Thanks to some newspaper archives and today’s Blogger call with Governor Mike Huckabee, I can now address the attacks on Gov. Huckabee in relation to homeschooling.

In 1997, Governor Huckabee supported and signed legislation that greatly increased the freedom of parents to homeschool their children in the state of Arkansas.

In 1998, the state of Arkansas (with support of Governor Huckabee), implemented the Arkansas Smart Start program:

Thanks to Smart Start, Arkansas has seen an increase in student achievement, as well as improved professional development for teachers and administrators. Smart Start focuses on improvement in student achievement in literacy and mathematics by the end of the fourth-grade. Smart Step focuses on improvement in the same areas for students in Grades 5-8. Smart Step implements some of the same strategies used in Smart Start.

As Governor Huckabee told me today (Nov. 26, 2007) during the Blogger call:

With the implementation and success of the Smart Start program some legislators wanted to reverse what we had done for Homeschoolers in 1997 and put in place very severe restrictions.

The restrictive legislation was HB 2037, brought forth by Rep. Jerry Allison (D). Here is a piece from the Arkansas Democrat Gazette from March 9, 1999:

House Bill 2037 requires that home-schooling parents: Hold classes at least 180 days a year.

Upgrade the curriculum each year based on state recommendations.

Provide class plans and daily records of student activity.

Notify the local school superintendent 14 days before parents begin each school semester.

Under Allison’s bill, parents would need at least a high school diploma before they can home school. Opponents said that requirement would eliminate second-generation home-schoolers from teaching.

In a recent Jonesboro Sun article about his bill, Allison was quoted as saying he wanted to be sure that children weren’t being pulled from public schools to be home schooled just because “parents are too lazy to take them there.”

“Many of you mothers here were insulted by the suggestion that you are too lazy to take your kids to school,” Lynn Childers, president of Christian Home Educators of Arkansas, told the group Monday. “I am offended.”

Childers urged the crowd, mostly home-schooling mothers and their children, to call Allison and ask him to withdraw his proposal.

“I’m trying to protect the children,” Allison said when reached at the state Capitol on Monday afternoon. “We’ve got to have some accountability. Those children [who attended Monday's press conference] should have been in school.”

Allison, serving his second two-year term in the House, said home-schooling proponents have generalized his words to their advantage.

“There are some parents who really are too lazy to take their kids to school and there are those who do a great job,” he said. “But they twist that around. They will do any deceptive thing to make me look bad.”

Randy Sharp, executive director of the American Family Association of Craighead County, said Allison fought a bill two years ago that lifted restrictions on home-schoolers. Sharp said he suspected Allison’s bill is a vendetta against home-schoolers who opposed Allison in 1997.

Sharp said home-schooling enrollment increased from 6,000 to 9,000 children in the past two years since restrictions were lifted. Children who were home schooled also scored higher on the Scholastic Assessment Tests and the ACT than their counterparts in public schools, he said.

“This shows something is right about home schooling,” Sharp said. “Mr. Allison seems to be the only one who doesn’t understand that.”

Susan Cole, a Jonesboro parent who home-schools her son, said she feared Allison’s bill would create more paperwork that would prevent parents from teaching and burden taxpayers.

“I question the motives and goals of a representative who makes a statement inferring that government needs to protect the children from the ones who love them the most — their parents,” Cole said.

Allison said Monday he had no intention of withdrawing his bill.

“They can kiss my foot,” he said.

Again, as Governor Huckabee explained to me today during our blogger call, the bill that he ultimately signed in 1999 was a bill put forth by a legislator that was a homeschooling father and supported by homeschool groups in Arkansas, was a defensive measure taken to prevent Allison’s bill from going through and returning homeschooling regulations to pre-1997 days.

Here again, an article from the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, dated March 12, 1999:

The House Education Committee picked the less stringent of two bills to tighten home schooling rules Thursday, bringing applause from 250 home school parents and children at the meeting.

The committee recommended House Bill 1724 by Rep. Jim Magnus, R-Little Rock, to require parents to give written notice to their public school superintendent by Aug. 15 or by Dec. 15 before home schooling could begin.

Parents could withdraw their child from public school for home schooling on other dates but would be required to give notice to the superintendent 14 days before home schooling began. Only the superintendent or the school board could waive the 14-day rule.

HB 1724 also would prohibit students from being taken out of public school to avoid detention or other disciplinary action.

The other bill was HB 2037 by Reps. Jerry Allison, D-Jonesboro, and Jim Jeffress, D-Crossett. A motion to recommend this bill did not pass. Under HB 2037: The parent teaching a child at home would have to have a high school diploma or its equivalent. “The law allows someone who is totally illiterate, with no proven ability to read or write, to take his kids out of school and home school,” Jeffress said.

The parent would be required to keep records, including a plan book or diary and a portfolio of the student’s school work. An annual report of the pupil’s work would have to be made to the superintendent.

A parent would be allowed to take a student out of public school for home schooling only at either the beginning of the school year or the beginning of the spring semester. Exceptions would be allowed only for children with medical problems, poor academic performance or a documented threat to the child’s safety.

Some parents take children out of public school for reasons that abuse the home school law, Allison and Jeffress said. The parents’ motives range from wanting the children to earn income for the family to avoiding court fines for truancy, to having older siblings baby-sit younger ones, cutting day-care expense, they said.

Allison said the home schoolers who were at the meeting are not the sort he was talking about. The abusers don’t show up at the committee’s meetings, he said. “Those children don’t have anybody here to represent them,” Allison said.

Magnus said that school-age children who are at home but not being taught are truant and their parents can be charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Jerry Cox of Little Rock, director of the Arkansas Family Council, said HB 2037 was too harsh, demanding even more than was demanded under a state law that legislators repealed in 1997.

Each September, home-schooling pupils must take standard tests at the fifth, seventh and 10th grades that public school pupils must take, said Charles Knox of Lonoke, executive director of the Arkansas Educational Administrators Association.

The tests are provided to home-schooled students by 15 public school educational cooperatives around the state. At the last testing session in the Mena-De Queen cooperative, fewer than half the home-school students who needed to take the tests showed up, said Knox. “I don’t think that’s representative of home school parents around the state, but it is an indicator that home schooling is not always being used for what it was designed for,” Knox said.

Home school parents who do not bring their children in for the tests are sent written notice that they must enroll their children in public school, and that their children will be considered truants until they are enrolled, Knox said.

Act 400 of 1997 dropped the yearly testing requirement and the requirement that the home-school parents pay for the tests.

In summary:

• The bill brought forth by Rep Magnus was defensive action against what Rep Allison was attempting to do to homeschoolers in Arkansas.
• Rep Magnus was a homeschooling parent.
• Homeschool associations in Arkansas supported Magnus’ bill … again, as a defensive measure against Allison’s bill.
• Governor Huckabee signed HB 1724 because of the support from Homeschool groups in the state. It was their best course of action at the time to stop Rep. Allison’s attempts to set homeschooling back to pre-1997 days. He would have preferred that the legislation that he signed in 1997 could have remained as it was, but the attacks from Allison left homeschoolers and Gov. Huckabee with no other recourse.

That is the rest of the story.

Respectfully submitted,

Kerry (OneMom, and a proud member of the Mike Huckabee for President “Truth Squad”)