Thank you for the work you are doing in Tennessee. We appreciate your service, and your time.

We are a homeschooling family and have become aware of House Bill 2795. This bill will destroy our ability to instruct our children in the creative way that is best suited to each child and family. I tell my children all the time, “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire,” a quote from William Butler Yeats. Our goal is to teach our children how to THINK, to inspire in them a passion for learning, and to endow them with the ability to reason through things, ultimately nurturing that into a lifelong love of learning. We would not want to smite passion for a lifetime, merely by forcing them to learn specifically for a test today.  That is short sighted and hedonistic at best.

Take a strong look at homeschooling. The numbers are growing every year, families are enjoying their children, homeschooled kids are getting an excellent education. Colleges are clamoring for the homeschooled students, noticing a distinct difference. The College of Idaho notes on their website, “We find that most of our home-schooled students have the ability to "think outside the box" and work independently--exactly the attributes you'll need to succeed here.” Eastern Mennonite University in VA says, “Home-schooled students -- with their strong self-confidence, critical thinking skills and disciplined study habits -- make great contributions to campus life. They are academic leaders and student life role models.”

The Army and our military branches are actively recruiting homeschoolers. From the website GoArmy.com > Benefits > Bonuses for Home School Graduates The Army now offers home school graduates who qualify the same enlistment incentives as traditional high school graduates, including cash bonuses up to $40,000 for enlistments of three or more years and the Army College Fund, which provides up to $71,424 for college. *Enlistment of home school seniors in the Army's Future Soldier program is also authorized. If you’re interested in finding out more about bonuses for home school graduates, contact your local Recruiter or fill out this form.
 

If colleges around the US and our military branches are eager to enlist homeschoolers, then homeschool families must be making excellent curriculum choices. This negates the need for House Bill 2795. Homeschooled kids are not the children who are failing at life.

Homeschoolers are hardworking kids who understand how to manage their time, think and reason independently and are not peer driven. This is largely because the current homeschooling freedoms we enjoy in the great state of Tennessee. We have the freedom to choose the curriculum best suited to our children, to their learning styles, interests and needs. We pay CASH for our curriculum, and we continue to pay the same taxes that every other Tennessean and every other American pays. We sacrifice greatly to homeschool, and are more than willing to pay for the curriculum we choose in our homeschool, remember, we are lighting a fire, not merely filling a bucket to pass the test of the  year.

Please oppose House Bill 2795, which would impose public school testing on non-public school students. This bill would effectively destroy non-public education in Tennessee by requiring private schools, church-related schools, and homeschools to adopt the public school curriculum for their instruction programs.

Thank you for your time.

Lisa Baughn

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