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More than one-third of Tennessee’s 35,000 private school voucher recipients live in just 20 ZIP codes, most of them wealthy and majority white, according to data obtained by Chalkbeat Tennessee.
While most of those recipients live in Tennessee’s largest cities, a Chalkbeat analysis found that ZIP codes with the highest shares of students receiving vouchers through the state’s Education Freedom Scholarship program are largely in affluent suburban and exurban communities.
In the east Memphis area south of Shelby Farms Park, which includes the sought-after Richland Acres neighborhood, nearly 1 in 4 students receive vouchers, the highest share in the state. The area’s median household income is $119,309, nearly twice the median for Shelby County.
More than 80% of residents in that ZIP code, 38120, are white, a stark contrast to Memphis, a majority-Black city.
A few miles northwest, in a Memphis ZIP code where the median household income is about one-third that of the east Memphis area and 78% of residents are Black, just 1 in 500 students receive a school voucher.
The new data illustrates the changed reality of Tennessee’s voucher landscape since Gov. Bill Lee first pushed for an education savings account program in 2019. Then, it was a limited program designed to help low-income students in a handful of lower-performing urban districts attend private school for the first time.
Now, it includes a statewide program increasingly used by families in some of Tennessee’s most affluent communities to subsidize private school tuition.
Republican messaging has changed, too, from emphasizing exit strategies from underperforming public schools for students from low-income families to paying for school choice for all Tennessee students.
“The ZIP code data matters because of the rationale that was used to justify vouchers,” said Alexza Barajas Clark, executive director at EdTrust-Tennessee, which opposes private school vouchers. “This data gives us a more detailed picture of not just where it’s going but the conflict with the messaging around its purpose.”
Voucher recipients live in around two-thirds of ZIP codes across the state, which means almost 200 ZIP codes have none, according to Tennessee Department of Education data. The 20 ZIP codes with the most recipients are home to 12,217 students receiving vouchers, 34.9% of the program’s total.
Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson, a Franklin Republican who pushed for the program’s expansion earlier this year, said participation across hundreds of ZIP codes “demonstrates that families throughout Tennessee want school choice.”
“The purpose of Education Freedom Scholarships is straightforward: to give Tennessee families greater freedom to choose the education that best meets their children’s needs. That is exactly what it is doing,” Johnson said.
East Memphis neighborhoods heavily benefit from voucher program
Differences in voucher use are especially stark in the Memphis-Shelby County area. After Knoxville, Memphis has the most voucher recipients in the state. But more than two-thirds of the city’s recipients live in just five ZIP codes clustered in east Memphis, among its wealthiest neighborhoods.
One of those ZIP codes, 38117, spans the Belle Meade area and includes the Memphis Botanic Garden. There, 744 students receive vouchers to pay for private school — around 13% of the ZIP code’s estimated student population. About two-thirds of residents are white, while Memphis and Shelby County are majority Black.
The east Memphis neighborhoods border even wealthier suburbs with high concentrations of voucher recipients. In Germantown, home to some of the state’s most exclusive ZIP codes, more than 1,000 students received vouchers this year. The city has about 40,000 residents.
Similar wealthy suburbs elsewhere in Tennessee have some of the highest concentrations of voucher recipients relative to their student populations.
In Davidson County, nearly 14% of students in the estate-filled 37220 ZIP code receive vouchers, the second-highest share in the state.
The area encircles Radnor Lake State Park and includes the rolling green lawns of Oak Hill and parts of the sought-after Crieve Hall neighborhood. It has a small population compared with Davidson County overall and a median household income of $156,227.
“This new data is consistent with what we have seen of the first year of the program,” Barajas Clark said. “Two-thirds of participating private schools were located in just six counties, and they were also some of Tennessee’s largest and wealthiest counties.”
Jackson stands apart from affluent voucher hubs
There are some outliers to the pattern of high voucher use in wealthier neighborhoods.
One is in Jackson, in west Tennessee’s Madison County, which has about 100,000 residents. The 38305 ZIP code, which covers a large swath of the county just north of central Jackson, has the most voucher recipients of any single ZIP code in the state: 947 students.
The area is racially diverse and has a lower median household income than other communities topping the voucher recipients list. It is also home to multiple private schools established long before the rise of vouchers in Tennessee. Chalkbeat identified at least five Jackson-area private schools that together enroll more than 1,400 EFS recipients.
The University School of Jackson has one of the largest EFS populations in the state: 530 of its 1,139 students receive a voucher. The school’s tuition starts at $11,300 for kindergartners and rises to $14,700 for high school students. USJ also provides daycare for younger kids, who are not eligible for voucher funding.
It is a university preparatory school without a religious affiliation, an anomaly in the EFS program where Christian private schools are the norm.
Don Roe, USJ’s head of school and a former public school teacher, oversees the 130-acre campus and its hundreds of students. He said the school did not advocate for the EFS program and does not want to wade into the political debates around school choice. If the school can maintain its academic independence from state mandates and the program helps its families, Roe said, it will continue participating.
“For us, it’s not trying to use the EFS to bring in massive numbers of families,” Roe said. “We just want to have it here to benefit our families if it is congruent with the mission of the school.”
When USJ opted into the EFS program, Roe said, it informed families about the new option — though it doesn’t act as a facilitator between parents and the state.
USJ’s enrollment has increased, but Roe said it was already growing before the EFS program began. The school does not intend to significantly increase capacity beyond its existing growth plan.
“We’ve not changed our admissions policy,” Roe said. “We’re not trying to use the EFS to dramatically increase enrollment. We’re just trying to serve the families who are here and interested in coming here.”
Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
