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Wow, it was it refreshing to find I am not totally alone in my views on this article. This was posted on another thread (not the one linked in post #3), but since I have not yet mastered doing links, I will simply say that I was being flamed as the only one who considered that state testing of homeschoolers was reasonable.

On that thread, I stated my admiration for homeschoolers for the immense sacrifices they have made (my sister homeschools, so I know that it requires a tremendous amount of effort).

Most current homeschoolers are very devoted to their commitments, and their children excell far beyond our contemptible public education.

But if this family is allowed to thumb their nose to state testing, then I see this as setting a precedent for all the lazy, low-life project mentality parents to "claim" that they are homeschooling their children. And they would no longer have to prove it. Then, as one of you stated, these children will grow up and be turned loose on society.

I just wish I knew how to do a link so that you guys could peruse the other thread and help me out. But alas, I've just now learned how to cut and paste, but the instructions I've been given on doing links still baffle me.)

But if this family is allowed to thumb their nose to state testing, then I see this as setting a precedent for all the lazy, low-life project mentality parents to "claim" that they are homeschooling their children.

Punish one for the good of the many. That's the spirit! Another statist!

You wrote

"But if this family is allowed to thumb their nose to state testing, then I see this as setting a precedent for all the lazy, low-life project mentality parents to "claim" that they are homeschooling their children. And they would no longer have to prove it. Then, as one of you stated, these children will grow up and be turned loose on society."

Our founding fathers understood that God gave inalienable rights to people that legitimate governments are intended to protect and preserve (life, liberty, and "pursuit of happiness" [which was a change from the earlier "right" of property]). God did not give the responsibility of education to the state, but to parents, and for the state to assume it is a usurpation of power.

Even "low-life project mentality parents" usually want something better for their kids than they have, but even if they don't, should they be forced to surrender their parental responsibility to the state. If the kids grow up uneducated and are turned loose on society, there are legitimate remedies for their "criminal activity." If they are merely poor and choose not to better themselves, don't they have the right to be so?

If I have to prove my kid can perform at a certain level that the "state" determines, then I exist for the state, and not the state for me.

On a practical note, here in San Francisco, I see the housing project kids have their needs routinely ignored while homeschoolers have been repeatedly told by the state that their activities are illegal. I have been lied to for several years in a row by my school district, but it now looks as if the climate is becoming more favorable for homeschooling, due to the diligence of homeschoolers and their willingness to withstand the state's incursion into their area of parental rights.

On Memorial Day I attended a picnic where a young teacher (in her 20's) related she is in charge of a class of twenty housing project kids (usually alone, but occasionally she has an aide) which includes two kids who are autistic (since the state now feels it is not good to stigmatize and separate special needs kids).

Do you think these kids are getting an adequate education by the state?

I'm curious, given your pro-testing position, how do you feel about the testing thus giving the state control over what and when the children are taught, in order that they be able to pass the tests, rather than the parents having control? Isn't that one of the great values of homeschooling? It seems as though this issue continues to be completely ignored by many in the discussion.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/930324/posts

The David Limbaugh column posted in the above thread comments on this issue.

If they were lazy parents, they would not go through all the efforts of telling the gov't that they are home schooling their kids, they would just shove them out the door to pubic skoos and tell them they don't want to here about your skoo dai.