Editor's Note:  these are notes taken by Mary Faiella who attended the meetings.


There have been two recent meetings where the legislature’s study of home education has been discussed.  Podcasts are available at www.chenh.org, and video of the June 2 meeting is at www.youtube.com/.  At each of the two meetings, there were about ten homeschooling parents and about ten homeschooled students (mostly teens) in the audience.  Their presence adds a very beneficial something to the atmosphere at these events.
 

            On June 2, the "survey subcommittee" of the House Education Committee met for a little over an hour at the Legislative Office Building in Concord.  Present from the subcommittee were Representatives Jim O’Neil, Emma Rous, Nancy Stiles, and Kim Shaw.  (Rep. Brien Ward was absent.)   Mark Joyce of the NH School Administrators’ Association and Roberta Tenney, home education contact at the Department of Education, had been invited to address the subcommittee.

            The discussion focused on what questions to ask and how to administer the survey, with some questioning from Rep. Shaw as to the usefulness of any survey.  Rep. Rous distributed a draft questionnaire developed by Chris Hamilton (a homeschooler on the Home Education Advisory Council) aimed at collecting the data that superintendents already have - for instance, how many programs are put on probation and what happens then?  Rep. Rous also distributed a list of questions of interest to her.  Some of Rep. Rous’s questions asked for basic numbers, but others were more probing - Do superintendents feel that they get enough information to be able to judge whether probation is warranted? How do students perform compared with peers if they return to school?

            Roberta Tenney spoke at some length about the value of getting information about the activities of young adults after they have completed homeschooling.  The subcommittee considered whether this was information that superintendents would be able to supply, and Rep. O’Neil said that he had not been considering surveying homeschoolers themselves, that it would be difficult enough to survey 87 superintendents.

            Mark Joyce reported that his organization sees the "vast, vast majority of homeschoolers working very, very well," but that superintendents had expressed concerns (in testimony at the February hearing) about a "low incident, but high need problem area... those few examples where people are using the law in a way that endangers a very few children, but every child is important."  He went on to review the cases from Rochester and Interlakes that had been mentioned in February (one involved what seemed like typical truancy, the other a student who returned to school ill-prepared to do grade level work).  Mr. Joyce added another example of four students in Dover who had left school saying that they were going to homeschool, had delayed submitting paperwork, and were ultimately arrested on juvenile offenses.  He expressed concern about the two year interval between notification and a forced return to school for students whose parents do not supply evaluations that meet the requirements of RSA 193-A.  (No one has indicated that any child has been forced into school under RSA 193-A in the nineteen years since it became law.)

            Difficulties with a timetable for a survey were discussed in some detail, in particular whether it be done by the Committee’s November 1st deadline.  Ideas of a pilot survey and ongoing data collection were brought forward by Rep. Rous and Mr. Joyce.

            As the meeting came to a close, homeschoolers present were invited to add their comments.  Abbey Lawrence, homeschooling Chairman of the Home Education Advisory Council, said that she had collected information from eleven (of the 87) superintendents who are participating agents for over 500 homeschoolers, and found that there had been three probations among this group in the year in question and that two of the students had been (voluntarily) returned to school.  Other homeschoolers offered familiar observations.
          

            On July 9th, the Home Education Advisory Council met at the Department of Education in Concord for its regular monthly (September to June) meeting.  Present were homeschoolers Abbey Lawrence (Chairman), Dennis Wyman, Chris Hamilton, Mike Benik, Mike Compitello, and George D’Orazio, along with Schools Boards’ Association attorney Barrett Christina, and NH House of Representatives members Emma Rous and Paul Ingbretson.  Absent were Roberta Tenney (Department of Ed), Molly Kelly (NH Senate), Keith Pfeifer (School Administrators’ Association), Mark Boyd (Principals’ Association), Neil Nevins (NH Tech).

            While other subjects came up at the HEAC meeting, this summary deals only with the discussion of the 2009 HB368 study, which occupied about a half hour.  Rep. Rous said that believes that there is a "shared goal" of trying to learn more about the status of homeschooling in NH, that "the perception is that we have a lot of anecdotal information either about successes or about problems, and we would like to have a better sense by doing some data gathering about what those problems are, how extensive they are."  She seemed to agree when Dennis Wyman pointed out that some of her House Education Committee members and the former Commissioner of Education were not well informed about the provisions of the current law.  She said that she wants homeschoolers' support, and that her goal is "to have a product that we are all comfortable with and that we are not rallying forces to oppose." 
            One of Rep. Rous’s questions that got quite a bit of attention was whether superintendents feel they get enough information to be able to judge whether probation is warranted.  Abbey Lawrence explained that the law is clear about what constitutes grounds for probation, and the information is supplied by %ile scores or statements from teacher-evaluators as provided by law.  If the scores or the statements meet the requirements of the law the program is not on probation -- the superintendent is not intended to be evaluating programs.  George D’Orazio noted that RSA 193-A relieves superintendents (and school districts) from liability in the matter of home education  (a provision that was directly tied to the fact that the law was intended to recognize the authority of parents to plan and supervise their children’s education, to use methods and materials of their own choosing, and to choose mechanisms for evaluation).
            Rep. Rous seems not to expect development, administration, and analysis of any survey to be completed in time to generate proposals for changing the law by the Nov. 1 deadline for reporting out HB368.  There were intimations that legislation might call for a survey.   Rep Rous seems to be leaning toward a pilot study, followed by some sort of ongoing data collection over a period of years.
            While Roberta Tenney had said at last week's survey subcommittee meeting that she could work on draft survey to discuss with the Council, she was not present. Ideas were floated for her working with members of the Council individually, which led to questions about how the public would be able to keep track of survey development.  Rep. Rous pointed out that Council members could attend House Education subcommittee meetings, but of course that is quite different from having the Council itself discussing a proposal.

            In the meantime, the June 23rd House Education survey subcommittee meeting has now been scheduled and cancelled twice.

Mary Faiella
12 June 09