The real education fireworks in the Tennessee legislative session may be saved for later with updates to the Education Freedom Act, but homeschools are having their moment now.
One bill (HB1729) filed by Rep. William Slater, R-Gallatin, would alter how the consideration of homeschool student success is determined, while a second (HB1823 and SB1968) filed by a pair of Cleveland lawmakers could involve the juvenile record of students who formerly attended public schools, were considered truant and then enrolled in homeschools.
Homeschooling in Tennessee has risen from a few thousand students in the 1980s to more than 15,000 in the 2024-2025 school year, according to the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy. The number saw a significant rise during the 2020 COVID pandemic. Other figures put the current number closer to 30,000 students.
Slater’s bill would change how the progress of homeschool students is measured — for example, from three to six months or six to nine months behind their appropriate grade level to a percentile measurement.
The percentile measurement — for example, being in the 25th to 50th percentage of their grade level — would be closer to the proficiency scores that standardized tests currently reveal for public school students, it seems to us.