Restrictive Homeschool Legislation to be introduced Thursday (NJ)

A bill that would force New Jersey homeschool children to submit to the same statewide assessment tests required of public school students, and force their parents to give the local school board proof the student had received an annual medical examination, is set to be introduced in the New Jersey legislature this Thursday.

The bill would also give the State Board of Education power to impose regulations on homeschool families. Homeschooled students would be forced to take the assessment tests in a public school. (For full text of bill, go to http://www.hslda.org/elink.asp?id=1257)

Your help is needed immediately to convince the sponsors of the bill, AB 4033, that it should NOT be introduced.

1. Immediately call all the sponsors of the bill (contact information is below).

2. Explain to them that the bill should NOT be introduced. Your message can be as simple as, "Please withdraw as sponsor of AB 4033 and do all you can to prevent it from being introduced as planned this Thursday. The bill violates federal law and could cause the loss of federal money."

1. HR 1, signed by President Bush exactly one year ago, prohibits states from requiring that homeschoolers take the state assessment designed for public school students. New Jersey would lose federal funds if AB 4033 is enacted, since it violates this requirement.

2. State assessment tests are designed to test material taught in the public school curriculum. Homeschool children do not use the public school curriculum. It would be unfair to test them on material not covered in their individual homeschool programs.

3. The statute does not say what score is needed to "pass." The Board of Education however, may have power under the bill to determine the passing score. A passing score imposed by a bureaucracy would not take into account the individual learning characteristics and abilities of each unique child.

5. This bill is being introduced at the very end of the legislative session, and it is highly unlikely it would pass before the session ends in a few days. Often bills introduced at the end of a session are to "test the waters" for filing the bill in the next session. We need to send a "tidal wave" message that this bill should not be introduced-now or ever.

No idea. It hadn't been introduced in the legislature as of noon today (some members of our county homeschool group spent the morning in Trenton protesting this), and it wasn't on Monday's schedule. Not sure if it was introduced this afternoon, but that seems to have been the intention. No info is yet available about today's session.

The following is a press release we got via email this morning -

HOMESCHOOLERS ACROSS NEW JERSEY OVERWHELMINGLY OPPOSE BILL A4033

Trenton, NJ, January 12, 2004 — Today at 11:30 a.m., state homeschool leaderswill hold a press conference in the room across from the Senate chambers to address some of the reasons for their opposition to A4033. Topics will include academic statistics, physical exams, the failure and culpability of DYFS, financial issues, and the stellar, long-term history of home education in the state of New Jersey.

Homeschoolers say that the bill, sponsored by Assemblywoman Loretta Weinberg (D-37), diverts attention away from DYFS and its role in an alleged NJ child abuse case that has received national attention. Further, it will open a Pandora’s box of intrusive regulation, forcing their families to comply with requirements that families of public- and private-schooled children are not obligated to fulfill. They are adamantly opposed to any legislation and are working together closely to have this bill withdrawn or defeated.

Homeschooling has been proven to be an effective means of preparing children for college, career and life. Homeschool parents want to raise their children in a safe, nurturing and supportive environment without any bureaucratic intrusion. Published national research shows that parents are doing admirably using the one-on-one tutorial method of home-schooling — the method advocated by many education experts.

- END –

PRESS RELEASE CONTACT INFORMATION:

HOMESCHOOL ORGANIZATIONS OPPOSED TO A4033

Tricounty Home Educators Association
Mark August, President
(609) 953-2145
tricounty@comcast.net www.tchea.org

New Jersey Homeschool Association (NJHA)
Tim Haas, President
856-546-2813; 609-504-6190 (cell)
www.geocities.com/jerseyhome jerseyhome@yahoo.com

Education Network of Christian Homeschoolers of NJ
(ENOCH of NJ)
Ray Stoever, President
Box 308, Atlantic Highlands, NJ 07716-0308
732-291-7800
www.enochnj.org President@enochnj.org

Unschoolers Network
Nancy Plent, President
2 Smith Street
Farmingdale, NJ 07727
732-938-2473
UnNet@aol.com

Catholic Homeschoolers of New Jersey
Diane L. Toler, President
1020 Cardinal Lane, Cherry Hill, NJ 08003
856-429-4893
materetmagistra@comcast.net

HSLDA – Homeschool Legal Defense Association
Scott Woodruff, Esq. – NJ Representative
Box 3000, Purcellville, VA 20134-9000
(540) 338-5600 · Fax: (540) 338-2733
www.hslda.org info@hslda.org

OTHER ORGANIZATIONS:

Eagle Forum of New Jersey
Carolee Adams, President
Box 205, Park Ridge, NJ 07657
(201)-391-1737
www.eagleforum.org eagleforumnj@juno.com

The press release was also read at our bimonthly meeting today. Also, we were told that some research was done into the assemblywoman mainly responsible for this bill - Weinberg (D) - and recent quotes were found to the effect that she opposed govt intrusion into adoptive families - once a child has been adopted, the govt has no right to interfere - the child is theirs and their health care practices are no one else's business. Very interesting that she seems to contradict herself with regard to homeschooling families.

One thing we did hear is that the Republicans who are opposed to the bill are optimistic that it won't get pushed through. We'll see.

Text of the bill, note item 4 -

ASSEMBLY, No. 4033

STATE OF NEW JERSEY

210th LEGISLATURE

INTRODUCED JANUARY 8, 2004

Sponsored by:

Assemblywoman LORETTA WEINBERG

District 37 (Bergen)

Assemblyman GORDON M. JOHNSON

District 37 (Bergen)

Co-Sponsored by:

Assemblyman Doria, Assemblywomen Perez-Cinciarelli and Quigley

SYNOPSIS

Requires certain testing and medical examinations of home-schooled children.

CURRENT VERSION OF TEXT

As introduced.

An Act concerning home-schooled children and supplementing chapters 7C and 40 of Title 18A of the New Jersey Statutes.

Be It Enacted by the Senate and General Assembly of the State of New Jersey:

1. A home-schooled child shall be administered each of the Statewide assessment tests required by the State of public school pupils that are appropriate for the grade level of the child. The tests shall be administered in a school of the resident school district.

2. The parents or guardians of a home-schooled child shall provide documentation to the resident district board of education no later than September 1 of each year that the child has undergone an annual medical examination.

3. The State Board of Education shall promulgate rules and regulations pursuant to the "Administrative Procedure Act," P.L.1968, c.410 (C.52:14B-1 et seq.) which are necessary to effectuate the provisions of this act.

4. This act shall take effect immediately.

STATEMENT

This bill provides that a home-schooled child must be administered each of the Statewide assessment tests required by the State of public school pupils that are appropriate for the grade level of the child. The tests would be administered in a school of the resident school district. In addition, the bill requires the parents or guardians of a home-schooled child to provide documentation to the resident district board of education no later than September 1 of each year that the child has undergone an annual medical examination.

http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/2002/Bills/A3500/4033_I1.HTM

The Governor's office was conducting a tally on opinions on the homeschooling Bill A4033 on Monday. The tally is continuing into Tuesday, if you would like to let the Governor's office know you oppose A4033 and have not yet done so, please call the Capital at 609-292-6000. Thanks for your help. Please call or e mail your assemblymen and Senator too, let them all know how you feel.

This bill may not seem so earth shattering but it is in a way since it will be one of many targeting home schoolers. They do the same with many other issues, the bills snowball and sooner or later their objective is accomplished through law, administrative code and regulations.

It's the fault of DYFS that Children are being neglected and starved and not the average home-school parent.

N.J. lawmakers move to regulate home schooling
Friday, January 9, 2004

By LESLIE BRODY

New Jersey home-schoolers have bombarded Bergen County lawmakers with hundreds of e-mails and dozens of phone calls in recent days to stop any attempt to regulate how they educate their children.

Assemblywoman Loretta Weinberg, D-Teaneck, and Assemblyman Gordon M. Johnson, D-Englewood, introduced a bill Thursday that would require home-schooled children to undergo periodic standardized testing and annual medical exams.

New Jersey home-schoolers - long an aggressive lobbying force - immediately banded together to protest that any such measures would be a misguided, unnecessary intrusion on their parental rights.

Weinberg said she had long wanted to tighten the safety net for children whose families might be failing them, and the Jackson case in Collingswood cemented her view that home-schooled children deserve more oversight. Raymond and Vanessa Jackson were charged in October with starving their four adopted boys, who were said to be home-schooled.

Weinberg said she was also spurred by a December article in The Record about "unschooling," an extremely relaxed form of home education in which parents reject structure, planned lessons, and timetables for academic milestones. She was appalled that a few "unschooled" children don't pick up reading until they're 12.

"We're not making it illegal for kids to be home-schooled or directing curriculum," Weinberg said. "We just want to make sure kids are being protected" and taught the basics.

Home-schoolers argue that the vast majority of their children thrive academically and the Jackson case was an aberration that should not set policy. New Jersey has long been one of the most permissive states for home-schoolers. Unlike many others, it does not require home-schooling parents to file curriculum plans with local school districts or undergo annual evaluations to make sure children are learning.

Christa Grajcar, a home-schooling mother of five in Hillsdale who heads the North Jersey Home Schoolers Association, said it was unfair to impose burdensome rules on thousands of great home-schooling families because of one extreme case.

"It's Big Brother," she said. "Parents know best what their children need in 99 percent of cases."

Grajcar added that most of the home-schooling parents she knows have their children take standardized tests voluntarily to assess what they've mastered, and their children must present medical records when they sign up for camp or local sports programs.

She said more state monitoring would "add a tremendous amount of paperwork and encumbering activities that take away from teaching time," and would coerce families to change their curriculums to resemble the very public school models they're trying to escape. "Home schooling isn't broken, so why are they trying to fix it?" she asked.

The bill was referred to the Assembly Education Committee on Thursday. Weinberg said the bill is still in its early stages and home-schoolers would have ample opportunity to express their views when it reaches the committee hearing phase. She said she will resubmit the bill Tuesday at the start of the new legislative session so that it can be considered.

Weinberg said she understands there are many successful home-schooling families; her goal is to add another mechanism - beyond the state's troubled child welfare system - to detect abused, neglected, or uneducated children.

E-mail: brody@northjersey.com

Letter to the Editor:

The Assembly bill to control home school education, AB-4033, would force home-school children to submit to the same statewide assessment tests required of public school students and require their parents to give local school boards proof that students had received annual medical examinations. My family has home schooled for 16 years, and I can show that this piece of legislation is poorly researched and is intolerant of home school families.

Home-school parents carefully choose curricula that reflect children's abilities and interests. Such curricula may not necessarily coincide with what public schools teach children of the same ages. To test children based on curricula they are not using is folly.

New Jersey would lose federal money. HR-1, signed by President Bush a year ago, prohibits states from requiring that home schoolers take state assessment tests designed for public school students. New Jersey would lose federal funds if A-4033 is enacted.

To require proof of a medical exam is just plain meddling. I see this as a knee-jerk reaction to the sad inattention of the state Division of Youth and Family Services to home-schooled children in foster care.

Ruth Gervat
Westwood, Jan. 8

Our county homeschool group called with the governor's office contact info shortly before 6 and I immediately called to give my opinion and they had already switched to the automated system for the night - a few minutes early. Guess they were getting hammered with calls. :)

Thanks for keeping this bumped, Coleus! Here's the latest from HSLDA -

January 13, 2004

Dear HSLDA members and friends:

Your tremendous efforts worked! AB 4033 died last Monday at the end
of the 2002-2003 legislative session because it was never brought up
for a vote.

In the rush and confusion of the last day of the legislative session
we suspected that Assemblywoman Loretta Weinberg (D-37) might use a
parliamentary tactic, thereby avoiding a public hearing, to obtain
passage of this harsh homeschool bill. You did a fantastic job
alerting every lawmaker in the state!

HSLDA is working closely with other organizations on this issue:
Tricounty Home Educators Association, New Jersey Homeschool
Association, Education Network of Christian Homeschoolers of New
Jersey, Unschoolers Network, Catholic Homeschoolers of New Jersey,
and Eagle Forum of New Jersey. Representatives of these groups met
last Saturday in East Windsor and affirmed their commitment to work
together toward stopping any legislative effort to restrict home
education.

As of this writing, Weinberg has filed 72 bills as primary sponsor in
the 2004-2005 Assembly, and 88 as a co-sponsor, but none deal with
homeschooling. We will watch the situation carefully.

Thank you for standing with us to protect homeschool freedom in New
Jersey.

Sincerely,

Scott A. Woodruff
HSLDA Staff Attorney

Homeschoolers vs. Big Brother

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | New Jersey's child welfare system, like most state child welfare systems, is a corrupt and deadly mess. Children are lost in the shuffle, shipped to abusive foster homes, returned to rapists and child molesters, and left to die in closets while paperwork piles up. So who does the government decide to punish for the bureaucracy's abysmal failure to protect these innocents?

Homeschoolers.

And what does the government think will solve its ills?

More power and paperwork!!

Last week, a Democratic assemblywoman introduced a bill that would impose annual academic testing and annual medical exams on home-schooled students in the Garden State. Never mind a federal law that prohibits states from requiring that homeschoolers take the state assessment designed for public school students. And never mind the fact that no public or private school students are subject to such health regulations. The State Board of Education would be given unprecedented regulatory authority over homeschoolers.

The sponsor of this Anti-Homeschooling Act is Assemblywoman Loretta Weinberg. She said one impetus for the legislation was the infamous case in Collingswood, N.J., in which four adopted boys abandoned by the state Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS) were found starving last fall. The boys' parents, Raymond and Vanessa Jackson, allegedly home-schooled the children when they weren't rigging up security alarms to keep their famished kids out of the kitchen.

The Weinberg proposal is a shameless smokescreen for government social workers who botched the Jackson case. Child welfare officials claimed they visited the boys' home 38 times in the past four years. Apparently the sight of a 19-year-old teenager who weighed less than a few bowling balls fazed no one. Department of Human Services Commissioner Gwendowlyn Harris admitted that she had employed staff who were "either incompetent, uncaring or who had falsified records."

While New Jersey politicians attempts to punish law-abiding homeschoolers for the sins of DYFS and the Jacksons, one of every 14 children in foster care in the state is placed in a home operated by someone with a criminal conviction or documented as having mistreated a child.

Moreover, according to a study released last summer by the School of Social Work at the University of Pennsylvania, one in 10 were abused or neglected by the agency caregiver and one in five didn't receive needed medical care. "The DYFS picture is not just bleak; it is one of chaos and tragedy," the report concluded. "From the reading of the disorganized and incomplete case files, to the statistical analysis of the status of children in the 'care' of DYFS, institutional abuse, neglect and ineptitude are the dominant themes."

Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL), a member of the House Ways and Means Committee and Co-Chairman of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus, noted at a hearing last year that: "Most people treat their pets better than the state of New Jersey has treated its children." The problem is systemic and nationwide. In Foley's state, 7-year-old Rilya Wilson is just one of 500 missing children in the child welfare system who have vanished. In California, Independent Institute research fellow Wendy McElroy reports, children are rushed into dangerous foster care homes thanks to a toxic combination of perverse financial incentives and lack of accountability for social workers' gross misconduct and neglect.

At bottom, Weinberg's bill is a cynical power grab — something homeschoolers across the country have been fending off as the movement's success has skyrocketed. "This is about legislators interfering with parental rights," Tricia McQuarrie, a South Jersey homeschooling mother of five, told me. "It's Big Brother." Indeed, legislators and the liberal media (witness CBS News' anti-homeschooling hit piece last October) are pushing for increased regulation of home-schooling parents, including criminal background checks, because the grass-roots movement gravely threatens their socialist agenda of promoting dependency. God forbid children be taught by their own parents without oversight from the all-knowing, all-caring, infallible wizards of the child welfare-public school monopoly!

A crackdown on innocent homeschooling families to cure the incompetence of government child welfare agencies is like a smoker lopping off his ear to treat metastatic lung cancer. It's a bloody wrong cure conceived by a fool who caused his own disease.

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