The Tennessee ConserVOLiance

First a history lesson: In the last 100 years, there was only one two-year period, from 1969-1971, when the Tennessee House had a Republican Speaker. It happened in 1969, following the mandated 1-man,1-vote redistricting of the Tennessee Legislature (which reduced the disproportionate strength of the rural counties). After the turbulent 1968 elections, the defection of […]

[Read more →]

U.S. District Judge Robert L. Echols issued his ruling yesterday on the ACLU vs. Wilson County Schools (aka Lakeview Elementary). The Tennessean headlined their story this way:
Prayer group can’t get special access at school
Judge says Wilson public school supported religious activity
The ACLU, predictably , claimed victory. The Tennessean linked to Judge Echol’s 59 page MEMORANDUM, […]

[Read more →]

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 […]

[Read more →]

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, […]

[Read more →]

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 […]

[Read more →]

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 […]

[Read more →]

Longest blog post title ever…
The bill was HB 1652, and you can read the history of how we got here in an earlier post.
The terminology of legislative committees is QUITE confusing… apologies to all. Enacting legislation is messy… today was a little messier than most.
When the problem with the police officer and daycare worker […]

[Read more →]

Kay Brooks has a great post summarizing the story so far: Good enough for UT, Vandy, Harvard…
The Tennessee Department of Education seems intent on picking a fight with church-related schools in general and homeschoolers in particular. They’ve been “educating” other state agencies for some time now about the fact that so-called “Category IV Schools” in […]

[Read more →]

There are 3 House bills which are important to parents rights this week. The information for both came from Bobbie Patray (TFRW Legislative/Research Chairman). Remember at election time that a vote for a Democrat (any Democrat) running for the TN House is a vote for the continuing reign of House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh. […]

[Read more →]

Education is supposed to be about learning and knowledge. Today’s education seems to be about far more than that, however. From participating in the “Who gets a seat in the Lifeboat?” scenario to curricula dealing with homosexuality, moral issues are taking up more time in schools. Unfortunately, educators often come down on […]

[Read more →]