MD Homeschool Court Case.!

Question:
These comments are from my recently received issue of Maryland Home Education Association's newsletter editor and publisher Manfred Smith. Manfred was instrumental in helping to draft the current bylaw. Cheryl Battles refused to submit the Assurance of Consent form and refused to allow the schools to review her portfolio. Her position is that the bylaw is not real law and that she is in compliance with Section 7-301 of the Code because she claims to be providing "..regular and thorough instruction.." to her daughter. The legislature back in 1986 made it clear that homeschoolers would be regulated, but that subsequent regulation MUST BE minimally intrusive and provide SUFFICIENT PROTECTIONS for parents from school authorities. The bylaw that was created WAS ACCEPTABLE to the delegates. No matter which way this case turns out, it will not be good news for homeschoolers. If found not guilty, the current bylaw will, in effect be nullified. In response, the state will submit the bylaw to the legistature in Annaplois to be made into law. This means committee hearings, and floor votes. It may be very tempting for some delegates to attempt modifications -- like testing. If Ms. Battles is found guilty, the state may still send the bylaw to the legislature to forstall future confrontations over the bylaw. Manfred points out that Homeschoolers and Homeschool organizations cannot afford to appear to support a process of undermining the homeschool bylaws over time. Some persons argument about Revolution and examining orifaces, etc. just gives lipservice to the problem. We have a bylaw that MOST of use can work with. I hope an overzealous person mad at the system did not wreck the system. And some more food for thought. Manfred said that. . Hostile lawmakers and school officials predicated that this homeschooling would lead to all kinds of child abuse, fraud, etc. Manfred points out that in 1988 a homschooled child was starved to death in Pennsylvania. As parents began to discover that they could claim to homeschool and well, abuse children. It happened in Virgina two years ago when a child was killed. In Western Maryland a small community of folks decided that it was too much trouble to get up early so they decided they would "homeschool" and do nothing. Manfred says the number of stories of abuse or neglect under THE COVER of homeschooling is increasing. Ignoring these kinds of problems IS NOT acceptable. As I said in early posting sometimes you need government. If the regulations are resonable then MOST OF us are not going to have any problems. Maryland Home Education Association and others believe the current bylaw is reasonable. I would much prefer to "have a system" to work within that gives "Homeschooling" a good reputation. Then to have no system that opens the door for bad people to do bad things.

Answer:
- Then I was right and the accounts I had read were not in error. I retract my earlier retractions. She is resisting an unwarranted (literally) intrusion into her private home life on the part of the state of Maryland. I'm not familiar with the concept of a "bylaw" except in the context of my credit union and alumni associations and honor societies to which I belong. Is Mrs. Battles being prosecuted under a "law" that was never even submitted to the legislature or signed by the governor? This gets more outrageous the more I hear. Only in Maryland. This is why I called it Homeschool Hell in an earlier post. Even in Michigan, with last year's disastrous legislation, intrusion on this scale wasn't even the remotest of threats. And Michigan isn't exactly at the top of homeschool- friendly states. The "system" came to *her*. Yes, wrapping oneself in "the welfare of the *children*" is a favorite tactic of demagogues. Usually they're far more interested in power than in the actual welfare of any actual children. Jocelyn Elders engaged in a lot of this, and we saw a supreme example in Sarah Brady's nauseating speech at the Democratic Convention last night. (Of course, Sarah Brady needs "children" to be redefined as "age 20 and under" to get the numbers she desires, but her heart is in the same place.) But I digress. We already have a massive child welfare bureaucracy empowered far beyond what any human agency ought to be, and a (somewhat more rationally-based) criminal justice system for dealing with exactly these problems. The simple solution is biennial testing: simple, non-intrusive, objective. Of course, it would be only fair to administer the *exact* same tests to the public school population, with similar sanctions for failure to measure up to the minimums (I'm thinking of termination or even criminal and civil liability for the negligent teachers and administrators). No double standards for private individuals vs. government. Great. No wonder your state is so screwed in the first place. And I thought the *Michigan* advocacy groups were being run by idiots. (Well, they are, I suppose; they're just a different kind of idiot.) Freedom's a bitch that way. Enjoy your serfdom; I'll just keep to the west of the Appalachians, where I belong anyway.