The North Dakota Homeschool Association is asking the legislature to ease up a bit on North Dakota’s restrictive homeschool laws. Currently, the state is one of the most heavily regulated in the nation. Their plan? To take North Dakota from a so-called “red state” all the way to the enviable status of “green state.”
If a repeal of monitoring and qualification requirements is passed, it would put the state into what home schoolers call the “moderate regulation” category. They would push for repeal of more regulations in 2011, making the state a low-regulation state, and lobby for further repeal of laws in 2013. If they are successful, the final step would put North Dakota in the same category as 10 other states that don’t require parents to report to education authorities at all when they home-school their children. GrandForksHerald.com
It will be interesting to follow the discussion as this progresses.
Something which caught my eye:
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Wayne Sanstead told the committee that current regulations are the result of compromises worked out 20 years ago between home-school groups and the state. He said he would “adamantly oppose” any repeal of monitoring laws. Ibid.
I will have to research this more, but Pennsylvania’s restrictive laws were also the product of compromises worked out many years ago between homeschool groups and the state. Here in Nebraska, on the other hand, we just defied the law and forced the issue to be taken to court. It was a heated battle that gained national attention. There was no talk of compromise, and many mothers fled the state as their husbands were sent to jail.
Now we’re a “yellow state,” requiring only a bit of paper to be sent in at the beginning of the year but with no additional monitoring.
Thirty years ago, homeschooling was a very different issue than it is today. Then, homeschoolers were a bunch of radicals, whether religious or social, defying the system, defying the law, and in some cases even defying the social order. Homeschoolers across the country were gradually becoming aware that they were not the only ones, that there were other homeschoolers in other areas and they began to organize. Pouring over compulsory education laws and old court cases, they began to formulate arguments and see what did and did not work before the court and before the legislature. Certain names began to emerge with which we are still familiar as they were thrust to the front of a movement that was just beginning to organize, most notably John Holt and Dorothy and Raymond Moore.
For some perspective, think of Germany where those who choose to home educate face fines and possible imprisonment. How much rejoicing would there be if the various groups working together were able to get the state to accept a model such as that practiced in North Dakota? It would be a major vicotry and a first step toward recognizing home education as a viable alternative.
That is exactly what this law in North Dakota should have been. A first step.
But twenty years later, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction still wants to stick to the compromise? I can empathize with the position lawakers were put into when homeschooling was first being addressed and pressure was mounting to either suppress it or formally recognize it. But now? A generation has passed, and the education system has not descended into a state of anarchy, despite the NEA’s worst fears, nor has homeschooling turned out roving bands of illiterate gangsters. The fears of the time, though understandable, proved to not be warranted.
I don’t know that I would have laid out my four year deregulation plan this year, but certainly it is time for the legislature to ease some restrictions to give homeschooling families more independence and flexibility.
Dana, in no way do I want to criticise your article, but I do have to wonder aloud whether states with high regulation discourage parents from even beginning home education programs. I know if my son weren’t very young and/or I lived in a restrictive state, we’d have to seriously consider moving or slow down plans to bring him home. I would hate to not be up to snuff and lose my “privilege” that first year, and it DOES take a little time to get into the swing of things and figure out how things work. (JMO)
Perhaps this Superintendent of Public Instruction knows this is a common fear of parents and that they won’t even try it if the regulations are strict? Or he will come off as “soft” on education standards if he compromises (a political problem for him/his job)?
PS He also “hears cases” where somebody thinks somebody else’s neighbour’s cousin’s best friend knew someone else who didn’t educate their children properly, too. I have to wonder if this sort of “I heard this and that about somebody in this group” sort of GOSSIP were applied to Mormons, blacks or some other minority if there wouldn’t be trouble…? (As there should be…?)
I thought the same thing about the things he “hears.” I “hear” about all sorts of things in the public schools. Do I advocate making it tougher to teach? Not at all.
And I do think the point is to discourage people from homeschooling. But I don’t think their concerns are as valid as they might have seemed when these laws were first written.
OH, and I ‘hear’ a lot of people in North Dakota don’t bother with the law at all, and homeschool “under the radar.” A lot do that here, as well, although I’m not sure I see the point as much when the regulation is minimal.