The Department of Education has so far succeeded in declaring all homeschoolers’ high school diplomas to be invalid.
Bill Hobbs has a nice summary of what the Department has done:
“Cindy Benefield, the Tennesseee Department of Education Executive Director of Field Services, who oversees the state’s homeschooling office, recently declared that a diploma from a church-related school is “not worth the paper it is written on.” That is not just the idle opinion of one uninformed bureaucrat, but has become Department policy. Bredesen’s education commissioner, Tim Webb, told four legislators in April that until the legislature passes a law stating that the diplomas given by church-related schools are acceptable, they aren’t acceptable for certain kinds of employment.”
“And the state is now preventing people who hold diplomas from church-related schools or home schools from holding certain jobs. For example: a police officer in Roane County, who holds a diploma from a church-related school, then graduated the police academy with perfect grades, has been demoted and prohibited from continuing to serve as a police officer - even though he also graduated from the local community college. The Rockwood police officer has been forced to take a desk job until he takes and passes the GED because the Department of Education says his 2001 diploma from a church-related school is invalid.”
“The fallout goes beyond that one officer. Suspects he has arrested may be set free because he can not appear as a witness in the case because the state, which regulates the profession, says his diploma is invalid.”
Church-related schools (CRS) have been issuing high school diplomas since at least 1975 - and until now, they’ve always been accepted, never been challenged. The bigger irony in this is that the Tennessee university system and the Lottery scholarships continue to accept CRS diplomas. It’s a fair assumption to predict that the Department of Education would like that practice to stop as well.
Rep. Mike Bell’s bill to reverse this stunning policy change escaped the House Ed Committee without being hijacked, but it is now sitting in the Calendar & Rules Committee where it may be quietly allowed to die. If that happens, the Department will have succeeded in disenfranchising thousands of high school graduates by bureaucratic fiat. There are upwards of 40,000 homeschool students in TN. Probably 3,000 of them graduate from high school each year. The Department’s actions not only invalidate the diplomas of this year’s graduating class, they retroactively invalidate the diplomas of thousands who have graduated over the past thirty years.
What’s happening is an outrage. We have a shortage of good police officers. We have a shortage of good daycare workers - but the Department of Education can’t stand it that someone out there might be getting an education outside their control.
- Rob Shearer
Director, Schaeffer Study Center
(aka RedHatRob, where this is cross-posted)
9 responses so far ↓
1 Logo (1 comments) // May 12, 2008 at 1:20 am
Have you people gone insane???
Homeschoolers are the most sought after at Harvard or Yale, or any other respectable college. If you people can’t get your head outta your butt long enough to see the light, then your going to be without jobs soon. I wonder if these idiots in this Dept are somehow connected with
the regular “system”? They’re not supposed to be linked in any way whatsoever (independent). To me, if people don’t stand up to this, then you can forget about having ANY freedoms in this country, and that IS one of them. Come sheeple wake up, especially us TN’ers, we have too much corruption as it is.
2 maryclaudia (1 comments) // May 22, 2008 at 11:35 pm
I would say that there are a number of people working in the TN State government whose diplomas are not worth the paper they’re written own, as well to use their terminology!
Cindy Benefield is obviously not homeschooled or she and her cronies would realize the outrageousness of this idea and that it hasn’t a leg to stand on in court. Is this the caliber of people who are supposedly serving across the land? Of course it is. Otherwise we’d not have $4 a gallon gasoline and preening political prima donna wagging their fingers at the men who run American Oil companies just so they can show the folks back home that they are “doing” something! This is no way to run a state or country.
Perhaps the fine folks in the TN Dept. of Education might stop and think about the ramifications of such a stupid idea as it applies to future companies looking for the next location of their big new plant! They couldn’t possibly want to build in a state that is too busy running interference for the TN. Education Association instead of recruiting the best and brightest teachers, homeschooled or otherwise! Idiots.
3 Contrary Mary (3 comments) // May 23, 2008 at 9:17 am
THE PROBLEM HERE IS THAT HOMESCHOOLERS SHOWS WHAT A WASTE PUBLIC SCHOOLS ARE, BY SCORING EXTREMELY HIGHER THAN KIDS WHOM ARE TAUGHT IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, WHICH IN TURNS SHOWS WHAT A WASTE THE DIPLOMAS OF KIDS WHOM GRADUATES FROM PUBLIC SCHOOLS ARE!! THIS IS ABSOLUTELY THE LAST STRAW!! Would the publishers of this site please hold a poll, petiton or anything, so that it’s readers (especially us Tennesseans) can show how much we are against this attack on religious schools!! Please..pretty please! I am so ashamed of my state…our GOP are too busy acting like little kindergartners, our local government has taken us taxpayers for thousands and illegally used it, our governor, Bredesen, is afraid that participants on TnCare might just get good medical care..more than a thousand died when he yanked it from under them in 2005….therefore he is always taking more and more needy sick off of it…..this state is falling apart with corruption and oppression of its citizens!
4 Contrary Mary (3 comments) // May 23, 2008 at 9:21 am
It should scare the public when the government realizes that children, whom haven’t been liberalized in the public school system, are attacked so. Honestly though, most homeschooled kids sets their sights higher than piddly state jobs. They become CEO’s, business owners etc……not all but alot do.
5 Contrary Mary (3 comments) // May 23, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Well we have one choice and only one choice, and with what little comfort people have left, they are still unwilling to do what is necessary.It is way past time to tear down the foundation of the pitiful group we call our government. Are you willing to loose it all and possibly your life? Until we, the masses, storm, riot and demand, it will remain the same. We have to unite and take over….but did you know that our government has contracted Canada to come in and kill all revolters in the event of such a revolt? Yeah, they are covering their arses…are we? Much longer and it’s too late.
6 thejustadvenger (1 comments) // May 23, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Mary you are so right, Viva la Revolution, we MUST refresh the tree of liberty. Reorganization of the government will not work we must scrap the whole corupt mess.
7 State of TN declares war on homeschoolers « nuke gingrich // May 25, 2008 at 7:43 pm
[…] The Tennessee Conservoliance, […]
8 Country Living (1 comments) // May 29, 2008 at 9:36 am
Just another example of the teachers unions trying to keep control of their turf. There is a constant battle going on to keep education under their control so they can retain their jobs and indoctrinate our children. Public schools give out 3 different diplomas in our area one if you met the state standards for graduation, one if you passed the classes but not the state requirements, and a third one if you “just show up” at school. And they are saying home school diplomas don’t count! What a joke!!
9 Jason Thomas (1 comments) // Jun 3, 2008 at 6:38 pm
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Unless you have a CRS Diploma apparently.
Leave a Comment