ABSTRACT
In January 2014, Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam introduced the Tennessee Promise. The Tennessee Promise was accompanied by a statewide increase in the base funding for public schooling and teacher salaries. By February 2014, there was statewide fanfare about Governor Haslam’s Tennessee Promise proposal, and it moved into legislative negotiation. In the aftermath of the recession, state governors across the country were forced to reckon with severely constrained annual budgets. The governor’s push for the Tennessee Promise was built upon lessons learned from a previous legislative overhaul to the postsecondary system, the 2010 Complete College Tennessee Act (CCTA). The CCTA of 2010 delivered a strict mandate to the state’s public postsecondary system. The CCTA “established increased educational attainment as the State’s primary need relative to higher education and mandated certain fiscal, academic, and research policies in service of educational attainment”. In 2008, a provisional rule was established for the Tennessee Education Lottery Scholarship program.
