Tennessee ended its regular 2023 session with a legislative lightning round and several loose ends. But in the few months that lawmakers convened, they passed many education-related bills. Here are some of the biggest developments from the session.
School safety
On March 27, three 9-year-old children and three adults at the Covenant School were shot dead by an assailant who later died by police gunfire.
After the shooting, Gov. Bill Lee’s administration proposed legislation beefing up security at schools across the state as well as a $140 million budget amendment to place an armed school resource officer, or SRO, at every public school in the state. The legislature also approved $7 million in grants to help private schools hire SROs.
In addition to the security personnel, the state will start requiring additional safety drills from public and private schools. The law also mandates that schools lock all exterior doors when students are present. Public schools could face financial penalties if they fail to do so. On top of that, the law calls for more coordination between public schools and state and local law enforcement.
Lawmakers also specified how they want future schools built, with security in mind. The legislation requires new schools to have secure entrances with a locking vestibule and classrooms with doors that can be locked from the inside. New schools will be required to have surveillance systems that police can access during an emergency. The bill also states that all ground and basement level doors and windows have bullet or entry-resistant film installed.
The law passed with broad bipartisan support. But some Democratic lawmakers, including the Tennessee Three, cast votes against it, saying it failed to address the root cause of gun violence.
Thousands of protesters, many of them students, showed up in droves to the capitol after the Covenant School shooting. They asked lawmakers to make schools — and communities at large — safer by tightening Tennessee’s lax gun laws. They asked for red flag laws, universal background checks and a ban on assault weapons. A recent poll shows those kinds of policies have wide support in Tennessee among Democratic and Republican voters.
But rather than crafting those bills, Republican leadership wrapped up the session early. Already, Gov. Lee is planning to call lawmakers back to the capitol to work on gun reform. A start date for that special session has not yet been announced.
Third grade retention
Rewinding to the start of the session, third grade retention was poised to take center stage in education committees. Back in December, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle expressed doubts about the law they’d passed to improve third grade literacy back in January 2021.
The law could put nearly two-thirds of Tennessee third graders at risk of repeating the grade based on an end-of-year test score in English Language Arts. Throughout the spring, parents and educators have been pleading with lawmakers to base retention decisions off more than a single test, and allow local school districts to have the final say on who moves to the next grade. Many have pointed to research that shows damaging long-term effects of retention.
Democratic and Republican legislators filed more than a dozen bills to revise the third grade retention law, but only one moved out of committee. The final legislation makes relatively minor changes, and won’t take effect until next school year.
Republican backers of the new policy say they address parent concerns by considering the score of a benchmark test in addition to the TCAP. But even then, the bill requires students to participate in a full school year of tutoring in the fourth grade.
The new bill also mandates tutoring for students held back in grades K-3 and lets certain school employees help appeal a retention decision to the state. Under current law, parents have to do that process themselves.
To read more about tension over third grade retention, click here.
Culture wars
Republican lawmakers pushed through more bills targeting culture war issues this session. One of them will shield teachers who misgender trans students. The bill protects school employees from professional punishment as well as civil lawsuits.
Another culture war bill bans school districts from requiring implicit bias training for workers. That kind of training helps people recognize their own unconscious biases, often based on characteristics like race and gender. According to the National Institutes of Health, the training “can help reduce individual biases by making people aware of their behaviors and situations where bias occurs.”
This bill means educators can’t be required to confront their own unconscious prejudices, or evaluate how that may impact the way they interact with students.
Republican lawmakers also expanded the reach of Tennessee’s “divisive concepts” law in the higher education realm. Those concepts include the idea that someone can be privileged based on their race or sex, or that the United States is “fundamentally or irredeemably racist or sexist.”
Tennessee had already banned public colleges and universities from requiring students or employees to support those concepts, or discriminating against them for refusing to agree. The new bill allows people who think the law has been broken to file a report with the university. The school then must investigate and report violations and resolutions to the state comptroller. It also forbids schools from making potential students or workers submit or agree to a diversity statement, and adds new job requirements for workers whose titles include diversity, equity or inclusion.
Additionally, the bill extends into extracurricular activities and events. The bill restricts state money from going to groups that require the members to endorse one of the “divisive concepts.”
It also outlines rules for campus speakers and organizations. Schools can’t deny use of facilities based on viewpoint or political ideology or charge different fees for security costs.
That’s as controversial college speakers have garnered national attention in recent years, with some universities spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on security to accommodate divisive figures.
The law does allow colleges to shut down activities deemed “obscene” or that disrupt previously scheduled events in a public forum.
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