Recently, the Tennessee State Board of Education ruled diplomas issued to home-schooled students from religious based schools were invalid as proof of the successful completion of High School should it be presented for employment purposes for a job for which state law requires a diploma. You read that right. According to the State Board of Education, all diplomas are equal but some diplomas are more equal than others. According to Tennessee ConserVOLiance blogger Red Hat Rob,

... anyone from a public school (or a private accredited school) who presents a diploma in order to be hired as a daycare worker, police officer, fireman (or any other position which state law requires a high school diploma for) will be automatically accepted. Anyone who presents a homeschool diploma will be automatically rejected.

The Board of Education's rationale is since they had no input over the curricula which resulted in the diploma, they won't recognize the diploma since they don't know what it represents. For instance, the diploma could mean only that the student had 12 years of school yet cannot read well enough to complete an employment application and will need remedial classes for his first year of college. But there's a problem. It's nicely pointed out by Red Hat Rob.

I have some news for the Department of Education officials. When a public school graduate presents a diploma, no one has any way to tell what it represents either. Did the ertswhile young graduate have an A average or a D- average? There is no minimum GPA requirement for graduation from a public high school in Tennessee.

Education has always been a prime subject for measurement. I'm not particularly opposed to that since I'm a big believer in rewarding individual effort if it's successful and working to improve performance if it isn't. To do that it is vital we know how well a particular person is doing in the skill we're measuring. The Tennessee Board of Education and Red Hat Rob are both right on one thing. The presentation of a diploma is no measure of a student's learning or ability. It only means the student has completed 12 grades. For that reason, Big Education has always touted certain metrics as being indicative of the success or failure of educators in providing a quality education. High on the list of metrics is ACT scores. They are useful for group comparisons as opposed to individual successes or failures. Red Hat Rob refers us to the ACT itself, which reports in ACT News, that in 2007, the national average score on the ACT was 21.2. The average score for High Scool grads in Tennessee was 20.7. That makes Tennessee students just a little less than average as a group. While that figure is a composite of home educated, privately educated and governmentally educated students who took the test, it generally may be taken to mean that Tennessee's Board of Education is willing to accept as satisfactory a diploma that represents a slightly less than average education. What would be really interesting is examining data that broke down the different groups based on performance. How do government schools compare to home schools, for example? Fortunately we have just such a comparison available. Red Hat Rob refers us to a report from the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), an official site of the United States Department of Education, which has such numbers from 1998. An ERIC digest titled 'The Scholastic Achievement of Home Schooled Students' from September of 1999 found the following:

Almost 25% of home school students were enrolled one or more grades above their age-level peers in public and private schools. Home school student achievement test scores were exceptionally high. The median scores for every subtest at every grade (typically in the 70th to 80th percentile) were well above those of public and Catholic/Private school students. On average, home school students in grades 1 to 4 performed one grade level above their age-level public/private school peers on achievement tests. Students who had been home schooled their entire academic life had higher scholastic achievement test scores than students who had also attended other educational programs.

It further found,

Even with a conservative analysis of the data, the achievement levels of the home school students in the study were exceptional. Within each grade level and each skill area, the median scores for home school students fell between the 70th and 80th percentile of students nationwide and between the 60th and 70th percentile of Catholic/Private school students. For younger students, this is a one year lead. By the time home school students are in 8th grade, they are four years ahead of their public/private school counterparts. The results are consistent with previous studies of the achievement of home school students.

Addressing our question of ACT scores, a long standing metric for determining academic success, the digest reports,

Home school students did quite well in 1998 on the ACT college entrance examination. They had an average ACT composite score of 22.8 which is .38 standard deviations above the national ACT average of 21.0 (ACT,1998).This places the average home school student in the 65th percentile of all ACT test takers.

What was the ACT composite score for Tennessee students for 1998? In the year homeschoolers averaged 22.8 and the national average was 21.0, Tennessee's students scored just 19.8, a full 3 points below home schoolers. This put Tennessee ahead of only North and South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana and Washington DC. The composite home school score places them FIRST among the 51 jurisdictions represented in the study. Unfortunately, the digest attempts to downplay the astounding statistics noting,

The superior performance of home school students on achievement tests can easily be misinterpreted. This study does not demonstrate that home schooling is superior to public or private schools. It should not be cited as evidence that our public schools are failing. It does not indicate that children will perform better academically if they are home schooled. The design of this study and the data do not warrant such claims. All the comparisons of home school students with the general population and with the private school population in this report fail to consider a myriad of differences between home school and public school students. We have no information as to what the achievement levels of home school students would be had they been enrolled in public or private schools. This study only shows that a large group of parents choosing to make a commitment to home schooling were able to provide a very successful academic environment.

In essence, it says the digest reports home school students outperform government school students by significant margins. They do so throughout their academic careers. They do so measured any way you choose, including standardized tests. They do so consistently as reported in studies covering a variety of samples, locations and times. But ERIC concludes home schools are not superior to government schools. It only demonstrates " ... home schooling [provides] a very successful academic environment." I only attended government schools but even I can read between those lines and discern the truth. Tennessee's Board of Education is going with the government line "Home schooling must be automatically rejected since we don't know what they've learned" and "Government schools must be accepted since we know what they've learned." Unfortunately, State educators missed the widely available and easily located studies and reports that prove them wrong. They didn't do their homework. Or perhaps they missed the lesson on how to do a research paper. We shouldn't hold it against them, though. They probably went to government schools, too. Blue Collar Muse

In 1998, the several states which comprise our grand experiment in representative democracy found themselves on the receiving end of a windfall!! After years of abuse and under threat of continued litigation financed from the state's deep pockets, the tobacco industry made peace with its enemies.

It was an easy choice considering the alternative was to be destroyed by government. Consider that in 1964 Big Tobacco was required by government to put warning labels on its product telling people cigarettes would be bad for them if they chose to smoke. Next, it was forbidden by government from advertising its legal product on TV. The last TV ad for cigarettes appeared on The Tonight Show on 1/1/71 Later still, it was forbidden to even market tobacco in and to certain segments of the population. Joe Camel and Winston's 31 year history with NASCAR both withered and died. Government is still gunning for the tobacco Industry. Just in the last year, government has outlawed smoking in public places such as restaurants and stores here in Tennessee and elsewhere.

However, the unquestionable high point of government's offensive against Big Tobacco arrived November 23, 1998. The end results of Big Tobacco's product in the lives of willing and informed consumers was deemed so detrimental to the well being of the states that the industry itself was held accountable for the havoc their product wrought. Big tobacco was required to pay almost $250 billion to the states over 25 years in a settlement

...intended to cover past Medicaid costs from smoking-related illnesses in exchange for immunity for the tobacco companies from further state- sponsored lawsuits.

Such rulings are a perversion of justice. But they are typical of big government's abuse of power. In this case, state government - with Tennessee ranked among the worst in the matter. On the one hand, we just passed a law which outlawed smoking in most public places. On the other hand, we also just tripled the cigarette tax to fund Education! Thus we're funding a program for which the state continually wants more money with a revenue stream the state is trying to destroy. But we can trust the government on this. Just look at what a great job they're doing.

Well, let's consider the Tobacco Settlement funds, shall we? As noted, the money was intended to help states cover costs they incurred while dealing with health problems associated with tobacco use. But that's not happening. Not in Tennessee and not anywhere else that I can find either. According to The Tennessean, Tennessee is slighting lung cancer. In fact,

The $1.4 billion in tobacco settlement money that Tennessee has received since 2000 has gone into the general fund, paying for everything from state troopers' salaries to computers in schools. None of that money has been earmarked for lung cancer research.

A billion and a half dollars extorted from tobacco companies under threat of being sued into non-existence by the states. The states claim they are acting in the best interests of the people. Big Tobacco agrees to pay billions to offset the costs of past smoking and to fund state prevention programs. What do the states do? They do what unaccountable, irresponsible and out of control government always does - whatever they think they can get away with. Tennessee receives millions annually for state health concerns and spends nothing on it. Our neighbor to the north, Kentucky, is lauded for spending $35 million on lung cancer research since 2001. $5 million a year when they get well over $100 million. And Kentucky may be one of the good guys!

Quoting from The Tennessean again,

Because there are no restrictions on how states spend tobacco settlements, money that other states receive also often goes toward just about everything but research, said Laurie Fenton Ambrose, president and chief executive officer of the Lung Cancer Alliance, a D.C.-based advocacy group. "We are astounded that this could be so overlooked, and are actively advocating for those resources to assist victims of this disease," Ambrose said.

One would think that the states, which knew enough a decade ago to be concerned about the emerging health crisis they faced from smoking that they piled on on Big Tobacco, would also be smart enough to use this "found money" to address the issue directly. But we're dealing with government here. The Tennessean adds:

For a state in which roughly one in four adults smokes, Tennessee has been notoriously bad about funding tobacco prevention programs. But Danny McGoldrick, Tobacco Free Kids' vice president for research, said that this year he applauds Tennessee for being "most improved." Tennessee put $10 million of budget money toward tobacco prevention for the first time ever this fiscal year.The money funded programs such as the smoking cessation hot line, 1-800-QUIT-NOW, and nicotine replacement therapies for the uninsured. McGoldrick also lauded the state's new tax increase on cigarettes and the smoking ban in most public places. "Last year was a big improvement, after years of doing virtually nothing," McGoldrick said. Previously, Tobacco Free Kids ranked Tennessee 51st, among all states and the District of Columbia, for its tobacco-prevention efforts. But the new initiatives bumped Tennessee up to 34th this year. Tobacco Free Kids will present Gov. Phil Bredesen with its "champion award" in a few weeks for leading the efforts.

This is success? This is government for the people? No. This is typical government fraud, waste and abuse. Citizens ought to be nauseated. But we accept calling it "improvement". We spend $10 million of our $1.5 billion on a stop smoking program and our Governor gets a "Champion" award. Meanwhile, the other 49 states' efforts are so equally pathetic our non efforts move us up 17 places in ranking and earn us the title "most improved". Only to government bureaucrats is this success. Each Tennessean should call his representatives and demand fiscal responsibility in this matter.

 This year alone, Tennessee is due to receive almost $160 million from Big Tobacco. By the time the 25 year payout period is up, we are due to receive almost $5 billion dollars. It is supposed to be to protect our health. It is supposed to be to help educate us. It is supposed to help us stop smoking. If we, the citizens of Tennessee, permit this fraud, waste and abuse to continue then I have to ask how healthy our priorities really are; what we are really learning from what they are teaching, and; what in the world are we really smoking in the Volunteer State?

 Blue Collar Muse