Posted on 02/09/2005 8:20:55 AM PST by hsmomx3
Homeschoolers in several states are faced with aggressive attempts to take away their freedom. HSLDA and homeschool families are fighting back.
The majority of state legislatures have started their 2005 session, and not surprisingly the regulation of homeschooling has been a hot issue. Several states have introduced bills that would restrict the freedom to homeschool.
Attempts to Impose State Assessments on Homeschools For example, both New Mexico and South Dakota filed bills that would force homeschool students to take state-selected standardized tests in the public school or under the supervision of a certified teacher. These bills violate a federal prohibition in the No Child Left Behind Act that forbids states to require homeschoolers to take the state assessment.
Unlimited State Powers Over Homeschoolers New Jersey introduced a bill in 2004 that would give the state Board of Education virtually unlimited power to impose new restrictions on homeschoolers, force homeschoolers to take a state assessment based on public school curriculum and turn over private medical information to the public schools. The bill was defeated last year after hundreds of homeschoolers and HSLDA staged large rallies at the Capitol in opposition. It has been reintroduced at the beginning of the 2005 legislative season. HSLDA and New Jersey homeschoolers will fight hard to stop this bill.
Worst Bill of the Decade After Democrats took control of the House, Senate, and Governorship in Montana, a long-time anti-homeschool Senator filed one of the harshest bills we have seen for a long time. The bill would transform one of the best homeschool laws in the nation to one of the worst. It would require that homeschools be supervised by a certified teacher and monitored bi-annually by the school district. Among other restrictions, it would even prohibit the homeschooling of any child with developmental disabilities in spite of HSLDA studies proving that special needs students learn better in a homeschool setting. It also prohibits homeschooling by stepparents and legal guardians!
HSLDA Attorney Dee Black is working closely with Steve White head of the Montana Coalition of Homeschoolers to stop this bill. Dee plans to testify against this terrible bill in committee on Monday, February 14.
An Attempt to Turn Back the Clock An Oregon Senate bill turns the clock back by requiring families to submit a yearly notice and standardized test results to their local school district. The legislature had previously removed these requirements from the law. HSLDA Attorney Thomas Schmidt is working with the state homeschool association OCEAN to defeat this bill.
Attempts to Expand Jurisdiction over Homeschoolers Besides these legislative challenges, families are also facing major expansion of state jurisdiction over their children in Michigan, Wyoming, Hawaii, Colorado, Indiana, New Jersey, and Iowa. All seven of these states have introduced one or more bills expanding the compulsory attendance age in the state, thus requiring parents to comply with school regulations for longer periods of time. The goal of the teachers unions is to lower the mandatory school age to three years of age and raise it to at least 18 years old.
Believe it or not, Indiana has a bill to require children to be in school until 19 years of age!
HSLDA Legislative Team Our legal legislative team at HSLDA, headed by Senior Counsel Chris Klicka, is made up of five lawyers and six legal assistants. They are actively working around the clock to defeat all of these restrictive homeschool bills and continue to monitor hundreds of bills in all 50 states. They are also working on promoting many bills that will advance homeschool freedoms.
South Dakota Restrictive Bill Defeated The first restrictive homeschool bill to fail was in South Dakota. In below zero temperatures, Attorney Scott Woodruff traveled to South Dakota in mid-January to testify against the testing bill. He pointed out that it violated both federal law and a parent's right to direct their children's education. Hundreds of homeschoolers attended the hearing, which helped clinch the victory. The committee unanimously voted against the bill!
We stand ready to take similar action in other states to ensure that homeschool freedom is protected.
Remember, we need you to stand with us in order to fight these battles for homeschool freedoms. Without your membership, we could not exist. Thank you for your continued support!
As Benjamin Franklin once said, "We must all hang together or, most assuredly, we will all hang separately!"
send to homeschoolers on PEDL
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IMHO this is sounding like a controversy designed to make lawyers rich at student expense. In the first place education is (or should be) a state activity. We homeschool our kids with materials bought from the State of Texas school system and it's great. They send us standardized tests that are proctored by a local teacher and that helps us prove to others that we taught our kids right.
This is a fight we must all take seriously, whether you home school or not. When I hear things like this It becomes ever so clear of the attempt to indoctrinate our children. Damn this makes me mad
It's a foot-in-the-door requirement, to make homeschooling burdensome to parents, and to force the students to physically come to the public school premises.
1. A requirement that students attend annual standardized tests.
2. A requirement that students attend a two-week preparation session for annual standardized tests.
3. A requirement that homeschooled students attend a supplemental twice-yearly progress exam.
etc...
This simply is the battle between Conservatives and Liberals. Most home school families are very conservative, and most often religious, specifically Christian. Liberals want to defeat everything that these families stand for.
I choose to have my children in public school, but I am very conservative and I support families who home school.
Here in TN there is a fight starting about funding of pre-K programs (long story short--lottery money that is supposed to be for college scholarship is probably going to be used for pre-K programs). Once government starts funding pre-K programs, the government will want to make it mandatory for there to be kids in those programs. Too early for requiring children to go to school, in my opinion.
yep - but fits their findings that, even tho' heavily indoctrinated in school - kids often "revert" to the parents teachings. So they are trying to get to the kids earlier - to quote them "we must get to the children by age two, before the parents had instilled their values in them."
That should send a chill up every ones spine.
"In the first place education is (or should be) a state activity."
Show me the part of the Constitution that states the above.
"They send us standardized tests that are proctored by a local teacher and that helps us prove to others that we taught our kids right."
That's a subjective measure, do you really want that out of your hands?
What's the point of homeschooling if you aren't going to take advantage of the unlimited amount of good educational resources available and just do the same thing that the local school is doing? That seems boring to me...jmo.
Homeschool Bump!
Thanks for the ping. I just finished reading this in email and then checked FR... and there you were.
Some courts have accepted the 10th amendment:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved tot he states, respectively, or to the people.
And others haven't. To me, the amendment means that since education wasn't mentioned any where else, it becomes local business. That was in the late 1700's. Since then, the US found out that in order to survive it needed an educated population. So along with bearing arms (second amendment) the nation's young men needed to be physically fit (Eisenhower 1958) and know how to read a the latest tank operator's manual.
Bottom line: a good legal case can be made to keep the feds out of the 'ed biz'. OTOH, since the first rule is that the country also has to survive, the feds in cooperation with the people, will do what ever suits 'em..
There's no rule that says that a parent in Amherst can't buy Tex materials for homeschooling thus avoiding the homosex math. All doom'n'gloom hype aside, there's never been a homeschooling parent in Mass that's gone to jail solely because of homosex math education.
Maybe I'm a bit slow on the sarcasm pick up today, but you've got to be kidding. You can't possibly be serious.
The curriculum used in public schools today is a PC riddled, homosexual promoting, revisionist, godless mash that is assembled by committees. It is boring, filled with error, and outright lies. Why use the govt. pablum when there are better things to use to instruct your children?
It is a new world out there, a world that needs leaders, thinkers, and conscientious citizens, not people trained to be factory workers and mind-numbed followers of the godless state. The school systems are 50 years behind the modern world. If you are using public school standards, you're putting your children behind from the start.
I apologize for coming on so strong. It's just that your statement was breathtaking in its naivety. You can read books by John Taylor Gatto for a more informed view of how the state schools operate. He was teacher of the year in the state of NY. He gives real eye opening information about how the school systems work.
Homeschoolers are at a disadvantage in state tests. Most homeschoolers do not learn all Science from an environmentalist wacko point of view. Or learn History from a America is always wrong point of view. Or Social Studies from a Gay/Lesbian is the preferred lifestyle point of view.
Many school districts and states test these sorts of topics in their "standardized tests" that they wish for homeschoolers to take.
We were talking 'apples' and 'hand grenades'. I was talking about how (constitution wise) the state government can pass a law regulating education for kids and the feds can't. [My post 15 gives my reasoning why survival trumps the constitution.]
As far as what's the best way to teach kids, that depends on individual situations. We used to send our kids to public and private schools because it seemed easier to pay someone to find all the books, give the tests, etc. We started teaching our kids at home when we moved out to live in the jungle. Now we've learned that when we teach the kids, they get taught right -- kind of like why we do our own plumbing work too.
We've also found that teaching the kids at home is also easier and cheaper than what we had, but (like I said) other people may have other situations.
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