Hang in There, Bureau County Home Schoolers, Someone May Wake Up Yet

is the Truancy Officer and the Regional Superintendent supposed to just take these families' word for it? Or should they take some steps to verify that these kids are actually being taught something? In a day and age where reports of child abuse and neglect have reached all time highs, isn't it reasonable for the area's chief education officer to try to make sure that these parents aren't lying? What would you suggest this man do?

I think this is being blown all out of proportion. Don't threaten a mama bear's cubs, indeed. No one's coming in to abuse these kids. They want to make sure they're learning something, which is the law and their job.

Ron, last I checked, children are not automatically wards of the state. Do you see how you are taking the position that the GOVERNMENT knows best about what and how children should learn? That the government should automatically mistrust PARENTS? That the government should check-up on all parents? That the government should assume that parents who homeschool might be abusing their children?

And, why would it be more likely for homeschoolers to be abusive than non-homeschoolers? Because they spend more time with them? Other parents spend time with their children, too (or, at least, I hope so). Parents of public school students can be abusive, but we don't see the government kicking in their doors.

2) It appears to me from what I've read in the thread header that there's a Illinois state public official whose job it is to see that all children in his district attend school and get an education, no matter what kind of school that is, public or private.

They don't. It's false. You've been told that. Those public officials are merely trying to intimidate the parents to submit their kids to the system.

Yes, it's that evil.

3) Said official would then seem to have a legal obligation to verify that home schooled kids are getting basic instruction in English, math, etc.

Exposition on a false premise. See 2).

4) Said official would have absolutely no business in specifying the type, amount, etc., of any moral content in such education, or requiring that the order, etc., of the education match that of the public schools.

Exposition on a false premise. See 2).

Allow me to make it clear for you. You may WANT an agent to exercise a claim to verify that kids are being educated to your satisfaction, but you can forget that option. If they are in public school, they will ignore your expressed interests in children's education. They will instead listen to the interest with the biggest legal and financial stick: the federal government at the behest of the NEA. If they are in private school, they will ignore your expressed interests in children's education. They will instead listen to the interest with the biggest legal and financial stick: their board of directors or the diocese in charge who KNOWS that if the kids don't get an education nobody will dig into their wallets to give them the money. If they are in home school, they will ignore your expressed interests in children's education. Parents do have direct accountability in that the kids will be stupid dependants and an embarassment to them unless they get an education.

You have no claim on how anybody else's kids are educated. You may want one, but if you can't even get accountability for your tax dollars, why are you expecting it out of parents?

Personally, I think the state has a legitimate interest in ensuring that children acquire basic reading and math skills by age 10 (the age at which research shows, on average, that if a child hasn't learned to read well he/she almost certainly never will, due to fundamental changes in the brain around that age). Given those basics before it's too late, the child will be able to compensate for whatever education was withheld by parents, after he/she turns 18 and is no longer under their control. The only thing required to achieve this is a test, which would only need to be taken once if the child passed (and many homeschooled children could pass at age 5 or 6), and would not be required until age 8 (when there would still be time for the child to catch up before age 10).

Furthermore, the state has no legitimate interest in forcing homeschooling families to maintain higher standards that the state's own schools maintain. Therefore, I would argue that passing levels for the test be set at the 10th percentile of levels achieved the previous year by public school fourth graders. At this point, most homeschooled 3-4 year olds could pass. It would be a reasonable compromise for homeschooling activists to endorse this tyoe of testing program, on condition that the tests are strictly limited to reading comprehension and getting the right answer on math problems (i.e. remove all political, religious, and touchy-feely aspects). This would ensure that the tiny percentage of homeschoolers who really aren't schooling at all, and are in many cases seriously abusing their children, would be caught in the dragnet. Everybody else would only have to deal with a one time test, or perhaps take it annually two or three times, if the child didn't pass the first time.

They don't. It's false. You've been told that.

Such has been asserted to me. However, the only language that I've seen (putatively) quoted out of the statutes reads to me that he's responsible for seeing that all children in his district are being educated, not just those in public schools. Now, if I'm wrong, show me. And I'll then freely admit that this guy has overreached his authority and should be slapped down. But until then, what I've seen quoted says different.

Actually, I have to comment on the flavor of the home schooling threads that I've read on FR. To read them, you'd think that almost all public schools a) teach kids that homosexuality is morally equivalent to heterosexuality, b) give demonstrations and exercises on how to use condoms, c) degrinate the Christian religion and uplift paganism, d) don't teach the basics of American government, e) teach that the U. S. Government in particular and Western Civilization in general are the source of most evil in the world, f) pay no attention at all to the parents' wishes in how their kids are taught, and g) are run by teachers' unions.

I've had two kids in public schools in the SW Chicago suburbs. I've seen none of these things. I have seen school officials who've displeased the taxpayers get dumped. I have seen my kids get taught the contents of the U. S. Constitution and it's advantages (as required by Illinois state law, by the way). I read my kids' books and have seen pretty standard history, English, and math assignments that have nothing to do with pinning the evils of the world on the U.S. I have seen the graduates of our school district, including my oldest child, attend the country's finest universities, and grow up to be good, moral people. While I think that there are certainly faults in the public school systems in the U.S., and while there are some individual horror stories in some districts, in the main I haven't seen any evidence that the public school system is the source of evil that keeps getting proposed on FR.

Ron, do you understand what co-operative learning is? I happen to know they use this method just about everywhere including the burbs of chi-town. It is , pure and simple, socialism. Now if that isn't evil enough for you... well then you deserve what you get.

Look into it and see how teachers are now class room managers ,and the kids are expected to keep other in check. Students check each others papers ,and the managers purposily put one excellerated kid with two middle kids and one slow learning kid.

Do a google search and see for yourself. What is backwards day, and who started it? Have you ever wondered why all of the desks are pushed together and everyone sits in groups. Everything is a class project and kids have to decide who does what. If someone doesn't pull their weight for a group grade... well then they are told to work it out with their neighbor. Group grade don't you know.

Don't be blind. We homeschoolers agree with you that it is a scary and tiring endervor to be completly in charge of your child's welfare and education. The only difference between us and you is that we have risen to the challenge. Wake up, or it is your children who suffer. Sorry it is the truth plain and simple.

However, the only language that I've seen (putatively) quoted out of the statutes reads to me that he's responsible for seeing that all children in his district are being educated, not just those in public schools.

The link you were provided in Post 12 had the appropriate section. You either didn't go to the HSLDA site and read what I did of Illinois law or you are incapable of so doing.

105 ILCS § 5/26-1. If a child is "attending a private or a parochial school where children are taught the branches of education taught to children of corresponding age and grade in public school," and where instruction is in the English language, the child is in compliance with Illinois compulsory attendance law. Home schools that meet these two requirements are considered legal private schools.

As long as the child is in the school and taking similar course material as the public school, there is no truancy action that can be legally taken. Further, private schools do not have a minimum number of days of instruction, so there is no way for the officer to verify that on any particular day the kids should be in school. The only way the officer could initiate an action is if he caught the kids off campus in violation of curfew laws (i.e., outside the home or not in the custody of the parent and the parent says that they should be in school), or if he has direct evidence that their studies are not according to the law. On the former criteria, if he went to the parent to issue that warrant and parent as the director of a private school attests that the kids were present in the home and taking appropriate materials, he is out of his jurisdiction. Illinois law has no statewide testing program so he has no way to assert that the kids are not being taught grade appropriate materials, nor is there a procedure for state audit. Thus he has no means to obtain probable cause that the kids are being taught inappropriately. QED

I have seen ALL of that in our local pubelick skewels in Santa Cruz, CA and worse. We have group pressure sessions where a student is told to stand in front of an entire assembly of their peers, led by private homosexual activist consulting firms, to explain why they do not accept homosexuality as appropriate behavior. Local schools maintain special rooms with a pink triangle on the door for homosexual "meeting places" (straights are NOT allowed). They sponsor a day of silence to commemorate lesbian and gay suffering. The local university campus maintains facilities for lesbian sex and charges admission on the grounds that they are educational. The local CPS officials operate what constitutes a publicly funded kidnapping ring, where they get $40,000 for early placement of children into adoption. That means they go after white middle class kids on shaky grounds because they are quick to adopt. Grounds for such takings include "educational neglect." Failure to indoctrinate the kids in "tolerance" constitutes such neglect. Evidence of a Bible is indication that the children are being similarly abused because it teaches that homosexuality is sinful.

Meanwhile, at nine, my homeschooled daughter is so FAR beyond the public school product that at nine years old she tested Post High School on 14 of 18 categories. Her sister is not far behind that achievement level. The public schools want to induct homeschoolers in order to raise their miserable test scores to qualify for federal funding.

So if you don't know the law, and don't know that this type of coercive brainwashing is going on, then you are unqualified to make the tacit assertions you have inferred that your agents have any legitimate interest in home school oversight, much less qualification. Keep your nose to your own kids and leave home educators alone.

Ron, do you understand what co-operative learning is?

Actually, no. I'm not familiar with it.

Students check each others papers ,and the managers purposily put one excellerated kid with two middle kids and one slow learning kid.

Heck, when I was a kid we traded math papers and corrected them, or tests where the answers were multiple choice or T/F. But that's all we did. As far as mixing accelerated kids with others, they tried that in our schools, but the parents raised holy hell and it stopped. Our middle school has 3 levels of classes, and the high school has 5.

What is backwards day, and who started it?

Never heard of it. Tell me.

Have you ever wondered why all of the desks are pushed together and everyone sits in groups.

They're not, and they don't. And my Scout Troop meets in the local middle school, so I look into classrooms pretty often. Unless the kids are pushing their seats into rows at the end of every day and then pushing them into groups at the beginning.

Now, they do occasionally work in pairs in the middle school. It's generally all individual work in the high school.

Everything is a class project and kids have to decide who does what. If someone doesn't pull their weight for a group grade... well then they are told to work it out with their neighbor. Group grade don't you know.

My kids have never had an all-class assignment.

I read that section. It wasn't immediately clear to me on to what extent the Regional Superintendent had authority to determine/audit the compliance of parents with the quoted section of law. HDLDA holds that all the parent has to do is state that they are in compliance to the truancy officer, and that's it; they have to take the parent's word for it. If so, then this guy is out of line. I'm just a little surprised that the law is that lax. But that's a different matter.

Illinois law has no statewide testing program

Hm. The public school kids take tests in almost every grade. They alternate between math and English. The results are posted, by school district, in the paper every year, with comparison to state average. And all HS sophmores (or juniors, I forget) have to take the ACT, whether or not they're going to college. But perhaps the private school kids aren't required to take these tests.

I have seen ALL of that in our local pubelick skewels in Santa Cruz, CA and worse.

The statements you make after this sentence are truly shocking. Given such, I don't blame you for pulling your kid out of the local schools. But, I have to ask, where are the local parents in all of this? Who elected the school board? Who negotiated the teacher contracts? Is all of this truly being done against the will of the local parents? If our local school board tried to go along with stuff like this, they'd be out of office at the next election and there'd be parents in the school hallways. But, then, the last time people in our district were dissatisfied with a school principal (she screwed up a school expansion project), the board had turnover at the next election, and the principal was booted a year later when her contract ran out.

I'm having a hard time believing that stuff like this was instituted without the at least tacit approval of a majority of the district residents. What I'm asking is, did all of this happen because of a runaway school board and teacher union and an inattentive public, or is it that most people are going along with this, and you are in a political/sociological minority in the area?

A lot of it is driven by what is cynically dubbed, the "sweetheart lawsuit." Activist group sues complicit government agency, agency and activists make a backroom deal for a consent decree, and a program (such as "teaching tolerance") to end a form of "discrimination" is written in law. It's done in all sorts of fields from environmental law to mandates concerning the disabled.

The school boards here are dominated by the unions who fund the candidates. The districts are so big and bureaucratic that an average person has no hope of understanding the machinations well enough to be effective, much less deal with the full time deals swinging between teachers and administrators, usually former teachers. Then there are the consultants. These are usually teachers who cooked up a cool scam to milk the district by fulfilling said court mandate. They of course work the dark side with the activists to lock in more business.

School district candidates funded by unions? Just how big are the districts?

Illinois has 3 types of districts; elementary districts, operating schools from K-8, High School districts that operate high schools, and unit districts that operate both. There are also community college districts, but that's not our concern here.

Where I live, I'm in separate elementary and high school districts, which is the usual case in the Chicago suburbs. My local High School has about 3500 students. It's one of the biggest high schools in the state; most are much smaller. It's the only high school the district operates. My elementary school district has one school K-5, and another 6-8. I'm going to guess offhand that there's about 700 students (multiple elementary districts feed into the high school district). Again, the elementary district operates only the two schools. This is pretty much the norm for the suburbs. In other districts, you might see the high school district have multiple high schools, but the total population won't be much bigger than ours; just spread out over multiple physical plants. At least with one big HS, you have fewer principals, etc. This means that the school board members are local. I personally know half the local elementary school board. I know one person on the HS board, and know people who know 2 or 3 of the others.

Now, the cities tend to have huge districts, of course. But even in Chicago that is one huge district, each school has an elected supervisory boards with the power to hire/fire principals for each individual school, the boundaries of the boards corresponding with the population boundaries of the school. Chicago schools aren't great yet, but they are definitely improving. Reform is slowly working in Chicago.

Now, I can see where a city might have one big school board. But it sounds like overall California needs to bust up their school districts into a lot more smaller ones. Admin costs might go up some, but it would pay off in much greater local control. And if you destroy the existing districts as legal entities, then the contracts would become invalid and new ones could be negotiated.

If a candidate around here got money or an endorsement from a teachers' union, it would be the kiss of death for their campaign.

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