Updates at the end.
Our nation’s capitol has some of the most lenient homeschool laws in the country, requiring only notification with a form that is now available online. In the wake of the Banita Jacks case, however, Mayor Fenty vowed to institute a tracking system to keep track of all homeschooled or transfer students. Now the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) and the State Board of Education have submitted a proposal to establish procedural rules to establish a Homeschooling Program in the District of Columbia which goes a little beyond just tracking children. It also will place significantly more restrictions on homeschooling in the District. The proposal was posted February 29, the public hearing took place March fifth and the public comment period is thirty days (I assume from February 29). Some of what homeschoolers in the D.C. area may have to look forward to:
- The Office of the State Superintendent of Education will establish a Homeschooling Office within the District of Columbia to administer and implement the District of Columbia’s Home Schooling Program.
- Written notification will be required, which indicates consent with all the policies in the regulation and must be turned in 15 days prior to beginning homeschooling.
- Documentation including attendance, hours of instruction, materials used and student work must be kept and submitted for review up to three times per year.
- Parents must also prove their children are vaccinated.
- The OSSE will notify the parent of any deficiencies and the family will develop a plan for remediation, correcting all deficiencies within thirty days. (This is more forgiving than the text of Senator Schimek’s bill here in Nebraska.) If the plan is not met, the parent will receive a letter and have 14 days to prove attendance in a public or private school.
- Children may participate in standardized testing in their home district at the parent’s request. (I actually don’t object to this, except that I doubt it will be long before that “may” becomes a “shall.”)
The purpose of all this is to “assist school authorities in fulfilling their responsibility under the District of Columbia’s school attendance and reporting requirements.” Oh yes. And to determine “that a child participating in a home schooling program is receiving regular, thorough instruction during the school year in the studies usually taught in the public schools to children of the same age.”
I wonder now how many states are granting homeschool liberties through this sort of gray area of what rules and procedures the respective State Boards of Education choose to adopt. Would specific legislation have been better? That obviously also has drawbacks, because legislation rarely passes in the same form it is introduced. Still, with the case in California, these abuse cases and the legislation that has been introduced in a number of states, the public debate has begun. It likely will die down after a few months, as America’s attention span is historically short. Besides, we have a presidency to fill. In the meantime, however, how can we best engage in the debate? After all, our ability to homeschool free from unnecessary limitations and monitoring of the state really rests in public opinion.
Home Education Magazine also has collected quite a lot of information.
Update: According to an HSLDA alert, homeschoolers broke attendance records for the public meeting on March fifth. The board is debating a time frame and a vote could happen as early as March 19.
The Texas Homeschool Coalition writes:
In a hearing on March 5, dozens of home school families testified against the proposed rules, and officials agreed to scrap the proposal and start over, this time including home school leaders in the process of adopting regulations.
I’m looking for more information on what actually happened in this meeting and will update when I find it.
[tags]homeschool, homeschooling, Banita Jacks[/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! 
Tracking has apparently obtained a new definition since I went to school. So what happens if the school system doesn’t like what it sees? Who reviews the work? If the child isn’t meeting (cough, hack) the D.C. school boards high standards, do they have to attend one of D.C.’s highly rated, award winning public schools?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/interactives/dcschools/
http://www.dcpswatch.com/
http://educationwonk.blogspot.com/2008/02/disastrous-dc-school-system.html
The question “would specific legislation have been better?” is on my mind, too. I’m sort of thinking, YES, only because I’m wondering if chances of positive legislation will only decrease, so let’s take what we can get now.
As a resident of the DC area for eleven years, I am familiar with the trials and tribulations of the DC school system: Schools opening late because they don’t meet fire codes, hundreds of students being rushed through last minute vaccinations because they weren’t up-to-date, etc. I wonder if this is going to be a blessing or a headache for homeschoolers, because there is no way the city has the bureaucratic wherewithal to administer this kind of regulatory nightmare. They’ll either skip over it entirely (a la the Banks) or make homeschoolers pay for their own incompetence.
April, I wonder if the result will be that they are so busy monitoring innocent homeschoolers, they will miss the abusive ones. Jacks did not even file minimal paperwork. How long will a person be able to remain “under the radar” by simply not filing? And if I understand this correctly, some official or other had contact with that family over the course of a year.
I just don’t see how this will really help.
Jennifer, I agree. Except that I also know that any laws introduced will have countless amendments tacked on, and we will find ourselves voluntarily giving up some liberties to maintain others.
Dana, How funny. I think we could take the concluding paragraph of our respective blog entries and “flip-flop” them without changing the content of our entry.
You must be very bright today… we are thinking exactly alike! :o)
Julie, that is funny. And I recommend everyone else go read her thoughts as well.
http://acceptancewithjoy.wordpress.com/2008/03/11/because-i-havent/
I’m happy to blog away in the shadow of your greatness, Julie. : )
Oh, I’m sure it will cause headaches and probably misery for at least a few homeschoolers. I’m envisioning homeschoolers trying to file the required paperwork and being sent to 9 different offices in 6 different buildings before hitting a dead end and giving up. Then, after making a good faith effort, they’ll just go back to doing their thing. Someone will probably make an example of one or two families who “didn’t file the proper paperwork” (despite herculean efforts) and then go off to knit or play minesweep or whatever it is dc bureaucrats do.
This is what I’m thinking, applied to homeschoolers: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/23/AR2008022301920.html
No, not good. And if it can be stopped, it certainly should be.
No one will have time to homeschool…and children will come to the office complaining of being tired and hungry, prompting another round of investigations. Aah!
The only people who will respect the law are those who respect the law. Like, duh. Those who wish to operate outside the law will continue to do so, regardless of how complicated and burdensome and intrusive the laws are. Officials often don’t enforce what’s already on the books- and they want to add more to the dogpile of educational legislation?
The more educrats get hysterical about home education, the more ludicrous they appear to those who have two brain cells to rub together.
You mentioned that our freedom to homeschool lies largely with public opinion. I think many people, some homeschoolers included, think that state oversight in its various forms is a good and necessary thing. I don’t know if it is possible to change public opinion in that regard.
Engaging in the debate is very hard. Often many prejudices have to be hurdled to get to the real issues. Perhaps we will never sway all of public opinion, but we can stay active in our government.
BTW, I was impressed that the Texas Homeschool Coalition mentioned the NE case. I may just have to join one of these days.
Thankfully our gov’t is a republic and not a democracy, and we are governed more by rule of law, and less by popular opinion. Obviously opinion is a factor, but if we can hold our legislators accountable to acknowledge and respect the purpose and precepts in The Constitution, that in itself will go a long way to protecting our home education freedoms.
Quite frankly, I think we need a move in the homeschooling world toward The Fair Tax- talk about getting rid of some of the factors that influence legislators.
True, Susan. And that is why we have been largely successful to this point in keeping new laws from being passed. But a lot of people are talking about passing laws in order to clarify existing law…which seems ideal. But that is a lot more difficult and we don’t know what will be added to the legislation in debate. I think we have to also take into consideration that most people just don’t think about homeschooling all that much, which is good when it comes to policy making since most people would like to see greater restrictions.
I lived in DC a couple years ago when one of the councilmen tried to get a universal preschooling passed. He had several town meetings on the topic. It seemed that homeschoolers were some of the only people questioning the program, which would not clearly have permited any families to decline the service. In the end, the proposal was dropped. I think in part because it was pointed out that to was being sent to a vote without having been discussed in regular council meetings (rather than the town hall meetings). Interestingly enough, that councilman later was a supporter to giving DC schoolchildren vouchers, so perhaps it was a well intentioned effort.
One of the things that homeschoolers can do is to be actively involved in campaigns. Not just on the national level but in campaigns for state and local offices. My Mother-in-law was a township trustee in a large Ohio township. She bore the majority of campaign costs and did a ton of work designing signs and flyers and passing out flyers and standing at polling places with literature. Given the small scale that local campaigns run on, even a few more people (like one or two homeschool families) is a big help.
As to why it matters, she had been the only trustee of three to vote against a teen evening curfew. After she lost her second reelection, the new trustee board voted to impose a daytime curfew as well. It’s also worth noting that two senior members of the Ohio legislature started out as trustees in that township.
So find a candidate you like and really give them some support.
You said:
Not just on the national level but in campaigns for state and local offices.
And I couldn’t agree more! In fact, I’d say it is especially important to be active in local campaigns. These are the positions where our homeschool liberties are most likely to be challenged.
Thank you so much for your well-thought out comment!
And April, yes…those are the kind of ridiculous results of allowing specific cases drive legislation. Hawaii may be seeing the same thing soon.
Something good for everyone to know, though: If you are ever contacted by CPS, your record is not necessarily clean just because the allegations were shown to be unfounded. Here in NE, anyway, you have to go down and have it removed from your record so that nothing will show up on background checks.
As one of the D.C. homeschool parents involved in this issue, we’ve had several meetings with the OSSE representatives. We’ve spent a good portion of our time trying to convince them that this legislation is overly burdensome and COMPLETELY unnecessary. And while they seem to be willing to drop some of the more intrusive measures (mandatory vaccinations, home visits, access to medical records) which are HIGHLY unConstitutional to begin with, they are laser-focused on two things: 1) some way to prove you (homeschooler) are actually doing what you say you are doing and, 2) some way to prove that your student is making sufficient progress. On the surface, the claim is that this is unrelated to the Jacks case and that some form of oversight was impending, which does have some truth to it. We knew last fall that the OSSE was looking at homeschooling in the District…but the legislation they put forth on 5 March, 2008, was WAY different than what they talked about last year. NOW tell me this isn’t related to Ms. Jacks?!
We continue to hammer out the details on this proposed regulation and expect it to be put before the board in mid April or early May. To the OSSE’s credit, they seem genuine when they say they want our opinion, and more likely our support, on this regulation.
Thank you so much for the information! I hope it all goes well, and I’m glad to hear they seem to be listening. What kind of things are the homeschoolers pushing for?