On June 20, Governor Greg Abbott signed legislation to encourage homeschoolers to enroll in public universities.
The automatic admissions procedure and financial aid eligibility for students with alternative secondary educations—like homeschoolers—who need a class rank to be eligible are modified by Texas House Bill 3041.
“The good news is that these universities have always been accessible to (homeschool) students,” stated Anita Scott, the Texas Home School Coalition’s director of public policy.
The law expands on Texas House law 3993 from 2023, which mandates that homeschool students be included in the automated admissions process for public schools and universities that offer class rank-based admissions.
According to Grace Hurley, a journalism junior, class rank is a quirky thing for homeschoolers. Since I was the lone student in my class, I finished first.
Hurley claimed she had always intended to attend college, even though her mother homeschooled her throughout her K–12 education. According to her, applying to colleges did not appear to be difficult.
According to the coalition’s website, under HB 3993, institutions used the average class rank of traditionally schooled students who received the same SAT or ACT scores to rank homeschooled students.
In order to mitigate the impact of outliers in the conventionally schooled comparison group, HB 3041 requires universities to start correlating class rank using the median rather than the average of standardized test scores, beginning with admissions for the fall 2026 semester.
According to the measure, universities must post on their websites the median scores of the standardized tests they take into consideration as well as the scores that correspond to class rank.
According to Scott, the purpose of HB 3041 is to provide a legislative remedy for HB 3993, elucidating its intended interpretation.
According to Scott, a homeschool graduate had no access to “automatic admission” prior to House Bill 3993. Homeschoolers now have more options thanks to House Bill 3993.
Previously, Kandace White, chief education officer at Read Radiantly, Write Wonderfully LLC, a homeschool tutoring organization, believed that homeschoolers might only be able to enroll in lesser colleges.
“I thought that after completing their homeschool program, students wouldn’t be able to attend a four-year college, but they can,” White said.
According to Hurley, HB 3041 appears to have good intentions, but since not all homeschoolers are prepared to take standardized examinations, further research is required on the subject.
I didn’t grow up taking STAAR tests or any other kind of standardized testing during my K–12 education, so I had to practice a lot for my standardized examinations, Hurley said. Much consideration and research, in my opinion, should be done to determine how the various homeschooler populations would be impacted by standardized testing, which serves as the benchmark.
