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| Date: From: Subject: | 5/18/2004 3:37:31 PM Home School Legal Defense Association Oregon--Come to Salem to Protect Your Homeschool Freedom! |
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====================================================================== From the HSLDA E-lert Service... ====================================================================== May 18, 2004 Oregon--Come to Salem to Protect Your Homeschool Freedom! Dear HSLDA members and friends: Your presence at the Capitol building in Salem is needed to help protect homeschool freedom in Oregon. On Wednesday, May 19, the Senate Interim Education Committee will hold a hearing on whether to increase the requirements to current homeschool law. Oceanetwork will be testifying at the hearing in opposition to adding to the current law. We need you to be at the hearing to show the Senate Committee that homeschooling families are opposed to additional homeschool regulations, which have been proven to be unnecessary. Please make every effort to come to the Senate hearing in Room B at the State Capitol building. The hearing is scheduled to begin at 11:00 a.m. If you are unable to attend please consider helping to make it possible for other families in your area to attend. By standing together now we can prevent dangerous legislation from being introduced next session. Come defend homeschool freedom in Oregon! REQUESTED ACTION: 1) Please come to the Senate Interim Education Committee hearing on the homeschool laws tomorrow, May 19, 2004. The hearing will be at 11:00 a.m. in Room B of the State Capitol in Salem. 2) Please pray that Oceanetwork and others would be able to effectively testify and that the truant officer's testimony would be successfully overcome. Reasons We Oppose Adding to the Current Laws: - Statistics show that higher regulation--such as mandatory testing does not help homeschool students. Studies show that homeschoolers score 20 to 30 percentile points higher than other students. Forcing them to take tests when their performance has already been proven is senseless. - Currently 41 states (including Oregon) recognize the right of parents to teach their children without any specific teacher qualifications. Studies have shown that the level of education that a parent has does not figure significantly in a homeschool student's achievement. If you compare students in public school or homeschool based upon the education level of their parents, homeschooled students will still perform 20 to 30 percentile points higher than public school students. In fact, if you compare students of parents with less than a high school education, homeschooled students perform 40 to 50 percentile points higher than public school students. - No state requires a parent to provide the time and location of their home education program. This would add a significant burden on families who do not follow traditional school hours or their children receive education from many different locations (community college, co-op, apprenticeship, etc.) - Under the current law a parent must be educating the child in order to be exempt from public school attendance. If parents were truly not educating their children as claimed by the truant officer, they would already be in violation of the compulsory education laws in Oregon. Thus, any school district already has the ability to protect those children who are not being educated at home by their parents. BACKGROUND: The Oregon Interim Education Committee is holding the hearing tomorrow to consider whether to add to the current requirements for homeschooling families in several different areas. Among the issues being considered are requiring parents to provide the Education Service District (ESD) or local School District with: - a list of the materials to be used in the home education program; - the time and place of the instruction; and - require that the parent have at least the equivalent of a high school education. This hearing is being held at the request of a truant officer from the Springfield School District who believes that there are many homeschooling families in Oregon who are simply putting their name on a notice of intent form with no real intent to educate their children. The truant officer is reported to have stated that he believes that nearly 30-50% of homeschooling families in his district are not educating their children. He has provided no evidence to support these wild claims. The vast majority of families homeschooling their children are doing so, not out of laziness as the truant officer suggests, but out of a desire to train their children to be contributing members of society and for the Kingdom of God. Sincerely, Thomas J. Schmidt HSLDA Staff Attorney ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -> Will your friends stand by you in trouble? They will if you're an HSLDA member and your homeschool is threatened. HSLDA is ready to stand by your side along with 75,000 other homeschool families. More reasons to join HSLDA... http://www.hslda.org/elink.asp?id=1105 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ====================================================================== The HSLDA E-lert Service is a service of: Home School Legal Defense Association P.O. 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Thank you for your cooperation. ====================================================================== | |
