State toys with mandatory tests for homeschoolers

Lawmakers in New Hampshire are toying with the idea of demanding annual tests and portfolios as well as vast new score-reporting requirements for every homeschooler in a plan described as the "most anti-homeschool legislation ever conceived" in the state.

But the Home School Legal Defense Association is encouraging constituents to speak out against the plan pending in the state lawmaking body.

Staff attorney Mike Donnelly told WND the proposal was scheduled for a vote today but didn't make the cut of subjects under consideration. Now it is expected to be on the agenda at some point next week, and parents need to speak out now, he said.

"This legislation is completely unnecessary. The existing New Hampshire law works well, and in an era when homeschoolers are significantly out-performing their public school counterparts the last thing homeschoolers and taxpayers need is another bureaucracy wasting their time and money," he said. "We hope that enough legislators will see through the maneuver which is being used and vote to retain the existing homeschool law."

Pending is a possible amendment to the state's requirements that would make the state's homeschool demands "the most restrictive and burdensome in the nation," HSLDA says.

"Members of the Democratic leadership are taking advantage of the system and attempting to slip through the most anti-homeschool legislation ever conceived in New Hampshire," he said.

The proposal would require that every homeschool student be tested every year, undergo a portfolio review and submit test scores to the state Department of Education. The agency would be granted "sweeping rule-making authority" regarding homeschooling.

A bipartisan legislative study committee in the state recently recommended, on a 14-6 vote, that lawmakers not change the law.

An analysis by the HSLDA of the issue said the package of recommendations from Rep. Judith Day is "the most significant threat to New Hampshire homeschoolers" since 1990.

"These [plans] impose a needless burden on homeschoolers and shift authority to determine whether a child should be homeschooled from parents to others," the analysis said. "Parents have a fundamental right under the United States Constitution to direct the upbringing and education of their children, and legislation like Rep. Day's undermines this right by going against the presumption that parents act in the best interest of their children."

Both parts of the plan, H.B. 367 and 368, "are unnecessary," the analysis said, and would create additional burdens and costs and are "problematic in that it creates potentially unconstitutional vagueness which could result in needless litigation."

The HSLDA also offers on its website recommendations on how to oppose such proposals politely but firmly.