NC UPDATE
Here are the relevant bits. My commentary interspersed:
Findings #5
• According to the Department of Non-Public Instruction’s web site, Lynn Paddock had a registered home school, Benjamin Street School.
First off, the Department of Non-Public Instruction doesn’t even exist. It’s the Division of Non-Public Education. Nit-picky, perhaps. But it really doesn’t bode well for their understanding of home education.
• The Department of Non-Public Instruction is unable to make site visits to monitor and support home schools’ compliance with state policy due to limited funding and oversight resources.
This is thankfully true.
• Home schooling may contribute to social isolation if children are not involved in outside activities and adoptive parents are not utilizing post adoptive services.
Sure. If you lock your kids up in cages, they may feel isolated. But how many homeschoolers do that?
[snip]
Recommendations #5:
• The Department of Non-Public Instruction should conduct a study regarding a Needs Assessment and pursue funding to support increased monitoring and oversight to home schools.
This is the heart of the matter, and the task force again show their ignorance of the law. DNPE (not DNPI) has no authority to monitor homeschooling beyond inspecting our testing records, which are only open for review for a period of “one year after the testing.”
• The State Fatality Review Team supports the continued efforts of the Division of Social Services in regard to the gathering of statistics related to specific school situations in child protective services.
This one is really beyond our ability to control. Besides, the MSM make sure that everyone knows when a homeschooling family is involved.
• The State Fatality Review Team recommends that the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner begin to track school status at the time of death and make available this information on a yearly basis to the North Carolina Child Fatality Task Force and the state-level North Carolina Child Fatality Prevention Team.
Again, these data are already widely dispersed. There’s really not a whole lot to say about the State gathering data.
7 Responses to “NC UPDATE”
 Comment by Nance Confer June 17th, 2008 at 6:13 pm |
How often do you people need to go through this? nhen.o...id=421 Nance |
 Comment by Daryl Cobranchi June 17th, 2008 at 8:11 pm |
State law mandates that the child Fatality Task Force issue an annual report. They also issue reports, like this one, in individual deaths. |
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Comment by Nance Confer June 17th, 2008 at 8:23 pm |
Do they have to rehash the same issues every time? 🙂 Nance |
 Comment by JJ Ross June 17th, 2008 at 9:32 pm |
Nance, It’s because we can’t do anything else. We feel helpless as a society so we use government reports and stupid legislation to try to seem like we’re doing something. That was the genius of the NHEN approach, that it offered specific positive actions the government could consider and actually make work FOR homeschooling, to mitigate isolation and other abuse risk factors better than — certainly no worse than! — regulation. I bet we could think of other positive approaches that might, just might even help detect delusional parents needing professional interventions themselves, as well or better than threats and stupid regulatory school rules that do no one any good except the government folks let off the guilt hook by passing and enforcing them. |
 Comment by Alasandra June 17th, 2008 at 9:33 pm |
What I want to know is WHY when a public school student is killed at the hands of his/her parents a big deal is not made out of the fact the kid attended public school? |
 Comment by don June 17th, 2008 at 10:18 pm |
Not much to comment on here that hasn’t already been said, but I will leave you with this thought: “The State Fatality Review Team supports the continued efforts of the Division of Social Services in regard to the gathering of statistics related to specific school situations in child protective services.” If the Dept. of Social Services was able to gather statistics on school situations in CPS cases, I think it would just demonstrate what we’ve said all along; that abuse is no more prevalent among homeschooled kids than among public school kids (and very likely less prevalent). |
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Comment by Nance Confer June 18th, 2008 at 7:21 am |
And you know they have that info in the files and it would just be a matter of adding things up. But that would involve numbers and logic, Don. Things we are apparently incapable of using and remembering. It reminds me of the argument I heard on the news last night that Obama can’t continue to explain his position on the treatment of terrorist suspects with any sort of nuance because we are all too stupid to understand anything but fear. Carry on, NC! Nance |