Homeschooling News 2000

Note: Newspaper links can quickly go "bad" as they are archived.
If the link doesn't work try checking the newspaper's search feature.

11/14/00 McCaughey's are homeschooling

From MSNBC "As if Bobbi didn’t have enough to do, this fall she started home schooling Mikayla while the other kids sleep. Bobbi intends to do this with the septuplets, too. She says, giving herself a break is not as important as shaping her children’s education."

11/11/00 from USA Today is an article about HSers applying for college.

"Home-school parents do not understand the admissions process as well as they should," says Cafi Cohen, a home-schooling parent and author of And What About College?

The article includes some helpful tips.

10/26/00 Hardeman County Mom

This morning I spoke to Mrs. Horn. She still hasn't received any word from her attorney, David Gordon of HSLDA (pro bono) regarding the disposition of her case which was scheduled for a hearing on 10/16/00. She is assuming that "no news is good news."

Mrs. Horn was arrested in August for violating the compulsory attendance law despite her children being under six years of age. She was trying to arrange his enrollment in a safer school but her request was denied. She said the word "homeschool" and was subsequently arrested by the authority of Charles Brown the attendance officer in Hardeman County.

9/00 The Education Freedom Index ranks Tennessee as 48th in the nation as regards homeschooling freedom and 36th in overall educational freedom.

"We find that students in states that have higher scores on EFI also have higher scores on standardized tests, even after controlling for other demographic and policy factors."

Read the whole report here.

9/10/00 RE: the NEA stand against homeschooling

"Spokesperson Kathleen Lyons, after admitting that the organization does not have an "expert on home schooling," and that the issue is "not something that we track," nevertheless said the statement has been the "long-standing position of the association."

Read the whole WND article for more convoluted thinking.

7/11/00: California homeschoolers:
DA decides to close the case against these families. No trial. Charges dropped!
WorldNetDaily article or CHEN website for more info.

Summer 2000: Survey of Nashville's potential homeschoolers

Patricia Lines has an interesting 10 page article on homeschooling in the summer issue of The Public Interest. (The article is not online at this time.)
(snip)
"Future growth could occur most rapidly among ethnic minorities. Though
African-American and other non-Caucasian groups are under-represented amonghomeschoolers, the next generation of minorities is seriously considering it. In a survey of selected classes at Vanderbilt University and Nashville State Tech (a selective private university and a two-year-college), almost half (45.5 percent) of the African-American students said "yes" or "maybe" when asked if they would homeschool their own children in the future. Among other non-Caucasian minorities, two-thirds indicated "yes" or "maybe." Incontrast, less than one-fourth of the white students said this. The survey was small (254 students) and nonrandom, representing students enrolled in the classes of the researchers, whose influence was perhaps stronger among the non-Caucasian students. Nonetheless, the results are startling. Public educators who count on the loyalty of ethnic minorities as the backbone oftheir big-city clientele may be in for yet another surprise."

May 12, 2000 Sonlight Curriculum disassociates from HSLDA. Customers are still able to receive an HSLDA discount though.

Unfortunately the online conversation between John Holzmann of Sonlight, and Mike Farris of HSLDA, as well as those of interested forum participants, about this issue have been removed from the Sonlight Forums. In his formal statement dated May 12, 2000 John wrote: 

"In January of 2000, Sonlight Curriculum., Ltd., determined it would disassociate itself from HSLDA. We did so because we realized that we could not fulfill with respect to HSLDA the fiduciary responsibilities we believe are ours when we promote a product or service. It is our corporate policy that we will not promote a product, service or organization concerning which we are unable to act freely as an advocate on behalf of our customers."

In e-mail correspondence with John Holzmann dated 9/24/03 John affirmed that that the issue was not resolved and that Sonlight, while still offering their customers an HSLDA group discount number, does not promote HSLDA membership as it once did.

All of the posts back and forth between Sonlight posters, John and comments by Mike Farris have been removed from Sonlight at the request of HSLDA and in Sonlight's effort to be as fair as possible. Many of those post can still be read in the old messages of the HEM-Networking list if you have an interest in reading selected passages. You may e-mail TnHomeEd for a copy of the Holzmann statement.

May 2000: President Clinton wants to organize homeschoolers. 

This WorldNetDaily report contains the following: 

Concluding his two-day "school reform tour," President Clinton yesterday said home-schooled children should "have to prove that they're learning on a regular basis" -- or be forced to go to school.

"I think that states should explicitly acknowledge the option of home schooling, because it's going to be done anyway," Clinton said. "It is done in every state of the country and therefore the best thing to do is to get the home schoolers organized," he said.

Clinton said while he would not choose it for his own child, home schooling can work well when students and parents are made to answer for the students' learning.

"We should say, 'Look, there's a good way to do this and a not-so-good way to do this,"' and require that home-schooled students meet academic benchmarks, he said.

"But if you're going to do this," he added, "your children have to prove that they're learning on a regular basis, and if they don't prove that they're learning then they have to go into a school -- either into a parochial or private school or a public school." 

Pres. Clinton's remarks were also posted at Home Educator Family Times.

March 3, 2000 Bob Jones Univ. Drops Race Date Ban
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20000303/aponline215159_000.htm

By Page Ivey
Associated Press Writer
Friday, March 3, 2000; 9:51 p.m. EST

COLUMBIA, S.C. –– Bob Jones University is dropping its ban on interracial dating in the wake of the criticism that followed George W. Bush's visit to the school.

"As of today, right now, we're dropping it," Bob Jones III said on CNN's "Larry King Live" Friday night.

February 27, 2000 A Mighty Fortress Abandoning the fight for a Christian America, fundamentalists are retreating into their own homes. But it's hard creating a world apart when the secular world keeps knocking.

By MARGARET TALBOT Photographs by JEFF RIEDEL
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20000227mag-christian.html

[This article is a fairly respectful piece about a homeschool movement that chooses to withdraw from current society. The author actually spent time with a family in several situations in her effort to understand them and the way they've chosen to raise their 7 children.]

>From the article:
(snip)
None of this is what Steve and Megan Scheibner would say first about themselves. What they would say first is that they are Christians -- fundamentalist Baptists who were born again when, as teenagers, they found Jesus Christ and accepted the doctrine of salvation. And yet the way they practice their faith puts them so sharply and purposefully at odds with the larger culture that it is hard not to see the Scheibners, conservative and law-abiding though they are, as rebels.

We have arrived, it seems, at a moment in our history when the most vigorous and coherent counterculture around is the one constructed by conservative Christians. That sounds odd to many of us -- especially, perhaps, to secular liberals, who cherish our own 60's-inflected notions of what an "alternative lifestyle" should look like.

February 22, 2000 Home-school apps jump
(at Stanford University)

By AMY L. KOVAC
Stanford Daily
http://daily.stanford.org/Daily99-00/02-22-2000/news/NEWhome22.html

(snip)
This is true at Stanford, where the Office of Undergraduate Admissions has just begun to organize and systematically track home-schooled applicants.

According to Jon Reider, senior associate director of admission, 1999 was the first year that the Admissions Office grouped home-schoolers under their own code.

Fifteen home-schooled students applied for admission to Stanford last year; four were admitted and joined the 1999-2000 freshmen class. This amounts to a 27 percent acceptance rate for home-schoolers, nearly double the overall acceptance rate.

January 2000 Maryland HS Mom acquitted

By Jeff Archer
http://www.edweek.com/ew/vol-16/09home.h16

A state judge in Maryland last week acquitted a woman who teaches her child at home of criminal charges filed against her for refusing to comply with home-schooling regulations.

Some observers said the decision to acquit Cheryl Anne Battles casts doubt on the strength of the state rules governing how districts can monitor home-schooled children in Maryland.

1/29/99 Efforts to Quash Homeschooling Fail

This WorldNetDaily article details the dustup in Lauderdale County in the fall of 1998. A new Federal program to combat truancy, school officials and a local judge were all a part of this incident where two homeschooling parents were arrested. One of the results of this whole incident was the Jeter Memorandum .

August 1999: Homeschoolers Adapt Well to College:

From The Daily News Journal, Murfreesboro,
http://dnj.edge.net/index.ez?viewStory=5818
NASHVILLE (AP) -- Their high school experience might seem sheltered, but home-school graduates generally don't have any more trouble adjusting to college life than those from public schools.

Susan McDowell, managing editor of the Peabody Journal of Education at Vanderbilt University, acknowledged little research has been done on the estimated 1.5 million to 1.7 million home-school students nationwide.

"But what there has been has been positive, or at least neutral," said McDowell, who
researched the relationships between home-schooling mothers and children for her
doctorate. "They seem as a group to be very adaptive.

Check Kay Comments for more on Ms. McDowell's research.

People on the Front Lines of Homeschooling

Ron & Cindy Cobb: This family was sued by the maternal grandparents for custody of the children on the grounds of educational neglect. A Texas judge has given custody to the grandparents. The parents fled to Oklahoma and were subsequently returned to Texas to face contempt hearings. They are awaiting the filing of a writ of mandamus (and order from the higher court) with the Texas Supreme Court on this situation for relief. A jury trial is set for September 12, 2000.

The Texas Home School Coalition is tracking this case: http://www.thsc.org

May 2000: Karen Maple Wins!
http://rutlandherald.nybor.com/News/Story/7907.html

Home-school mom's plan was proper
May 27, 2000

By WILSON RING The Associated Press

MONTPELIER - A Bakersfield woman jailed for two weeks in a dispute with the state over a home-schooling plan for her son had properly set up the program when he was declared truant and ordered into state custody, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled Friday.

The high court reversed a Franklin County family court decision that found the 15-year-old son of Karen Maple was a child in need of supervision because he was not in school and not participating in a state-approved home-schooling plan.

In the late summer of 1998, the family court ordered Trevor Maple into state custody after Karen Maple and the Vermont Education Department were unable to agree to the details of a special component of his home education plan.

In September 1998, Karen Maple went to jail for two weeks rather than turn her son over to department of Social and Rehabilitation Services. Until Friday, her son was still legally in state custody, although officials do not know where he is.

The Supreme Court decision said that under state law governing home schooling, Maple met the legal requirements for telling the state she planned to educate her child at home. The state Department of Education did not follow the procedures needed to contest a home-schooling plan.
(snip)