Bill To Require Standardized Home School Testing Rejected

A House subcommittee rejected a proposed state law to put home schools under more supervision, after more than three hundred home-schoolers showed up to protest today.

The original bill would have required that home school students take the same tests as public school students. But home school advocate Kay Brooks says both the original bill and an amendment get in the way of what home schools want to do.

“We want good public schools. You know, we understand that we’ve got to have an etiquette…an educated citizenry, and we want to support that, but we have chosen a different path, and we’re not doing badly.”

Representative G.A. Hardaway, a Memphis Democrat, tried to withdraw his bill, but the subcommittee voted it down before a standing-room-only crowd – in fact, many of the home-schooled children were sitting on the floor.

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The bill is HB 2795 Hardaway/SB 3412 Tate. In the Senate it’s been referred to the Senate Education Committee, where it now unlikely to be called up, having failed in the Special Initiatives Subcommittee of House Education.

A Washington, D.C., attorney read a six-page polemic on home-school prerogatives into the record of the subcommittee Wednesday (3/19/08). From the prepared text from Dee Black, senior counsel of the Home School Legal Defense Association:

The No Child Left Behind Act requires states to test public school students in the areas of mathematics, reading or language arts, and science at certain grade levels in order to measure their achievement of state academic content and achievement standards. However, this federal law contains a provision specifically excluding private schools and home schools from the testing requirement…..

….A violation of federal law would likely result in the forfeiture of federal funds received by the State of Tennessee for education.

We believe that current law in Tennessee requiring standardized achievement testing of home school students establishes more than enough accountability to the state. Home school students are required to be tested in grades five, seven and nine unless they are associated with a church-related school [in which case they would be tested on the same schedule as the church-school students].

Black claimed his group represents 80,000 member families in 50 states and the District of Columbia, with 3,000 member families in Tennessee.

View local home schooling website that tracks legislation here.

At today’s hearing, much was made about the communication between the home schoolers and

the bill’s sponsor, Representative Hardaway. Here’s home school advocate Kay Brooks…

“All of this is complete nonsense, it’s just not useful, it inhibits our freedoms, wastes tax dollars, wastes everybody’s resources, up and down the line. So what we want him to do is withdraw the bill and we begged him for three weeks, to do that very same thing. He would not communicate with us, would not talk to us, it’s gotten so that he frankly got ugly on the phone yesterday when people continued to call. That’s what we’re supposed to do, we’re required to do as citizens, is call our representatives and say, ‘This is what we want from you.’ “

Brooks’ complaint drew a quiet response from Hardaway.

“I got very nasty phone messages and conversations when I answered the phone, and I try to answer my [own] phone whenever possible.”

Hardaway says he eventually began asking callers from out of his district, or out of state, to reduce their comments to an e-mail or a letter. He says he didn’t blame the persons who came to him in person.

“The majority, the overwhelming majority, of the individuals that I’ve met, the children especially, have been respectful, they’ve indicated their position, that they disagreed with the original bill, and that’s OK. Now. If you’re asking me if there’s a fringe element, I say ‘yes, there is a fringe element.’ Is it peculiar to the home schoolers, I say, ‘No.’ There’s a fringe element to any movement.”