LEGAL/LEGISLATIVE UPDATES
ACROSS THE STATES

OREGON

Multnomah ESD threatens family

Home School Legal Defense Association recently assisted a member family within the Multnomah Education Service District (ESD) who had received a letter from the ESD registrar notifying them that they were in violation of state law by failing to submit standardized scores to the ESD. The ESD threatened to notify the family's local school district if the test scores were not submitted by a certain date. Since Oregon law only requires submission of standardized test scores if requested by the ESD, the threat to report this family was unwarranted.

HSLDA Attorney Dewitt Black contacted the ESD registrar by mail and pointed out that the homeschooling family had not violated state law and should not have been threatened with legal action. Black stated that the family was willing to submit the test scores by the deadline. (State law does not impose a deadline for submitting test scores, but students must be tested by August 15.) Subsequently, the ESD official wrote the family and acknowledged the mistake in the wording of the earlier letter containing the threatening language. The registrar assured the family that future requests for test scores from homeschooling families would comply with state law.