Or so claims the Lincoln Journal Star, anyway. I was going to step through the argument one point at a time to see if I could address them, but I never really found an argument to address. In fact, of all the statements made, I found more against testing than I did for it. A summary of quotes taken directly from the entry:
Arguments Against Testing:
- Approval of the bill would mean a huge change in home schooling laws in Nebraska.
- It sets up a system of state intervention.
- The dramatic change in the status quo seems unnecessarily onerous.
- The bill would even require that parents pay for the state testing.
Arguments For Testing:
- As Schimek says, there is little evidence on how well children are being educated in home schools.
Am I wrong in saying that once you take out the filler information and focus solely on the case being built, that there really is nothing persuasive about the need for testing? One statement supports testing. One made by the author of the bill, who also happens to be the wife of the Nebraska State Education Association’s government relations person. After twenty years serving in the Nebraska legislature, I do not think it is inconsequential that this bill comes up in her final year of office before term limits force her retirement.
After 315 words which serve only to provide a summary of the LB 1141, a brief history of Nebraska’s negative history regarding homeschool liberties and offering no convincing evidence of the need for testing, the LJS offers a compromise.
A more reasonable approach would be to establish a simple requirement of annual testing and leave it at that. The test results could provide some benefit to students and parents by identifying problems that need to be addressed. The tests could offer some assurance to the rest of society that no home school students are slipping through the cracks.
I’m sorry, but I remain unconvinced. No need for annual testing has been established. Schimek’s assertion is not much of an argument. And what evidence does exist points to homeschooling as an excellent educational alternative. The test results are not going to provide me with any information I do not already know. I assess my children regularly. Sometimes even formally. I do not need the state’s assistance to identify my children’s strengths and weakness.
And why do I need to assure “society” of anything if I have done nothing to arouse suspicion? Schimek has the “distinct impression” that there is “nothing about her bill that [we] are willing to accept.” At least she has that much right.
This bill represents a drastic overstepping of the state’s boundaries, with no promise of real benefit to anyone while it infringes upon the rights of families who have done nothing to even arouse suspicion. I feel no need to compromise on this one. Current law is satisfactory to serve the purposes intended.
Testing homeschool students does not have merit.
______
For more information on LB 1141, you can click on the category LB 1141 and find everything I have written so far.
[tags]homeschool, home school, LB 1141, Schimek[/tags]
Principled Discovery is a place to stop and discuss news and information related to faith, family and particularly education. Pour yourself a cup of tea and join the conversation! 
Good luck defeating the Bill. SB2271 that would have required testing of MS homeschoolers died in committee.
“The tests could offer some assurance to the rest of society that no home school students are slipping through the cracks.”
What are they offering the homeschoolers to assure us that no public school students are slipping through the cracks.
a. I’ve seen some of their test scores. Not pretty.
b.I worked as a remediation tutor in Louisiana one year for students who had failed their fourth grade exam. I had to back track to first grade level for some of them. Not pretty.
c. Show me the normative information for any standardized test that actually claims to be for what the school districts use it for. Not likely.
I did it again. No question mark for my interrogative sentence. Maybe standardized testing would help:?
[If state officials decided that a progress has been unsatisfactory, they could require the child to be sent to an accredited school.] What if this applied to children edcucated in public schools?
Minnesota does require testing, but what LB 1411 requires surpasses our requirements. We have to test once a year, but there isn’t an approved list of tests. I have tested Marissa at home using the CAT 1970 (available from Christian Liberty Academy) since we started homeschooling. It costs $20. The results come to me; the person who paid for the test. The law says that I have to have Marissa evaluated for a learning problem is she scores in less than the 30 percentile. I already know Marissa has a learning problem, so the test is a check box item we do on the first day of school… Does anyone really think parents don’t know their children aren’t learning unless they have a test to show them that they aren’t?
I sure hope this doesn’t pass ~
Institutional education people totally do not understand homeschooling because the model they use to educate is almost entirely different than a homeschooler’s. A classroom is nothing like the tutorial environment of a homeschool. Testing needs to happen in the institutional environment because there are too many students for a teacher to really be able to assess one-on-one, but this is not so in a tutorial environment.
Thanks for following this issue so closely!
“But it’s for the kids”,
Here’s where Schimek takes out the hanky and places a few crocodile tears into it, “it’s ‘blah wahh’ for the ‘cry sniffle’ the kids ‘tears pouring out’”
Oh okay, that’s a good argument, go ahead destroy our liberties, step on our freedoms, abolish our inalienable rights.
My suspicion is it is not for the kids though. Can you say NEA payback fill my pockets with money and power greedy time?
P.S.
I propose an inquest/investigation into the relationship between NEA and this bill. Me suggests there might be something fishy going on. Got to make sure there responsible to society and all.
After reading the comments at the LSJ, some folks obviously haven’t thought this through. If we can enact any legislation that ‘benefits’ children and therefore society, the state can come in and make all kinds of demands.
How about we have all homes begin a program of healthy living, based on studies regarding childhood obesity and the ‘dangers’ of violent tv and video games, with parents filing menu plans and paying for annual checkups at the Dr.’s office to ‘prove’ they are acting in the best interests of their children.
After all, if they are doing right, what do they have to hide?
And out taxes go toward paying for health care, right? So why not have people accountable to the state for their lifestyles choices?
Yeah- it’s all fun and games until the gov’t is in YOUR kitchen.
I tend to be of the belief that all of those once a year tests to see where our students stand are faulty… especially the tests given to the older students.
It is my experience that most high school students have figured out that the tests scores play no part in their grades (here in our District anyways) and they really couldn’t care less how the school ranks. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of concern beyond their own “finishing and getting out” mentality. I can’t really fault them their.
Now the proficiency test in math and writing and the exit exams the kids must pass in order to graduate (California) will honestly be work at as these do affect them.
So I see no sense to standardized testing at all… I think testing has outlived its purpose; it may have served a purpose at one time in our educational history, but life is little affected by students public school test scores these days… and the kids know this.
I wanted to add that it would be my guess that HSed students taking these tests would make an effort compared to their public schooled counterparts.
And yes, I realize I did not touch on the whole legislative issue you were making… sorry. I just think testing is pointless for ALL students–homeschooled or public schooled, and therefore think any such legislation is a waste of time, money, and resources… not to mention any liberties that may be infringed upon in the whole scheme of things.
No, it doesn’t have merit and the teacher’s union agrees with that. (Unless their hypocrisy shows..)
Would this help, Dana? It was posted on the NEA site December 7.
NEA President Reg Weaver Encouraged by Move Toward Better NCLB Accountability Model
Weaver reminds Bush administration that children are more than standardized test scores
“Although this is promising news for educators who have been calling on the Bush administration to treat children as more than standardized test scores, we urge the administration to look beyond NCLB and AYP—and testing, labeling and punishing—and get serious about reducing class sizes, increasing the number of highly qualified teachers, and providing educators with the tools and resources to prepare children to succeed in the real world.
Looking beyond NCLB and AYP, homeschooled kids can be exempt from the testing, labeling and punishing by strangers while those who love them best guide them. Homeschoolers have wonderfully reduced class sizes along with unlimited resources and tools to use while living and learning in the real world.
What more can a society that truly values learning want?
The NEA? Hypocrisy? Never! Actually, they have a lot of arguments against the use of testing as any sort of sorting for students or teachers. Because it isn’t good for teachers.
Actually, if we all had to pay dues to the NEA, I bet they’d change a lot of their public policies. Maybe we should scrap HSLDA and all take up membership in the NEA. After all, we are teachers, too.
Just sounds like another way for someone to get money. We already pay taxes that support gov’t schools that we DO NOT use, why try to enforce that we give more? If they’re going to force tesintg they should NOT demand payment since we already pay taxes. But to force testing requires that parents force the gov’t on our children. Our children are not born to serve our gov’t, they have NO right to suggest so by forcing them to comply to their standard.
I’m not raising my children to be able to compete with other countries for advancement of technology. The gov’t and schools need to stay out of our families lives. They’ve done enough damage to our nations children.
by the way, Happy Birthday Dana!
I agree what will testing accomplish?
What do the schools do when schooled children don’t fare well on testing? They keep on doing the ’same old same old’. Individual children who don’t do well compared to their peers are not then given special help. Special education and struggling learners are identified, tested, and labeled via other means.
I have many reasons to be against standardized testing for homeschoolers after having one of my sons tested recently with a battery of tests, all of which contradicted each other and gave different results. It is very scary because I don’t know what to believe is accurate or inaccurate. I have so much to say about it I have not yet blogged my experience with that.
Anyhow my issue with testing homeschoolers is that homeschoolers should not be held to a higher standard than schooled students. Schooled kids fall through the cracks all the time but it seems the public wants homeshcoolers to have no gaps or to not even be ‘average kids’–they look for all Rhodes Scholars which is ridiculous.
OH! I LOVE the idea of joining the NEA! Wouldn’t that be hysterical?! How many homeschoolers are there now, about 2 million? Can you imagine what would happen if 20% of the parents of those kid joined the NEA?? Can you imagine what would happen?
I often wonder about what other people have said. Why doesn’t the public school system worry about their own kids who are failing ~with~ the testing!
Good post, Dana, even though the bill doesn’t exactly apply to me.
Oops! I didn’t mean to repeat myself. But really, can you imagine?
OK- jsut read this article http://www.texaspolicy.com/commentaries_single.php?report_id=1746
In 2007, a school could be rated “Academically Acceptable” with only 40 percent of students passing science and 45 percent of students passing math. Surely, parents and taxpayers would not consider more than half of Texas school children failing core subjects like math and science as “acceptable.”
Yet, more than half of Texas public schools and three fourths of Texas school districts were rated “Academically Acceptable,” according to the Texas Education Agency.
Residents across the state may be shocked to discover that many of their local schools are not doing a good job teaching the basics, especially in math and science. For example, in Arlington, a mere 53 percent of Morton Elementary School students passed science; 45 percent of Roquemore Elementary students passed science while 56 percent passed math; and only 49 percent of Sam Houston High School students passed science while 57 percent passed math.
In the Austin area, only 47 percent of students passed science at Manor ISD’s Decker Elementary, while 57 percent of students passed math. In nearby Del Valle, only 61 percent of high school students passed science and 52 percent of students passed math.
Residents in Houston’s Alief school district might be surprised to learn that bare majorities of Elsik High School students passed science and math, while only 57 percent of Hastings High School students passed science and a scant 54 percent passed math.
Astonishingly, the state deemed all of these schools “Academically Acceptable.”
I know this bill is in NE, but I suspect that many school’s numbers are high for the same reason as in TX- the standards are so low that a centipede with 99 broken legs could measure up.
So how does the system and standardized testing benefit kids again? ‘Cause I done forgetted.
My statements still stands–none of these tests really matter when students don’t even try or take them seriously.
What difference does it matter where/how the child is schooled? Why can’t the politicians see this? Testing is pointless for the purposes it is intended.
In Texas, these are high stakes tests. The child doesn’t pass if he fails them. Children get sick before them and all year in the classroom you here, “Will this be on the TAAS?” They aren’t quite like the tests I took in school which had not bearing on anything but that little score we got at the end of the year.
So true.
1. Parents don’t need the state requiring them to test their students to know where they stand. We either know, or we will test on our own if, when and where we deem it necessary. We (unlike others?) don’t need the state to tell us what to do in order do it.
2. What evidence are we given that no ps child is falling through the cracks. As a part of society, I really need that assurance. I would never send my child somewhere where they hadn’t presented proof that no one ever fell through the cracks. (sarcasticly said - well just the part about me needing assurance about other’s children)
3. Many of our children do take test that prove they have not fallen through the cracks. They are called the ACT and SAT. And we’ve proven that our students do very well on them. (I told our senator that one.)
Alassandra - glad to hear MS’s died in committee..
Thanks for your submission to the Homeschool Carnival. You can find your post at http://ericnovak.com/?p=145
Eric Novak