Ohio superintendent: 'I will question homeschoolers as I see fit'

Needs some legislation to more clearly define where his domain ends. … but if he has the right to “question” as he wishes, certainly parents have a right to not answer if they wish.

See the part about the HSLDA getting involved. HSLDA has about ten reports per month about school administrators and such getting “too big for their britches.” The only thing that might be added is civil or criminal penalties for repeated violations, in my view.

does a superintendent really have responsibility over ALL CHILDREN in his area? That would seem to me t include all private schools of any type. If that is the case, so be it, but I doubt it.

That being said, I have known some great homeschool parents, but I have known A LOT MORE who were lazy and let their kids blow off things like math or writing skills. I have seen it over and over.

I recall years ago taking my kids to a new pediatrician for shots and checkup. The woman learned they were homeschooled and immediately took on an agitated posture toward us and began asking intrusive questions she had no right to ask. We walked out and never returned.

Ohio law is very clear about the scope of authority of school officials over homeschoolers. We file a notification that we are homeschooling each year, and the superintendent send us an acknowledgement and excuse from compulsory attendance letter.

We also send in the results of a standardized test or narrative assessment by a certified teacher each year.

They do not have the authority to oversee when or what homeschoolers learn, or make any determinations as to progress except when the child tests below the 25th percentile.

It doesn’t inspire confidence when school officials don’t understand how to interpret results of standardized tests.

“His response further demonstrated a lack of understanding regarding how to interpret a nationally norm-referenced assessment…Hile wrote that he considered a child who scored in the 30th percentile on a standardized test ‘2–3 years below grade level (as 50th percentile is on grade level on NNRA).’”

“As a professional educator, Hile should know percentile scores on a norm-referenced assessment that is standardized nationally – as required by Ohio regulations – reflect how many students performed at or above that level … not what grade level the child is…A score of the 30th percentile simply means that 30 percent of the students scored below a particular result on that test.”

It’s true that some homeschoolers appear to be slackers, but based on the ‘acceptable losses’ in public schools (as seen on school district report cards on the NAEP website), I think most school superintendents have enough to do to ensure the progress of the students in their charge without invading the lives of homeschoolers who are in compliance with the law.

[Mark_Smith]

does a superintendent really have responsibility over ALL CHILDREN in his area? That would seem to me t include all private schools of any type. If that is the case, so be it, but I doubt it.

That being said, I have known some great homeschool parents, but I have known A LOT MORE who were lazy and let their kids blow off things like math or writing skills. I have seen it over and over.

I appreciate the second sentence of Mark’s here. There are some people who homeschool who do neglect math, and quite frankly that’s the one weak spot that national surveys tend to identify. Writing, too, although if someone’s been reading good books, that tends to be overcome a lot more quickly than a lack of math instruction.

Really, the supervision homeschoolers need most is the reminder that if your child does not learn to read, write, and cipher well, the parents are going to most likely be dependent on their parents or the state. Probably a really good lesson for all of us, no?

In 23 years, I’ve only met one homeschooling family that was truly inept—and after a couple of years they put their kids back in school. I’ve also never met a homeschooling family that didn’t obsess about whether or not their child was doing enough of everything. It’s not that I don’t think neglectful homeschoolers exist, it’s just that in my experience, homeschooling self-selects for parents who are dedicated to their child’s education.

According to the NAEP, only 37% of 12th graders were performing at or above ‘proficient’ in reading in 2015. Obviously, public schools are no guarantee that children will receive a quality education. I think school superintendents should be more concerned about those numbers. After all, their schools are funded by tax dollars, while homeschoolers don’t take a dime from the gov’t.

Political philosophy plays a huge role in these conflicts. The leftism/progressivism that dominates higher education, media, and public education in general is convinced that government solutions are the best solutions to virtually every problem—or that the government solution is the only real solution. This is part of the overall thinking that progress in our social evolution means leaving the traditional family and its responsibilities behind. There is a feeling that we need to outgrow it.

Along with that, we have the assumption that the only real community institutions are government institutions. So “community” and “government” are seen as synonymous. Families… churches… if they have any continuing value to society it’s as institutions that help support the agenda of The Community, which is the government.

So if you’re homeschooling—to these folks, you’re a throwback to the middle ages, an earlier stage of evolution, anti-community… and probably “right wing extremist.”

Christians are going to have to get used to being increasingly further out of the mainstream of American ways of thinking (as are non-Christian conservatives).