After restrictions were lifted off Pennsylvania homeschoolers, state legislatures are likely to ease regulations in at least three other states during this legislative session, said Mike Donnelly, staff attorney for the Home School Legal Defense Association.
“It has been a trend to remove unnecessary burdens from homeschoolers,” Donnelly told TheBlaze. “A dozen or so states have updated their laws in the last 10 or 15 years. Most of the regulation were drafted 35 to 40 years ago when home schooling was an unknown. Today we know that homeschooling works well and that some regulations are unnecessary and burdensome.”
In observance of National Fossil Day, 6-year-old Alec Turnbull, right, strains for a view inside the cranial cavity of a Smilodon or saber-toothed cat during a field trip to the University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History in Eugene, Oregon, Oct. 15, 2014. The group of a dozen area homeschool children went on a scavenger hunt in the museum and got a hands on opportunity to investigate fossils of plants and animals from Oregon's ancient past during the afternoon visit. (AP Photo/ The Register Guard, Chris Pietsch)
Donnelly was reluctant to name the states likely to have pending legislation this session, other than West Virginia, where lawmakers are planning on a legislative package. He said he was concerned that opponents of homeschooling legislation would prepare to defeat it. No state is looking at increasing regulations, because homeschooling has a proven track record, Donnelly said.
Donnelly helped in drafting laws that passed in Minnesota and New Hampshire that lifted regulations on homeschoolers. Donnelly said lifting these restrictions would take the burden off the public education.
“People who have a job of focusing on public education should focus on public education,” Donnelly said.
Pennsylvania public educators saw it different, and unsuccessfully fought the deregulation bill that did away with requiring homeschoolers to submit their children’s portfolios, as well as the results of standardized testing in third, fifth and eighth grade, to school district superintendents. Instead, the new Pennsylvania law allows parents to certify their children completed high school graduation requirements.
“Here we are loosening standards for a subset of students while at the same time giving them the same credential as all other students,” Jim Buckheit, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators, told the New York Times.
Pennsylvania previously had one of the strictest homeschooling laws in the nation, the Times reported, in requiring student to register each year with the local school district, requiring parents to outline study plans and certifying that adults in the home had no criminal record.
The Times reports that 11 states don’t require families to register with a state or local government agency, while 14 states don’t specify required subjects. In about half the states, homeschooled children do not have to take a standardized test.
In 2014, the Utah state legislature passed a law that lifted requirements that homeschoolers file affidavits once per year with the school district.
The number of children being homeschooled jumped to 1.8 million in the 2011-2012 school year, up from 1.5 million five years earlier, with the highest concentration in the South and West.
