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Archive for the ‘Home Education’ Category

On Thursday, February 17, 2011, Senator Edward Maloney killed SB 136. When I heard the news, I contacted his Chicago office to thank him and to ask if he will continue to pursue the registration of homeschooled students with the Illinois State Board of Education. I was told by a woman in his office (Jackie) that the senator was still in Springfield and that she did not have a lot of details. She did inform me that “any future discussions will include homeschoolers.” She did not indicate WHO those homeschoolers would be. She did tell me she would leave Sen. Maloney a message to return my call. As of this writing, Saturday, February 19, 2011, I have not received a call from my senator.

In the meantime, organizations such as the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) and Illinois Christian Home Educators (ICHE) have put out messages to their members which say that the issue of SB 136 is done. However, they are WRONG. While SB 136 was indeed tabled, the issue is still quite alive.

Senator Maloney must not have received the message carried to Springfield earlier this week by some 4,000+ folks from the homeschooling community.

For more information, visit the following Facebook pages:

• Stop SB 136: http://www.facebook.com/STOPSB136

Update 2/22/11: The rally scheduled for Saturday, February 26, 2011, has been postponed. Please visit the Stop SB 136 Facebook page for any updates.

Please contact Sen. Ed Maloney, and let him know that you oppose SB136. This bill proposed all non-public students be required to register with the state. Now, he plans to amend it so it only affects homeschoolers. Registration is not necessary and it will be costly – this does affect the entire community. Please call/fax/email Sen Maloney to oppose this bill. His contact information:

Yesterday, thousands of homeschoolers traveled to Springfield, Illinois, to attend a hearing regarding SB 136. This bill would require non-public school students to register with the Illinois State Board of Education. It is sponsored by State Senator Edward Maloney, 18th District. This happens to be my district.

It seems Sen. Maloney plans to amend SB 136 so that the language specifically references homeschooled students.

I have several questions about this bill:

I am wondering how a bill can be passed, applicable only to homeschoolers, when the Supreme Court declared homeschools are private schools here in the State of Illinois. Just how will this be accomplished? It seems to me that this would be unconstitutional.

Then, there is the matter of funding this “registration.” Who will bear the costs associated with registering thousands of homeschooled students? As a property owner in Cook County, I am already paying over $3,000 every year to my local school districts. It seems to me that property owners will end up bearing the costs associated with this bill.

Exactly what will be done with the information provided to the Illinois State Board of Education?  I am thinking that registration would be just the first step to saddling the homeschooling community with further requirements and restrictions.

None of these questions were addressed at yesterday’s hearing.

As a resident in the district served by Sen. Maloney, I will be paying his office a visit later this week. I hope to be able to meet with the Senator and have him answer these questions and address my concerns.

Do not worry, though, as I will not be holding my breath.

For more information on SB 136, visit the Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/STOPSB136

Earlier today, Senator Ed Maloney discussed SB 136, the proposed bill to regulate homeschoolers in the State of Illinois, with Cisco Cotto on WLS radio. There is a transcript of the discussion here: http://www.triviumpursuit.com/blog/2011/02/14/transcript-state-senator-edward-maloney-joins-cisco-cotto-on-wls-am-890/comment-page-1/#comment-265978

I have made several attempts to contact Senator Maloney, who actually represents my district. His office in Worth, as listed on his website, is closed, with a big “For Rent” sign in the window. The phone at his office in the Beverly community goes straight to voicemail. Curious? Or perhaps he does not want to hear what his own constituents have to say?

From the interview, it is pretty clear that Maloney wants some sort of regulations for homeschoolers in Illinois. His reasoning of “accountability” is fairly bogus, in my opinion, considering that the accountability in the Illinois public schools is rather suspect when so many students graduate below grade level.

Some of my favorite quotes from the interview:

“I think the state of Illinois is responsible for its citizens and if we have run into situations where … the parents are not being responsible in handling their child’s education, then we have to deal with it.” ~Senator Ed Maloney. -

Hey Sen. Maloney: why don’t you apply this to public school families and leave the homeschoolers alone!

“What I’m saying (is) the state ultimately is responsible for its citizens so if we have problems later on with these children who haven’t been educated in the proper manner then the state ends up dealing with them.” ~Sen. Ed Maloney.

Hey Sen. Maloney – this has been happening with the kids in public schools for decades. I’m thinking the state didn’t do a very good job with many of those kids!

I think Cisco Cotto was spot-on when he said:

“There’s a difference if someone comes to you and goes, ‘Lookit, we’ve got all these thousands of kids that can’t read and write and they’re in and out of jail and they’re having a horrible time and it’s because they were homeschooled.’ Instead, those are the kids who come out of the public schools! And there’s no one who’s sitting here saying we need to actually fix the public schools or at least doing something substantive to do it. If there was a problem that you could diagnose, then maybe the homeschool parents would go, ‘Oh well, we get it, we want to make sure that those things are taken care of.’”

Go read the transcript. You may listen to the podcast from the WLS website at this link: http://citadelcc.vo.llnwd.net/o29/stations/CHICAGO/WLS_AM/Cisco_Cotto/Feb14EdMaloney.mp3

Earlier this week, I wrote in to the SouthtownStar Newspaper about the proposed SB 136 bill, put forth by Sen. Edward Maloney, 18th District (my district), here in Illinois. The same day that the newspaper published an abridged version of my letter (see my post on that here), it also published a letter from one Dana P. Zigmund. Today’s post is a comment I wrote on the SouthtownStar’s website in response to her letter.

Below is Ms. Zigmund’s Letter to the Southtown Star, which was entitled ““Need to assure all students are prepared for future.”

I appreciate that Fran Eaton and many other homeschool parents do a wonderful and thorough job educating their children.

However, some children are pulled from school to avoid perceived conflicts with teachers, special education services and other reasons. Sadly, those children may miss out on valuable skills that allow them to support themselves as adults.

As a state and a community, we owe it to the children who are homeschooled to make sure that they are learning at home and will be prepared to enter the work force.

Obviously, failure to learn can happen at school, too. However, in the home setting, a child who is not learning has few, if any, chances to reach out for help.

The parents who are confident in the excellence of their home curriculum should welcome this important safeguard for the children of Illinois.

My comments to Ms. Zigmund:

Take a trip to the Cook County Criminal Courthouse, at 26th and California, and you can personally see the many former public school students who failed to learn those “valuable skills” that you wrote about.

It is not the state’s, nor the community’s, job to make sure that children are learning and are prepared to enter the work force as responsible citizens. This is the task of PARENTS.

There are thousands of students being graduated every year from public schools who are not at grade level. If government schools cannot make sure every graduating student goes out into the world with a real education, then why should the same state which oversees public school students take on the task of overseeing private and homeschooled students.

As parents, we need to take responsibility for our own children. I have seen the village – I do not need it raising, nor overseeing the education of, my children.

The original letters may be found on the SouthtownStar website here: http://southtownstar.suntimes.com/opinions/letters/3759592-474/forum-state-should-focus-first-on-public-school-students.html

Join Illinois Homeschoolers this Tuesday, February 15, 2011, in Springfield to attend a hearing at 10:45am, with Senator Edward Maloney, regarding SB 136.

For more information, visit the ICHE website: http://www.iche.org/blog/1513/02-11-2011/alert-legislative-task-force

Stop SB 136, Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/STOPSB136

Last week, Senator Edward Maloney, Illinois 18th District, introduced SB136, which will require non-public school students to register with the Illinois State Board of Education. This would include both private school students and homeschool students. I recently wrote in a letter to the SouthtownStar, after reading a column about the subject by Fran Eaton. Below is my letter, in its entirety.

Fran Eaton’s piece, “Homeschool parents ask, ‘Why state registration?’” raised some good points regarding the proposed Senate Bill 136 by Senator Edward Maloney. This legislation would require all non-public students to register with the Illinois State Board of Education. This includes private school students, as well as homeschooled students.

Maloney’s “concern” is about those children being taught at home. He claims to “want more accountability.”

In the article, Maloney said, “Certainly, for the most part homeschoolers do a conscientious job that exceeds standards. I’ve heard many anecdotal stories about home-taught students doing well, but there are some out there that aren’t. We need minimally to know who the home-taught kids are.”

As a parent, who homeschooled my own children for 12 years, I would twist that around and say to Senator Maloney (who represents my district):

With thousands of my property tax dollars going to fund government schools every year, I would say that for the most part government schools do a conscientious job that likely meets state standards. I’ve heard many anecdotal stories about public school students doing well. My own sons, who attended community college while homeschooling their way through high school, were classmates with public school graduates in 090 level math and English courses. These are high school level courses, Sen. Maloney.

While it is acceptable for a 16 year old to take such courses, WHILE IN HIGH SCHOOL, it seems to me that a public high school graduate should be in Freshman College level courses. To me, this points to the fact that our government schools are not meeting the standards. I need minimally to know who is responsible for overseeing instruction of these “high school graduates” and why they were allowed to graduate without achieving high school level studies.

I would be very happy to have the Illinois State Board of Education express concern and demand accountability from private and homeschooled students when it can achieve success with the tens of thousands of students already enrolled in public schools. Until all public school graduates can demonstrate that they can perform at twelfth grade levels upon graduation, I do not see how Senator Maloney and the Illinois State Board of Education can exact “more accountability” from private school and home educated students.

Here is a link to my letter, as published by the SouthtownStar: http://southtownstar.suntimes.com/opinions/letters/3759592-474/forum-state-should-focus-first-on-public-school-students.html

Here is a link to Fran Eaton’s article, as published by the SouthtownStar: http://southtownstar.suntimes.com/news/eaton/3719092-452/homeschool-parents-ask-why-state-registration.html

There are is a page on Facebook that has been set up to fight SB 136:
Stop SB 136 – http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/pages/Stop-SB-136/151000834954598

The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives.
~Robert Maynard Hutchins

Yes, it’s that time of year. No, not Christmas, but the beginning of the school year. Like the quote above states: the object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives.
For most of my son’s lives, their education was acquired in the non-traditional form of homeschooling; living life and learning have always gone hand-in-hand.

For the first time in nearly 12 years, the start of the school year does not include homeschooling any of my sons. My youngest son is now a full time college student, heading off to someone else’s classroom five days a week. This is a wonderful feeling and, for me, it does seem sort of like Christmas.

My boys are not strangers to the local college. The oldest began taking courses there part-time when he was 14 years old; the other two got dragged along for the ride, often working on their own school work in the gathering areas at the college. Since they all began taking college courses while in high school, all of my sons graduated from high school a year earlier than their same age peers.

It has been satisfying to see the boys navigate their way through a large college campus, often being the youngest in their classes. Many are surprised to find that they were educated at home for most of their grammar school and all of their high school years. The years of learning and working with a wide variety of people, from the very young to the elderly, shows in how confident they are in the world.

Sending the youngest off to take college courses full time really is a gift. Like my older sons, he has proven time again that he can think for himself and make good decisions. It truly is a “present” knowing that the education my sons received during their homeschooling years has created a strong foundation for their future.

Onward and upward!

~Karen