Posted by Howard Richman on May 07 2008 at 09:12:21:
An article in today´s Knoxville TN News-Sentinel reports that TN homeschoolers are losing their government jobs because they lack recognized diplomas.
Homeschoolers in PA need not have the same problem since the PA home education law (unlike the laws in the other 49 states) recognizes high school graduation from a home education program and the PA Department of Education recognizes the diplomas of homeschool organizations who have submitted their standards and procedures and gone through the recognition process.
Unfortunately, the Home School Legal Defense Association has dropped the ball for homeschoolers in the rest of the country. When new homeschool laws have been written since 1988, when PA home education law was written, they have not even suggested that those laws contain requirements for high school diplomas.
It is not clear why HSLDA has failed the homeschool community, but my guess is that since almost all of their lawyers claim the religious exemption to compulsory education in VA, they realize that there is no possible way that they could get recognition for their own diplomas. (The religious exemption is basically an exemption that says you aren´t educating your children; it was put in place in VA to give an out to the Amish whose kids drop-out after 8th grade.)
The HSLDA strategy has been to try to make high school diplomas unnecessary for government services. They have succeeded admirably well as far as college scholarships and admissions are concerned.
One problem, however, is that they have also made it much easier for high school drop-outs to masquerade as homeschoolers, which has considerably lowered the reputation of homeschool diplomas in much of the country.
It´s hard to believe, but despite the recognition process in PA, many PA homeschool parents each year decide not to go through the inexpensive process of getting their diplomas through a PA homeschool organization. I get phone calls all of the time from homeschool grads whose parents were too lazy or cheap to complete that paperwork. For example, yesterday I got a call from the family of a homeschool grad who is having trouble enlisting in the Marine corps because he lacks a recognized diploma. He may have to take community college courses before he will be permitted to enlist.
Here is a selection from the Tennessee story:
NASHVILLE - Rockwood police officer John Evans may lose his job if a bill validating his homeschooling fails to pass the Legislature soon and, he says, at least six drug arrests he has made would be dismissed.HowardThree West Tennessee day-care workers have already lost their jobs because of a new interpretation that the state Department of Education has given to what qualifies as the high school diploma required for holding some government-related jobs, according to Rep. Mike Bell, R-Riceville, sponsor of a bill that would revise that interpretation.
But critics of the measure say it would amount to giving a legislative seal of approval to a homeschool education when the state has no control over what is involved in that education....
Bruce Opie, legislative liaison for the Department of Education, told the committee that department officials "were a little overzealous" in deciding that homeschool certificates do not count as high school diplomas. But he insisted that "it has not been out of malice or any mean-spiritedness on our part."
Starting this week, he said, the department has adopted a policy of looking at each situation on a case-by-case basis and determining whether a person has the equivalent of a high school education.
In the case of someone such as Evans, who had formal post-secondary education after his homeschooling, it might seem "ludicrous" to deny approval, Opie said.
At the same time, giving blanket approval of homeschool certificates as qualifying as a diploma may not be appropriate, he said.
"Do we get in the business of approving a diploma when we have absolutely nothing to do with oversight?" he said. "Under the law, we are told to stay completely out of (homeschooling)."
Rep. Ulysses Jones, D-Memphis, said the bill would give special treatment to homeschool students not granted to those attending public schools and receiving a certificate of attendance rather than a regular diploma - typically after failing to pass required Gateway exams showing proficiency in key subjects. The certificates do not qualify as a diploma.
"We have kids who fail the Gateway algebra test by one point, and they get nothing," said Jones, adding that the same student attending homeschool with no proficiency exam required would be treated as having a diploma under the bill.
"That´s just unfair," he said. "We´re turning our back on these kids (with public high school certificates) and telling them, ´No. You can´t be anything.´"
Rep. Mark Maddox, D-Dresden, said he has "no problem with true homeschoolers" but is aware of situations where eighth-grade dropouts, working with a "for-profit organization," got suspect homeschool certificates in just a few months....