I think the educational bureaucracy in Tennessee has gone just a little over the edge recently. It apparently does not like church related schools very much, even if these represent one of the ways to homeschool a child outlined in Tennessee law. From the Tennessee Home Education Association (emphasis mine):

Cindy Benefield with the Department of Education told a graduate from a church related school, “Your diploma is not worth the paper it is written on.” He has to have a high school diploma to be able to work in his current profession. (You won’t believe the courage and heartbreak I must tell you about below.)

Later the department did offer that he could take the GED and they would accept that. What that means is this The DOE will accept making a 70 on a 6th grade level test, but they flatly reject a high school diploma given by a church related school. (They also rejected a Police Officer who after receiving his diploma, graduated from the Police academy with a 4.0 and are setting suspects free, because the arresting officer, a CRS graduate, had to be administratively demoted and cannot appear in court to be a witness in his cases.) TNHomeEd.com

Apparently, this goes back to a rule passed back in 1992 invalidating diplomas issued by church related schools designated as Category IV who neither have nor desire state accreditation. And it does not matter what you have accomplished after this diploma…ACT, SAT, Police Academy or college degree…if your high school diploma is not from an accredited institution, it is worthless. In a meeting with the state commissioner on April 29, the only remedy he saw was for the legislature to pass a law specifically allowing these diplomas to be recognized.

So it was drafted. And the Department of Education slipped in an amendment of its own, making it clear that they are not merely doing what the law requires but are actively seeking to gain more control of church related schools (emphasis mine):

Notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary, a student who has a diploma awarded by § 49-50-801 or §49-6-3050 shall be considered by all departments, agencies or entities of state government as possessing a valid high school diploma as long as all entities issuing diplomas pursuant to the above statutes require and document that all teachers conducting classes in kindergarten through grade either (K-8) hold a valid high school diploma or GED and all teachers conducting classes in grades nine through twelve (9-12) hold at least a baccalaureate degree awarded by a college or university accredited by an accrediting agency or association recognized by the state board of education. This section shall not apply to state lottery proceeds as provided title 49, chapter 4, part 9…

And compare that to the way the law currently reads:

The state board of education and local boards of education are prohibited from regulating the selection of faculty or textbooks or the establishment of a curriculum in church-related schools. Tennesse.gov

But they just can’t leave it alone. They asked for a law allowing them to accept these diplomas and used it as another means of obtaining control.

Fortunately, Tennessee homeschoolers seem to have a couple of friends in the legislature.

5/5/08: The legislation passed in the House Education Committee with the amendment proposed by Rep. Mike Bell (R-Riceville) and Rep. Dennis Ferguson (D-Midtown). The DOE Amendment never came into play. It now goes to the full House for a vote. It must also pass through the Senate. Stay tuned for information of when it will be heard next. More details on the days events to follow. I highly recommend Rob Shearer’s overview in the meantime. TNHomeEd.com

(The amendment which passed requires the state to recognize Category IV diplomas.)

Legislation is messy business, and you have to watch that Board of Education like a hawk.

More detailed information at Contending With the Culture.

Update: Just found this. That is some mighty fine English, Mr. Legislator. I think it might not sound as bad with a thick Tennessee accent, though.

The Thirst for Freedom posted a nice entry regarding my post about researching homeschooling which received an interesting comment from Casper about homeschoolers and testing. With the accountability craze in the public schools right now, it is unlikely this is a concern that is going to go away any time soon and with the resolution put forth by one of our state senators to look into ways to bring more oversight to Nebraska homeschoolers, it is very likely to be quite relevant to us here in the near future.

I have gone into the testing issue a few times and my objections really rest on the fact that in a free society, private citizens are not accountable to the state. The state needs probable cause to search my home for evidence of illegal activity and the same should hold true for the mental capacities of my children. It is a philosophical objection based in my understanding of individual rights and of what it means to have a limited government. In the interest of saving a little space, I’ll just point out two past posts which really go into this issue in more depth:

• Why would homeschoolers object to state testing?
• My written testimony before the NE state legislature

But there are other issues with standardized testing than individual liberties in a free society. First, we need to look at the purpose of standardized testing:

• To report how well schools are performing to the public.

This is the real thrust of the accountability movement and is really an important function of standardized testing. I think this has gone to an unhealthy extreme in American education and I hope the pendulum will soon begin to swing the other direction. But the goal is a good one: provide parents with an independent measure to aid them in making educational decisions for their children. The point is similar to that made in the entries I linked above: in a free society, it is the state that is accountable to the people and it is we that maintain oversight of its functioning. I as a parent and as a taxpayer have a right to know what is being taught in the public schools and whether or not it is effective. I, however, am in no way accountable to the state or to the public for what I teach my children.

• To focus learning and instruction to state standards and key concepts.

This is the real problem with testing homeschoolers. We are not bound to state standards and we do not necessarily purchase curriculum aligned to state standards. On the surface, it may seem that a child that can read should be able to pass a reading test or a child that has been taught math should be able to pass a math test, but this is not necessarily the case. Almost half of my first grade class flunked our first benchmark when I was teaching because the district tested using a test from a different publisher than the math program our school was using. When we threw out the problems that had not yet come up in our program, my kids excelled. Looking over one standardized math assessment, my daughter would struggle with the section on congruent shapes because we haven’t talked about them yet. And there are other issues. The test talks about “fact families” but this concept has another name in her math book. She may or may not be able to figure it out from the question and available answers, but who knows what she will decide a “family” is when applied to numbers. She can, however, add and subtract numbers to three places with regrouping, a skill which is not on the test. So if she did poorly on this test, would it mean we had “done nothing?” Or just that we are doing things differently than the state schools?

And there are other problems which come with high stakes testing in general, whether it is in the public school or the homeschool. This gets a bit technical, but standardized tests, even those which are “criterion referenced” are not designed to make sure that all students have mastered a certain proficiency level. They are designed to discriminate between high achievers and low achievers, meaning that a student could achieve a basic proficiency in the subject matter and still fail the test. A summary of how these standards-based tests are developed which demonstrates that the idea of “some basic quality control testing” is not as easy as it might at first appear:

During the construction of both norm-referenced and criterion-referenced tests, test makers use a pilot test to determine which items (test questions) will appear on the finished test administered to students on testing day. The survivor items are ones that possess the proper statistical profile: survivor items are those that “discriminate” between high-scoring and low-scoring students. In other words, test makers only want items that are answered correctly by high scoring students and answered incorrectly by low scoring students. Any items that are answered correctly by almost all students will be eliminated from the final test. Items that almost everyone answers correctly are considered “too easy for the target population” (Massachusetts Department of Education, 2005, p. 102). Such “easy” items provide little helpful psychometric information; in selecting test items, test-makers want to choose the items that will be most helpful in distinguishing among students of differing abilities. Validity of high-stakes standardized test requirements for homeschoolers: a psychometric analysis

I am reminded of a situation related in a professional development seminar I attended in Texas back when Bush was governor. Texas students had gotten a little too good at the story problems and were recognizing the “key words” to determine whether a story problem called for addition or subtraction. So the language of the test began to change, resulting in problems that I as an adult had to read twice to figure out what they wanted…for a third grade assessment!

It is not that I think standardized testing is “evil.” It is just that I recognize its limitations. I have no problems with parents testing their own children. Many do…and I have as well. But the scores should be for the parent’s information to guide instruction, not as a comparison to children in other educational settings and certainly not as a requirement to continue to homeschool.

And one more old post for those of you who just love reading about psychometric testing: Standardized Testing: An American Addiction.