Tennessee public education advocates chalk up a win Efforts to defund Tennessee’s public schools crashed and burned on Monday after weekend negotiations failed to advance Gov. Bill Lee’s universal voucher bill. The bill will be dead (for now) once the legislature adjourns for the year. Lee plans to bring it back next session. The Tennessean: “I am extremely disappointed for the families who will have to wait yet another year for the freedom to choose the right education for their child, especially when there is broad agreement that now is the time to bring universal school choice to Tennessee,” Lee said in an early Monday statement. “While we made tremendous progress, unfortunately it has become clear that there is not a pathway for the bill during this legislative session.” “Freedom to choose”? Remember when conservatives pitched vouchers as a way to help poor, minority kids escape “decaying” inner-city public schools, lives of poverty, drugs, etc. ? Nowadays they’ve dropped the facade. The “funding should follow the child” rubric hides the real goal of having the general public subsidized rich parent’s choice to send their kids to private schools. Vouchers and supposed “opportunity scholarship” programs are aimed at diverting public funds away from not-for-profit public education to selective private academies, many of them religious schools. Many charter schools operate the same way with public funds. A look behind the curtain reveals where the tax dollars get diverted, to nominally nonprofit private schools often operated by for-profit LLCs that take a markup…