Since April of 2005, Home School Legal Defense Association and Network of Iowa Christian Home Educators have been working with the Iowa Department of Education to ensure that changes to Competent Private Instruction (CPI) rules would not adversely impact homeschool families. The revisions adopted by the State Board of Education acquired the force of law on February 18, 2009. (Changes in home school assistance program regulations are not addressed in this article.)
1) CPI students are explicitly allowed to enroll in postsecondary enrollment option courses, in line with a lawsuit HSLDA won several years ago in the Meggan Stone case.
2) In accordance with HSLDA’s victory in Fitzgerald vs. Simmons, approval to provide CPI to a special needs student is no longer necessary unless the family wants their special needs child to be evaluated by the school system.
3) HSLDA has long advocated that a portfolio is acceptable to satisfy the baseline assessment requirement. This is now being adopted into the regulations. Generally speaking, a family should use a portfolio assessment as a baseline if they plan to use a portfolio in future years, or a standardized test if they plan to use that instead.
Changes related to timelines:
4) August 26 is now the deadline for filing the CPI form rather than the constantly shifting “first day of school.”
5) Parents who begin to homeschool after the school year starts have a little more breathing room. Before, they had 14 days to file a fully completed CPI form. Now, they only need to file a draft form within 14 days, to be followed by a fully completed form within 30 days of withdrawing the child from school.
6) A supervising teacher’s duty to contact a parent twice “per quarter” has been clarified to twice “per 45 days of instruction.”
7) The timing for the baseline assessment submission has now been clarified to coincide with the guidance HSLDA has provided for several years (i.e., no change from our current summary of the law).
Changes related to assessments:
8) Year-end testing options have been broadened and now explicitly include testing through “a correspondence course or other school accredited by an accrediting agency approved by the Federal Department of Education, or by any testing service authorized by the publisher of any test approved
by the state Department of Education for assessment purposes.”
9) Parents are specifically allowed to redact, or blot out, portions of a year-end test score that are not required to be submitted to satisfy the law.
10) A previous rule required the submission of the “original” of the test results. The revised rule allows the submission of a photocopy.
11) Year-end test results are now required to be submitted only to the school district—not copied to the state department of education.
12) A report card from an accredited correspondence school is now explicitly identified as satisfying the baseline evaluation or year-end assessment.
13) A person with a current substitute teacher’s license who previously held an Iowa license with classroom or content endorsements may provide a portfolio evaluation for a child within the same grade level restrictions as that of a person with a current Iowa license classroom or content endorsements.
And to round out our 16 highlights:
14) A person with a substitute teacher’s license or substitute authorization is now explicitly authorized to provide instruction or instructional supervision.
15) The duties of a supervising teacher have been explained more carefully to avoid needless administrative duties.
16) “Actual guardians” are now listed as additional persons allowed to provide home education.
Over the past few years, several bills have been filed by out-of-touch legislators seeking to impose additional requirements on homeschool families. By the grace of God, and with the vigorous help of Iowa homeschool families, those bills were all stopped.
In Iowa’s somewhat hostile legislative atmosphere, we give God the glory that all these regulatory changes are either neutral or helpful for homeschoolers.
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