Thankfully, black holes reside far away from us in the universe as their irresistible gravity will pull anything nearby, even light, into their utter darkness.  While we do not have to worry anytime soon about a black hole engulfing the earth, we do need to be concerned about a legislative black hole called school choice.  Bad legislation such as school choice can act similar to a black hole in that it can pull the unsuspecting bystanders into an undesirable situation by its own legal force or through its connections to other previous legislation.  Beyond these legislative strings, “natural” strings pull some into the black hole unexpectedly when they are connected by shared programs or services.  I will cover the basics of these various strings in regard to the black hole potential for school choice legislation in Tennessee to affect homeschoolers so that you can decide for yourself how to respond.

               Over the course of this essay, I will provide the following information concerning the present status of Tennessee homeschooling and then the potential future for homeschoolers under school choice.  First, I will review the current homeschool legal status and how we got here.  Second, I will examine the natural and legal ties of homeschooling with public and private schools.  Third, I will discuss some effects that school choice legislation could have on public and private schools.  Finally, I will return to the primary emphasis of this article, how homeschoolers can get pulled into the school choice black hole before they know what grabbed their children.

               The current laws permitting and addressing homeschooling in Tennessee did not begin with the state’s founding nor did they pop into existence and remain unchanged.  Under the compulsory school laws which covered Tennessee in 1913 (LINK) students were required to attend a public or private school between certain ages.  Today, this is an accepted fact of life that kids must go to school. This fact of life had little pushback until back in the 1970s and 1980s when parents were beginning to object to some subjects and books taught in public schools. This led to the early homeschool movement.  After a series of court battles followed by legislative advocacy, homeschooling legality was signed by Governor Lamar Alexander in 1985.  Initially, this freedom was limited, but over time legislative changes have brought us to the present status in which parents have three options to homeschool their children in Tennessee. The first option, which still continues from early legislation is for the parents to enroll as an independent home school with the local school board and follow certain rules.  The second option allows parents to affiliate with a church-related umbrella school that allows more independence from the public system.  The final option allows parents to enroll their child with an accredited online school.  Each of these have some requirements attached which can be read at (LINK).  While the current law offers some freedom, they require ongoing vigilance to maintain and need concerted effort to press for more freedoms.

               While Tennessee legal code officially considers these homeschool options separately from other school legal code, parents and their homeschooled children still live with various connections to the private and public-school systems.  At the most general level, all students must comply with state requirements for a high school diploma.  From there, connections with public schools exist for independent homeschoolers who report to the local education association (LEA).  These parents are held accountable by these LEA’s for standardized testing and other reporting.  The LEA’s can at times attempt to refuse permission for parents to withdraw their children from the public schools or at least make it difficult.  For these reasons and others, legal groups like Home School Legal Defense Association and Heritage Defense exist to provide legal support for these parents against resistance from school districts.

               For homeschoolers who choose either private school option, umbrella or online schools, you are dependent on the existence, support, and advocacy of such schools.  While many of these schools do not have brick and mortar private school counterparts, many do operate private schools which must follow legal codes applicable to them.  Homeschoolers who affiliate with these options must abide by the regulations that their umbrella or online school is held to.  These schools report less to the state but are still held accountable for their education of the children.  Participating families benefit from the services and opportunities found under such schools such as academic counseling, record keeping, social connections, and extra-curricular activities like sports.

               Should the school choice legislation described in a prior essay pass this year, the various forms of schooling in Tennessee will be affected in different ways.  The public school system stands the most at risk of major changes if parents are able to take their children out of poorly performing schools and then legislation dictates that the school loses some of their funding for that reason.  While the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement Act of 2019 (described at LINK ) claims that the money follows the child in order to incentive schools for success, one major pushback against the school choice program concerns this loss of money for public schools. Without an actual written proposal by our Governor for his so-called Education Freedom bill, we don’t know the final plan, but we can hear the hemming and hawing of numerous legislators claiming that we won’t take money from our children in the public school system despite that being a point of emphasis for school choice in general.  No one is sure which direction this will go.

               While the wider public will continue the public-school funding debate, private schools need to be watching the legislation’s development and final details also.  The private schools accepting voucher or scholarship money (which term is actually used by law makers is superfluous) will have to accept the regulations which are attached to the money.  In lay terms, there will be strings for any government money handed over to private schools.  Public school advocates demand a variety of strings, but ultimately it comes down to proof of the school’s success in terms of comparable standardized testing and some type of reporting whether accounting of money spent, or public reporting of curriculum taught.  The legislation could include limitations on what worldviews or topics are allowed in classrooms.  Once these schools accept state money with such strings, they must find ways to implement it through adding expenses or shifting expenses or raising prices.  Changes must occur to some degree or else they will risk losing their approval to participate. 

               Homeschoolers would seem to have it the simplest of all these groups.  Like private schools who could just say no to state money, they could feel pretty safe from governmental intrusion.  Private schools might suffer from such a decision due to competitive forces from those schools who take the money, but it would seem that homeschoolers could continue to function outside the gravitational force of school choice legislation.  If only that were true, I would not need to write so much about this issue.

               In reality, homeschoolers can also be pulled into the school choice black hole in a number of ways without seeing the danger before it is too late.  For the independent homeschoolers, they are already beholden to their local LEA for oversight, so less may change for them.  For homeschoolers operating through private options like the umbrella option or online school option, regulations for the private school could trickle down to the homeschoolers and pull them in. Regulations regarding required standardized testing could extend beyond the private school students receiving vouchers/scholarships to engulf the homeschoolers either by legal code imposed in the legislation or by the school’s necessity.  For online schools, curriculum options could be affected so that they would comply with state requirements or to optimize scores on standardized testing.  For either type of private school, the costs of compliance with the new system could increase costs which would be passed on to parents or cause the school to face difficult business dilemmas.       

               Outside of these more indirect effects upon homeschoolers under private schools, there is also the potential for legal terminology changes or confusions.  The long and broad history of law offers near limitless examples of the importance of terminology in understanding and applying passed legislation.  When a term is used in formal law, it must carry specific meaning.  When that word is used across a variety of legal codes, it must carry the same meaning in all settings and then connects those different laws when legal challenges arise to the definition of that term.  In Tennessee, homeschool laws maintain a separate section under education law which limits their connection to public school and private school laws as much as possible.  For example, homeschooling families do not have to abide by fire codes or emergency planning regulations.  Homeschool parents also don’t have the same education requirements as do schoolteachers.  Neither do they have the same reporting requirements to the state for their child’s education or curriculum.  Should school choice offer its money to homeschoolers under private school options, homeschooling code and public-school code could be intertwined.  This is almost never a good thing. 

               Beyond these indirect effects and potential legal ties, future legislation amendments could even bring homeschoolers who refuse the money into the regulations imposed on those that do.  Control enamored legislators claiming noble intentions could come back and decide that while initially only the homeschoolers taking the money had to follow the new rules, later they want all homeschoolers to follow a certain curriculum or take the standardized tests or have to report more on their children.  Even if the legislators don’t do this, the department of education could “interpret” the regulations as applying across all homeschoolers.  The Tennessee Department of Education recently attempted to reinterpret legislation regarding homeschoolers reporting of vaccination status.  Only a statement by the state legislature corrected them and stopped their completely opposite interpretation.  We must always be vigilant for future legislation to change our present freedoms or for the bureaucracy to impose its own faulty interpretation on otherwise decent legislation. 

               This brings up the question of why our government moves in these directions towards more and more restrictions of freedoms unless we push back.  In this case, it comes down to the basic assumption by many in government and the education world that our children belong to the public of Tennessee and they as our leaders have a responsibility to prepare them for our future society.  This blatantly contradicts the Biblical and Christian worldview that parents are the primary parties responsible for the education and rearing of children.  That worldview of lawmakers and the general public results in law code that seems to focus more on limiting parents’ freedom in the name of preventing parents from harming their own children.  What we need instead is more legislation intent on preventing government from intruding into the jurisdiction of family life and parental freedom.  The faulty worldview has created major blind spots for sometimes well-intentioned legislators in terms of supporting the education of Tennessee children.  They do not recognize the black hole they can create with this new legislation and do not seem to see the repercussions of the school choice upon private schools and homeschools in Tennessee.

               Parents of homeschoolers and those hoping for a future opportunity to freely homeschool future children must see through the darkness of this black hole by viewing the situation through a different worldview.  We must recognize that these precious little ones before us are gifts of God, and we are called to be stewards of their future rather than just serve as babysitters while the state dictates their future.  The legislation of our state can either work to protect our freedoms and thus our children or it can encroach on those freedoms and lead to lifelong harm.  We must evaluate school choice proposals when they are formalized and understand how it will impact on homeschooling in Tennessee.  If we don’t, no one else will do so.  It is up to us to stand firm.  We must know the issues ourselves and not depend on our legislators to simply tell us what is best for us and our children.  We must then make the issues known by others around us so that we can collectively and effectively advocate to reject the school choice black hole.  We can do this through social media postings of essays like this one, emailing our legislators, sharing this understanding with our churches, calling legislators with our opinions, attending legislative meetings, and more. In these situations, besides knowing your position, don’t accept platitudes and unhelpful generalities about helping all of our state’s children. Open other’s eyes to what we are facing and hold legislators accountable to protect our educational freedom instead of watching it go down a black hole with a new bill falsely advertised as Education Freedom.

Bibliography:

Langley, D. (2015, Autumn). A history of homeschooling in Tennessee. https://responsiblehomeschooling.org/research/histories/a-history-of-homeschooling-in-tennessee/#:~:text=The%20legality%20of%20homeschooling%20was,file%20as%20a%20private%20school

Tennessee investment in Student Achievement (TISA) formula. (2024a). https://www.tn.gov/education/best-for-all/tnedufunding.html T

Tennessee State Government – TN.gov. (2024). Home school . https://www.tn.gov/education/families/school-options/home-schooling-in-tn.html

Prior Essays in this Series:

Be The Opposition (by my wife) (LINK)

Three Reasons to Oppose School Choice

Part 1 – LINK

Part 2 – LINK

Part 3 – LINK

Part 4 – LINK

Comparison with North Carolina

Part 1 – LINK

Part 2 – LINK

Tennessee School Choice

Part 1 – LINK

Part 2 – LINK

Part 3 – LINK

(continuing from part 1 introduction)

Current Program Evaluation for Tennessee

               The purpose of any pilot program always includes the idea that a new concept can be tested at a small scale to see if it works before investing much larger amounts of money and effort into a larger scale endeavor.  In other words, one tests the waters before diving in so you can either pull back from bad ideas or adjust imperfect initial plans to increase the chances of success at the larger scale.  To make this process successful, an evaluation of some sort is required.  Jumping in the water without at least sticking a toe in could be a problem if the water is the wrong temperature.  For a governmental program spending millions of dollars, a pilot program allows this type of smaller scale test run before putting 100’s of millions of taxpayer money into a potentially unsuccessful program.  Once the pilot program has its chance to operate for a period of time, then we must take some measurements to decide if it worked.  If we stick our toes in and the water is too hot, we can change our original plunge plan.

               Before jumping into the larger scaled program, we should have reliable criteria that can be confidently measured which tells us whether we can expect to get our return on investment out of a program.  In regard to school choice, given the critical importance of our children’s future success in life and the hundreds of millions such a full scale program could cost (just look at other states in a prior article on site), we need to evaluate the small pilot program that occurred in Tennessee since the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement (TISA) legislation was passed in 2019 giving first Nashville and Memphis opportunities for school choice before adding Chattanooga.  Of course, we can also look at other states where similar programs have been running even longer, but if we have our own program and plan to inflate it to full statewide scale, we should evaluate if we are implementing a school choice program well or not.  Minimal criteria should include whether the student recipients of our state’s vouchers or scholarships demonstrated improvements in education versus children who remained in our public system.  Parental satisfaction and student mental health outcomes are less objective but still worth considering.  Once the program has run for several years, we could look at whether more students graduate, more go to college, or whether they earn higher incomes.  Tennessee’s program needs a few more years for these last criteria to be measurable, but some earlier short-term criteria could be evaluated if we were given the data.

               So, let’s look at the outcome studies which compare students who received scholarships versus those who remained in the public school assigned to them. To be blunt, we have silence at this point as I can’t find any studies in Tennessee that make that comparison.  The only thing that the state reports is that 91% of recipient parents are satisfied.  That is a very subjective number.  Realistically, a few years is probably needed to see if a student will learn more in a new school such that it can be measured and considered statistically and educationally significant.  Beyond that, some method of comparing the students on an equal “apples to apples” basis is needed.  In most other states, this standard comparison comes in the form of standardized testing, in which all students take the same test and see who scores better.  This seems like a level playing field at first glance, but such a Tennessee comparison has not been done so far. At a second glance, even it has some problems.

               Besides having no testing comparison in Tennessee, three problems arise out of trying to use such a standardized testing comparison.  First, private schools in Tennessee are not required to administer a standardized test to all their students.  Therefore, students moving from public to private schools may not get tested unless a new law requires it.  Second, even when schools do test their students or if they are forced to do so, there are several options for standardized testing.  If one group of students takes one test, and another takes a different test, the results are not technically comparable, still leaving us without an adequate comparison of apples to apples.  Finally, even if all the students are compelled to take the same test, a school which does not employ a curriculum focused on that specific test will find itself at a disadvantage.  Just like a sprinter training for the 100 yard dash will not fare as well in the 2 mile run having trained differently, the student who spends the year in one curriculum may not do quite as well on a test which did not match their recent curriculum.  Unless the public-school group and the private school group utilize the same curriculum for the year, the private school students could be at a disadvantage.  The private schools could therefore be incentivized to change their curriculum to match the test used for comparisons with the public school.

               Without a fairly implemented objective comparison in Tennessee that extends over several years including sufficient numbers of students, we cannot predict whether expanding the program to a statewide form is a good idea or not.  We are left with the one statistic and its hopeful logic.  The statistic promoted by the state on their website sounds encouraging that 91% of parents are satisfied.  What does that mean?  Are they simply satisfied that they qualified for $7000?  Are they satisfied that their child escaped a bully at school or school violence dangers?  Are they satisfied that their child has a better teacher or better friends at school now?  On the other hand, it seems logical that giving parents money to move their children out of a public school with subpar testing scores where they are bullied daily to a private school with higher academic standards would result in better outcomes for the child? If only logic always worked out in the real world.  There are so many factors intervening between the money and the outcome that simple logic is often too simple.  By looking at many other states as I did in another article, the outcomes for the school choice students have not always been as clearly successful as proponents have promised or reasoned.

               Therefore, in regard to objective outcome criteria for Tennessee’s pilot school choice program, we do not have data on which to base a decision.

               Without outcome data, we must turn to other statistics to better understand what the program is doing to or for our future generation.  These numbers are mostly available, but a few gaps exist which could help Tennesseans determine whether or not to take the plunge on universal school choice.  From Tennessee’s website, it looks like over 2400 students have been awarded educational scholarships out of over 3400 applicants.  That should mean that around 1.7 million dollars have been awarded.  The program stipulates income limits for recipients, so we can safely assume that these have been awarded to lower income families that probably would not have been able to afford the private schools.  From there, I don’t see any data on where these children went in regards to private or charter schools.  At least in North Carolina, there is a way to see how many children went to which private schools as some form of accountability and tracking North Carolina State Education Assistance Association. Before addressing the money question next, we return again to the one emphasized statistic, parents are 91% satisfied.  I still wondered what made them satisfied and why are 9% not satisfied?

               Now we come to an important data point, the cost of such a program.  Scaling such a program involves multiplication obviously, but also a conscious decision on how big do we want the program to be.  Even if we want to theoretically multiply and cover the state, at some point we have to draw a line and say we can’t afford to multiply by a bigger number.  At this point, Tennessee reportedly spends about $11,600 (according to Federal report U.S. Public Education Spending Statistics from Education Data Initiative per student in the public school system.  I assume that this number includes TISA’s 2019 increase in spending where 9 billion more was promised towards the education of Tennessee children.  According to TISA’s law codes, 70% of a given school’s funding comes from the state while 30% must come from the local government over the school system.  One of TISA’s guiding principles is that the money follows the child such that a school gets state money based on how many students are enrolled and additional factors regarding the child and certain school district characteristics.  High risk or special needs children mean more money for the school district while school districts with challenging conditions also get a higher funding.  How much beyond this TISA calculation are we going with this education scholarship money?

               For the current school choice pilot program beyond TISA’s foundation, the state publicizes a number of rules to be followed for the student and the schools receiving the funds.  As noted above, income limits apply to the student’s parents.  The private schools which the student wishes to move to  must accept the state money and its requirements.  Currently independent homeschoolers who are not under an umbrella program cannot receive this funding.  Beyond the private school tuition, the sate provides a list of approved spending.  Once those stipulations are fulfilled and a child is awarded the scholarship., $7075 is available to their parents for school choice. 

               Before looking at the proposed scaling of this program, we look back at what we have available in terms of this pilot program.  We are trying to decide if we want to go beyond sticking our toes in the water.  Do we have enough data on the costs, success, and impact of this pilot program to decide if we want to take a larger plunge and how much further of a plunge do we want to take?  Proponents seem to be basing their arguments more on three things.  First, we get an emotional appeal that the situation for our children is desperate, and we must do something before it is too late.  Second, we get an appeal to the logic that of course it will work to move children into supposedly better private schools.  Third, while we don’t have real outcome measures for our pilot program, we can assume that our bigger program will succeed “like” other state programs even though their outcome measures were not consistently improved.  So far, I am not convinced by the current information that is available.

Return Wednesday for Part 3 – Future Proposed Universal Program

Bibliography:

Parents have a choice in education

               Gazing backwards upon history reveals many critical choices which left ongoing determining influences upon public life.  In the legislative sphere, the passage of many laws marked significant trajectory changes in the nature of society.  Civil rights legislation, the passage of Medicare, or social security in past decades all marked moments when public life changed from one way of life to another.  This year, parents in Tennessee stand at such a fork in the road in regard to the education of children in our state as our Governor proposes something he calls Education Freedom. A choice must be made by our state in regard to whether or not we want to pay the necessary price for this so-called freedom.  As parents whose children’s lives will be greatly influenced by this legislative decision, we should think carefully about this decision and speak up with a clear, unified voice in influencing the future trajectory of our children’s education.  If we do not stand up for our children, legislators and lobbyists will be left in charge of shaping our children’s future.

               No one can honestly argue that Tennessee excels in educating its next generation.  Too many statistics reveal dismal numbers on various statistics.  Recent reports indicate for the entire state the percent of students achieving a grade appropriate score on standardized testing is less than half the students. (for other evaluations of Tennessee schools look at self reported “report cards”). Other random news reports document the outcomes of bullying in our schools which result in anything from increased diagnoses of mental illness to suicides. If that were not enough, nighttime news reports offer the peppering of school employees having illicit relationships and “contact” with students.  Meanwhile parents have to fight the constant attempt to force Critical Race Theory and failed Common Core methods upon vulnerable children. Our public education system in Tennessee clearly has a rottenness that is afflicting our next generation.

               Parents and the public express dismay about these statistics and reports, but none of us can address this issue alone.  The current options besides their local public school for parents have for their own children are to either homeschool, pay for private school, or move to a different school district.  While many can argue that these are not all viable options for all parents, they are still options that most parents can choose even if it means some sacrifice for the sake of their children.  These options are available thanks to legal freedoms that the current government recognizes and our society supports in general.  When addressing the wider picture of educating Tennessee’s children as a whole, parents must speak together so that these options are not taken away in the process.  Tennessee must keep these present options while effectively addressing the dismal status of our current system for all involved. 

               This brings us to the choice before parents today, a choice which our Governor Lee has proposed though not written out for the public to evaluate (as of January 18th, the bill’s proposed wording is still not available to the public).  Currently, the policy form of school choice, in which the state supplies a set amount of monetary funding for a child to attend a private school rather than their designated public school, is now active in 3 Tennessee counties.  The Governor proposes that this smaller pilot program for 3 counties should be expanded to the entire state for at least 20,000 students but eventually for as many as want it.  Superficially, it would seem cruel and uncompassionate to argue against such an appealing and seemingly noble proposal that all children should be able to attend the best schools their parents can choose for them. 

               When such a momentous opportunity is presented for anyone to shape the course of the future for so many children and thus our future society, such a superficial and reflexively quick acceptance of such a presently vague proposal is however unwise.  Anyone paying attention to the past few years should know that the good intentions of government do not always produce what they promise or what we want.  Anyone who has watched the course of any public policy implementation knows that there are secondary consequences for any major policy decision.  Anyone who has progressed beyond elementary common core math knows that such government programs cost money, lots of it, and practically always more than what was initially stated.  With all of this and our children’s education in mind, Tennessee parents must pause and be sure we are choosing the right fork in the policy road before we are stuck going downhill without any brakes.

               Participating wisely in this decision-making process for our children’s future requires an open-eyed evaluation of our current limited school choice program in the 3 counties where it operates as well as considering the unofficial proposals we have heard from our Governor and other lawmakers.  We cannot yet evaluate the actual bill since it exists only in the clutches of our leaders hidden in the dark backrooms of the capitol where no parent can presently read it for its actual details.  For the currently operating program we can consider what outcomes it has produced in the years since passage in 2019, the statistics publicly available for its participants, the money trail that flows through it, and the rules that govern it.  For the future proposal still waiting to be formally released, we can consider the proposed numbers for the program, the possible strings that may be attached to the program recipients, the money trail proposed for this larger program, and the perspectives or hints from various lawmakers who have spoken to the media on this choice. 

Return Monday for part 2 addressing the status of the current Tennessee School Choice program.

Bibliography: