by Rob Shearer
Excerpt Fall 2008 issue Home Educating Family Magazine

There are many heroes in the history of the modern homeschooling movement.  There were a number of educators, researchers and philosophers who were critical of the structural horrors built into “compulsory government factory schools.” John Holt, Ivan Illich, and Raymond and Dorothy Moore deserve to be mentioned prominently. But it was the action of parents who created the modern homeschooling movement. Beginning in the early 1980s a small group of parents, against overwhelming odds, created a new educational option for parents across the United States. It was a national movement, but it was also a state-by-state fight. In 1980, many states considered homeschooling to be illegal and prosecuted parents who taught their children at home under truancy laws.  There were frightening arrests and prosecutions in AL, TX, MI, and even here in TN that made parents who were considering homeschooling pause to consider the costs and the risks.

In Tennessee, a group of families organized the Tennessee Home Education Association in 1984. In 1985, they were successful in getting a law through the legislature (and signed by Governor Lamar Alexander) that provided a legal means to homeschool in Tennessee.

During the rest of the 1980s, local chapters of THEA were established, and workshops, seminars, and curriculum fairs were started and the number of families homeschooling grew quickly. In 1990, THEA held a statewide Homeschool graduation ceremony in Nashville – with five graduates. In 1991, MTHEA held its first graduation ceremony with 21 graduates.

After 1984, the legislative battles in Tennessee focused on families who wanted to homeschool their students in grades 9-12. The original homeschooling legislation required a parent teaching a child in grades 9-12 to have a college degree unless they were granted a waiver by the State Commissioner of Education. By 1994, only one waiver had been granted and dozens of parents had been denied.  That year, an amendment to the homeschooling statute was passed which allowed church-related schools to enroll homeschool families in grades 9-12 and eliminated the requirement that a parent have a college degree.

During these years, a homeschooling pioneer in Tennessee, Ron Scarlata, had established both a church-related school (Family Christian Academy) and a homeschool curriculum supply company which served thousands of families across the state.

But at the same time the passage of the 1994 amendments was granting new freedom to homeschool students in grades 9-12, a new challenge had also appeared.  The Department of Education, losing its efforts in the legislature, sought to impose new requirements on homeschoolers by pressuring the church-related schools through their associations. One association (TANAS) had announced new regulations for its church-related schools in 1993 which were as onerous and invasive as the law just amended by the legislature. The new TANAS regulations would have required annual testing, annual home visits, and would have terminated the parents’ right to homeschool if the student fell more than one grade level behind.

There was another threat to homeschoolers as well. The Tennessee Department of Education (and many of the local public school systems) wanted the names of all homeschool students in Tennessee.  They wanted parents, and schools to be required to sign up and they wanted umbrella schools to be required to turn those names over to the state. Given the history of Department of Education, and local school systems’ hostility to homeschoolers, many homeschool families (and many church-related schools) were reluctant to turn over the names of all homeschoolers. The Department of Education began pressuring the church-related school associations to force their member schools to turn over the names of homeschoolers to the state. Most associations did as the Department wanted. A few did not, but the situation was precarious.

Ron Scarlata, together with homeschooling dads, Rob Shearer, David Jones, and Lynn Ray formed the Tennessee Association of Church Related Schools (TACRS) to provide a safe haven for homeschoolers and for church-related schools who were registering homeschoolers. In 1995, TACRS explained it’s founding principals:

Each of the existing organizations sees homeschooling as somehow an adjunct, and, if you will, a poor step-sister, to its more traditional day-school programs. Each of the existing organizations find itself representing the interests of traditional private day-schools, even where those interests diverge from those of homeschoolers. Our philosophical differences with each of the existing organizations looms so large that we find ourselves in conflict with them over rules and regulations (however wellmeaning) which stifl e and straight-jacket homeschoolers rather than assist and support them in educating their children.

Founding TACRS wasn’t enough by itself to protect homeschooling.  The organization still had to be recognized by the State of Tennessee as a legitimate association of church-related schools.

It took two years, and numerous meetings and trips to the legislature to secure an amendment that recognized TACRS, but Ron Scarlata never wavered even though it cost him personally a great deal of time and money. In 1995, a bill was approved in committee, but never made it any further. Over the summer of 1995, Ron met with each of the members of the joint oversight committee on education to explain TACRS to them and answer their questions. Lynn Ray was instrumental in persuading the Chairman of the House Education Committee to sponsor the bill.

In February of 1996, Senate Bill 605, sponsored by Sen. Tom Leatherwood (R-Memphis) and House Bill 29, sponsored by Rep. Gene Davidson (D-Hendersonville) addded TACRS to the list of organizations listed in statute whose members are recognized as church-related schools.

The bill passed the House 94-1, and in the Senate on the “consent calendar” without objection.  The bill had passed the Senate Education Committee on a vote of 9-0, being supported even by the chairman of the committee, Senator Andy Womack, who in the past, had been a critic of homeschooling.

One of the significant consequences of the bill, for the first time, homeschooling families and schools affiliated with some non-traditional religious communities had a way for their schools to be officially recognized by the Tennessee Department of Education and local education agencies.

Ron Scarlata was proud (deservedly so) to be able to announce that “Because we believe that religious education is a fundamental right of all citizens, we have been especially concerned to offer associate membership to non-traditional religious communities such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Amish and Mennonite communities.”

TACRS was different from the other organizations already recognized in Tennessee Statutes in several respects. Unlike the other organizations, whose focus is on traditional day-school, classroom programs, the member schools of TACRS have made it their primary mission to offer “umbrella programs” for families who are educating their children at home. Also unlike the other organizations, although TACRS is an explicitly Christian organization, it is not affiliated with any denomination. The statement of faith required for membership consists of one sentence:

I/we declare that the leadership of our school is of good moral character; and subscribes to the historic creeds of the Christian church (the Apostle’s Creed, the Nicean Creed, and the Creed of Chalcedon); and recognizes the authority of the Scriptures in all matters of faith and practice.

The recognition of TACRS was an important milestone in the fight to secure homeschooling freedoms in Tennessee. TACRS has, at times, been the lone voice among the private school community defending the rights of homeschoolers.

And Ron Scarlata, President of TACRS and founder of Family Christian Academy is the man who made it happen. Homeschoolers all across Tennessee are grateful to one of our own pioneers, Ron Scarlata.

© 2008 All Rights Reserved, Home Educating Family Magazine