The Right Education Makes Even Traffic a Privilege

The destination makes all the difference

Every morning, too many families in Nashville, and across the state of Tennessee, send their children off to a school that parents know isn’t working well. That is a paralyzing situation that I know all too well and it is what the Education Freedom Account program seeks to remedy. But given the choice between being stuck in a suboptimal school and driving across town for a better solution - most folks would consider the commute a gift.

I don’t bring up traffic lightly. Few things unite Nashvillians like our contempt for all things traffic-related. Whether it’s pedestrian crossings that resemble the game “Frogger,” potholes so large they’ll swallow a mid-sized sedan, or 440, which bears a certain likeness to the 1^st level of Dante’s inferno, when it comes to dealing with traffic, we’d rather not. We all know that what used to take 10 minutes now routinely takes 35.

But recently, sitting in traffic has felt like a privilege, and it's all because of education.

Rewinding a few years, we were just coming out of the bleak, COVID-19 school shutdowns. My own children had finally returned to in-person learning but were still struggling. One day when my daughters came home from school, I asked my eldest how her day went and she immediately broke into tears and said, "I just want to learn something new in math."

To be clear, my daughter wasn’t a math prodigy, but she's always had strong skills and a curiosity for learning. Moreover, history is replete with examples of girls whose interest in science and math were dismissed. I wondered, “Is this how the dream dies?” That day I resolved, as any parent would, that I was going to do something about it.

Our family set about to find the best educational fit for that little girl. We visited a number of schools: public, charter, private, and finally settled on one outside of our neighborhood. We traded a six-minute commute (including sitting in the car line) for a private school tuition bill. But a few weeks into the experience when the same daughter who earlier, had tears in her eyes, told me how excited she was for study hall – STUDY HALL! – I felt a relief that had been missing for months.

Our family’s new routine involved going back and forth across town every day, but when you see your child thriving, sitting in traffic feels like a privilege.

The Education Freedom Account program would give 20,000 families the ability, and the means, to use around $7,000 in state funds towards tuition and other educational expenses. It’s important to note that 10,000 of these scholarships will be reserved for lower-income families. Despite this record investment in education, there are some who say it’s not enough. But consider another recent, and much needed program.

If choice works for transit – it works for education

Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s “Choose How You Move” transit plan won overwhelming support even as conventional wisdom acknowledges that the plan is far from perfect. Nevertheless, it is lightyears better than continuing to stick our heads in the sand in hopes that traffic issues will fix themselves.

Meanwhile, some lawmakers tell stalled-out families to keep waiting for the system to work a little bit better. But parents know time is of the essence and they deserve options now.

Supporting education choice is what it looks like to elevate the needs of individual students over the permanency of a one-sized fits all system. Whether it's for reasons of special needs, academic struggles, bullying and safety, neurodivergence, religious beliefs, or anything else, when a student is struggling at their current school, we ought to prioritize getting them into a better environment as quickly as possible.

As they have in 17 states across the country, Education Freedom Accounts will go a long way towards giving families in need meaningful access to a school that best fits their child.

In trying to be generous to those worried about the demise of public schools, I’ll merely say that they are viewing the situation through the wrong lens. This month as the Tennessee General Assembly has the opportunity to improve the education destination for thousands of students, the right perspective is putting ourselves in the shoes of parents who are stuck, and asking, “Would you rather remain in a bad educational situation or crawl through traffic on the road to a better future?”

For our family, the choice was clear.

This piece originally ran in The Tennessean on Friday, January 24, 2025.