By Sage Ross (Flickr: Boston Wiki Meetup) via Wikimedia Commons

Aaron Swartz is dead. His memorial service was Tuesday at a synagogue in Highland Park, Illinois.  I ran into the terrible news reading Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing. Besides working with Doctorow on Creative Commons, Aaron developed the RSS program, the popular news and information site – Reddit, along with Public.Resource.Org. He co-founded Demand Progress, and served as a fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics.  Those are a few of his contributions from his 26-year-old life.

The prosecutors, legislators, regulators, MIT leaders and other mucky mucks against him surely did not anticipate the fallout from his tragic death.  In a time where there is little public honor in Aaron’s and my home state of Illinois, Aaron (and his family) have been acclaimed for his fight to open access for documents and information that should be freely available via the internet.

From the Chicago Tribune By John Keilman and Sally Ho:

“He grew up in an environment where those sort of things were held in high esteem, the notion of making the world a better place,” Robert Swartz said.

That outlook became clear at 13, when he gained national acclaim for creating a do-it-yourself online encyclopedia that predated the launch of Wikipedia. It was the height of the dot-com boom, yet his site, The Info Network, was bereft of advertising, subscription fees or any other way to generate money.

“That’s not what the Internet was made for,” he told the Tribune at the time. “It was based on open standards and freedom, not ads.”

After Aaron’s freshman year in a private school, he moved on to homeschooling, supplementing his education with Lake Forest College classes.  The homeschool community can be proud of him, not just for his brilliance, but for the way he lived his life expressing that genius.

The above video How We Stopped SOPA is explanation of the political activism and creativity used against an invasive regulatory bill that would cause government censorship on the internet.

Homeschoolers passionately protect our educational autonomy by visiting our represesentatives in our state and nation’s capitol.  We do this to guard against our children being shut down in their learning joys and life passions. Just as Robert and Susan Swartz allowed for their son.  We can relate to Aaron’s conversation he shared with a United States Senator.  When Swartz asked him about the hypocrisy of the SOPA bill stifling freedom of information, he saw fire develop in the representative’s eyes, along with a raised voice: “There’s got to be laws on the internet. It’s got to be under control.” The tyrannical attitude was defeated that time.  Aaron went on to say that these invasive bills will “happen again. The fire in these politicians’ eyes hasn’t gone out.”

The internet really is out of control. [He said with a mischievous smile] But if we forget that. If we let Hollywood rewrite the story so it was just big company Google who stopped the bill, if we let them persuade us we didn’t really make a difference. And we see this as someone else’s responsibility to do this work. And it’s our job to just go home and pop some popcorn and curl up on the couch to watch Transformers, well then next time they might just win.  

Let’s not let that happen.       ~ Aaron Swartz 1986-2013

Internet - 1 Congress – 0

From the New York Times By John Schwartz Internet Activist, a Creator of RSS, Is Dead at 26 

 In 2008, he took on PACER, or Public Access to Court Electronic Records, the repository for federal judicial documents.The database charges 10 cents a page for documents; activists like Carl Malamud, the founder of public.resource.org, have long argued that such documents should be free because they are produced at public expense. Joining Mr. Malamud’s efforts to make the documents public by posting legally obtained files to the Internet for free access, Mr. Swartz wrote an elegant little program to download 20 million pages of documents from free library accounts, or roughly 20 percent of the enormous database.

The government shut down the free library program, and Mr. Malamud feared that legal trouble might follow even though he felt they had violated no laws. As he recalled in a newspaper account, “I immediately saw the potential for overreaction by the courts.” He recalled telling Mr. Swartz: “You need to talk to a lawyer. I need to talk to a lawyer.”

Mr. Swartz recalled in a 2009 interview, “I had this vision of the feds crashing down the door, taking everything away.” He said he locked the deadbolt on his door, lay down on the bed for a while and then called his mother.

Aaron’s family created a website: Remember Aaron Swartz:

About this site

Aaron was a tireless supporter of the open internet and an old-school hacker. To honor his memory and his contributions to technical community, Aaron’s family and friends wanted to provide a way to share their memories that:

• uses free and open source software wherever possible
• licenses its content under the Creative Commons
• is open to the technical community to hack on and contribute to
• leverages tools that Aaron used and contributed to, like Markdown and RSS

The site itself is a work in progress; we can’t do everything ourselves. To that end, we’d like to invite other programmers to contribute to the improvement of the site on Github. Here are more features we’d like to add:

• make it easy for a broader community of contributors to share memories, perhaps via Github’s Javascript API and CORS
• allows for sharing and contribution to Reddit
• provide compatibility across a diverse set of web platforms

If you’d like to contribute, please fork the repo on Github and get hacking. Alternatively, you can email your memories to share them directly with Aaron’s family and friends, who will work to shift them onto the website as quickly as possible.

Aaron dead. World wanderers, we have lost a wise elder. Hackers for right, we are one down. Parents all, we have lost a child. Let us weep.

Tim Berners-Lee ~ eulogist at Aaron Swartz’s funeral and creater of the World Wide Web

Homeschoolers in Illinois are facing challenges to their situation as described in this Sun-Times article by Fran Eaton, titled Homeschooling Parents Not Eager for States Help:

Homeschoolers can be called a lot of things because they’re so independent and self-sufficient, and that seems counter-intuitive in today’s world. But they’re not as paranoid as some public school officials would make them out to be. The truancy officer acknowledged he would assume guilt before proving innocence. He would not have a problem searching private homes to prove the schools within were up to state standards.

The Senate committee exchange became more revealing when Reynolds told the committee he would look around those registered homes for computers with educational software, books and other indications teaching was going on.

And then he would “help” them.

Illinois blogger Susan Ryan is following the situation closely at her blog Corn and Oil:

Illinois homeschoolers don’t want any legislation that will infringe on their rights.  Any negotiations are concerning if they ever end in compromise.  4,000 Illinois homeschoolers in the Capitol showed the resolve about that issue.

Susan also noted the formation of a political action committee for Illinois homeschoolers:

One good thing to come of this ongoing fiasco is the creation of the IL Homeschool PAC.  We needed that yesterday.

The New York Times put most homeschoolers into an undesirable, non-bid for fame.  We’ve been profiled as a special interest group wanting something (money) from these “new Republicans.”   I don’t know about many other homeschoolers, but I’d rather step out of this particular limelight of perceived hands held out. As an Illinois homeschooler, my husband and I have known we could use the Illinois Education Tax Credit for some years, but decided it wasn’t worth it for various reasons. We learned some time ago that our freedom is worth more than money.

In the NY Times’s Room for Debate, Susan Neuman, professor in educational studies and assistant secretary of education in the George W. Bush administration had an interesting point of view.  She started out with the notion that ‘conservatives’ are trying to destroy public education with homeschool tax credits.

I’d say that ‘conservatives’ like Chester Finn are trying to destroy homeschooling with his love of standardized tests.  His thumbs up for homeschool tax credits came with the notion that “if they don’t pass those tests, either the subsidy vanishes or the kids must enroll in some sort of school with a decent academic track record.”  As if those tests are a good synopsis of what children learn.  As if enrolling kids who don’t do well on tests is reason to be in a school.  We could turn that around to say that some public school students shouldn’t be in school because those tests look very bad for them.  Most good teachers agree that teaching to standardized tests doesn’t help learning, even if their union insists on testing for homeschoolers.   From the edu-industry end, Mr. Finn was invested as a Director of K12, Inc. until July of 2007 and is still a member of the Education Advisory Committee.  Not surprisingly, Finn was promoting the virtual schools heavily in this non-reality based comparison of homeschooling and virtual schools:  “From a policy perspective, however, there’s not much difference between teaching kids at home and enrolling them in any of hundreds of “virtual charter schools” or district- or state-run alternatives”.”    His K12 company is lobbying hard in Illinois for more business than just the Chicago Virtual School.  I wouldn’t want him speaking on behalf of the homeschooling community because dollar signs keep distorting his view.  In The Educated Child, a book he co-authored with William Bennett, they stated that “homeschoolers should not have to do so [homeschool]  because there are no good schools available”.  What they don’t seem to understand is the homeschooling lifestyle enables the family to enjoy each other and their education and isn’t necessarily because of an indictment of schools.  Families homeschool in communities with the best school districts too.

Rob Reich – notorious for his anti-homeschool freedom attitudes – sounds almost excited about federal tax credits.  His piece is similar to Finn’s, except he wants homeschool registration, where Chester Finn likes the testing notion.   I think Reich’s piece was the tamest of any of his previous articles demanding homeschoolers answer to the government. There’s cause for alarm.  Reich senses promise in registering all homeschooled children with the use of tax credits.

Want a tax credit to home school? Accept a requirement to register your child as being home schooled and that the child take the same state tests as other public school students. Federal dollars come with strings attached, and these particular strings are in the best interests of children, anyway.

Luis Huerta of Columbia University had a piece with many similar points to a Daily Beast article.

The current efforts consist of a two-prong approach that involve resurrecting recently proposed legislation: First, the Family Education Freedom Act of 2009, sponsored and repeatedly introduced by Representative Ron Paul of Texas has proposed a tax credit of up to $5,000 for private school tuition and home schooling expenses. Second, the Parental Rights Amendment of 2009 sponsored by Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina and written by Michael Farris, the founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association, would protect “the liberty of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children” as a fundamental right.

But I think his point below shows the HSLDA sponsored contradiction in promoting a Parental Rights Amendment, while chancing federal regulations of homeschooling with tax credits.  I also don’t like the Parental Rights Amendment because we don’t need our rights enumerated.  We already have them.

Dana Goldstein from The Beast says in her article How the Tea Party Will Destroy Education Reform that:

The organization [HSLDA] has powerful supporters—both veteran legislators and newcomers. Mike Pence, chairman of the House Republican Conference, and Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the caucus’ vice-chairwoman, support homeschool tax credits. John Kline, the incoming House Education Committee chairman, was the keynote speaker at last spring’s Home School Legal Defense Association conference, where he said he would work to “charge up Capitol Hill with the message of homeschool freedom.”

I’m all about a message of homeschool freedom, but we generally keep it to ourselves, unless ironically enough, legislators or school authorities start getting in our way.

Here’s some more “new Republican” names laid out from the Beast that want to ‘help’.

“Rubio and Paul ran for Senate supporting tax credits for homeschoolers, though they also describe themselves as deficit hawks committed to balancing the federal budget. Paul has been an especially vocal advocate for homeschooling, often speaking publicly about the prominent role homeschooling volunteers played in his Kentucky campaign. He spoke on June 25 to the Christian Homeschool Educators of Kentucky, whose mission is to “protect children from mental, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse by secular humanists in a socialist society or governmental system.” On his campaign website, Paul’s staff regularly promoted homeschooling as an alternative to failing public schools, citing high academic achievement scores among homeschooled children (who also tend to come from more affluent families than their public school counterparts.)”

Cato Institute‘s Neil McCluskey seems to get it in his article: Unconstitutional Intrusion

The sentiment is right: Home schooling parents shouldn’t have to pay for schools they don’t use then pay again for education they do. But good intentions neither make a law constitutional, nor necessarily sound. Proof of home schooling could be defined as passing federally prescribed tests – just the sort of mandate many home schoolers despise. In Article I, Section 8, the Constitution gives the federal government specific powers, and the feds may do nothing beyond them. Included among them is nothing about education, so Washington may make no education policy. And no, the taxing power does not allow Washington to do whatever it wants as long as it is connected to taxes. Taxation may only be used in service of the enumerated powers.

McCluskey finishes with this thought:

Home schoolers deserve some breaks. At the national level, that means adhering to the Constitution and getting the federal government out of education, which would benefit not just home schoolers, but all taxpayers.

I don’t think most homeschoolers consider themselves deserving of a break.  Except when legislators or public school authorities interfere with well or ill intentioned motivations.  Rule number one for homeschoolers should be to not make any rules or laws or regulations for homeschooling families.  If we’ve already determined it’s worth it to go against the societal mainstream of public schools, then we’re also pretty determined to create the best learning opportunities for each of our children in the coziness of our homes.  In other words, no worries about us, as public schools already have plenty to do on their own.

Neumann concludes with a question.

This latest proposal is designed for the heart not the head. Home-schooling families are too smart and too savvy to buy into this half-baked plan. They know that tax credits are good for nothing but greater federal intrusion. Is this what the Tea Party had in mind?

If you’ve ever heard the story about The Wild and Free Pigs of the Okefenokee Swamp, then you’ll understand homeschoolers don’t want to end up in the educational market’s pen.  Many have walked away from the carrot.

NHELD’s Deborah Stevenson has an excellent piece about this tax credit issue.

Spunky has a piece, along with good comments on the issue.

Update – My thoughts, concerns,  a bit of research and a lot of other good folks’ articles regarding the IL Education Tax Credit and its repercussions are posted here.

Submitted by Susan Ryan, who is happily and independently homeschooling in Illinois

The January 2 Chicago Tribune features an article titled African-Americans Choosing to Home-School:

Home-schooling experts say more African-American families are choosing to school their children at home, opting out of public schools, which critics say may be not only failing their children, but also in some cases shortchanging them of their history.

“That is the No. 1 reason … the black curriculum,” said Joyce Burgess, who with her husband founded the National Black Home Educators organization, based near Baton Rouge, La. “They’ve taken black history out. It wasn’t just Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth … and Harriet Tubman. It was also Condoleezza Rice, Shirley Chisholm; it was also Marian Anderson and the Tuskegee Airmen. They’re heroes, and our children need to learn about our heroes.”

Although numbers reflecting the trends and demographics of home-schooled children are hard to come by — for example, in Chicago, parents who choose to home-school are not required to inform the school district — experts and leaders in the field say there is no doubt that minority participation is growing.

From the Southtown Star, an edition of the Chicago Sun-Times, an article by Fran Eaton titled Homeschooling taught lessons for both children and parents:

Any day now, we’ll all be hearing those familiar sounds of school buses and young voices shouting out as the kids head back to school. That first day marks a fresh beginning in a child’s life.

I’ll never forget our daughter’s first day of kindergarten more than 20 years ago. Determined to be independent and on her own, the little blond 5-year-old went out the door with lunchbox in hand. I stood and watched as she walked down the sidewalk. Within minutes, she entered the front door of her school – back home, right where she started.

“I’m ready for school,” she said. And she was.

Homeschooling was our family’s choice. During the 1980s, a revival of home education hit the United States, and we, along with tens of thousands of other young couples, were swept into the tidal wave.

Continue reading Fran Eaton’s article at the link above.

Susan Ryan at Corn and Oil cautions: “I want to point out again…that the Regional Offices of Education are systematically pushing for daytime curfews in Illinois communities to rein in homeschoolers. It’s all over the state, but quite a few southern Illinois communities in a couple of Regional Offices of Education areas with anti-homeschool agendas have passed curfews in the last few months.” Click on Susan’s link to read much more.

An upbeat piece titled Home school not like old school, focusing on members of the Westside House, a chapter of Illinois Home Oriented Unique Schooling Experience, or HOUSE, which bills itself as an inclusive, non-sectarian network of homeschooling support groups, appeared in the May 11th La Grange, Illinois edition of MySuburbanLife.com, which serves Chicago’s western suburbs. The article quotes homeschool mom Elizabeth Crewe: “One of the biggest misconceptions of home schoolers is that they are home,” she said. “We are so rarely home. We do have a weekly schedule of things we do or what we are going to study, but it’s different from day to day.”

WRITE THESE LAWS ON YOUR CHILDREN: Inside the World of Conservative Christian Homeschooling By Robert Kunzman

The book was released in August of 2009 and published by Beacon Press of Boston.

A Review by Susan Ryan, Illinois Homeschooler

In one of Robert Kunzman’s interviews with six “strongly conservative” Christian homeschooling families, a California homeschooling mom related her kids “get a lot of life, real life that goes on, that they don’t understand when they are separated for several hours a day.”  She went on to explain that their family of nine children was able to spend valuable time lovingly caring for their grandparents as they reached the end of their lives. Whatever different views, philosophies and lifestyles any homeschooling family has, the incredibly diverse homeschool community can appreciate that, as Mr. Kunzman points out, “homeschooling is…woven into the fabric of everyday family life.”

Indiana University Associate Professor of Education Robert Kunzman’s name – and his quotes – have been floating into general homeschooling news over the last few months.  Many homeschool advocates have been wondering what collective influence he has had, to be sought after so frequently in articles about homeschooling. (It is an odd feeling, as homeschoolers carry on with our busy lives and then discover that some unknown entity is talking about us in an authoritative fashion.)

Often, Mr. Kunzman’s feedback was requested regarding a perceived homeschool growth trend.  The National Center for Education Statistics data is reported on his site with their supposed 74% homeschooling increase since 1999.  He has developed an impressive Indiana University website called: Homeschooling Research and Scholarship. It gave a start to see that on a university link. (The University of Illinois has a homeschooling applicant section in order to study at the University, but not to be studied.)

Kunzman researched and analyzed the families who were located in California, Indiana, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont. Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) co-founders Michael Smith and Michael Farris, former Generation Joshua leader Ned Ryun, and a Teen Pact college student were also interviewed. The book offered observations and reflections on “four crucial questions that framed [his] homeschooling journeys“: “What do homeschoolers do, and why do they do it? Do children learn to think for themselves?  What do they learn about the relationship between faith and citizenship?  And how, if at all, should homeschooling be regulated?”

I found Mr. Kunzman’s attentive layout of each individual family’s qualities and schedule engaging, although he didn’t ever seem to take his professional evaluator’s hat off when stepping in the door. He asked the parents’ opinions of increased oversight of homeschoolers.  The feedback seemed to be a resounding negative on more governmental authority. One California mom’s adamant rejection of more bureaucracy brought about his acceptance that some homeschoolers “who have learning difficulties would be having at least as much trouble in an institutional setting.”   He maintained that “to assume outright that a parent-teacher is a failure because her child doesn’t meet a fixed standard at a particular age or grade level may be just as unfair as expecting a classroom teacher to have all students excelling in June, regardless of where they started in September.”  That is a worthy concept.

Still, Kunzman proposes homeschoolers be subjected to those standards in his concluding chapter: “General consensus should exist on standards for meeting those interests.”  (“Interests” are included as part of his first proposition that “vital interests of children or society must be at stake.”)

There is a societal disquiet across our communities concerning much of public school education and its standards.  Naomi Wolf laments in a Washington Post article [‘Hey, Young Americans, Here's a Text for You’] that the federal No Child Left Behind Act mandates tests which “assess chiefly math and reading comprehension,” while civics and history education has gone astray. However, Kunzman calls for “basic skills testing” (reading and math) of homeschoolers, along with his third homeschool oversight recommendation that “an effective way to measure whether standards are met” be fulfilled.

Professor Kunzman also expressed ambivalence about the Home School Legal Defense Association’s teen civic education program called Generation Joshua.  Kunzman observed that Generation Joshua has “genuine civic engagement.” While noting a 2006 National Assessment of Educational Progress civics assessment is distressing, in that “only 27% of high school seniors [were] scoring at or above proficient.”

Kunzman’s 2007 interview with former George Bush speech writer and founding Generation Joshua Director Ned Ryun occurred before Ryun unhappily exited from the HSLDA fold.  The reason for that departure is one example that the conservative Christian homeschooling community is not in lockstep with HSLDA. Many draw the line when homeschooling rights are risked.

There was another case in point concerning the interviewed Tennessee homeschooling family who did not follow HSLDA advice.  They were the only family in the book that had to deal with state social workers (“four or five different times”).  The family determined they had “nothing to hide” and allowed the social worker into their home to chat.  When asked if there was any follow-up to the visit, the reply was a negative, with the father’s comment that: “As a matter of fact, the last visit, the man opened up to me quite a bit about how he raises his children.  He told me he smacks his children!”

The mother observed that was a touchy issue.  This family had a “thin black rod about eight inches long” that rested on the table.  They were also former neighbors of Michael Pearl, whose book “To Train Up A Child” is a deep source of dismay for many homeschoolers.  Conversely, the Tennessee homeschooling father was inspired by the book:”I have never read anything more encouraging, more uplifting, more knowledgeable in homeschooling.”

When Kunzman returned home from Tennessee, he looked up Pearl’s book on Amazon and discovered there were nearly 700 [currently 859] reviews of the book.  Many of the negative reviews were from dismayed homeschoolers not supportive of this type of discipline, and very active in the Stop the Rod movement.

Most homeschool advocates counsel to not let social workers or truant officers in the home without a court order.  We recognize and agree with the author that “some public school officials and social workers do have a decidedly jaded view of homeschooling.” Abuse is unwanted in the homeschool community.  That would include governmental bullying of law abiding families because they choose to homeschool.

That prudence should be understandable when homeschoolers’ educational base is located in the family’s private living space.  The call for regulation by Mr. Kunzman and others thrashes the very opposition that these six families have to governmental interference. Ironic, isn’t it?

There seemed to be a definite agenda in this book that wasn’t favorable to homeschooling self-sufficiency. The last chapter is oddly named: Becoming A Public. The premise of Kunzman’s homeschooling concerns, framed in the first chapter’s last question regarding “Homeschool Regulation,” seemed to lead to this book’s foregone conclusion.

I’m also bewildered by Washington Post columnist Jay Mathews’ thought process in his recent Education column, 3 Smart Rules for Regulation of Homeschoolers, which focused on Kunzman’s book. Mathews’ position seems to be that unfavorable political winds could increase regulation and that we should do something about that by using the “sensible answer” of universal regulation as offered in “Write These Laws On Your Children.” Mathews also states, “Kunzman knows that many parents have chosen to homeschool for non-religious reasons, but focuses on serious Christians because they are the ones that public school professionals are most worried about.”

The concern about “serious Christians” is the theme throughout this book. Kunzman requested each of the six families fill out a General Social Survey to confirm their social, political and religious conservatism.  There must be a survey or study sought out for almost every curiosity, while most homeschoolers seem to be holding out as the last bastion.  Robert Kunzman reported that nearly a fourth of our homeschooled population don’t need to notify or verify educating their children.  He asked HSLDA’s Michael Smith if their ultimate goal was to be a “place like Illinois where parents don’t have to report, register, anything.”

Kunzman’s propositions suggested that free homeschooling states (such as Illinois) “runs the greatest risk of neglecting the interests of children and the state.” His unease seems to be baseless and cynical, as he didn’t provide proof of such neglect. An imagined problem, that school bureaucrats need to oversee already established parental accountability, will kill what we live – and what we love about homeschooling.  The former Social Studies and English high school teacher, coach and administrator describes a “triad of interests” (children, parents, society) as a concern of “advocates of regulation.”  (‘Anti-homeschoolers’ is the term I use for homeschooling regulation advocates.)  Even after hundreds of hours observing homeschoolers, Robert Kunzman either doesn’t understand the homeschooling way of life, or worse yet, he does.

Naperville area homeschoolers negotiated with school authorities, and common sense prevailed. A potential district policy revision demanding that a “district-approved external accrediting agency” certified any homeschool credits and grades transferred onto a public high school transcript was dropped.
The Naperville Sun reports this news from Indian Prairie School District 204′s school board meeting:

D204 compromises on home-school policy June 23, 2009 By TIM WALDORF

“The difference that you’re going to see in this new version versus the old is that in the old we indicated that we were not going to accept any credits from a no-accredited school toward graduation. So they would all have to be accredited or else we weren’t going to issue a diploma,” said Mike Popp, District 204′s school improvement and planning director.

“In this version, we’re saying, ‘You know what? That’s not appropriate.’ We’re going ahead and saying we are going to accept those credits, but we put in what you talked about last time: is there a way for us to sit down with an individual student and talk about those individual courses to go ahead and honor the credit that he or she earned?”

The old version (and other pertinent details) was pointed out on News & Commentary here: Educational Rigor

It appears that Mike Popp was reasonable, and kept the dialogue open with local homeschoolers. If homeschoolers did choose to enroll in the public high school, then their previous hard work at home should not have been disregarded because of lack of accreditation.

I don’t see a pass/fail on a transcript as a problem. Our particular family does not do grades. Learning materials are either mastered or not:

However, honoring those credits is one thing. Honoring the grades attached to them is another.

District 204′s transcripts would separately list the unaccredited coursework, and not assign a letter grade to any of it. They would only note whether students passed or failed these unaccredited classes.

Consequently, home school students would have to turn in two transcripts — one from District 204 and one of their own making — when applying to colleges.

Universities and colleges seem to be scrambling and recruiting for that “homemade”/home education transcript. Our local IL community college admissions counselor said that he’s seen (and accepted) homeschool transcripts of various forms. He was part of a homeschool workshop at the college to recruit homeschoolers. Continuing in the article:

The policy will also require these students to complete two credits in a District 204 high school in each of two consecutive semesters prior to graduation. So, in their senior year, these home school students seeking District 204 diplomas — District 204 estimates there are roughly 15 of them a year — will have to attend a District 204 high school on nearly a full-time basis, and pass four senior-level classes in order to graduate.

That seems like a fair policy.

I was a little puzzled that homeschoolers would be entering the public high school just to get a public school diploma? That piece of paper didn’t seem as useful as a homeschool diploma, or as many Illinois homeschoolers do, just entering ‘higher education’ with transcript in hand. That’s my biased homeschool opinion, of course.

“The example, by way of analogy that’s in my head, is that it’s what a university would tell you,” said board member Mark Metzger. “You can’t accumulate credits at Eastern and Western and Southern, and then call up U of I and say, ‘I’m going to take a class there, and I want my diploma from you.’ It doesn’t work that way.”

Mr. Metzger’s thoughts are right on. If a public school diploma is sought, that public school should be attended.

But again, I don’t see the advantage of seeking a public school diploma, if homeschooled teens can finish out their education at home before college. Mark Metzger mentioned the University of Illinois, which is ranked 25th in this Graduate School of Education World University Rankings. It is a very competitive school, but yet “30-40 home school students are admitted each year“.

Home Schooled Applicants FAQ

Does the University of Illinois admit home school graduates?

Yes, we encourage home schooled students to apply to the University.

We are very interested in having talented, well-qualified applicants from a variety of settings. Home schoolers would provide a diversity of academic experiences to the campus.

From a homeschool advocate stance, I’m pleased to see that homeschooling credit was given (in more ways than one).

That quote in the header was from a Cook County (Chicago) Circuit Court summary judgment in favor of the Chicago Virtual Charter School (CVCS).   Why were they talking about homeschooling in a virtual school judgment?  This week, the Chicago Teachers Union lawsuit claiming Chicago Public School/IL State Board of Education authorization illegalities was dismissed.  The well financed union claimed that the Chicago Virtual Charter School was actually “home based” homeschooling.

It’s been an ugly row, and somehow the Illinois homeschooling name seemed to be in the middle of this issue.  Both of these parties (the Chicago public schools, along with the CTU President, Marilyn Stewart) talked a good bit about “home schooling”.

Virtual charter school can receive public funds Chi Town Daily News June 12, 2009
BY ADRIAN G. URIBARRI

Marilyn Stewart, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, says the difference was not enough to merit public funding. Since students of the virtual school spend most of their time learning at home, she says, they are essentially home-schooled.

“For someone to take public funds to home-school their children is not right,” she says. “It should not be on the backs of a majority of our students who are in our public schools.”

As I read the excerpt below, Judge Riley seems to have made a solid, factual decision based on Illinois charter school statutes:

From a K12 Business Wire:

The judgment ensures the continued lawful operation and funding of CVCS.

The Court concluded that the Plaintiffs arguments fail as a matter of law. The Court determined that CVCS is not a “home-based” school and therefore not in violation of charter school law, and that the school is in full compliance with the Illinois School Code.
In the ruling, the Court emphasized the differences between the model of instruction employed by CVCS and traditional home schooling, stating:
“Home schooling is a well-known and established means of education.While the form of home schools may vary, the underlying substance of the education is decided by a student’s parents.Home schools do not have to teach according to ISBE’s [Illinois State Board of Education’s] mandated curriculum, nor are the students required to take standardized tests to meet the State’s requirements for basic skills improvement.CVCS, however, is required to teach according to the ISBE curriculum.CVCS students must meet the State’s requirements of the No Child Left [Behind] Act.CVCS is subject to fiscal oversight by the ISBE and CBOE [Chicago Board of Education].And, unlike home-schooled students, CVCS students are graded by certified teachers.”

The Chi-Town Daily News quoted the CVCS head:

“There are differences between the way we do education and traditional home schooling,” says Bruce Law, head of the Chicago Virtual Charter School. “On that difference — that’s where we were making our case.”

In this case, it was necessary for them to show that their school is different from homeschooling.  K12 is providing the CVCS curriculum, and the Virginia based company is also lobbying in our state capitol for a state-wide virtual school.  In 2002, K12′s chair made this case below about his hope that independent homeschoolers would put up and shut up.  (Bennett was also the Reagan administration’s Secretary of Education):

How William Bennett’s Public E-Schools Affect Homeschooling-Larry and Susan Kaseman
November-December 2002

The major differences between Bennett’s goals and those of most homeschoolers can be seen clearly in Bennett’s comments during an interview by Mark Standriff on WSPD radio in Toledo, Ohio, August 16, 2002.

Standriff: What kind of opposition have you folks found?

Bennett: We found opposition from both sides of the political spectrum. Some of the homeschooling people have opposed us.
Standriff: Oh really, I would think this would be right in line with their thinking.
Bennett: Well it should be. Frankly, I’m disappointed. I’ve been defending homeschoolers for twenty years. But the principle I’m defending, Mark, is school choice, parental choice. The objection they have is that it shouldn’t be involved in public funding, at all. It shouldn’t be involved with government schools, as they say. But, I’m not prepared to relinquish $400 billion and just say, well never mind, this is not money that I’m entitled to. Parents are paying that money in taxes, they should have an option within the public school system that gives them a chance to educate their children at home, but be publicly accountable as all public schools should be.

The Chicago Public Schools attorney had this explanation in a 2006 Chicago Tribune article about the Chicago Virtual approval:

Illinois law states that charter schools must be “non-home based,” which the teacher’s union argued would restrict the state from approving the virtual school. State Supt. Randy Dunn recommended the board deny the virtual school’s application based on the law’s language. But board members and proponents of the virtual school said that charter school laws enacted in the 1990s did not anticipate the growth of technology that has made virtual schools possible. Rocks, the attorney for Chicago Public Schools, said the restrictions on”home-based” charter schools mushroomed from concerns that home schools were trying to become charter schools simply to get public dollars. He presented letters from state lawmakers who voted on Illinois’ charter school law, and said their intent was not to block Internet-based schooling.

The legislators might have been been worried that Illinois homeschoolers were looking at public monies, but I have seen little evidence of that.

The union voice from Ms. Stewart is harsh.  Chi-Town Daily News: Teachers union pans virtual classroom plan July 17, 2006
BY JENNIFER KOONS

“For them to think they can address the social and emotional issues of a child without being in the same room as that child is ludicrous,” Stewart said. “You can only adequately address these issues in a classroom where you have necessary peer support and peer interaction.”

Stewart expressed concern about a lack of interaction between students and educators.

“Qualified teachers are only providing 20 percent of the lessons,” Stewart said. “Who are the certified professionals who will supervising the students when they are off-line?”

She wasn’t done there.  The Southwest News Herald had a 2006 article (not available online) quoting her union concerns about children learning at home via the Chicago Virtual Charter School:

“How are students to model behavior with a computer screen,” said Stewart.

They’re in their home, dear.  The 8 year olds don’t need to model their behavior after the 8 year old in the next door desk.

But everything, including grading, she said, is being done virtually. And Stewart is unhappy that there is “no direct supervision.”

What, Stewart asked, if there are three or four children in a household enrolled in the virtual school? Are there going to be three or four parents watching the children?

“And who are these parents or guardians that are helping the children — their grandparent who barely speaks English, or a work-at-home parent?” asked Stewart.

She loves parents….I was feeling that.

That “S” word doesn’t seem to go away.  Socializing is a bit different than School Socialization.  Apparently, the Chicago Virtual families chose getting together in their community, as opposed to the same room as folks like Marilyn Stewart.