House Education Committee
Hearing for HB 2560
TESTIMONY OF CHRISTOPHER J. KLICKAJune 13, 2002
BEFORE THE
PENNSYLVANIA HOUSE EDUCATION COMMITTEE
CONCERNING HOUSE BILL 2560
Introduction
My name is Christopher Klicka and I am senior counsel for the Home School Legal Defense Association. HSLDA is a national non-profit association of attorneys dedicated to protecting the right of parents to home school with minimum state intervention. Our Association is comprised of over 70,000 member home school families nationwide with approximately 2,198 families in the state of Pennsylvania alone. Since 1985 I have worked at the Home School Legal Defense Association in areas of constitutional, criminal, and educational law. I have litigated scores of home school cases, resolved over 6,500 conflicts between home schoolers and the state and have drafted home school amendments to dozens of state compulsory attendance laws. At one point during the middle-to-late 1980’s I was working simultaneously on over 20 home school cases throughout the state of Pennsylvania. I also served as one of the attorneys in Jeffery v. O’Donnell, 702 F.Supp. 516 (M.D. PA 1988), where the federal district court ruled the home school law at that time unconstitutionally vague and a violation of the parents civil rights.
I have written three books on home schooling and parents rights and since 1985 I annually update my published analysis, Home Schooling in the United States: A Statutory Analysis, which summarizes the home school laws and cases in all 50 states. I have provided several copies of my most recent analysis for the Committee to review in order to see that Pennsylvania has one of the most regulatory laws limiting parental freedom in the country. In addition to this analysis and my written testimony, I have given you copies of a study on home schooling called Home Schooling Achievement . This is a combination of two major national studies of home schooling by Dr. Brian Ray and Dr. Larry Rudner. This establishes the fact that home schooling works without state regulation.
I recommend that this Committee, in a future hearing, vote to support House Bill 2560 and thus free innocent, law-abiding home school parents across the state from burdensome regulations.
I have four major points to make before this Committee:
1. H.B. 2560 eliminates burdensome requirements imposed by school districts.
H.B. 2560 will end 14 years of unnecessary and burdensome requirements on home school families. Over the past 14 years our office has represented well over 1,000 home school families who have been arbitrarily abused by school officials through the application of the current law. Our legal contact files in Pennsylvania are virtually the largest of any state. The current restrictive home school law has not kept the local school districts in Pennsylvania from developing policies which add to or contradict the provisions of the statute. For example, last year HSLDA assisted a mother who was being required by the Antietam School District to file a criminal history record before she could teach her own children. William Penn School District disapproves all filings for home education programs after August 1, even though the statute permits a program to begin at any time during the school year. The most egregious policy in the Commonwealth comes from the Carbondale Area School District. Among other things in Carbondale, all parents must meet with the superintendent and convince him that they are capable of teaching their children, and the school district “reserves the right” to have the child evaluated by a psychologist, a public school official must be permitted to enter the family’s home to monitor and access the instruction, and the home education program may be terminated by the district at any time for any reason.
In Bethlehem Area School District, a family submitted an affidavit and was attempting to withdraw their son from public school, but they were informed that the student would have to remain in public school until his home education was approved by school officials. The district gave no indication as to how long it would take to review the family’s affidavit and educational objectives. In Mechanicsburg Area School District, a family filed a notified affidavit prior to beginning home instruction pursuant to the law. Immediately upon receiving the affidavit, the superintendent demanded that the family submit a portfolio of the child’s academic instruction in 15 days. The law, on the other hand, says that this has to be done at the conclusion of the school year or if the superintendent has reasonable belief an appropriate education may not be occurring. This family had not even started home schooling yet.
In another situation the School District of Philadelphia dictated to a family what the grade level of the child in the home education program had to be. They ignored the fact that the parents, not the public school officials, are responsible for determining grade level.
I have attached a handout entitled “Examples of Arbitrary Enforcement of Current Pennsylvania Home School Law.” This document includes examples of how the current law has created endless hassles for innocent home school families and even nightmares for others. This memorandum documents problems in Punxsutawney, Littlestown, Fairview School District, Bangor Area School District, Wyalusing, Perkiomen Valley School District, Central York School District and others. Recently HSLDA finally won a case for a single mother trying to teach her special needs son. She had filed her affidavit in May 2001 and the superintendent called to tell her she had omitted a paragraph. He wanted a statement reflecting the fact that her son had been identified as a child in need of special education services. He told her she needed to get the amended affidavit to him within the next week because he would be out of the office. She mailed it four days later on May 11. On the official’s return from vacation on May 15 he notified Mrs. Oliver that her documentation was complete. Meanwhile the public school principal filed charges. The school district continued to pursue penalizing this innocent lady and the court found her guilty of violating compulsory school attendance from May 5 when she filed her original affidavit until the amended affidavit was received by the school district May 12. She was fined $125, which according to Pennsylvania law goes to the local public school’s coffers. HSLDA appealed the decision in a trial de novo and the commonwealth ended up withdrawing the charges, realizing that the “violation” was caused by miscommunication by school officials. Do I need to say more? The Pennsylvania law is broken, and it needs to be fixed. H.B. 2560 would eliminate nearly all of these and many other problems and harassment faced by honest, law-abiding citizens of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
2. Regulation and accountability to the government does not make better home school students: H.B. 2560 protects parental liberty.
H.B. 2560 would protect home education programs from arbitrary oversight by public school officials. There is no dispute as to what a home school family must do to satisfy the law and what the superintendent must do to enforce the law. This bill would eliminate the unnecessary requirement for filing a notarized affidavit containing education objectives and personal health information for each child. It would eliminate the requirement of maintaining a portfolio of records and materials for each child, freeing the parents up to focus on educating the child.
This bill would achieve the necessary balance of requiring certain minimal standards such as 180 days of instruction, 900 hours at the elementary level or 990 hours at the secondary level, establish mandatory course requirements similar to private schools, and require an annual notice to teach the children at home, giving certain necessary information.
On the other hand, this bill would clearly protect parents “fundamental right to direct the education and upbringing of their children” as protected by the 14th Amendment of the Liberty clause in the U.S. Constitution. Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972), and Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 1076 (1925).
According to the U.S. Supreme Court, “that some parents may at times be acting against the interests of their children…creates a basis for caution, but is hardly a reason to discard wholesale those pages of human experience that teach that parents generally do act in the child’s best interest…the status notion that the government power should supercede parental authority in all cases because some parents abuse and neglect children is repugnant to the American tradition…” Parham v. J.R., 442 U.S. 584 (1979).
The U.S. Supreme Court recently reaffirmed this important constitutional issue in the case of Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57 (2000), where the Court stated that there is a legal presumption that parents act in the best interest of their children. This applies to all parents. Before the state can take away a parent’s fundamental right to direct the education of their children, the state must find that the parent is not fit to do so. We urge you to simply “trust the parents” and support House Bill 2560. The highest courts of our land recognize that parents on the whole act in the best interest of their children. The parents here today, represented on the panel and in the audience, testify to the fact that they care about their children and will see to it that these children are well educated.
Dr. Brian Ray will provide testimony to show that parents who teach their children at home are succeeding. The study that I have handed out entitled “Home Schooling Achievement” shows that students who are home schooled on the average score above average at the elementary and the secondary grade levels. Furthermore, the publishers of the ACT and SAT college entrance exams have tracked home schoolers for the last three or four years and have found that home schoolers on the average are scoring above average on the college entrance exams. Lastly, according to internal surveys by a number of colleges, home schoolers on the average have a higher GPA at a college level. (See the copy of “Home School Students Excel in College” which I have submitted to the Committee to provide evidence of home schooler’s success in colleges.)
Furthermore, research supports the conclusion that parents can be trusted. Burdensome government regulation that is faced by home schoolers in Pennsylvania does not produce better students.
The research that I have included in my testimony in the “Home Schooling Achievement” paper demonstrates that there is no positive correlation between state regulation of home schools and performance of home school students . This study compared home schoolers in three groups of states representing various levels of regulation. Group One represented the most restrictive states, such as Michigan at that time, Group Two represented slightly less restrictive states including North Dakota, and Group Three represented unregulated states such as Texas and California. Dr. Brian Ray concluded “…no difference was found in the achievement scores of students between the three groups which represent various degrees of state regulation of home education…was found that students in all three regulation groups score on the average at or above the 76% in the three areas examined: total reading, total math, and total language. These findings, in conjunction with others described in this section do not support the idea that state regulation and compliance on the part of home education families assures successful student achievement.”
This simply stands for the fact that home schooling works without excessive state regulation.
The Committee recognizes the four most effective elements of the successful education of youth are:
1. Parental involvement
2. Individual attention
3. Small class size
4. A disciplined environment
Home schooling has all four of these elements and scores of studies demonstrate that home schooling works.
3. Pennsylvania is out of step with the nationwide trend to deregulate home schoolers.
As I have said, the home school law in Pennsylvania comprises one of the most restrictive home school laws in the nation. Only New York has more oversight over home education of all the states, but the state is on the verge of overturning its law with the expected passage of Senate Bill 4767 which would eliminate 75% of the present regulation of home schoolers in the state of New York.
Home schoolers throughout the 49 other states are being readily admitted to all the major universities in the nation including Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and Stanford. Home school graduates in Pennsylvania have no special higher class than home schoolers across the nation because of the restrictive requirements. The only difference between home schoolers in Pennsylvania and most of the other states is they have to put up with much more hassle by school districts, wasted time and effort in unnecessary record keeping and portfolios, and wasted time performing other paperwork or arguing with their local school district.
I have presented to the Committee several copies of my “Home Schooling in the United States: A Legal Analysis.” I have been updating this annually since 1985. This provides proof of the trend toward deregulating home schooling across the nation. For example, Oregon recently changed its home school law to eliminate annual testing. Evidence introduced in support of this bill showed that home schoolers were spending $250,000 per year to purchase tests and an average of only two children per year were falling below Oregon’s cutoff score. Spending $125,000 to find one failing child is simply not cost effective. Arkansas for many years required annual testing of home schoolers with scores submitted to the state. Eventually the paperwork got to be so burdensome that the Department of Education took the lead in eliminating annual testing. Alaska, Arizona, and Nevada have all entirely repealed their requirements for testing of home schoolers in the last few years. Here are some additional observations of how the Pennsylvania home education statute not only denies parental liberty, but is out of step with the more minimal requirements in most of the other states.
· Pennsylvania is one of only seven states requiring parents to have teacher qualifications established by the state (high school diploma or its equivalent) before they are permitted to teach their own children. The other 43 states and the District of Columbia have no formal education requirements for teaching parents—not even a high school diploma or a GED.Pennsylvania needs House Bill 2560 to enable it to join the trend throughout the states to protect parent’s rights and begin to trust the parents.
· Pennsylvania is the only state in the nation requiring parents with special needs children to get the approval of a certified special education teacher or psychologist before they can teach their own children at home.
· Pennsylvania is the only state in the nation requiring parents to submit proposed education objectives in each subject to the local superintendent before beginning home instruction, which has been a source of much arbitrary enforcement.
· Pennsylvania is one of only seven states requiring home school parents to submit personal health information about their children to the public school officials.
· Pennsylvania is one of only sixteen states prescribing the time of instruction in a home school. Pennsylvania prescribes more time for home instruction than any other state except New York, which prescribes the same amount of time as Pennsylvania.
· Pennsylvania is one of only eleven states requiring home schools to maintain a record of daily instruction. No state requires more record-keeping than Pennsylvania.
· Pennsylvania is the only state in the nation requiring a double year-end evaluation of students receiving home instruction: first a qualified evaluator such as a certified teacher determines if the student is receiving an appropriate education and then the local public school superintendent conducts yet another evaluation to determine the same thing.
· Pennsylvania is the only state in the nation imposing high school graduation requirements on home school students without recognizing diplomas earned by students who fulfill the requirements.
4. Answers to objections to Pennsylvania House Bill 2560
Some critics have inaccurately described House Bill 2560 as being harmful to students. As evidence they have raised a number of concerns. Below is a brief answer to those concerns demonstrating that the concerns are not valid.
There is nothing in the proposed bill that would keep the state from recognizing diplomas issued by home school associations. Home educators who believe that their children would get a better education through diploma programs will continue to be free to enroll them in such programs. The language in House Bill 2560 prohibiting the "control, management, or supervision of a home education program" by the state does not prohibit the state from recognizing diplomas issued through such programs. But in our opinion the state would not be allowed to develop any policy granting any rights, benefits, or privileges to the recipients of these diplomas in discrimination against a graduate of a home education program, i.e. a student who has fulfilled the graduation requirements of the statute. This is the basic fairness guaranteed by the language of House Bill 2560.
Although only a small percentage of home schooling families desire to use public school textbooks and other curriculum materials, local school districts are currently required to lend these materials to families. The new law would remove the requirement that school districts provide such materials, but it would not prohibit them from doing so. Lending these materials to families would not violate the statutory provision prohibiting school districts from any "control, management, or supervision" of the home education program.
Likewise, this bill would not prohibit local school districts from establishing a policy permitting students in home education programs to participate in sports or any other extra-curricular activities at the public school. Again, so long as the policy does not attempt to control, manage, or supervise the home education program, school districts may continue to establish policies for enrollment and participation of home school students in public school curricular or extra-curricular activities.
Regarding the proposed elimination of the administrative due process provisions in current law, it must be noted that this procedure is only applicable after the superintendent has determined that an appropriate education has not occurred. If House Bill 2560 becomes law, the superintendent would no longer be making that determination, and, further, the new law would no longer define "appropriate education." Thus there would be no occasion for a due process hearing.
In response to those saying that elimination of the due process hearing subjects parents to prosecution for educational neglect and removal of their children by social services, this is simply not true. The due process provisions of the home education statute were never directed toward addressing allegations of child neglect. Social services agencies in Pennsylvania have never been limited by the provisions of the home education law in conducting investigations and prosecuting for abuse or neglect. Neither current law nor the provisions of House Bill 2560 affect the function of social services. But most noteworthy is the fact that there is no provision in Pennsylvania law either defining or prohibiting educational neglect. Any suggestion that parents could be prosecuted for educational neglect and have their children taken away from them is without any legal foundation.
Critics of the bill have said that it removes child protections by no longer requiring parents to have their children receive immunizations and health and medical services. In fact, current law does not even require these services if the parents have a religious conviction in opposition to them or if these services are medically contraindicated. Pennsylvania is one of only seven states requiring parents to provide this information to public school officials. There is nothing to indicate that removing this requirement will result in a lack of needed health care for children in a home education program. Parents who care enough about their children to devote their lives to teaching them at home will also ensure that they receive proper health care.
Only Pennsylvania and Arkansas have provisions in their home school laws prohibiting home instruction when a member of the household has been convicted of certain crimes. There is nothing to indicate that such laws actually provide any protection to children. It has not been a problem in the other states where there are no such laws. The current law in Pennsylvania prohibits home instruction in this case even if the judicial authorities have determined that the adult, usually the parent, may live with the family and participate in all other aspects of family life. In other words, the parent may do anything lawful he wants with his children except teach them at home. We at HSLDA believe this law is certainly unreasonable and probably unconstitutional.
Enactment of House Bill 2560 would not enable parents to thwart the compulsory attendance law, as some are asserting. Parents failing to comply with the provisions of the law would be subject to the truancy provisions just as they are now under Section 13-1333, a completely different statute. If the state has evidence rising to the level of "probable cause" that a violation is occurring, then the parent would be subject to prosecution. Regarding the fact that House Bill 2560 contains no language requiring the parent to state that he will comply with the law, no such language is necessary to hold parents accountable. All citizens are responsible for obeying the law even though they have not stated that they will do so.
Those opposing this bill have complained that the graduation requirements are too vague and that there is no monitoring of completion of the requirements. Current law requires that there be a certain number of years of instruction in named subjects in meeting the graduation requirements. House Bill 2560 retains the "years" requirement but adds "equivalent credits" as an alternative for meeting the time requirement. This simply permits home educators to accelerate their program if the student is able to do so. Current law contains no provision for monitoring completion of graduation requirements.
House Bill 2560 has been wrongly characterized as not requiring any high school math for graduation, because algebra and geometry are no longer expressly required in grades 9 through 12. In fact, the bill would require that math be taught at the high school level and that the student complete three years of math or equivalent credits before graduation.
Under House Bill 2560, parents would no longer have to have a high school diploma or its equivalent in order to teach their own children. By enacting this legislation, Pennsylvania would join 43 other states in having no such requirement. Studies have shown that parents can be successful home educators without having formal education credentials. In fact, the testimony of most parents is that they learn along with their children while home schooling. The last thing Pennsylvania should do is discourage parents without a high school diploma or a GED from entering into this educational experience with their children.
Conclusion
The home educators of Pennsylvania have earned the right to less state oversight after demonstrating their success in spite of the burdensome obstacles of the current law for the past 14 years. It is beyond dispute that home schoolers in Pennsylvania are the victims of regular harassment and arbitrary enforcement by school officials. H.B. 2560 will bring this abuse to a screeching halt.
H.B. 2560 will maximize parental rights and protect the parent’s fundamental right to direct the education and upbringing of their children as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, the Pennsylvania constitution, and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Pennsylvania home schoolers have suffered under unnecessary regulations and requirements for too long. Now is the time for Pennsylvania to join the trend throughout the states to deregulate home schoolers and begin to trust parents rather than bureaucrats. Lastly, this bill will do no harm to home school families but will simply allow more families to home school and give those families the ability to spend more of their time educating their children instead of meeting arbitrary demands of local school officials and filling out unnecessary paperwork.
On behalf of our over 2,000 member home school families in the state of Pennsylvania we ask you to support freedom for these families by supporting H.B. 2560. Thank you for your time and consideration.