By Melissa Leu Illinois Statehouse News
SPRINGFIELD — Hundreds of concerned parents and children flooded the Capitol on Tuesday to rally against a measure that will require home-schooled students to register with the state Board of Education.
Sen. Edward Maloney, D-Chicago, said that Senate Bill 136 targets students who are “falling through the cracks” of the home-school education system.
Janet Hasselbring, of Braidwood, home schools her three children, and arrived early Tuesday morning to voice her opposition.
Michael McCreery, executive director of the Illinois Association of Regional Superintendents of Schools, said that most parents who came out on Tuesday were the “cream of the crop,” and that he’s more worried about the ones who didn’t show up.
Under Illinois law, home schooling is considered private education. Parents are required to teach their children subjects “taught to children of corresponding age and grade in the public schools,” including language arts, mathematics, science, social science, fine arts and physical development and health.
“Please don't say home-schoolers have to do nothing," said Scott Woodruff, a lawyer for Home School Legal Defense Association."They have to educate in good faith, instruction has to be adequate, they have to provide education in all the required branches of learning. And they have the burden of proving (all of) that.”
Jasmine Jasper, 16, a home-school student from Mascoutah, said she enjoys the one-on-one attention her parents can provide.
Twelve states — Indiana, Michigan, Texas, Missouri, California, Connecticut, Idaho, Oklahoma, Alaska, New Jersey, Kansas and Illinois — are considered to have minimal home-school regulations, Woodruff said.
A home-schooled transplant from New York said he likes the looser environment.
Giove, 28, expects to educate his four young children at home.
The measure was supposed to be brought up in committee this week, but with the outpouring of criticism from parents, future plans remain on hold.
Oh please don’t change the regulations! We all know there are kids who fall through the cracks in EVERY level of education including the public schools, but that doesn’t mean you penalize the great parents who are giving their kids the best education there is! Kids are flourishing and growing, and becoming brilliant! Don’t let some slack-off change that!
As a parent who homeschooled 4 in a state not approving of homescholing, I see the problem in a simple way. The government needs money for public schools. Also that the state would claim the students are their responsiblity when in fact it is the parents.
It boils down to money and control. God gave only 2 things church and home. Parents need to have the choice of how to raise their own children. They own no one an explaination to the state government of their reasons why. That is freedon.
So Michael McCreery is concerned about the homeschooling parents who didn’t show up on Tuesday? I didn’t show up. I have degrees from Washington University in Education, Psychology, and English Literature. My husband wasn’t there either. He has a PhD from Caltech in Environmental Engineering and is currently a full professor at Northwestern. We couldn’t be in Springfield because we are currently in Puerto Rico where my husband is presenting a paper at a Limnology and Oceanography conference. Before we came, my daughter did a unit on US territories and the history of Puerto Rico. Yesterday we took a “field trip” to a rain forest, and she still worked through her full course load in the evening.
Seriously, I can’t believe the state is considering wasting our time and tax dollars this way. Mere weeks ago we were promised that the 66% income tax increase would not be spent on new projects, but rather to pay off debt. This is an outrageous betrayal of the taxpayers of this state!
According to the capitol police the number of homeschoolers was estimated at 4,000. Having been 1 of the 4000, I can’t figure out how the couple of hundred number keeps coming up. The capacity of the hearing room is 100.
This is the only balanced piece of reporting I have seen on this subject – but it fails to mention that truancy laws are already in effect to address the issue of truancy. The burden of proof that compulsory education laws are being followed rests with homeschool families when taken to court on truancy violations.
Senator Maloney must be afraid home schoolers won’t do nearly as bad a job as the government schoolers. How do you explain a mom and dad do a better job than “professionals” spending about $10,000.00 dollars a year do? Simple — drag the home schoolers down to the subterranean level of government schoolers.
During my career as a professional engineer in an American consumer electronics company, if we lost 500 televisions out of 1,000,000 on the assembly line, it was bad, very bad. The answer was never “throw more money at it.”
America is in about 20th place when you rank countries by literacy. That is pathetic.
Maybe Senator Maloney should work on lifting up government schools to the levels of home schoolers — admittedly an impossible task, but it might keep him busy.
“My concern is with those parents who are not committed, not making the effort and (are) not accountable in any way. We have no way of identifying these parents and students,” Maloney said. “We don’t know if they are learning or if they are truant or what that level of truancy might be.”
This is such an incredible statement – because I can point to case after case where public school teachers are not held accountable in any way for their failing to teach kids. Our nation has some of the highest illiterate rates in the world and it isn’t coming from homeschooled kids – they are being turned out from the public indoctrination centers across the nation. Public schools want to indoctrinate that the nanny state will take care of you, and you aren’t responsible for your life. It is all about control and indoctrinating them into a “global citizen”. I am a single parent and have my kids in a private school. They have been in a private school for 5 years now. I don’t have the nicest looking furniture, nor do I drive a new car each year. I keep a cell phone until it don’t work anymore. And I eat at home most of the time. People must wake up and start learning how to sacrifice and pull their kids out of these public indoctrination centers. Our nation is in a heap of trouble and the majority of that can be directly tied back to the school systems. They know more about how to put a condom on a cucumber than how to do their ABCs or arithmetic. Wake up folks – the kids are our future and if we fail in educating them properly, how will we then end up?
It’s worth noting that not only is there no correlation between homeschool success and the level of regulation, but that the sponsor of the bill comes from a city where the average high school graduate reads at a sixth grade level.
Given that 40-50% of Chicago government schooled kids drop out, that means that a sixth grade reading level is about the 75th percentile in Chicago–where a 12th grade reading level ought to be the 50th. There are some serious problems with education in Illinois, and they’re not with homeschoolers.
First of all…
The schools are accountable to parents (and all taxpayers) and not the other way around. Since when did our failing school system become the boss of anyone?
I say screw the government school system all together. They have failed in EVERY way.
It’s time for parents to defy the perverted government authority on our children now!