Lottery questions still bedevil Tennessee House
A sticky issue since lawmakers convened in January, the debate revolves around one question: Should the scholarships be used to encourage outstanding academic achievement, or as a way to increase college access to poor and minority students?
Some advocate using financial incentives to keep the best and brightest high school graduates in Tennessee. But critics of that approach say the state — with a low percentage of college graduates — must open the doors of higher education to more students.
A split among House Democrats over the eligibility requirements surfaced during a caucus meeting last week.
The chairwoman of the Black Caucus called it ‘criminal’ to require both a 3.0 grade point average and a 19 ACT score to qualify for a scholarship, as the House bill now would do.
‘When we use a 3.0 and a 19 ACT, we find that low socio-economic youngsters — white, black, blue, green and polka dot — all tend to miss the mark,’ said Rep. Tommie Brown, D-Chattanooga. ‘So what we’re doing is setting up an elitist model.’
Such concerns have prompted a move to make the eligibility standard an either-or proposition, where a 3.0 average or a 19 ACT score would be required — but not both.
‘Our position in the caucus is to see how many of these students can get scholarships instead of how many of them we’re going to prevent from getting scholarships,’ said House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh, D-Covington. ‘We want to educate as many of these kids as we can, especially those that can least afford to go to college. That’s who I really want to help.’
House Democratic Caucus Chairman Randy Rinks of Savannah said he thinks ‘everybody is pretty much in agreement’ to support the either-or approach.
If he’s right, that raises another issue.
Given numerous differences in grading scales and systems across Tennessee, a 3.0 average in one place might not be the same as a 3.0 somewhere else.
Creating a standardized grading system ‘would be a formidable problem,’ said Karen Weeks, research associate for the State Board of Education.
‘Even if you promulgate a standard system, it doesn’t mean an ‘A’ in one system is an ‘A’ in another, because of variables in what it takes to get that grade in different places,’ she said.
Rep. Chris Newton, the House sponsor, delayed consideration of the lottery scholarship bill until this week at Naifeh’s request. But Newton, R-Benton, said he intends to put the bill to a vote of the full House on Wednesday, regardless of the split over the eligibility standards.
‘If we’ve got 50 votes, we’ll pass it,’ Newton said.
Newton said supporters of the either-or approach should know the potential costs.
Those costs would pose the danger many lawmakers have said they fear most, he said: promising more scholarship money than the planned lottery can deliver.
The either-or eligibility standard would cost $290 million a year by the time the program was fully mature, compared to $197 million for the program as he proposes it, he said.
Plus, Newton said, the House bill already includes two provisions to help poor, disadvantaged students. It would provide additional $1,000 stipends to students from families making less than $36,000 a year; and it would provide partial grants, known as ‘half-a-HOPE’ scholarships, or access grants, to students with slightly lower academic credentials.
Newton’s cost projections also take into account that the House version of the plan offers maximum scholarships of $3,000; the version the Senate already has passed has maximum awards of $4,000.
Newton said the either-or approach combined with the Senate’s full awards would cost $377 million when fully in place, or nearly twice the projected cost of his version and more than the program is estimated to generate for scholarships.
‘As always, we’re being very conservative with these numbers, but I think we have to live with them,’ Newton said. ‘If we go above them, we’re using phony numbers and risk the likelihood of triggering the scholarship reduction mechanism in the second year of the program, and I don’t think that’s what any of us intended to do.’
A lottery implementation bill, which sets up the governing board and the outline of the games themselves, already has passed both houses in varying forms. The conference committee of House and Senate members created to resolve those differences is scheduled to begin its work on Monday.
If Newton can pass the scholarship bill on Wednesday, a conference committee could be appointed Thursday and begin its work shortly thereafter, putting the Legislature on track to conclude its work for the year either the last week of May or first week of June.