Category Archives: Tennessee politics

National Politics, Tennessee politics

Bredesen to HHS? Governor Ramsey? Senator Mumpower?

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Time Magazine’s Mark Helperin reports “Tennessee Governor Bredesen in line to run HHS after talks with White House officials.”

h/t to AC Kleinheider, who is still skeptical.

Thinking ahead to the next moves on the chess board, this would make Ron Ramsey the new Governor of Tennessee.

The Tennessee Senate would then have to elect a new Lieutenant Governor.

There would also need to be a special election to fill Ramsey’s Senate seat.

Would Jason Mumpower run for the Tennessee Senate?

If he won, the Tennessee House would need to elect a new Majority leader.

AND… there would then have to be a special election to fill Mumpower’s House seat.

But perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself….

National Politics, Tennessee politics

Thanks, but no thanks – refusing the bailout?

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Ken Marrero of Tennessee’s own BlueCollarMuse raises an intriguing idea. Should those who are opposed to the bailout refuse to take the funds?

According to Ken, “Haley Barbour is considering it for Mississippi. So is Mark Sanford in South Carolina.” Jason Mumpower, Republican Majority Leader in the Tennessee House says there are those in the legislature who are sympathetic to the idea.

Head on over to Ken’s post and read his full discussion.

Tennessee politics

An inscribed copy of Dante’s Inferno for Rep. Kent Williams

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In Dante’s Inferno, the great Italian poet arranges the geography of hell in the form of nine concentric, descending circles. As you descend from circle to circle the severity of the sins being punished increases as does the gruesomeness of the punishments. Dante populates each level with figures from ancient history as well as his contemporaries in late medieval Italy. He thus goes considerably beyond any explicit biblical precept in creating a hierarchy of sin. He does not minimize any kind of sin, but he has clear and definite ideas about which sins are lesser and which sins are greater. Here’s a short summary of the nine circles of hell (according to Dante):

Circle One: virtuous pagans and unbelievers

Circle Two: the lustful

Circle Three: the gluttons

Circle Four: the greedy & the miserly

Circle Five: the wrathful

Circle Six: heretics

Circle Seven: the violent

Circle Eight: frauds

Circle Nine: traitors

Circle Nine is subdivided into four sub-rings: those who betrayed their kin; those who betrayed their city or country; those who betrayed their guests; and finally in the very pit of hell, those who betrayed their lords and benefactors – exemplified by Brutus and Cassius (who together betrayed Julius Caesar) and Judas who betrayed Jesus.

I plan on sending a copy of Dante’s Inferno to Rep. Kent Williams.

To paraphrase Patrick Henry, “Caesar had his Brutus, Charles I had his Cromwell, and Rep. Williams . . . may profit by their example.”

Tennessee politics

Tennessee ACT Scores – State DOE still claiming credit for the scores of non-public school students

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The Public Schools’ average ACT score is a full point-and-a-half LESS than the Non-Public Schools. But the Department of Education won’t report that. In fact, the Tennessee Department of Education takes advantage of the higher ACT scores by Non-Public School students by falsely reporting the average score for ALL Tennessee students’ as if it were the average score for Public School Students.

On the 2008 TDOE Report Card, the Department reports both the 2007 and 2008 average composite ACT score as 20.7. But that’s NOT the average for Public School students in Tennessee. That’s the average for all 50,225 students who took the ACT test in 2008 (48,113 in 2007). And it overstates the average ACT score of Public School students by about a half a point.

The data reported by the ACT Corp. for Tennessee can be found here: http://www.act.org/news/data/08/pdf/states/Tennessee.pdf. Here’s an excerpt from the tables on page 9 of that report:

Here’s the misrepresentation by the Department:

In 2007, 35,715 Public School students took the ACT, with an average score of 20.3. In addition to those Public School students, 12,398 NON-Public School students also took the test, with an average score of 21.85. When you combine them with the public school students, it raises the state average from 20.3 to 20.7.

In 2008, 36,764 Public School students took the ACT, with an average score of 20.3. In addition to those Public School students, 13,461 NON-Public School students also took the test, with an average score of 21.79. When you combine them with the Public School students, it raises the overall state from 20.3 to 20.7.

The numbers and average scores for the Public School students are compiled from the Department’s own TVAAS system which gives results by school and by school system.

I have a full report (TN ACT Scores 2008.pdf) which pulls the data together and shows the average composite ACT score for all 119 school systems in Tennessee with high schools. Here’s a portion of the final page:

The report is an update to research I did last spring, during the furor over the Tennessee Department of Education’s arbitrary decision to reject homeschool diplomas for state regulated jobs in law enforcement and daycare. I was hoping to discover the average ACT score for Tennessee homeschool students so that I could compare it to the average ACT score for Tennessee public school students. Sadly, the ACT Corp. doesn’t report the homeschool scores separately for individual states.

The irony and outrage here is that the state Department of Education has the audacity to reject the high school diplomas issued by homeschools and church-related schools while at the same time using the higher ACT scores from those students to boost their own average.

The Tennessee legislature needs to take steps in 2009 to clearly adopt a policy that recognizes homeschool and church school diplomas and overturn the arrogant attacks by the Department of Education.

Rob Shearer, Vice President
Tennessee Association of Church-Related Schools (TACRS)

National Politics, Tennessee politics

Some common sense economic advice from the Sage of Mt. Juliet

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A thoughtful community stalwart sent me the following in an email this morning. Mr. Fred Weyler of Mt. Juliet has the following observations:

______________________________________________________

My county trustee is raising my annual rent again. He says that my house is worth about four times what I paid for it. He also says that schools need 20% extra this year for school bus operation. I never had a school bus ride. I walked until I bought a bicycle. My classmates did, too. They had no obesity problems. It will take 14 of the 3 cent first class postage stamps I used to pay my first bills to send the trustee this year’s rent. The rent is higher despite my fixed income and my higher expenses, like more to fill my push mower than it cost to fill any of my first three cars. If I must sell my house to pay my bills, I face a capital gains tax even though my capital is now worth less.

Some people blame me, as a baby boomer, for wrecking Social Security. What a social circus! Twas not my choice, but FDR said I had to do it temporarily. Along the way, folks said I had to do it bigger and so did my employer. 16% of my pay would have made a huge IRA, but I had no choice. I could choose whether to pay big interest rates for a car and furniture or to walk a while longer and sleep on the floor until I could pay for furniture. Government knew that my retirement trust fund was more important than my start in this world. I sometimes worked two or three jobs to avoid big debt and big interest.

LBJ “borrowed” from my retirement trust fund to build housing in Chicago, Nashville, Knoxville, and Chattanooga and elsewhere, but not in my small town. I watched as it was trashed, then as the bulldozers hauled it off or buried it. Community organizers and congress urged banks to finance housing for the next generation from LBJs projects. Do not ask about income, assets, or jobs the way my mortgager asked me. Banks blindly made loans which they and the borrower knew could not be repaid and had insufficient collateral. They did not pay and the banks have worthless paper instead of capital.

Now they tell me that it is my responsibility to help the banks get going again and to help those who did not pay to stay in their houses. Who’s telling me?

Those same people who told the banks to make those blind loans, who make bank rules, and under whose oversight the laws are administered. They are advised by some of those folks who made millions bringing financial institutions to their ruin.

I am incensed that they wanted to take my money, then if it got paid back, take 20% of it for organizations like ACORN. Are they not the outfit which set new records of multiple voter registrations, deceased voter registration, cartoon character voter registration, and canine voter registration to elect the yahoos who now want more of my money?

Why do I feel like I’d find joy if Franks, Dodd, Pelosi, Reid, Bush, and Paulson were impeached for malfeasance of duty?

I worked hard in college. I worked harder in high school. It paid off. With my savings and scholarship, my college job paid the rest and I did not graduate with huge debt. My dad helped me get my bicycle to campus. I rode the bus to get home occasionally. My professors walked from their houses to the classroom. Now there are parking lots where their houses were.

I’d say that the financial system needs some help. Some ways to give it:

  • First, do nothing until you put a stop to the practices which brought on this situation. No need to throw more good money after bad.
  • Lower the capital gains tax. Lower the corporate tax rate. Watch how much money comes out of the mattresses to ease the credit crunch.
  • Share oil revenues with the states to encourage new production and watch investment soar, new jobs, more tax revenue, improved balance of payments, and lower gasoline prices. Encourage new nuclear power plants and oil refineries. You cannot amend the law of supply and demand. Let it dictate when entrepreneurs have electric cards on the road with new jobs in fast battery swap out and recharge stations and more tax revenues.
  • Prosecute the bums who led institutions to ruin. Put all their assets back into the system.
  • Pay off the national debt to reduce the cost of capital.
  • Make FICA follow the same solvency rules as you enforce upon pension funds. Deposit that $50 trillion or whatever the number is into banks so that they may
  • lend some of it with ample oversight, transparency, accounting and regulation.
  • Divert some funds away from Dept of Education. Quit expanding high school parking lots. Put some lard buns to work digging up those global warming parking lots to make room for bike racks and more grass and trees.

– Fred Weyler, Mt. Juliet, Tennessee

Tennessee politics

New Open Records Law takes effect in Tennessee

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“Providing information to the public is an essential function of a representative government and an integral part of the routine duties and responsibilities of public officers and employees;”
– The Tennessee Legislature

One of the accomplishments of the 2008 session of the Tennessee Legislative was an updating of the Tennessee Open Records Act. The amendments to the act took effect yesterday, July 1, 2008.

SB3280 has been assigned Public Chapter Number 1179 by the Secretary of State. You can get the complete text and the signature page showing where Naifeh, Ramsey, & Bredesen signed by clicking on that link.

There are three significant changes in the law – all of them good:

  • There is a new, more comprehensive definition of what constitutes a “public record.”

“public record or records” or “state record or records” means all documents, papers, letters, maps, books, photographs, microfilms, electronic data processing files and output, films, sound recordings, or other material, regardless of physical form or characteristics made or received pursuant to law or ordinance or in connection with the transaction of official business by any governmental agency.”

This is an important clarification. All those office files (word, excel, & powerpoint) are public records. Not just a print-out of the contents, but the files themselves. Public. Records.

  • There is a seven-day deadline for public agencies to either produce the records, deny the request in writing, or provide a detailed written response “stating the time reasonably necessary to produce such record or information.”
  • A government agency “may require a requestor to pay the custodian’s actual costs incurred in producing the requested material; provided that no charge shall accrue for the first five (5) hours incurred by the records custodian in producing the requested material.” Got that? No more twenty-five cents per page for making copies. The charge has to be the ACTUAL COST that the agency pays for copies. I’m betting that’s closer to one cent per page than it is to twenty-five. And also note that an agency may NOT charge for the first five hours time required to produce the requested material.

The law incorporates and reasserts the principles presented by the study committee created by Chapter 887 of the Public Acts of 2006:

(i) The state policies and guidelines shall reflect the policy that providing information to the public is an essential function of a representative government and an integral part of the routine duties and responsibilities of public officers and employees;

(ii) That excessive fees and other rules shall not be used to hinder access to non-exempt, public information;

(iii) That, in accordance with § 10-7-503(a)(7)(A), no charge shall be assessed to view a public record unless otherwise required by law;

(iv) That the requestor be given the option of receiving information in any format in which it is maintained by the agency, including electronic format consistent with Title 10, Chapter 7, Part 1; and

(v) That when large-volume requests are involved, information shall be provided in the most efficient and cost-effective manner, including but not limited to permitting the requestor to provide copying equipment or an electronic scanner.

Go forth and make use of your newly enhanced rights to request and inspect the public records of your government.


Homeschooling, Tennessee politics

Rush Limbaugh quotes Rob Shearer

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Terribly immodest of me, I know… Click below to hear an excerpt from the Rush Limbaugh show on Thursday, 5/22/2008 where he reads from a post by Warner Todd Huston (of StopTheACLU.com) and quotes from the comments I made about the validity of public school diplomas vs. homeschool diplomas.

Rush Limbaugh 2008-05-22 on Tennessee diplomas:
[audio:http://www.greenleafpress.com/media/RLimbaugh TN diplomas 2008-05-22.mp3]

Hat tip to dittohead Ernie Blevins for the audio file and to Kay Brooks for editing out the pertinent three minutes!

Here’s a sampling of the incoming links on this topic:

Tennessee Mandates Low Quality Graduates Be Employed Over …

20 hours ago by noreply@blogger.com (Bill Smith)
Ken Marrero at “Blue Collar Muse” reports that. Recently, the Tennessee State Board of Education ruled diplomas issued to home-schooled students from religious based schools were invalid as proof of the successful completion of High …
ARRA News Service – http://arkansasgopwing.blogspot.com/ – References

Good enough for government work

22 May 2008 by Kay Brooks
The DOE’s characterization of private school (Category IV diplomas) as worthless made it national this afternoon as it moved from our own TennConserVOLiance writers to Warner Todd Houston at StopTheACLU and then on to Rush Limbaugh’s …
Kay Brooks – http://kaybrooks.blogspot.com/ – References

Tenn. Declares Only Dumbest Kids Wanted for State Jobs

22 May 2008 by Warner Todd Huston
It’s true. The State of Tennessee has officially declared that from this point forward it will accept only less educated student applicants for state, county and city jobs in the Volunteer State. Why would the kindly folks in Nashville …
Default Site Weblog – http://americanewsjournal.com/index.php/site/index/

TN State Education Board Fails Research Test …

22 May 2008 by Blue Collar Muse
Editors Update and RePost: Thanks to Rob Shearer at Red Hat Rob and Warner Todd Huston, this story has received national attention. Rush Limbaugh read extensively from WTH’s post on the matter and mentioned both Warner and our own Rob …
Blue Collar Muse – http://conservablogs.com/bluecollarmuse

Not worthless

21 May 2008 by Kay Brooks
Councilman Eric Crafton and his Save Our Students aren’t the only ones who can crunch the education statistics. Red Hat Rob Shearer has spent considerable time today going through the State of Tennessee Department of Education’s website …
Kay Brooks – http://kaybrooks.blogspot.com/

Tennessee Makes Move Against Homeschooling

21 May 2008 by zee
It appears that my worst suspicions about public education are continuously confirmed these days. So, it isn’t really much of a surprise that the state of Tennessee prefers their employees to come from the dumbed down ranks of students …
Road Sassy – http://roadsassy.com

Tenn. Declares Only Dumbest Kids Wanted for State Jobs

21 May 2008 by Warner Todd Huston
-By Warner Todd Huston. It’s true. The State of Tennessee has officially declared that from this point forward it will accept only less educated student applicants for state, county and city jobs in the Volunteer State. …
American Conservative Daily – http://www.americanconservativedaily.com/ – References

Homeschoolers – under attack all over?

20 May 2008
We had a small concern going on around here in NH where the Democratic (highly leveraged Teacher Union support) with an encircle and envelope strategy. Well put by Consent of the Governed:. The Live Free Or Die State wants to regulate …
granitegrok – http://granitegrok.com/

Socialist “Curriculum” cannot penetrate home schools…therefore …

19 May 2008 by Jenn Sierra
Rob Shearer, of Contending with the Culture, reports:. The Tennessee Department of Education has recently defended its decision not to recognize homeschool diplomas with the assertion that because they were prohibited from having …
Ft. Hard Knox – http://forthardknox.com – References

Tennessee Education Board Fails Research Test19 May 2008 by Blue Collar Muse
Recently, the Tennessee State Board of Education ruled diplomas issued to home-schooled students from religious based schools were invalid as proof of the successful completion of High School should it be presented for employment …
New Media Alliance – Blue Collar Muse – http://thenma.org/blogs/index.php/bluecollarmuse

– Rob Shearer
Director, Schaeffer Study Center
Publisher, Greenleaf Press

Homeschooling, Tennessee politics

Public school vs. private school ACT scores

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This is a tale of 54,041 high school diplomas. That’s the number of public high school diplomas awarded in Tennessee last year (2006-2007). There are 324 public high schools in Tennessee. The public high schools are operated by 119 public school systems. There are 137 public school systems in Tennessee, but only 119 of them operate high schools.

I got curious this week about tracking down median ACT scores for Public vs. Private vs. Homeschool high school graduates. It turns out, even in the age of public data on the internet that this is not an easy question to answer. If the data to answer this question already exists somewhere on the internet, it’s extraordinarily well hidden. I spent several days searching for it… and I’m pretty handy with google. I did discover a blog in Kentucky which contained interesting articles commenting on the meaning of median ACT scores released for that state. Kentucky’s scores, released by ACT, Inc. of Iowa, give the median for ALL high school seniors, public, private, and homeschool. From the ACT data alone, you cannot tell how the public schools are performing, because ACT will not disagregate the data. Tennessee ACT scores are released in the same format as Kentucky.

But, it turns out, in Tennessee at least, there is a way to calculate median ACT score for the public schools. And if we know the number of public school students who took the ACT, and their median score, then we can calculate the median score for the remaining non-public school students.

In 2007, the median ACT for all students in Tennessee taking the test was 20.7. This is slightly below ( a half a point) the national ACT median score of 21.2. A half a point difference between two individual scores is probably not terribly significant. There are too many variables that can’t be controlled between two individual scores to ever be able to know why one student scored a half a point higher than another. BUT, comparing the median scores of two significantly sized groups IS meaningful… because all the individual variations offset and cancel each other out. 48,113 students took the ACT in Tennessee in 2007. 1,300,599 students took it nationwide. Comparing the averages for those two very large populations does tell us, with a pretty high degree of confidence, that Tennessee students did not perform quite as well as the national average.

But those 48,113 Tennessee students include public school, high school, and homeschool students. I have an inquiry in to ACT, Inc. asking them for the disaggregated data for those three groups, but they haven’t responded to me. The data would be very helpful in discussing some pretty pressing public policy questions about education. I don’t think it’s an accident that ACT doesn’t make the data readily available. I have the feeling that the data are not very flattering to public school administrators. And I suspect that’s why ACT hasn’t made them available.

But in Tennessee, there is another source of data about public school ACT scores – the Tennessee Department of Education itself. The Department has an online database that reports the number of students who took the ACT and the median composite score by school system. Actually, the online database has a great deal more information than that, but the median composite ACT scores are what I was interested in.

I don’t know whether it’s intentional or not, but the Tennessee DOE does not report the statewide median ACT score, nor does it make it easy to calculate, but all the pieces are there, on their website – they just have to be assembled.

So, I spent about four or five hours today, using the free wifi at University Pizza & Deli in Chattanooga, to pull up and copy off the median composite ACT scores for all 119 public high school systems in Tennessee. 35,725 public school students (out of 54,041 who graduate) too the ACT in 2007 – about 66.1% of the graduates. The median composite ACT score for all of them was 20.30. Since there were a total of 48,113 students who took the ACT in Tennessee, we can subtract out the public school students and the remaining 12,388 students were non-public school (private schools and home schools). And since we know the median composite ACT score for ALL students in Tennessee was 20.7 and the median for the PUBLIC school students was 20.30, we can calculate what the median composite score for the non-public schools was: that median composite ACT score in 2007 was 21.85.

So, we can now end the speculation and report with confidence that in 2007, in Tennessee, ALL students averaged a 20.7 composite ACT score, PUBLIC SCHOOL students averaged a 20.30 composite ACT score, and PRIVATE SCHOOL students averaged 21.85 composite ACT score. In other words, in 2007 private schools and home schools averaged 1.15 points higher on the ACT than the public schools. But of course, it’s the private school diplomas that the Department of Education thinks are suspect.

Since I had to compile the data for all 119 systems in a spreadsheet, I’ll post all of the data here – so that others can check my calculations, and so that the data will be available to everyone interested.

There are a number of other interesting observations about the public high schools that can be made from the data.

For example, here are the 10 public school systems in Tennessee with the HIGHEST median composite ACT scores:

TENNESSEE REGULAR % TAKING 2007 ACT Composite
SCHOOL SYSTEM DIPLOMAS ACT n median
1 Maryville City 321 76.9% 247 23.67
2 Oak Ridge City 321 68.8% 221 23.53
3 Kingsport City 400 82.8% 331 22.74
4 Greenville City 209 66.5% 139 22.68
5 Williamson Co. 1,966 80.6% 1,584 22.54
6 Tullahoma City 239 77.4% 185 22.35
7 Johnson City 398 73.1% 291 22.34
8 Pickett Co. 46 58.7% 27 22.11
9 Alcoa City 107 74.8% 80 22.01
10 Knox Co. 3,257 66.6% 2,168 21.97

And here are the 10 public school systems with the LOWEST median composite ACT scores:

TENNESSEE REGULAR % TAKING 2007 ACT Composite
SCHOOL SYSTEM DIPLOMAS ACT n median
1 Fayette Co. 187 65.2% 122 15.80
2 Memphis City 5,741 67.9% 3,898 17.56
3 Hancock Co. 62 38.7% 24 17.96
4 Haywood Co. 170 71.2% 121 17.98
5 Lake Co. 51 70.6% 36 18.11
6 Grainger Co. 241 53.1% 128 18.41
7 W. Carroll 79 54.4% 43 18.47
8 Campbell Co. 299 58.2% 174 18.63
9 Union Co. 196 53.1% 104 18.63
10 Hardeman Co. 234 56.0% 131 18.66

Here are the Here are the 10 public school systems in Tennessee with the HIGHEST percentage of graduating seniors who take the ACT:

TENNESSEE REGULAR % TAKING 2007 ACT Composite
SCHOOL SYSTEM DIPLOMAS ACT n median
1 McMinn Co. 292 92.5% 270 20.33
2 Union City 77 88.3% 68 19.93
3 Kingsport City 400 82.8% 331 22.74
4 Williamson Co. 1,966 80.6% 1,584 22.54
5 Bradford City 41 80.5% 33 19.18
6 Oneida City 83 79.5% 66 20.58
7 Shelby Co. 2,561 78.5% 2,010 21.72
8 Madison Co. 679 78.2% 531 19.27
9 Tullahoma City 239 77.4% 185 22.35
10 Huntingdon City 70 77.1% 54 20.20

And here are the Here are the 10 public school systems in Tennessee with the LOWEST percentage of graduating seniors who take the ACT:

TENNESSEE REGULAR % TAKING 2007 ACT Composite
SCHOOL SYSTEM DIPLOMAS ACT n median
1 Hancock Co. 62 38.7% 24 17.96
2 Fentress Co. 60 41.7% 25 19.92
3 Sequatchie Co. 116 44.8% 52 19.71
4 Greene Co. 488 45.7% 223 20.06
5 Trousdale Co. 91 47.3% 43 19.12
6 Johnson Co. 156 47.4% 74 19.81
7 Meigs Co. 94 48.9% 46 20.37
8 Washington Co. 656 50.8% 333 20.68
9 Bledsoe Co. 102 51.0% 52 20.73
10 Jefferson Co. 449 52.1% 234 20.52

Here are the 10 public school systems in Tennessee with the LARGEST number of graduating seniors who take the ACT:

TENNESSEE REGULAR % TAKING 2007 ACT Composite
SCHOOL SYSTEM DIPLOMAS ACT n median
1 Memphis City 5,741 67.9% 3,898 17.56
2 Davidson Co. 3,601 64.1% 2,307 19.11
3 Knox Co. 3,257 66.6% 2,168 21.97
4 Shelby Co. 2,561 78.5% 2,010 21.72
5 Rutherford Co. 2,328 66.1% 1,539 20.91
6 Hamilton Co. 2,322 68.0% 1,580 19.60
7 Williamson Co. 1,966 80.6% 1,584 22.54
8 Sumner Co. 1,691 62.9% 1,063 20.81
9 Montgomery Co. 1,644 59.9% 984 21.23
10 Wilson Co. 1,040 67.9% 706 20.70

And here are the 10 public school systems in Tennessee with the SMALLEST number of graduating seniors who take the ACT:

TENNESSEE REGULAR % TAKING 2007 ACT Composite
SCHOOL SYSTEM DIPLOMAS ACT n median
1 S. Carroll 31 58.1% 18 20.28
2 Van Buren Co. 37 62.2% 23 18.83
3 Richard City 37 70.3% 26 20.15
4 Bradford City 41 80.5% 33 19.18
5 Pickett Co. 46 58.7% 27 22.11
6 Hollow Rock-Bruceton City 47 57.4% 27 20.22
7 Lake Co. 51 70.6% 36 18.11
8 Fentress Co. 60 41.7% 25 19.92
9 Hancock Co. 62 38.7% 24 17.96
10 Huntingdon City 70 77.1% 54 20.20

The only significant sized sample of homeschoolers with ACT scores that I could find were 1997, 1998, and 2004 data released by ACT (cited on the HSLDA website). ACT reported that in 1997, 1,926 homeschoolers had a median composite ACT score of 22.5. ACT reported that in 1998, 2,610 homeschoolers had a median composite ACT score of 22.8. ACT reported that in 2004, 7,858 homeschoolers had a median composite ACT score of 22.6. These data are remarkably consistent over time AND they are significantly ABOVE the national averages. But remember, according the the Tennessee Department of Education, it is the homeschooler’s diplomas that are suspect.

Now, don’t you feel like you know the public school system in Tennessee much better?

Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves. Comments encouraged and solicited. Once again: here is the data. Or should that be, “here ARE the data…”

– Rob Shearer
Director, Schaeffer Study Center

Homeschooling, Tennessee politics

Homeschool vs. public school diplomas

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The Tennessee Department of Education has recently defended its decision not to recognize homeschool diplomas with the assertion that because they were prohibited from having anything to do with the selection of a curriculum, teachers, or textbooks in the church-related schools which “umbrella” homeschoolers they had no way to tell what a homeschool diploma represented.

So, the current status in Tennessee is that anyone from a public school (or a private accredited school) who presents a diploma in order to be hired as a daycare worker, police officer, fireman (or any other position which state law requires a high school diploma for) will be automatically accepted. Anyone who presents a homeschool diploma will be automatically rejected.

I have some news for the Department of Education officials. When a public school graduate presents a diploma, no one has any way to tell what it represents either. Did the ertswhile young graduate have an A average or a D- average? There is no minimum GPA requirement for graduation from a public high school in Tennessee. See the graduation requirements here on the Department of Education website for confirmation.

The final requirement on that page requiring a score of “proficient” on the three Gateway exams (Biology I, English II, Algebra I) has been altered, by the way. The Gateway exams are gone. They will be replaced with ten standard state-wide end-of-course tests that all public school students will be required to take. But the new tests won’t be high-stakes must-pass gateway exams. Instead, they will count as 25% of the student’s final grade in each of the ten designated courses.

Which only exacerbates the problem of how do you know what a public school diploma represents? Apparently it represents 20 courses, spread over four years (five per year) distributed over English, Math, Science, & Social Studies. In these four categories, only English is required to be taken in all four years of high school. So all you really know about a public school graduate with a high school diploma is that they at least passed 20 courses.

I don’t know of ANY private school, church-related school, or homeschool anywhere in Tennessee that requires LESS than 20 courses before they award a high school diploma. And yet, homeschool diplomas are automatically rejected by the Department of Education, while public school diplomas are automatically accepted.

In TN, 92% of high school graduates take the ACT test. In 2007 (the last year for which data was available) the average composite score for Tennessee high school grads was 20.7. Nationally it was 21.2.

And homeschoolers? The latest and largest study is from 1998, but since the ACT is so closely controlled statistically, it is possible to compare test scores from year to year. Here’s an excerpt from the ERIC clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation:

Home school students did quite well in 1998 on the ACT college entrance examination. They had an average ACT composite score of 22.8 which is .38 standard deviations above the national ACT average of 21.0 (ACT,1998).This places the average home school student in the 65th percentile of all ACT test takers.

The superior performance of home school students on achievement tests can easily be misinterpreted. This study does not demonstrate that home schooling is superior to public or private schools. It should not be cited as evidence that our public schools are failing. It does not indicate that children will perform better academically if they are home schooled. The design of this study and the data do not warrant such claims. All the comparisons of home school students with the general population and with the private school population in this report fail to consider a myriad of differences between home school and public school students. We have no information as to what the achievement levels of home school students would be had they been enrolled in public or private schools. This study only shows that a large group of parents choosing to make a commitment to home schooling were able to provide a very successful academic environment.

The full article is Scholastic Achievement and Demographic Characteristics of Home School Students in 1998, by Lawrence Rudner, published in the peer-reviewed EDUCATION POLICY ANALYSIS ARCHIVES.

There are specific ACT results for homeschoolers in Tennessee for only one year:

YEAR : 2005
Homeschoolers : 20.7
All Students: 20.5
( ACT report, TN, 2005, page 17)

For some curious reason, ACT no longer reports the homeschool ACT scores separately in its reports for 2006 and 2007.

So, in summary: Homeschoolers as a group have superior performance on every nationally normed test for which data are available, significantly above the public school average. Homeschoolers in Tennessee, as a group, have average ACT scores at or above the ACT scores for all students.

AND YET… the Department of Education somehow BELIEVES that they can’t accept a homeschooling diploma because they don’t know what it represents. Given the incredibly wide variation of skills an achievement that can accompany a public school high school diploma, something about the pot, the kettle, and the color black occurs to me. Class…? Class…? Anyone…? Bueller…?

Colleges and universities across the country have faced this problem for years. What does a high school diploma mean, anyway? Their solution? Require all applicants to take the ACT.

Now, if the POST Commission on police officers and the Department of Human Services regs on daycare workers need to be revised to require ALL applicants to take an ACT test in order to validate and help agencies evaluate their high school diploma, that would be fine.

But DO NOT single out homeschool or church school graduates as if their high school diplomas were suspect, while the public school diplomas are not.

Homeschoolers have every bit as much data to substantiate the success of homeschooling as anything the public schools can point to. For the Department to automatically reject homeschooler’s diplomas is insulting. It could not possibly survive a legal challenge.

If the Department will not overturn their arbitrary and capricious policy, then homeschoolers should pursue remedies in the courts, or in the legislature.

But I am NOT willing to concede that homeschoolers should have to meet any additional testing burdens that are not also imposed on all other high school graduates. A homeschool diploma deserves every bit as much credence (I’d argue more so) than a public school diploma.

The Department of Education’s actions amount to an unsubstantiated, unprofessional, and unjustified attack on homeschooling.

The Department of Education has 1,000,000 students in public schools in Tennessee. Do they really want to pick this fight with homeschoolers?

– Rob Shearer
proud homeschooling dad
Director, Schaeffer Study Center
Vice President, Tennessee Association of Church Related Schools.

Homeschooling, Tennessee politics

HB1652 still languishing in the House Calendar & Rules Committee

1 Comment

Since its favorable passage eight days ago by the House Education Committee, HB1652 (the bill to direct the Department of Education to resume recognizing homeschool and church-related school diplomas) has been languishing in the House Calendar & Rules Committee. This Committee is where all bills go when they receive committee approval. Calendar and Rules decides when to schedule floor votes on bills that have been reported out by other committees. The Calendar and Rules Committee (like all the other House committees) is appointed by Speaker Jimmy Naifeh. Here are the members:

Larry Miller, Chair D-Memphis
John Hood, Vice-Chair D-Murfreesboro
Nathan Vaughn, Secretary D-Kingsport
Joe Armstrong, D-Knoxville, Stratton Bone, D-Lebanon, Rob Briley, D-Nashville, Tommie F. Brown, D-Chattanooga, Frank Buck, D-Dowelltown, Glen Casada, R-Franklin, Charles Curtiss, D-Sparta
Lois Deberry, D-Memphis, John J. DeBerry, Jr., D-Memphis, Craig Fitzhugh, D-Ripley, Ulysses Jones, Jr., D-Memphis, Mike Kernell, D-Memphis, Mark Maddox, D-Dresden, Steve McDaniel, R-Parkers Crossroad
Michael McDonald, D-Portland, Jason Mumpower, R-Bristol, Jimmy Naifeh, D-Covington, Gary Odom, D-Nashville, Doug Overbey, R-Maryville, Phillip Pinion, D-Union City, Randy Rinks, D-Savannah, Les Winningham, D-Huntsville

There are 25 members of the committee, 21 Democrats and 4 Republicans. That, unfortunately, might be a fair estimate of the odds of getting HB1652 brought to a vote on the floor. The Democrats control the Tennessee House of Representatives with a 53-46 majority. But, with control and the election of the speaker, they are able to effect such oddities as the stacking of the Calendar and Rules Committee with a 21-4 Democrat majority.

I would STRONGLY urge all homeschooling families to call and email the members of the House Calendar and Rules Committee and respectfully request that they release HB1652 for a vote by the full House of Representatives. You might remind them that the bill is co-sponsored by a Democrat (Rep. Dennis Ferguson) and a Republican (Rep. Mike Bell). There is a good summary of the bill and its history at Kay Brooks’ TNHomeEd site.

For the prospects of the Republicans being able to achieve a majority of the House of Representatives in November 2008, I refer you to this analysis by Steve Gill.

Remember, if this bill does NOT pass, then the Department of Education will have succeeded in invalidating the high school diplomas of thousands of homeschool and church-related school graduates.

For everyone’s convenience, here are the email addresses of all 25 members of the Calendar and Rules Committee: (yawl do know how to do cut & paste, right?)

rep.larry.miller@legislature.state.tn.us, rep.john.hood@legislature.state.tn.us, rep.nathan.vaughn@legislature.state.tn.us, rep.joe.armstrong@legislature.state.tn.us, rep.stratton.bone@legislature.state.tn.us, rep.rob.briley@legislature.state.tn.us, rep.tommie.brown@legislature.state.tn.us, rep.frank.buck@legislature.state.tn.us, rep.glen.casada@legislature.state.tn.us, rep.charles.curtiss@legislature.state.tn.us, rep.lois.deberry@legislature.state.tn.us, rep.john.deberry@legislature.state.tn.us, rep.craig.fitzhugh@legislature.state.tn.us, rep.ulysses.jones@legislature.state.tn.us, rep.mike.kernell@legislature.state.tn.us, rep.mark.maddox@legislature.state.tn.us, rep.steve.mcdaniel@legislature.state.tn.us, rep.michael.mcdonald@legislature.state.tn.us, rep.jason.mumpower@legislature.state.tn.us, rep.jimmy.naifeh@legislature.state.tn.us, rep.gary.odom@legislature.state.tn.us, rep.doug.overbey@legislature.state.tn.us, rep.phillip.pinion@legislature.state.tn.us, rep.randy.rinks@legislature.state.tn.us, rep.leslie.winningham@legislature.state.tn.us

– Rob Shearer