Rob Reich has finally posted his recommendations for “minimal” homeschool regulations. A quick summary:
In short, these regulations amount to the following:
• The state knows which students are being homeschooled.
• The state insists upon a curriculum that meets minimal academic standards and that introduces students to value pluralism.
• The state tests students periodically to ensure that minimal academic progress is being made.
Read the whole thing.
When even the school cops are being attacked, why would any parent in their right mind allow their kids to attend the g-schools?
Brazil has started fingerprinting American visitors to that country in response to our doing the same to theirs (and a bunch of other countries). Sounds fair to me. Our State Department doesn’t think so:
“We have told the Brazilians that we think that these are measures that provide tremendous inconvenience to travelers and that they need to be changed,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Tuesday.
How whiney can you get? After all, we started it.
In the referrer logs I found links to several Democratic candidates’ (I’m not naming names)official websites. What game are they playing? I’m sure none of them is interested in homeschooling. Any ideas?
This whole debate thing has got me depressed. Let’s change the subject. Yeah! That’s the ticket! Here’s today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, a high res photo of the Mars surface. Way to go NASA!
With Rob Reich espousing libertarian views, I thought it’d be a good time to dust off The World’s Smallest Political Quiz.
BTW- The Great Debate is now open to all. I have a short post there in response to Rob’s latest.
UPDATE: Dave Z has posted his response. After three rounds my scorecard reads 30-3. At least Hitler and Stalin stayed home this time.
From Tim Haas:
According to the Office of Legislative Services, a bill to regulate homeschooling in New Jersey is slated to be introduced in the Assembly on Thursday. Based on the content of the bill, A4033 — which would require assessment testing and evidence of an annual medical exam, as well as give the state DoE the power to draft regulations — it looks as though the Jackson case in Collingswood is the primary impetus.
For more info contact NJHA.
Rob Reich has made his third post in the Great Debate (which so far has not exactly lived up to the name). I’ve only read through it briefly (after all, I do have a job) but, at first glance, it seems quite good and, er, small “L” libertarian. I’ll post a more thorough analysis later. Y’all foot-loose and fancy-free folks who are self-employed feel free to comment below.
I can’t resist blogging this craziness from The Casper (Wyoming) Star-Tribune:
Through Internet searches and library study, Chanah traced her family roots to Amsterdam, where she believes her family was descended from Sephardic Jews.
The connection explained a yearning for Jewish practices Chanah has felt since she was a teenager.
”I was a good Catholic girl drawn to Judaism,” Chanah said.
My grandmother was from Poland. I guess that’s why I like kielbasa.
The principal at Goose Step High has lost his job over the incident. Sort of. He will be re-assigned. No one in the schools ever really gets fired for utter stupidity, you know.
The American Association of Pediatrics is at it again.
In a new policy statement, the academy says doctors should contact superintendents and school board members and “emphasize the notion that every school in every district shares a responsibility for the nutritional health of its students.”
Who needs parents?
Rob Reich and Dave Zitzkat have each posted a second round in the Great Debate (interspersed with a brief comment by Yours Truly regarding Nazis and Godwin’s Law). In the “10 point must system”, I score it 20-0 for Reich. Rob Reich kindly emailed me with a link to his post. Here’s my response as I’m still persona non grata at CHN 🙂
Hi Rob,
[Personal stuff omitted] I had a response all written up this afternoon but CHN’s website “ate” it. I’m sure it would have blown your socks off. 🙂 Actually, the main point I wanted to make was that I think you set up a false dichotomy in your last post. You wanted Dave to avoid “legal” arguments but stick to “political” and “moral” ones. I don’t see how you can separate the legal from the political. Aren’t these just two sides of the same coin? The moral issue is, of course, separate (what is legal is not necessarily moral).
Now arguing on the basis of morality is particularly tricky as it requires an external yardstick. C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity had a really good explanation of this. For many homeschoolers, the yardstick is the Bible. One can easily cite verses that justify homeschooling. But, I don’t think that’s what you were looking for, eh?
All that said, I do concede the state’s interest in an educated, knowledgeable citizenry. I just don’t understand this: “the state has an legitimate interest in trying to convey some basic ideas about citizenship through schoolhouses.” Why just through schoolhouses? There are infinite ways to learn citizenship. Even the federal government, when an immigrant wishes to become a citizen, doesn’t require that s/he take a course in the public schools. S/he just has to demonstrate that the knowledge is there. Is that what you were driving at? Testing homeschoolers to prove they know their stuff?
Not the movie but HR3139.
John Holzmann of Sonlight Curriculum wrote me a very nice email pointing to a post of his about the above bill. I had actually seen his website before and meant to blog it but, er, you know…
Anyway, John has a really good exposition of this federal legislation that will dramatically change the places, times, and jobs our kids can work. Most importantly, the bill seems to mandate that in order for a child under the age of 18 to get a job, she/he would have to get permission from the local public school system.
There is a a horrible new bill before the House of Representatives titled the “Youth Worker Protection Act,” HR3139. If it makes its way through Congress, I believe we’re about to see virtually all students under 18 become wholly unemployable.
Am I overreacting? Consider just a few of the most egregious provisions of the bill:
* Outlaw the use of riding lawn mowers for purposes of earning income by all youths under 18 who have yet to graduate from high school.
* Outlaw the use in an employment context of ladders over 6 feet tall by youths under 18.
* Outlaw any handling of fat used in deep fat fryers–whether the fat is hot or cold, it does not matter–by youths under 18.
* Potentially outlaw the employment of anyone under 18 years old in ANY place of employment where any of the above-mentioned equipment or materials may be located.
* Outlaw all “youth peddling” (i.e., going door-to-door for any sales purpose if you’re under 18 years old) unless selling newspapers or soliciting in behalf of a nonprofit organization).
. . . And so forth.
Read the whole thing.
UPDATE: Wandering around on John’s site I found this:
I’m apparently “strange” for a conservative Christian, but the more I study the issue, the angrier I become: What business does the U.S. federal government have in declaring certain drugs illegal . . . and then seeking to enforce its will by violent means?
There is more good stuff over thing. John is a new blogger. Just go over to the site and read everything.
Here’s Part II of the WA homeschooling series begun yesterday. There appears to be something strange with the way the article got posted as it includes the buline three times for what appear to be three different articles. I have a feeling that the latter two were supposed to be sidebars. Regardless, the main article is quite good and there is some interesting stuff in the “sidebars,” too. WA homeschoolers apparently think they have it pretty good:
There are three ways a parent can become qualified to teach at home. They must have either completed a course in home-based instruction at a post-secondary or vocational-technical institution, have 45 hours of college credit hours or be supervised by a certified teacher.
Parents must also sign a form with the school district that their child would have attended which exempts the district from responsibility of educating that child.
The school district’s only responsibility then becomes to provide access to ancillary services, such as athletics and clubs, to home-schooled students.
While the law does not require home-schooling parents to teach a certain number of hours a day or days in a year, it does require parents to plan and supervise instruction in the following areas: occupational education, science, math, language, social studies, history, health, reading, writing, spelling, and appreciation of art and music.
Parents are also required to give their child a standardized achievement test each year, although the results are only sent back to the parents, left unchecked by the state.
If children are not making academic progress, as shown by a standardized test, parents are required to make a “good faith effort” to bring them up to par.
Otherwise, all decisions about teaching methods, books, timing and place are up to the parents.
Mandatory topics, annual testing, minimum education requirements for the parents- all these sound pretty restrictive to me. Let’s hope WA parents are able to get these changed.
CHN member and sometime H&OES reader Judy Aron pointed to a very positive Boston Univ. alumni magazine article highlighting homeschooling at BU. Judy is rightly proud of her son, who is one of four homeschool grads profiled. The article is well-written and definitely worth a read.
Another WA article. This one is an overview of homeschooling in the state. It’s quite positive and worth a read.
Homeschooling, that is. Here’s a profile of a young homeschool grad who hooked up with Mr. Softee. Several good quotes in here.
“When I was obstinate, my mom would threaten to send me to the public high school,” he joked.
Now that sounds familiar.
T-Mobile put up a 100-foot cell tower on a piece of private property without even notifying the owner. According to the county, this move is legal becasue the pole “replaced” an old-fashioned wooden telephone pole. If the law allows this kind of nonsense, revisions are sorely needed. Here’s the pole:
This is the way to do all day kindergarten:
“If it has breakfast, and nap time, and lunch, and socialization time, and play time, then it’s fine,” [Kathleen Minke, an associate professor of school psychology in the University of Delaware’s School of Education] said.
Stanford Prof. Rob Reich is debating homeschooling attorney Dave Zitzkat on the topic of “The State’s Interest in the Child and Home Schooling.” I was originally expecting to participate but Dave Z wanted to keep it one on one. Here’s my response to Prof. Reich’s first post.
So we have two questions to answer: what justifies government authority over the education of children, if anything? What justifies parental authority over the education of their own children?
I’d like to re-frame Prof. Reich’s questions in terms of rights: Do parents have the right to exercise authority over their children’s education? Under what circumstances can the government interfere with that right? The Supreme Court has held in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U. S. 510 (1925), a case that was directly related to the education of children, that parents do, indeed, have this right under the U.S. Constitution:
“As often heretofore pointed out, rights guaranteed by the Constitution may not be abridged by legislation which has no reasonable relation to some purpose within the competency of the State. The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the State to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”
So, parents are the rightful guardians of their children’s education. When, then, can government step in? This question was settled in another case before the Supreme Court, Wisconsin v. Yoder 406 U.S. 205 (1972), in which the Court held that “[t]he State’s interest in universal education is not totally free from a balancing process when it impinges on other fundamental rights, such as those specifically protected by the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment and the traditional interest of parents with respect to the religious upbringing of their children.” What right could be more fundamental than the right to raise children as described in Pierce.
Interestingly, Prof. Reich’s argument echoes the dissent by Justice Douglas, a dissent that was joined by no other justice:
“It is the future of the student, not the future of the parents, that is imperiled by today’s decision. If a parent keeps his child out of school beyond the grade school, then the child will be forever barred from entry into the new and amazing world of diversity that we have today. The child may decide that that is the preferred course, or he may rebel. It is the student’s judgment, not his parents’, that is essential if we are to give full meaning to what we have said about the Bill of Rights and of the right of students to be masters of their own destiny. [citation omitted] If he is harnessed to the Amish way of life [citations omitted] by those in authority over him and if his education is truncated, his entire life may be stunted and deformed. The child, therefore, should be given an opportunity to be heard before the State gives the exemption which we honor today. “
I think it is important to note that the children being discussed in Yoder were 17 years old, so they could reasonably be expected to express their own desires. Nowhere did Justice Douglas suggest that the government make the decision for them.
So, parents have the right to direct their children’s education and the state cannot interfere absent a “compelling interest” and then only in the least restrictive manner. What, then, is the government’s interest in education? John Taylor Gatto has written that “[t]raditional forms of instruction in America, even before the Revolution, had three specific purposes:
1. To make good people
2. To make good citizens
3. And to make each student find some particular talents to develop to the maximum. “Is there any evidence that homeschooling parents, even in their relatively unregulated current state, are failing to accomplish these three goals? The burden of proof falls on Prof. Reich and the government.
A columnist in my hometown of Greenville, SC (yes, I share a home state with Kimberly Swygert) has all sorts of ideas for cutting the cost of public education, which he differentiates from the “government schools.”
Another idea for reducing taxpayer burden while keeping funding approximately the same is to tap the vast untapped resource that is parents of these kids in school. Parents care about their kids’ education. Many parents are paying out-of-pocket for private education. Many, if not most, parents who are pleased with public school services would be proud to pay for the service. Will they demand value for their money, of course. In our country, the demand for value and high expectations is what yields excellence. In the case of education, excellence is for the children.
He can’t quite force himself to call for the separation of school and state, but he’s headed in that direction. Somebody introduce him to Marshall Fritz, ok?
Dumb: The video game “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City” including the line “Kill the Haitians.”
Dumber: A Haitian civil rights group suing the game maker for “damages.”
USA Today has an editorial on the irrationality of ZT polices.
Schools that use common-sense penalties can promote good behavior and school safety without resorting to armed drug raids or suspensions for doodling.
As many as 11 states are considering rejecting federal education funds in order to exempt themselves from the requirements of NCLB, according to the New York Times. In my view, this is actually good news, as it could eventually lead to the de-federalization of public education. The Times doesn’t quite get it, though:
Few districts across the nation could afford to give up federal aid, which in large urban districts amounts to tens of millions.
Where do they think the money came from originally? If it weren’t for the federal budget deficit (which the states typically cannot emulate), federal education dollars would just be a big example of moving money from one pocket to another. I’d love to see all 50 states reject the “aid.” What would the Dept. of Education do then?
