Pennsylvannia


** Pennsylvannia Constitution
** Home School Statute (1988)-- Penn. Stat. Ann. Tit. 24 § 13-1327.1
** Karen Leventry (PA) on PA Statutes
** History of Legislative Efforts to enact PA Home School Statute (1988-2000)
** Letter Sent to Diploma Program Evaluators by Howard Richman March 2002
** "Is This Tyranny?" by Kim and Bruce Sickler -- November/December 1994
** "You're Out of Control, Superintendent!" by Pat Montgomery -- November/December 1994
** "Home-Ed-Politics Debate about Pennsylvannia in 1994"
With all of the misinformation being disseminated over the last year or so by Howard & Susan Richman of PA Homeschoolers and PHAA, I feel certain things should be made public to protect the interests of homeschoolers in PA. This is a letter to PA representatives sent by Howard & Susan Richman stating their opinions and feelings on PAFREE, unschoolers, and the effort for legislative relief for PA homeschoolers.

If anyone would like the actual letter written on PA Homeschooler letterhead complete with signature, please email me privately with your address and I will send it (for free!)

Norma Young / normomy@voicenet.com
Pennsylvania Home Education Network




Pennsylvania Homeschoolers
Susan & Howard Richman, co-editors
RR 2 Box 117
Kittaning, PA 16201
724-783-6512
FAX: 724-783-6852 or 724-783-6512
e-mail: richmans@pahomeschoolers.com

April 12, 2001
Rep. Tom Armstrong, Rep. Sam Rohrer, and Rep. Joe Petrarca

Dear Tom, Sam, and Joe,

As you know I am quite dismayed with the turn the legislative effort has taken. You have been taken in by a group of complainers and have lost track of where the homeschooling community really is.

Until this week, Susan and I had thought you would pick four or five problems in the law to solve as stated in the June meeting that Susan attended. Such legislation would be defensible in arguments with the legislators and would not be opposed by any segment of the homeschool community. Instead you have chosen to try to pass sweeping legislation which would completely rewrite the homeschool law.

You have been taken in by a small clique calling themselves PAFREE whose goal and tactics all along have been divisive. Their goals are to both free up the homeschool law so that unschooling parents will not be accountable to anyone and to eliminate the diploma programs because they donąt like the idea of standards, even if homeschoolers can choose among several sets of alternative standards.

As I noted in my FAX to you, their attempt to eliminate the diploma programs would be opposed by the best-organized segment of the homeschooling community - members of the diploma programs who would see it as and attempt to take away their diplomas. Our diploma program alone has 1400 members - and we are just one of seven.

You have failed to realize who PAFREE really is. They pretend to represent a large coalition of homeschoolers but:

When Barb Page held a meeting for support group leaders to discuss legislative change, nobody came except those who were on the program to speak - ask CHAP they were there! The only way they can get people to rally at the capitol is to choose a day of the week (Friday) for their rallies when legislators are not there.

Their real constituency is two very small groups - unschoolers and radical libertarians

Unschoolers are genuinely upset with the documentation and accountability requirements of the home education law. They believe children, being perfectly good, would, if left to themselves, successfully direct their own educations. Instates where there is no accountability, unschoolers sometimes donąt teach their children to read until the age of ten or twelve and sometimes never teach their kids basic arithmetic. That is one of the main reasons that their national leadership (journals such as Home Education Magazine) tell their readers not to participate in studies of home education.

The real goal of some radical libertarians is an anti-government revolution. Some of them convince people not to pay their income taxes, or get marriage licenses, or get driversą licenses, or comply with home education laws. They love prosecutions because they need martyrs for their cause. A legislative effort that cannot succeed is a big win for them since it will increase non-compliance with the home education law. Keep in mind that Barb Page didnąt begin to comply with the home education law until last year when she came in from the cold so that she could be legal when she enrolled her oldest in the Western Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School.

At the February 14, 2000, meeting which we called to begin exploration of this legislative effort, we included several groups which you then excluded form future meetings. When you made the decision to eliminate genuine leaders like Dave Peterman of SEARCH (whose group just organized a successful conference that about 1000 attended in the Philadelphia area) and Mary Hudzinski of Mason Dixon Homeschoolers, you left important independent voices out of the dialogue. Either of them could have told you that the homeschooling community is not particularly upset with the way the homeschool law is now and only wants to proceed cautiously. Instead you listened to the shrill voices of the PAFREE folks who have led you to believe that homeschoolers are complainers and whiners.

You would think that, with all the lies that the PAFREE folks have been spreading about Susan and me (read the łbarb˛page on our website at www.pahomeschoolers.com for some examples, our membership roles would be declining - not true. Instead, we get people thanking us every day for our work and letting us know that they appreciate what we have been doing. The membership of our diploma program has been growing ever more rapidly, up from 362 graduates in 1999 to 467 in 2000.

Incremental vs. Sweeping Approach

When I did our Internet survey and led sessions at conferences in Erie and SEARCH, those who responded or attended wanted the same incremental changes that we published in our newsletter article on the subject (it can be found at www.pahomeschoolers.com/newsletter/issue71.htm). Many of these changes could be easily defended in discussions with other legislators. Until last week you were ready to put together and incremental bill consisting of such changes.

Instead, on Monday you decided to introduce sweeping legislation that would require you to defend all of the following:

Parents who canąt pass a GED should be allowed to homeschool at the high school level.

Unlike the public and private school students, homeschoolers shouldnąt have to comply with medical and immunization requirements.

Felons who have committed child abuse within the past 5 years should be permitted to homeschool.

The Department of Education and colleges should be required to recognize diplomas that have been issued without standards.

Homeschoolers should not be required to have educational objectives.

Homeschoolers should not have to teach the subject areas that are required in schools.

Not only that, you would have to re-fight several battles that have already been won:

We have already won recognition of homeschool diplomas so long as they are issued through the homeschool organizations. Only Pennsylvania and South Carolina have won this battle so far. Our diplomas are recognized when homeschoolers apply for college or teach their own children. Instead you will try to fight for the principle that standardless diplomas issued by parents to their children must be recognized! You will have no precedent in any other state to look to, since no state willingly recognizes standardless diplomas.

We have already won recognition for the fact that our objectives cannot be rejected by school authorities which insulates us from the changes that occur in public education. Instead, after taking out the objectives, you would completely rewrite the homeschooling law, by taking it out of the school code and explicitly prohibiting interference, in order to gain the same end.

Furthermore you are opening the homeschooling community up to a huge counter-attack by the educational establishment who think that the current law is too lax. If you mange to get hearings on your sweeping proposal, the school districts will have horror stories to share that even under this current law people arenąt doing a responsible job. Frankly, the complainers and whiners of the PAFREE group often do not come out well when they deal with the press. For example, see the enclosed article from In Pittsburgh where Barb Page is highlights as saying, łIf you can teach your child to use the toilet, you can teach anything.˛

Keep in mind that there are three wings of the homeschooling community just as there are three wings of the private school community: (1) the alternative school wing represented in homeschooling by unschoolers, (2) the religious school wing represented by groups such as CHAP, SEARCH, CHALICE, and Catholic Homeschoolers of PA, and (3) the academically-oriented school wing represented in Pennsylvania by PA Homeschoolers. I urge you to put together a bill that doesnąt harm any of these wings.

We have always appreciated your integrity, your astute political sense, and your honor. But we think that you are making a mistake right now.

Sincerely,
Howard B. Richman, PhD