No news is bad news

The legislature has adjourned without taking action on either of the two bills which were intended to provide relief. Representative Neuman and Senator Dyson did their best, but they couldn't get the votes to move a useful bill out of committee. . The governor has called a special session, but that is limited to _his_ agenda, which doesn't include HB267/SB167, so those bills will sit there until January ... long after we've all enrolled our kids for the new year, and been told we can't use the texts and materials our kids need.

Folks here in Juneau are still trying to persuade the governor that he's allowing his Department of Education to shoot him in the foot, but he doesn't seem to have much regard for his nether appendages. Letters to the governor can't hurt, and if you haven't written him yet, please do, but I'm starting to give up hope for action from Governor Murkowski. He's acting like a politician who knows it's his last term.

It looks as if the only way we'll get relief is through the courts. That means that we have to be able to document harm. If you were planning to use materials for which your program would not reimburse you, would you please turn in an ILP with those materials listed on it? If your program accepts it, then all is well. If your program tells you that you can't have those materials on your ILP, please GET IT IN WRITING. That will be the documentation of harm from DEED's actions that we'll need to get an injunction.

If you can get such a refusal in writing, please save it, and please let me know! You can leave a comment here, or email me at nels dot tomlinson at gmail dot com. There are people already looking for lawyers who would be willing to handle this pro bono, and it looks promising. The more people who can document that they were deterred from using the materials their children need, the easier it will be to get relief from the courts.

This lawsuit won't be an attack on the programs: they're just doing what they think they have to to stay in business. This will be an attempt to stop DEED's attack on them. DEED has put the programs over a barrel, and is doing harm to our children in the process. Had our governor been a bit more responsive and responsible, he could have saved the state a great deal of money.

An update on DEED's evil deeds.

It's been 10 days since Thursday, the 21^st, when we were supposed to testify on HB267, the house version of the bill to put a stop to the latest attack on the statewide distance learning programs. We arrived at the Capitol Building a bit early, and found that the hearing had been canceled. It seems that the house sponsors have decided to pin their (and our) hopes on the Senate bill, SB167. I think that's a legitimate strategy rather than legislative laziness, but it was still a bit of a disappointment, even if it was a good idea.

Since then, we haven't heard any good news. Really, we haven't heard any news at all. Unfortunately, it looks as if the chances of getting legislative action on this are slim, this session. It's the end of the session, the budget is as contentious as ever, and the legislature has the education, gas line, workmen's compensation and state retirement issues to deal with, as well as the budget.

Unfortunately, if it doesn't happen this session, it'll really be too late. The programs will have to choose between being shut down and complying with the latest diktat, and the damage will be done. There are just a few days left in the session, and if the legislature can't get something done before they adjourn, we're going to be stuck with the new policy.

What can we do now?

• We can write to our senators and let them know that this is important to us. It wouldn't hurt to contact our representatives, too, but the Senate is where the bottleneck is right now.
• We can contact the governor. I don't think that this is happening on his orders, but it couldn't happen if he didn't acquiesce to it. If we can convince him that he has nothing to gain, and something to lose, by allowing this policy to stand, we can get it changed. Murkowski hasn't been very friendly to homeschoolers, or to the idea of alternative education in general, but stamps are cheap, and it'd be foolish to leave any stone unturned.
• We can ask the courts for an injunction against this new policy, pending the outcome of a suit.

That last option is the least desirable, but it looks like the one we'll be stuck with, unless the legislators or the governor come through for us.

In order to get that injunction and win that suit, we need to be able to show that our children are being hurt by this new policy. If you're with one of the statewide programs and you've been using materials for which the program won't reimburse you, please fill out your ILP with those materials when you re-register your kids for the upcoming year. If your program accepts them with no comment, all is well. If your program tells you that you can't do that, please get it in writing! That would be proof that the Department of Education's policy is doing harm to your children.

More on the April attacks

On Monday, the 18^th of April, I testified to the Alaska Senate Health, Education, and Social Services Committee on their bill SB167, which is an attempt to fix this mess.

The Department of Law (DOL) and the Department of Education and Early Development (DEED) were there, and testified. They didn't speak directly for or against the bill, they were just answering questions on the new policy. Some interesting things came out.

• First, we learned that DOL and DEED (especially DOL, I think) are firmly committed to this new policy.
• Second, we learned that the new policy, as DOL represents it to the Senate, is different than the auditor's report presented it to the districts.
• Third, we learned that the chilling effects of the new regulations and harrassment have begun to bear fruit: if the district chooses not to pay for something, it is tainted, and entirely unusable.
I'll take those three things in order:

I think that they are firmly committed to this policy. The DOL representative was polite, but firmly unhelpful. I have no reason to think that this is a personal vendetta by him against Christian homeschoolers, but if it had been, he couldn't have tried any harder. That's part of what a good lawyer is supposed to do: advocate strongly for his client's best interest. A good lawyer is also supposed to know what those best interests are, and I think that's where DOL is falling down on this. They're setting the state up for a messy, expensive, needless lawsuit. When the committee chairman pointed that out, he (the DOl guy) had no comment.

The second thing we learned is that DOL's presentation of the new policy to the Senate is not quite what they seem to have told the programs. The programs learned from the audit reports that they would no longer be able to give credit for, or recognize in any way, good, substantive courses which used any materials which were not reimbursable. The DOL, on the other hand, claims that giving credit is strictly the district's perogative. They may give credit for anything they want (claims the DOL to the Senate), but DOL refuses to allow them to be reimbursed by the state for doing so.

As an example, consider a student who takes four courses to be full time, with two of them using Abeka text books which his parents purchase with their own money. Under the new policy, he would be only a half time student, and would only get half an allotment, and (here's the really nasty part) the district would get only half of the base funding amount. The districts _would_ be allowed (the DOL claimed in the hearing) to give credit for the classes with the Abeka texts, but they would have considerable incentive to push parents to use reimbursable texts, to get the full funding.

In practice, this distinction between credit and funding is going to be meaningless: if the statewide programs cannot get funding for students who use classes which rely on texts and materials which the state will not fund, then they have strong incentive to discourage the use of those non-reimbursible materials, even if that's not in the child's best interests. In the extreme, imagine a child who's using Abeka texts for all his classes: none of the materials would be reimbursable, none of the classes would be fundable by the state, the child would not be full-time, or half time, but would be zero time: the programs wouldn't be able to serve him at all! Of course, in DOL's view (as expressed to the Senate) there would be nothing stopping the program from doing it ``pro bono'', at their own expense.

The third point we learned is that the ``chilling effects'' campaign has born fruit in a way I didn't expect: we learned that the fact that Abeka text books are not reimbursed is reason enough to disallow any course which uses them. That is, the auditors didn't look at the actual contents of the books they're banning: they merely saw that the school districts had, out of fear of the DEED's vague yet hostile policies, refused to reimburse parents for some books, as a safety measure. This safety measure has turned out not to be so safe, after all! Refusal of reimbursement to the parent for the materials for a class means the school district cannot count that class when deciding whether a student is full-time, part-time, or not really a student at all.

There is another hearing coming up, this time in the house, on HB267. I'm planning to be there, and I'll let you know what happens, right here.

More Chilling Effects

In my previous post, I said that the prohibition on religious curricula (purchased with parents' money!) was probably not official policy. It looks as if I was wrong. I've just gotten an email from a knowledgable, reliable fellow who tells me that auditors from the Department of Education and Early Development have told one of the statewide correspondence programs that they can no longer use sectarian materials to fulfill highschool graduation requirements. Presumably this will extend to the lower grades as well.

So, in a nutshell, if you pay for an excellent highschool Latin course to fill a language requirement for your highschooler, you can't use it if it has the word ``God'' in it. Courses for highschool credit may only use texts and materials which are acceptable to atheists. As usual, the bureaucrats are targeting only Christian materials: in practice, it seems, no other religion is being prohibited.

This is clearly in violation of the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which says (on religion):

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; ...

This new bureaucratic diktat clearly prohibits the free exercise of religion for those whose religion calls for them to teach their religion to their children!

If you're in Alaska, please contact your state senator and representative and let them know that this isn't acceptable. Even if you're an independent homeschooler, you don't want this sort of interference to become settled policy.

On Friday, Senator Dyson and Representative Neuman introduced bills SB 167, "An Act authorizing credit in a public correspondence study program for privately purchased curriculum materials from a religious institution." and HB 267, with the same title. These bills are a wonderful start, but they don't strike at the root of the problem: the DEED (Department of Education and Early Development) is running amok! This is merely the latest in a long stream of attempts to cripple and ultimately destroy the statewide correspondence schools, which are putting pressure on the urban school districts to serve their pupils.

The chilling effects are beginning.

When I wrote about the latest proposed new regulations in my previous post, I said that they would have a chilling effect. They were adopted by the school board, and (together with the earlier regulations, adopted in the summer of '04) are beginning to have the desired chilling effect.

Here's a quote from one of the Alaska homeschooling Yahoo groups:

When my sister-in-law, who uses a state program that had a recent audit, went in for her appointment the teacher mentioned that the audit people were not very happy about those of us that have Christian curriculum listed on our ILP's because we are not spending the money on curriculum and just using it for the extra's. She was givin the impression that it wouldn't be long before they try to regulate this out so that if a family was to purchase their own curriculum they would not be eligible to enroll fulltime if at all.

Now this is all just an impression given by our teacher and certainly not quoted but I was wondering if any of you have had a similar instance or if mabey there are new regulations in the works that I am unaware of?

I don't know which program this is, but it looks as if at least one of the programs is beginning to ``self-censor'': beginning to try to stop parents from making the legitimate choices which best serve their children, in fear of what the Commissioner might say. This is definitely a case of self-censorship, since rumor has it that none of the programs had received the results of their audits when this was written. I don't know if this represents an official policy for the un-named program (probably not), or whether it's just the rumor mill spreading Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt about what's really allowable. Either way, the effect is the same: parents are being discouraged from using their allotments in the way that best serves their childrens' needs. Unfortunately, this is exactly what I had expected. It would have been nice to have been wrong.

New Attacks on School Choice in Alaska

It looks as if the ``slow season'' for political attacks on homeschooling is over. Last night, I went to a meeting of some Juneau homeschoolers with a local legislator, to discuss some new regulations which have some of the homeschoolers here in Juneau worried. The administration seems to have kept things much quieter this time than they did last summer: this was the first I'd heard of these new regulation. After reading the new regulations (after the meeting) I think that we have another deliberate attack on the statewide correspondence programs by eager bureaucrats. I'll put the details on a page on my website when I've had a chance to digest them. So far, it looks like a repeat of last summer's attacks on school choice. Update on 19 November 04: I've had a chance to look over the new regulations, and they seem to be an attack on the programs themselves, rather than an attack on the families who use them. Read all about the proposed new regulations. The comment period expired last Tuesday (on 2 November). Again, we're going to have to rely on testimony at the state school board meeting, and perhaps friendly legislators, to help us fight this one off. If you are an Alaskan homeschooling parent, and you or your children have been harmed or inconvenienced by the regulations passed last summer, please let me know. Our legislators are willing to help (some of them, anyway), but they need specific talking points to confront the Commissioner of Education.

Historical Literacy (and Race)

It's the slow season for topics. With the elections coming up, the politicians are too busy running to do anything, good or bad (and that's an excellent argument for short terms!). While they get their politcal exercise, there isn't much to write about. Just for fun, here's some information on literacy in America. It's of interest to homeschoolers, I think, because it shows us how much (or how little!) our country's literacy rate has been changed by the public schools. First, let's take a look at the 1840 Census. If you select the variables ``total number of free white persons'' and ``number of white persons 20 years of age and over who cannot read and write'', you will find that the literacy rates for the 29 states ranged from 99.8% to 88.3%, with a nationwide average of 86%. This was in a time when there was no mandatory schooling, and a man could support a family without being able to read and write at all. In most walks of life, illiteracy was not a great handicap, yet the majority of the population read and wrote! Then let's look at the figures in 120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait. Their data goes back to 1870, and it includes literacy rates for non-whites. In 1870, compulsory schooling had already been introduced in several states, and was being pushed in the rest of them. For the white population, the literacy rate was 88.5% (see table 6), not significantly changed from 1840. By 1940, 100 years after the 1840 census and 40 years after the introduction of widespread compulsory schooling, the literacy rate for whites was 98%. It sounds as if compulsory public schooling had made a big difference! However, look at the school enrollment rates (see table 1). In 1850, white school enrollment was 56% (enrollment was generally not compulsory). In 1940 that figure was 76%. Compulsory enrollment had gotten only an additional 20% of the white children into school, and that had taught only an additional 9% of the white population to read. By 1940, not reading or writing was a significant handicap in most walks of life. The combined forces of pressing need and compulsory schooling had brought the literacy rate for whites up to nearly the levels that Connecticut, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Main, Vermont, Michigan, Rhode Island and New Jersey had achieved 100 years before, without compulsion or public expense. The literacy rates for blacks tell a slightly different story. In 1870, the first Census after the Civil War, the literacy rate for blacks was about 20%, and the schooling rate was near zero. By 1940, the literacy rate for blacks was about 89% and the school attendance rate was nearly 68%. The experience of blacks was far different that the experience of whites. Black literacy rose as the percentage of black children in schools rose, while for whites, there is little correlation between schooling and literacy. It seems possible that the difference arose because whites had a tradition of literacy which they could hand on to their children, while blacks did not.