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Fighting for the right to home-school

“I got my head handed to me,” said Republican Sen. Peter Mills of Somerset County.

He is speaking of a battle over proposed legislation, but not a battle with big business or activists interested in a hot-button political issue. Mills is talking about going toe-to-toe with Maine’s home-schoolers.

“I tapped into a mentality that was foreign to me,” he said.

Mills had proposed a bill that would require all home-school students to take the Maine Educational Assessment standardized tests. Supporters of home-schooling showed up in force at public hearings in Augusta to speak against the proposal, Mills said. The bill was killed, lacking committee support.

“They were very well-organized,” Mills said.

He described the scene as children playing on the floor and hundreds of people turning out to speak against the bill.

Kathy Green, who co-founded the nonprofit home-school support organization “Homeschoolers of Maine,” argues that requiring the standardized tests would force parents to teach the public school curriculum.

“That defeats the purpose of home-schooling if you impose arbitrary standards,” she said.

She quotes studies from the National Home Education Research Institute that claim home-schoolers do better on achievement tests than students in public schools.

However, the Maine Department of Education has no data concerning how well home-schoolers perform compared to public school students. In addition, it reports that there is no data showing how many or what percentage of home-schoolers go on to college or other higher education.

“My concern is that these kids are in a lock box,” Mills said. “There isn’t any realistic accountability, only anecdotal evidence of home-schoolers doing well. There is some unknown number of kids out of school for peculiar reasons that don’t have to do with the best interests of the children. … We are abandoning the idea of compulsory education.”

Mills said he sees the home-schoolers as having a lobby and power. Green said her organization is not a lobby, though it does have a legislative analyst.

“We as a society have an interest in distinguishing those who are home-schooling successfully with those who are not,” Mills said.

He said the legislature and the education department do not want to deal with the issue.

“Once you impose standards, you are not free to come up with your own curriculum,” Green argued. “That puts us back to where we started. Parents need freedom to develop the best course for their children. Regulation burdens parents and the state and does nothing to improve education.”

Mills’ MEA bill was only one of many battles won by home-school advocates over the years, and the state has steadily moved toward less and less regulation of home instruction. Home-school organizations, however, remain vigilant and ready to take up the fight should it return to the legislature.

Home-schooling emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s, especially among Christians.

In his book, “Home School Heroes,” Christopher Klicka described the situation:

“In the late 1970s, American families began to become disgruntled with the public school system. The statistics and information concerning the downward trend of public education was trickling out to the people. Christian parents, in particular, were becoming disenchanted with this system of education that was actively working against their interests and convictions.”

Home-schooling was seen as an alternative.

Edwin Kastuck of the Maine Department of Education explains how the laws regulating home-schooling have changed over the years.

The old rule was “Equivalent Instruction,” according to Kastuck. He said parents used to have to demonstrate to the local school board that they were providing the equivalent of the education students would receive in public schools.

Kathi Kearney, a member of the board of “Homeschoolers of Maine,” called that system “craziness.” Kearney serves as a “legislative analyst” for “Homeschoolers of Maine,” watching every piece of proposed Maine legislation to make sure nothing adversely impacts home-schoolers.

“Each school board was making its own rules,” she said. “There were no state standards. Home-schoolers would present their whole curriculum to the school board and take time only to have the school boards vote them down saying, ‘We don’t believe in home-schooling.’”

She added that it could be embarrassing because under that system home-school parents had to present all of their personal educational information including children’s I.Q. scores in an open public meeting.

In 1991, it changed so that parents were required to apply to the Maine Department of Education rather than local school boards for approval, according to Kastuck.

This created a new set of headaches, for the state this time rather than the home-schoolers. The state didn’t have the staff or the time to evaluate every home-school application, especially as the number of home-schoolers began to increase, going from six in 1981 to nearly 5,000 today.

Green said the education department didn’t have the staff to analyze the applications.

“It wasn’t making any difference anyway,” she said.

She argues that highly regulated states are not performing any better than nonregulated states. The only research she has to back this claim is from the National Home Education Research Institute, a group that supports home-schooling.

In the mid-1990s the rules changed again so that all that was required was for home-schoolers to fill out the application correctly, Kastuck said. There was no longer an approval process at the state level. Anyone was allowed to home-school.

Finally, in 2003, the rules were changed to what they are today. Home-schoolers are required to send a “notice of intent” rather than an application. This notice is filed with the Maine Commissioner of Education and local school superintendent.

Under the law, the parents must include the name and age of the student and agree to provide at least 175 days of instruction annually including English, math, science, social studies, physical education, health, library skills, arts and Maine studies. At one grade level from 7 to 12, computer proficiency is required.

The law also requires home-school parents to send in an annual assessment of the student’s academic progress, which can be accomplished one of several ways including a standardized achievement test, a test developed by the local school district, or review of the student’s progress by anyone with a Maine teacher’s certificate.

The law also allows, “a review and acceptance of the student’s progress based on, but not limited to, a presentation of an educational portfolio of the student to a local area home-schooling support group whose membership for this purpose includes a currently certified Maine teacher or administrator.”

cont'd

Most home-schoolers either get a letter from a certified teacher they know or provide a portfolio.

“It says that there’s an assessment, but there’s no standard of achievement for home-schooling, no standard you had to demonstrate or level of performance,” Kastuck said.

“Most teachers’ letters of assessment simply say, ‘I reviewed Johnny’s portfolio and he had a successful year,’” Kastuck said.

He said the state does not send out a letter of completion or any kind of credits or notice of course completion or diploma.

“The second year, they send a letter to the state and they are supposed to staple the assessment to the letter,” he said. “If you send it in without the assessment, I send it back to you, saying you need the assessment.”

He said there’s no monitoring of home-schooling and no regulating going on.

“You notify the superintendent and the state that you are home-schooling to avoid truancy,” he said.

“The Department [of Education] recognizes the right to home-school,” Kastuck said.

“What we have now is a good compromise between highly regulated and not regulated at all,” Kearney said. “We are more regulated than many states.”

Kastuck said State Senator Carol Weston, R-Montville, led the charge in the legislature to change from an application to a simple notice.

Weston said the rules were changing from year to year, and she thought it should be put into statute so the education department couldn’t always change the rules based on the “blowing of the wind.”

“Home-schoolers were required to give a year’s worth of lesson plans in advance, and the department couldn’t read the material they were requiring,” Weston said.

“We streamlined notification for parents and the department,” she said.

She said the assessments were important.

“We needed accountability,” she said. “We needed to know they were being educated. It was a simplification of the process.”

Weston home-schooled her own children in Kindergarten and first grade.

“I wanted to delay institutionalized life for my children,” she said. “I wanted to teach them to read.” She majored in elementary education in college.

“There are some home-schoolers who are not providing the best education,” she said. “That’s probably true. But there’s a range in schools as well. Every classroom isn’t the best classroom, just because we’re human.”

SAD 56 Superintendent Mary Szwec said she thinks there should be more guidelines and rules ensuring accountability of home-school parents.

She said her concern is that young people learn a great deal in their first few years, and if they do not receive the education they need at that critical time a gap can widen between them and their peers. In addition, she said that if educators in public schools are held accountable for the education they provide, she would hope others would be held accountable as well.

Szwec was also concerned that if the rules changed down the road and public schools were asked to absorb back the students who have been home-schooled, would those students meet the standards?

Kastuck said the applications that home-schoolers used to file had more information than the notices required now, so it is impossible for the state to break down the numbers of home-schoolers by county and school district as it did in the past.

“We can’t really track it,” he said. “We just have totals.”

“It doesn’t appear to be an impediment to getting into college,” Kastuck said. “Many home-schoolers are attending college.” (See related sidebar).

He said home-schoolers often get a General Equivalency Degree (GED) to help in applying to colleges.

However, he said the state has no data to show how many home-schoolers go on to college or what percentage of them go on to higher education.

He said home-schoolers do not want data collected about what they do as adults because they are worried it would limit home-schooling.

Green home-schooled her four daughters. She said three have bachelor’s degrees now.

“Home-schooling is a very difficult, exhausting process,” Kastuck said. “… I respect their right and wish them luck.”

In the early years of the home-schooling movement, it was more difficult. Kearney said textbook publishers refused to sell books to home-schoolers, afraid the trend would hurt the Christian school movement and sales to Christian schools. In addition, public schools would not allow home-schoolers to use their materials.

She remembers scrounging for materials.

“We set up a lending library after buying old and used textbooks from Marden’s,” she said.

Home-schoolers could not participate in sports teams or take the occasional class in the old days.

All of that has changed. Home-schoolers now have total access to any school facility, activity or class. Many booksellers provide materials for home instruction and more materials are widely available on the Internet.

“Homeschoolers of Maine” provides education, support, annual conventions, workshops and legislative oversight. It works with 1,000 parents/students per year. It is a nonprofit funded through donations, newsletter subscriptions and convention fees. The organization operates the “Heart of Home Bookstore” on Hatchet Mountain Road in Hope, providing materials for home-schooling and has its offices there.

Green summed up her opinion of public education saying, “It’s there because we want all children educated, but that doesn’t mean all children have to be educated there.”

Many more politicians need to be handed their heads in this manner.

There is no doubt in my mind that many Christians are pulling their children out of public schools. Many more are considering pulling their children out and might be giving the public schools one last chance to clean up their acts.

It's certain that public schools are being drug down into the gutter by special interest groups. If this continues, there will come a point when all real Christians will "just say NO" to public schools. In fact, there are many people other than Christians who will "just say NO" to what's being attempted and done in many public schools. Lots of people with no religion at all won't permit what's being tried in many public schools. It's also true that people of other religions are opposed to forcing perversion on our children. So, it's a matter of time before the public schools will either change many of their agendas or be looking at nearly empty classrooms. I personally feel that they will be looking at nearly empty classrooms, and that will be just fine. The next move will be for masses of people to stop paying taxes earmarked for schools they won't be using, and many of the public schools will close. Sooner or later the message will be heard and understood that we won't allow perversion to be forced on our children. There isn't much doubt that the message has already been heard, but they don't think we will withdraw our children.

In other words, they don't understand the message yet - BUT THEY WILL!

The number of home schooled children is increasing just in the last few years. Corpus Christi just held a graduation ceremony that included 19 home schooled children. Just last year the number was only 8. Nation wide there was between 10,000 to 20,000 just 20 yrs ago. Today it is estimated that there are between 1.3 to 2 million children that are being home schooled and that number is on a rapid incline.

There are many bills being introduced to make it harder to homeschool our children and some that have plans of introducing bills that would prevent it altogether.

Hillary Clinton has plans of introducing a bill making it mandatory for states to provide preschooling for 4 yr olds. She has also made statements in a book of hers that it takes the government to teach a child not the parents. With all this taking place we will see mandatory government indoctrination of our children before long if people do not do as this group did.

 ;D

If Hillary gets involved, that will speed up the emptying of public schools considerably.

They won't be able to turn the public schools into forced concentration camps, and anyone with any sense should know that. We can and will say NO to teaching that violates Biblical teachings, common decency, morals, and values that we are allowed to have in a free country. They can whistle "Dixie" if they want to, but the audience might be very small.

There's nothing that they can do to force this kind of education, and they should already know this as a fact. This is NOT Constitutional and any attempt to imprison someone for exercising their rights under the Constitution will find themselves imprisoned instead. When the time comes, the answer will be NO, and any forced attempt on their part to shove perversion education down the throats of our children will be futile. Any new laws that are created to help this forced attempt will also be Unconstitutional, and they already know that also. Any attempt to force this will be a bad mistake, and I'm sure there is plenty of space for them behind bars. All it will take is the first groups of parents standing up and saying "NO!" They might even spend a few days in jail, but the wages would be great! Who knows - maybe several groups of parents might be required to stand up, and I think there are plenty out there who will.

The only other option they have is an iron-clad opt-out option for the perversion training and other like issues. The ACLU and like groups are beginning to find out that they can't do what they want to any longer because people are finally standing up and saying "NO!" There are lessons for other entities to learn, and the education is pretty swift when people finally stand up determined and say "NO!" If need be, we can make the lessons very expensive and get their attention more quickly. Bluntly - they can't hold our children hostage in a free country and brainwash them with filth! Nazi Germany did, but that won't work here. Our Christian Legal Organizations would have an EASY WIN with this one without even breaking a sweat.

I guess they could try a dictatorship and putting the entire country under martial law, but the people won't put up with that either. This would be accepted almost as quickly as concentration camps for our children. In other words, they are back to whistling "Dixie" without an audience. HILLARY - are you listening?   ;D

I think that they need to go whistle "Dixie". They would be much better at it than they are doing what they are now.

It does appear that they are trying to set up a dictatorship type government. You are right that it would cause a really big uprising of many people. It reminds me of the verses in Mat and Mark.

Mar 13:12  Now the brother shall betray the brother to death, and the father the son; and children shall rise up against their parents, and shall cause them to be put to death.

I do believe that this type of chaos is coming soon, perhaps sooner than we may think.