RESEARCH

February 5, 2024 9:24AM

Over the past few years, educational choice programs that allow students to use a portion of their education dollars to attend schools that best fit their needs have experienced sweeping changes. By 2023, dozens of states had educational choice programs and ten states enacted universal or near-universal universal choice legislation, affording educational options to every... READ MORE

July 18, 2023 11:10AM

For at least a decade before the pandemic, Tennessee leaders have practiced conservative budgeting, keeping increases in state spending below population growth plus inflation. This saved Tennessee taxpayers billions of dollars, allowing for further pro-growth tax cuts. As the state is finally spending the last of its federal relief funds, it is more important than... READ MORE

January 22, 2023 9:00AM

Over the past 10 months, the Beacon Center has traveled the state to listen to our fellow Tennesseans about the challenges they face. This blueprint for restoring Tennesseans’ freedoms is a direct result of that listening tour. The listening tour was comprised of multiple components, including numerous and diverse community visioning panels, focus groups, and... READ MORE

January 11, 2023 4:42PM

Healthcare can be expensive and complex. But Tennessee’s rules and restrictions are making it worse, often for those who can least afford care. Adopted in the 1970s, certificate-of-need (CON) laws require a government permission slip before providing most healthcare services, such as opening a new hospital or purchasing high-tech medical equipment. Imagine if every new... READ MORE

December 14, 2022 5:00AM

Today, the Beacon Center released its most famous annual publication, the Pork Report. As always the report shed light on hundreds of millions of dollars of wasteful spending in Tennessee. Examples in this year’s report range from the state’s no-bid contract for contact tracing given to a company with no previous experience to the unused homeless pods the city of... READ MORE

August 22, 2022 8:00PM

Today, after months of research and open records requests, the Beacon Center released a new report showing how local school districts in Tennessee are budgeting and spending federal COVID dollars through the ESSER program. Congress allocated over $4 billion in federal taxpayer money to Tennessee school districts to address the pandemic. The data suggests that Tennessee public schools have budgeted or spent millions... READ MORE

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