students in Tennessee progressed by only four points. Moreover, Florida’s low-income students gained an astounding 27 points (equivalent to nearly three grade levels) to tie with the statewide average of all Tennessee students.

“This study is more proof of what we’re seeing across the nation,” Robert Enlow, president and CEO of the Foundation for Educational Choice, said. “When true reform occurs and parents are given the freedom to choose the education that’s best for their children, students are able to break through every barrier and truly excel. The real question is whether the adults making the decisions impacting Tennessee schools have the courage to do what’s right for the kids trapped in stagnant schools.”

About the Foundation for Educational Choice

The Foundation for Educational Choice is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and nonpartisan organization, solely dedicated to advancing Milton and Rose Friedman’s vision of school choice for all children. First established as the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation in 1996, the foundation continues to promote school choice as the most effective and equitable way to improve the quality of K-12 education in America. The foundation is dedicated to research, education, and outreach on the vital issues and implications related to choice and competition in K-12 education.

About the Tennessee Center for Policy Research

The Tennessee Center for Policy Research is an independent, nonprofit, and nonpartisan research organization that provides solutions to public policy issues in Tennessee. The Center is committed to achieving a freer, more prosperous Tennessee by advancing the principles of free markets, individual liberty, and limited government.

About Dr. Matthew Ladner

Dr. Ladner is a Senior Fellow with The Foundation for Educational Choice. He is Vice President of Research for the Goldwater Institute and coauthor of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s Report Card on American Education: Ranking State K-12 Performance, Progress, and Reform.

Visit www.EdChoice.org/TNvsFL to read the full study.

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TCPR on Collective Bargaining

editor — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 15:57:50 +0000

The Commercial Appeal in Memphis interviews Tennessee Center for Policy Research president Justin Owen about a new effort to end collective bargaining for teachers, allowing them to negotiate directly with administrators.

“When you have collective bargaining, you have a middle man between teachers and school boards, and of course, they take a cut, which means teachers receive less pay and there are fewer resources for students.”

Read the entire article here.