I haven’t had time to do more than skim it yet, but Chris has an analysis at O’DonnellWeb.

Illiberal Education: Constitutional Constraints on Homeschooling

Abstract:

Homeschooling in America is no longer a fringe phenomenon. Estimates indicate that well over a million children are currently being homeschooled. Although homeschoolers are a diverse group, the homeschooling movement has come to be defined and dominated by its fundamentalist Christian majority many of whom choose to homeschool in order to shield their children from secular influences and liberal values. In response to political pressure from this group states are increasingly abdicating control and oversight over homeschooling. Modern day homeschooling raises then in stark form questions about the obligations that states have toward children being raised in illiberal subgroups. Surprisingly, the legal and philosophical issues raised by homeschooling have been almost entirely ignored by scholars. This paper seeks to begin to fill this void by making a novel constitutional argument. The paper relies on federal state action doctrine and state constitution education clauses to argue that states must — not may or should — regulate homeschooling to ensure that parents provide their children with a basic minimum education and check rampant forms of sexism. This paper argues, in other words, that while there is an upper limit on how much states can constitutionally regulate and control children’s education, there is a lower limit as well. There is a minimum level of regulation and oversight over children’s education that states may not with constitutional impunity avoid.

Comments at other blogs:

• K-Dad Network: Initial Premise
• Knippenblog: Homeschooling and the state
• PrawfsBlawg: “Teach Your Children Well”….Or Else!
• Talk2Action: Regulating Homeschooling

posted — and edited — by Valerie

In Connecticut, schools have reported the parents of some homeschooled children to the Department of Children and Families for withdrawing their children from school. Judy, at Consent of the Governed, gives details:

31 May 2007: Homeschoolers under attack by Department of Children and Families (DCF) in Connecticut

Parents who have had it with the school system and then attempt to withdraw their children – even after filing Notice of Intent forms or writing a letter to withdraw their children from school, are being reported to DCF on trumped up charges of educational neglect as well as other claims in order to prevent them from homeschooling.

2 June 2007: CT legislators attempt to help homeschoolers

The following State Representatives attempted to offer up an amendment to help homeschoolers with the withdrawal issue and subsequent DCF problems on May 31, by offering up an amendment on SB 1094 An Act Concerning School Bullying.

5 June 2007: Press conference regarding DCF abuses scheduled for June 6 — sponsored by NHELD

You will hear from Isabelle Hall-Gustafson, whose husband is on military deployment overseas. She is a mother who was reported by her school district to DCF for educational and medical neglect after the school, itself, chose to ignore doctors’ notes and a medical plan for the child, only to call the child truant and the mother neglectful. You’ll also hear from another mother, Christine Canfield, who provided doctors’ notes for absences for her daughter, only to be told that wasn’t good enough, that she had to sign medical releases so the school could know more and talk privately to the child’s doctors. When that Mom said, “No,” the public school reported her to DCF, and DCF substantiated her for neglect. Other parents will talk about their experiences as well

A local television station picked up the news:

Parents: Home-School Laws Need Change, 6 June 2007, Eyewitness News, WFSB, Hartford, Connecticut

Video

Channel 3 Eyewitness News reporter Irene O’Connor reported the law is pretty clear in Connecticut: Parents have to educate their children. But there’s no clear criteria for what parents have to do for home-schooling.

“The recommendation is that you file a notice of intent to withdraw your child from school, it’s very vague and the state Department of Education has interpreted it many different ways,” Christine Canfield said.

Update:

Connecticut Network, Media on Demand: CNB on State Home Schooling Policies

dial-up warning: 36-minute video, please allow for download time

note at site: “DISCLAIMER: Please note, due to server space limitations, CT-N.com cannot guarantee that all programming will be made available as On-demand files. Additionally, this means that On-demand files will only remain available for a finite duration.”

I presume that a “finite duration” translates to a “short time.”

posted by Valerie

Judy Aron at Consent of the Governed looks at proposed legislation for public school students in the event of a public crisis. Her readers comment.

CT Pandemic Legislation – Is It Anti-Homeschool?

Neither rain or snow or pandemic, no matter what emergency arises you must still “do school” as the administrators demand it to be done. Seems to me they don’t want parents to make their own educational choices in a crisis, but instead will promote doing government school at home, or some other remote location. I think logging into some remote site in order for junior to complete worksheets and “word-finds” might be somewhat low on people’s “to do” list when they are fighting for survival. Also, do they honestly think people will have electricity to get their lessons on the Internet or cable TV?

posted by Valerie

Mandatory kindergarten bill proposed, San Mateo Daily Journal, San Mateo, California

Two home school advocate groups are also opposing the mandatory entrance into school at 5 years old. Roy Hanson, an advocate for Private and Home Educators of California and Home School Legal Defense Association, explained in an advocacy e-mail that the bill would cut an extra year of development outside of school with their parents.In addition, he wrote the early entrance means an extra year of paying for private school for families who choose that route.

Despite the complaints, the bills focusing on early education have the support of many state and local groups as well as education advocates.

Tammy, a California homeschool activist, has some interesting comments over at Daryl’s.

posted by Valerie

South Dakota’s governor signed Senate Bill 199 on 15 March 2007.

This is in line with the governor’s goals.

Governor’s 2010 Education Initiative Goals and Objectives

Goal 2: By 2010, South Dakota will be first in the nation for the percentage of students going on to college, technical school or advanced training.

Initiatives: Require compulsory attendance to age 18

posted by Valerie

Tonawanda News, North Tonawanda, New York, 6 April 2007, Residency dispute forces child to be pulled from school

Stone and her daughter, Samantha, moved from Kiel Street to Sommer Street, a move that’s practically around the block. She sent the district her new address and thought everything was taken care of for her fourth-grade daughter.

The move happened on Feb. 1. Almost two months passed, and the district sent Stone a letter stating she needed proof of residency, she said. …

She sent in mail delivered to her new home, pay stubs and a television bill, but it was not enough, she said.

And so, Stone pulled her daughter out of Gilmore Elementary School. Samantha Stone has now been out of school for two weeks, and with a solution nowhere insight, Gail Stone decided to home school her.

But the district wouldn’t let her do that, either, she said.

“I’m frustrated and angry,” Stone said. “I don’t know what they want from me. They know where I live. They’re sending me mail.”

posted by Valerie

Robert Epstein’s latest book, The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen, was published earlier this month by Quill Driver Books.

In an April 3, 2007 Education Week article, Let’s , he explained that while writing the book, “he explored some ideas that go almost that far.”

“As a longtime professor and researcher, I got curious. Were our young people always required to attend school, and were their work opportunities always limited to babysitting, yard work, and cleaning the floors at fast-food joints? Were they always subject to so many restrictions? Are teenagers necessarily incompetent and irresponsible, as the media tell us? Is there really an immature “teenage brain” that holds them back? After all, past puberty, technically speaking we’re not really children anymore, and presumably through most of human history we bore our young when we were quite young ourselves. It occurred to me that young people must be capable of functioning as competent adults, or the human race quite probably would not exist.”

He investigates compulsory education in our country and how it came to be and he states that he arrived at some startling conclusions. Here are just a few of those:

Are young people really inherently incompetent and irresponsible? The research I conducted with my colleague Diane Dumas suggests that teenagers are as competent as adults across a wide range of adult abilities, and other research has long shown that they are actually superior to adults on tests of memory, intelligence, and perception. The assertion that teenagers have an “mmature” brain that necessarily causes turmoil is completely invalidated when we look at anthropological research from around the world. Anthropologists have identified more than 100 contemporary societies in which teenage turmoil is completely absent; most of these societies don’t even have terms for adolescence. Even more compelling, long-term anthropological studies initiated at Harvard in the 1980s show that teenage turmoil begins to appear in societies within a few years after those societies adopt Western schooling practices and are exposed to Western media. Finally, a wealth of data shows that when young people are given meaningful responsibility and meaningful contact with adults, they quickly rise to the challenge, and their “inner adult” emerges.A careful look at these issues yields startling conclusions: The social-emotional turmoil experienced by many young people in the United States is entirely a creation of modern culture. We produce such turmoil by infantilizing our young and isolating them from adults. Modern schooling and restrictions on youth labor are remnants of the Industrial Revolution that are no longer appropriate for today’s world; the exploitative factories are long gone, and we have the ability now to provide mass education on an individual basis.Teenagers are inherently highly capable young adults; to undo the damage we have done, we need to establish competency-based systems that give these young people opportunities and incentives to join the adult world as rapidly as possible.http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/04/04/31epstein.h26.html

In this day and time of Zero to Three programs that are said to assure that children are ready to learn, Universal Preschool and pressures from the Federal Department of Education via NCLB, I hope that The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every becomes a best seller.

Posted by Mary

Mother arrested over school absences
By Jennifer Calhoun, Staff writer, Fayetteville Observer, NC

This story out of Raeford, NC reports that Jennifer Beckel was wrongfully arrested on truancy charges last Friday night. It turns out that her daughter did not have the 15 unexcused absences that she was charged with, but 3. The school attendance law in NC states that “the principal may notify the district attorney or the Department of Social Services after 10 unexcused absences in a school year — but only after school officials have notified the parents and worked with them on reducing the child’s absentee rate.”

However, Mr. and Mrs. Beckel never heard there was a problem from anyone. The article says:

“On Monday, Beckel requested the school’s documentation and protested when she saw that 12 of the unexcused absences should have been excused because of various illnesses and military family leave.

School officials agreed with Beckel and reduced Makenna’s unexcused absences from 15 to three.

Still, Beckel has pulled her daughter out of the school system, and has been home-schooling her since Monday.”

http://www.fayobserver.com/article?id=258439

Posted by Mary

Perhaps it’s a good thing that I’m playing catch-up. The original link is dead, but at least there’s still a Google cache.

Unlike the legislative activism in New Hampshire, it looks as if there is no way for homeschooling parents to excuse their children from compliance with the change. It also looks as if even that “invisible hole” annoys the authorities in South Dakota.

Rapid City Journal, Rapid City, South Dakota, 20 March 2007, Compulsory school attendance age to rise

A bill recently signed by Gov. Mike Rounds boosts the compulsory attendance age to 18 in 2009, which means any student entering high school during the 2009-10 school year must remain in school until age 18, unless the student graduates or is excused for other legal reasons.

…

Creal said students and their families will find ways around the law.

“They haven’t changed the home-school laws,” Creal said. Parents can apply for a home-school exemption and keep their children at home.

State law does require testing of home-schooled children in grades 2, 4, 8 and 11, but under the current law a 16-year-old home-schooled student can refuse to take the test, according to Pat Peel, director of student achievement for the Rapid City School District.

“Changed the home-school laws” to what? Not allowing homeschooling?

I grew up near Rapid City and spent my K-6 years in the Douglas School system, so I have a fondness for South Dakota with its wide open vistas, cold winters, and occasional views of the aurora borealis. Still, the comments about writing the law to make it so people cannot remove their children from school in order to homeschool sounds like ‘people’s republic’ thinking and make me cringe.

Is World Net Daily on the story?

posted by Valerie

In the discussion about raising the age of compulsory school attendance in order to decrease the number of people who go through life without a high school diploma, some people say it could be a homeschooling issue, and others dismiss that position. On the ‘yes, it’s an issue for homeschoolers’ side of the discussion, a rise in the age would affect all teens in a state, not just public school students.

In New Hampshire, homeschoolers worked with legislators to ensure that if a bill proposing to raise the age of compulsory attendance is passed, it won’t have an effect on homeschooling in the state.

Concord Monitor, Concord, New Hampshire, 17 March 2007, Dropout bill heads to House from Senate

Senators amended the bill slightly to allay the concerns of parents who home-school their children. Many home-schoolers complete their studies before they turn 18, and home educators worried that the bill could place such students in legal limbo. They also worried that students eager to drop out would simply declare themselves home-schoolers, since home-schoolers are exempt from the measure.

The proposal now allows such students to document the completion of their studies by submitting a letter to the state Department of Education.

posted by Valerie