January 7, 2010
Dear Michigan home educating friends,
There has been considerable activity recently within our state legislature and their allies in the media regarding the home schooling community. I thought I should update you briefly on a few things and share my opinion about them.
First, a series of news articles appeared in several large city newspapers and TV stations calling for greater control over home educators in Michigan. Links to those articles are listed below. Essentially, according to these articles, the issue is child abuse and their alleged solution is greater government regulation of homeschooling. But according to the MI Department of Human Services, 17,460 cases of serious abuse (levels 1-3) occurred in 2008, the latest year for which data is available. If 3-5% of the children in Michigan are home schooled (and potentially being ‘abused’!), then using their own ‘logic,’ 95-97% of all child abuse must occur within families participating in government education programs! This is a serious problem that should be addressed by this same reporter and our government regulators before they turn their attention to the few cases occurring within the “home school” community. Seriously, abuse should never occur within the Christian community and I pray rarely does. But not all home schoolers are Christians and even some of us Christians make bad decisions. At the end of the day, however, the issue really is clearly NOT about abuse but regulation, in order to remove the freedom we enjoy in discipling our children at home. To many in the education bureaucracy these children represent dollars not being enjoyed in the public education trough, which I would venture to guess is at least a part of the real issue. It is money for which our enemies will not stop working until they have our children, and their ‘per-pupil’ funding, back in their schools. Our friends at HSLDA have written an opinion in response to these articles and it too is listed below.
Second, new legislation is awaiting the governors’ signature that would require children to remain in school until age 18. Listed below are comments for your review from Citizen’s For Traditional Values’ James Muffett and Dennis Smith, my dear friends and fellow laborers in the work of home education freedom. Let me summarize this by stating that there is an “opt out” clause for home educators and other parents who desire other options for their children… but know that all government intrusion into our freedom is deemed unacceptable in my opinion. Know, too, that since this issue is, at least in part, financially driven, every child in a government school has a potential dollar value and the longer they remain in school the more money schools receive. The truth is: test scores and morality continue to worsen in government schools; money is not the answer but since it is their only answer, it remains the elusive ends and we are part of their means for securing more of it.
What these two issues bring to our attention is the need for us to both pray and stand guard for our freedom. The Lord raised up the home discipling movement because it was about training children to know and love Him. If we continue to make education the primary goal we will lose our freedom. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. He must be our first, primary and most important reason for keeping our children out of government schools. Let us make sure we are training our children in the ways of the Lord, and then let us pray diligently for God to grant us the freedom to continue in this blessing. Finally, keep writing your legislators and vote at every opportunity for those who support less government and believe Jesus is the answer for man’s problems, not Caesar.
Mike Winter
INCH Executive Director
http://www.detnews.com/article/20091217/METRO/912170337/Lax-home-school-laws-put-kids-at-risk
http://www.detnews.com/article/20091217/METRO/912170390/1026/rss06
http://www.detnews.com/article/20091217/METRO/912170386/1026/rss06
Dear Friends,
As you probably know by now, the Legislature changed the mandatory school attendance age to 18. This will start with this year's (or next, not sure) 6th graders. It also includes Representative Sheltrown's Amendment that allows any parent to opt their child out of this requirement for any reason. I was on the phone with Kuipers, Cropsey, Sheltrown, Pavlov and Elsenhimer throughout Friday evening trying everything I could think of to get this bill removed from the final draft, believing that not only is this bad legislation, but that we were giving up something and getting nothing in return. There is no evidence that this change will reduce the drop-out rate, and for school officials who are anti-homeschooling it gives them two more years to harass, if they are so inclined. It will also likely cost the state a lot of money and decrease the learning environment for the other students who actually are trying to learn something. Not to mention the teachers who have to manage the uninterested and disruptive students.
All that said, the lawmakers mentioned above believed that since the bill allowed parents to opt out, that it really did not harm homeschooling at all, and it was the trade-off Demanded by the Democrats for a big list of very good education reforms that Republicans had been pursuing for a long time. This includes a huge expansion of Charter Schools, greater outsourcing and other flexibilities with teacher contracts for schools, and two pilot cyber schools which will revolutionize education delivery in the long-term. Also, the bottom five percent of public schools are on the chopping block if they don’t improve. After learning about the provisions in the final bill draft, Al Cropsey (who voted for the bill), Dave Kallman and Dennis Smith all felt as if the trade-off was worth it.
Though we all still think that raising the mandatory age is a bad idea, this particular bill DOES strengthen parental authority. Public school parents, who want their child in school and are, by the way, legally responsible until they turn 18, now have the force of law behind them. Any parent who does NOT want their child in school after age 16, for any reason, can simply sign an affidavit to that end. The home school options still exist in law, and now there is this opt-out provision on top of that.
After reading my summary above, Dennis Smith made the following comments highlighting the influence of home school families in Michigan.
- Republicans (I'm sure because of all the "encouragement" from home schoolers on this issue) were able to get the Democrats to drop the earlier compulsory age requirement. That was great news.
- Home schoolers should know that many Republicans planned to vote NO on the package of bills specifically because of all the home school contacts they received on this issue. That demonstrates that the home school network is still very powerful and that collectively votes can be swayed.
- It was because of the massive home school pressure on the issue that a Democrat (Sheltrown) offered and got the opt-out amendment into the compulsory attendance bill, which helped to make it home school neutral, and in fact, as James points out, gives all parents more control in their children's education.
- I think we also demonstrated that we (home schoolers) were able to rise above our single issue (compulsory attendance) and support several conservative reforms that will help ensure that all kids have the opportunity to receive a good education in Michigan