Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Homeschoolers in the news

While browsing through news headlines this article caught my eye.

New Jersey Judge Orders Penal Charges Against Mom for Home-Schooling



TRENTON, March 7, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Honorable Thomas Zampino of the Family Division of the New Jersey Superior Court has ordered penal charges against a home-schooling mother of seven. According to a report by Matt Bowman on the website constitutionallycorrect.com, the mother's supposed infraction is home-schooling her children without supervision from the local school board - a right explicitly upheld in New Jersey law.

According to the court's opinion, Tara Hamilton is the defendant in a suit brought against her by her recently estranged husband, Stephen Hamilton. Stephen brought the suit in an attempt to force Tara to enroll their school-age children, aged 12 to 4 years, in parochial school because he believes that they are not receiving an adequate education while being home-schooled. All seven children currently reside with Tara.

According to the court document, Stephen claims that "continued home schooling is not in the children's best interest, they lack socialization skills and that it is too difficult for the mother to teach the children at five different grade levels. The father argues that the children are not receiving an education equivalent to a public or parochial school."

Prior to the marital discord that led to this suit, the Hamiltons had similarly home-schooled all of their school-age children.

In an effort to implement "certain basic requirements and safeguards", the judge ordered Tara to submit her home-schooling children to standardized tests supplied by the local school district despite NJ law which says, "A child educated elsewhere than at school is not required to sit for a state or district standardized test."

The judge also ordered the local school board to file a suit against Tara in order to be able to "evaluate the instruction in the home," a requirement only permissible if the local school board determines that there is credible evidence that the home education is below the standards of the public school.



The article goes on to give quite a few examples of how the judge is ignoring the law.

You can read Justice Zampino's full ruling here.

Justice Zampino makes some pretty outrageous complaints. He finds fault with the mother because her two non-school age children are in the same room as the other children during the "school day." He also seems to be horrified that the mother breast feeds her baby during school time. And of course, while the mother does have a college degree, (gasp) she does NOT have teacher certification.


"He believes there are too many children and different levels with too many subjects for the mother to provide the proper learning environment. "


I find this complaint a little amusing. So a certified teacher in a school with 20-30 students at a wide variety of levels is better than one teach with only 5 students. There is probably more variance in abilities in the typical classroom than in this home.


By the way, this is Justice Zampino's suggested requirements for homeschooling:

1. A parent/guardian who seeks to home school his/her child(ren) must register the child(ren) in their home school district, so that no child slips through the cracks of our educational system.

2. A curriculum must be presented and filed with the local board of education and some “home school” training seminar required for the teaching parent (a four hour video would suffice).

3. Testing on the same standardized basis for all students shall be administered to all home schooled children on an annual basis to measure whether “equivalent instruction” is being received by a child “elsewhere than at school”.


Oh, and Justice Zampino says, "This is not an attack against home schooling..."


It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Frightening!

Shannon said...

I live in NJ, so this is especially disturbing. I am appalled at the trend of our supposed "representatives" continuing to act as they see personally and morally fit.

Janine Cate said...

It is a disturbing trend. Nobody wants to protect child abusers, but treating all homeschoolers like they are neglecting their children is wrong.

I personally know someone who is "homeschooling" in an attempt to hide child abuse and neglect. I see how it would be easy to think that regulating homeschooling would provide protection for such children. However, in practice, I don't think it would work that way. Such laws would only make it more difficult for legitimate homeschoolers. Child abusers would just file some paperwork and keep doing what they are doing.

If social service won't follow up on easily documentable neglect and abuse, another laws won't help.

Anonymous said...

I know a family that uses homeschooling to escape truancy charges. Interestingly the children went to school for 8 years and the schools couldn't seem to get this family to comply, what makes them think having stronger regulations on homeschoolers will be any different?

I've also heard of numerous divorced parents where the father (usually) was for homeschooling before the divorce and afterwards is against it. Not sure why that would be except maybe to make life more miserable for everyone or maybe even hoping to force the mother to go to work? I don't know. Either way it is incredibaly scary to think of this judge abusing his power.

Abiding in the Vine!

Anonymous said...

first of all I think the judge was being harsh. i believe he was just upset because -he told the husband and wife to compromise on a schooling plan. They could not find any way to compromise. The judge felt that the mom was overwhelmed because she had 7 children ages 23 months to 10 years.
Irish catholic like me. 23 months 4,5,6,7,9,10. With no help at all. The judge was a teacher so this blows him away. What if sh got a mothers helper for 5 dollars an hour from 3-6pm or a tutor to come in for the older ones. she said no!!! Her dad is loaded. He paid for an expert named mr.ray to come and represent homeschooling to judge zampino. paid for his flight hotel everything.so why did mom not tell the judge she would get some help ? plus she would not even send them to CCD classes or activities. She taught them catholisism at home. Judge thought this was very anti-social so thats why I believe he was so harsh on her?I still do not agree with the judge but I think mom could have been better at problem solving.

Suni said...

she can still appeal it if she sees fit and gets a lawyer who really knows the law. i dont know how the judge thinks that he is above STATE law anyway.

Anonymous said...

I wrote about an issue like this on my blog some time ago. I am the oddball in my comment, but I always say if the husband and wife do not agree on an issue, submit to the husband. The children are his also. He has a right to say how they should be taught. They both want their way for their children's education and unfortunately it will affect the rest of us (I live in NJ). It should have been settled between the two of them instead of dragging it to court. Moms that are considering homeschooling. I always ask, "how does your husband feel about it?" It is scary when stuff like this gets into a courtroom.

Anonymous said...

Karen...they are divorced, not husband and wife any longer (besides, I think that whole submit to the husband issue is a bit archaic and it does not work like that in our home. Its what is right for everyone, be it hubby, myself or our children).

The ex-husband is obviously doing this just to be a jerk as he was fine with home educating before.

This ruling makes me very uneasy.

Janine Cate said...

It is hard to judge from the outside what goes on behind closed doors. The husband may have a legitimate concern, or he may just be trying to hurt his former wife. Either way, I wish the parents had been able to work out this issue without bringing the court system into it.