Echoes of Appalachia

Across the backroads and small towns of rural Appalachia, opportunity is hard to come by, and families are doing their best just to get by. And now, thanks to Tennessee’s school voucher program, they’re being told they have “choice” but it’s a cruel joke. Because for much of rural Appalachia, there is no choice at all.

Tennessee’s school voucher program, which currently offers around 20,000 vouchers to families across the state, is being sold as a way to give parents more control over their children’s education. The idea is simple on paper: families can apply for a voucher, essentially a state-funded coupon, to use toward tuition at a private school. Sounds fair enough, right?

But here’s the truth. For rural families in Appalachia, this program isn’t a lifeline. It is a dead end.

There’s a reason private schools are concentrated in wealthier urban and suburban areas. That’s where the money is. In most rural Appalachian communities, private schools simply don’t exist. Families may be able to apply for a voucher, but there’s nowhere to use it unless they’re willing to drive hours each day, and that’s assuming they even own a reliable vehicle. For many, that’s not an option.

Let’s say a family in rural East Tennessee manages to find a private school within reach. Even with the voucher, which might cover around 7,000 to 9,000 dollars of tuition, that’s rarely the full cost. Many private schools charge more than 15,000 dollars a year. That leaves families on the hook for hundreds of dollars a month, money that many simply do not have. A 500 dollar shortfall each month is the equivalent of a car payment, rent, or groceries. For people living paycheck to paycheck, that’s an impossible ask.

Meanwhile, who is benefitting from this system? Wealthy families. Affluent households that already had the means to send their children to elite private schools now get a bonus, money from the state paid for by your tax dollars, to subsidize what they were already going to do. And unlike rural families, they actually have access to a wide range of private schools. The infrastructure is already there. The schools are close by. They can afford to pay the difference. So while poor families are chasing a mirage, the rich are cashing in.

Here’s where it gets even more frustrating. This isn’t just unfair. It is exploitative. These vouchers are funded with public money. Tax dollars. That includes money from rural, low-income communities where folks are struggling to keep the lights on. In effect, people in these regions are footing the bill for wealthier families’ private school tuition.

That’s right. Poor families in Appalachia are helping pay for the education of rich kids in Nashville, Knoxville, and Chattanooga.

It’s hard not to feel like this entire program was designed with rural communities as an afterthought, if they were considered at all. Lawmakers can tout the program as “statewide,” but access is meaningless if the infrastructure doesn’t exist to support it. If there are no private schools to attend, and no realistic way to afford the cost gap, then these vouchers aren’t an opportunity. They are a hollow promise.

To make matters worse, this program also pulls resources away from public schools, the very schools that rural kids do rely on. Every voucher that’s handed out takes money away from public education. So while rich families in cities are getting taxpayer-subsidized tuition, rural schools are losing critical funding. The very fabric of the community, the school that serves as a hub for everything from education to food security, is being slowly unraveled.

There’s a lot of talk about “school choice,” but real choice requires more than a piece of paper. It requires options. It requires access. It requires equity. Right now, those things don’t exist for rural Appalachia. This voucher program is like giving someone a gift card to a store that doesn’t exist in their county and then blaming them for not using it.

This isn’t just bad policy. It’s insult added to injury. Generations of rural Appalachian families have been ignored, overlooked, and underserved. Now they’re being told that their children’s futures are part of some grand experiment in educational freedom, when in reality, they’re being used to make a deeply unequal system look fair.

The problem isn’t that people in Appalachia don’t care about education. They care deeply. They want better for their kids. But without schools to choose from, without money to cover tuition gaps, and without transportation to get kids across county lines, there is no “choice” to be made.

If Tennessee’s leaders are serious about improving education outcomes for all children, they need to start by listening to the voices in rural Appalachia. Instead of siphoning funds to private institutions that serve the few, invest in the public schools that serve the many. Upgrade infrastructure, pay teachers fairly, modernize facilities, and support the children where they are, not where the money wants to go.

Because right now, rural communities are being sold an illusion, all while the wealthy reap the benefits and the poor are left to pick up the tab. It’s not just unjust. It’s un-American.

This voucher program isn’t a bridge to better education. It’s a wedge driving us further apart. And the people in Appalachia? They’re not asking for handouts. They’re asking for fairness. They’re asking to be seen. They’re asking not to be used as political cover for a system that only works for the already privileged.

This program didn’t appear out of nowhere. It was pushed hard by Republican Governor Bill Lee. And the Republican-led legislature pushed it through for him, knowing exactly who it would benefit and who it would leave behind. They knew rural families would have no access, no support, and no chance to realistically use these vouchers. And they passed it anyway.

People need to take a hard look at every single legislator who supported this bill. These are the people who signed off on taking public tax dollars and using them to benefit the wealthy while leaving poor and rural communities behind. Your vote is your power. It is the only tool most Americans have to fight back against corruption that punishes the working class while padding the pockets of the privileged. Don’t let them sell you a lie and call it choice. Pay attention. Vote like your community depends on it because it does.

-Tim Carmichael