In this article Dr. Joseph Marcoline, superintendent of Homer-Center, is quoted: "Home-schooling requirements that a parent must comply with are very minimal." We would disagree.

"Minimal" governmental regulation of homeschooling would be exemplified by states like Texas. Texas' position on homeschooling was given by President Bush: "In Texas we view home-schooling as something to be respected and something to be protected. Respected for the energy and commitment of loving mothers and loving fathers. Protected from the interference of government." (Source: A. Scheuer, "All Work is Homework," Harvard Political Review, July 19, 2004).

Accordingly, Texas has no government regulation of homeschooling.

Although the argument could be made that the state has an interest in ensuring that its citizens and future leaders are educated, the current Pennsylvania law is triple redundant in this respect.

In order to show that their children are being educated, homeschooling parents must comply with the following every school year:

1. Have each child evaluated by a Pennsylvania certified teacher. The evaluator must review the child's work. The evaluator must give the parents a written notice that their children are receiving an appropriate education.

2. Submit a portfolio with examples of the work that each child has completed. The portfolio and evaluation are re-evaluated by the superintendent, who then determines again if the child is receiving an appropriate education.

3. Each child must be given standardized tests, by someone other than the child's parent, in grades 3, 5 and 8, and those results are submitted to the district to again prove the child is receiving an appropriate education.

It is particularly noteworthy, in light of other recent articles in the Gazette, that home-schoolers must seek annual approval of their children's education from a district which, based on state assessment tests, has been shown to not be giving its own students an appropriate education.

There is no evidence that homeschoolers in states like Texas are uneducated. All the studies that have been done show that homeschoolers are, in fact, well educated. The Pennsylvania Department of Education's own statistics show that more than 99 percent of homeschoolers are annually receiving an appropriate education.

All of the costs to comply with this regulation must be born by the parents. Annual evaluations can cost $100 per child. So can testing for grades 3, 5, and 8.

We homeschoolers are willing to bear the additional costs of educating our children, but not the additional costs of an unfunded mandate and burdensome, bureaucratic regulation.

The current law also places an unfunded mandate on the districts who must expend time, supplies and staff to conduct annual reviews of materials submitted.

Don't forget that we still pay taxes to support the school districts that evaluate our children. School districts that our children do not attend. Our children are still counted in the district census that is provided to the state when determining the per-pupil funding that the district gets from the state - meaning the district is getting funding for kids that aren't in their schools.

At the beginning of each school year, parents must file an affidavit with the district stating their intent to homeschool. The affidavit must contain a statement that none of the adults in the home have been convicted of any of the crimes listed in section 111 of the Public School Code.

These crimes concern charges of murder, assault and molestation. They are the same crimes that would disqualify one from being a teacher, and rightly so. But there is no law that prevents anyone, including teachers, convicted of these crimes from having children.

No other parents are required to prove to the local school district on a yearly basis that they were not convicted of these crimes.

In fact, if the district required such information summarily from all parents, it would violate the state's criminal history disclosure laws.

Public school parents are not required to sign affidavits that they are not currently molesting their children (even though the majority of convicted child molesters are not homeschoolers). The law should not be discriminatory toward home-schoolers in this regard. If we should have to submit this evidence to the school every year, so should every parent.

In the United States, one is presumed innocent until proven guilty, one of the basic premises of our law.

The current homeschooling law in Pennsylvania is the only law in this state that requires those subject to it to prove their innocence.

Imagine if you had to appear annually before your local chief law enforcement officer (in the case of education, that would be the district superintendent) and give him evidence such as that required above to prove your innocence of some crime.

Perhaps, as an example, to prove you were not dumping raw sewage into a stream. Imagine that if you failed to provide satisfactory evidence to this official (and he decides what is satisfactory and what isn't) you would be charged with dumping raw sewage.

Imagine that when the case came to trial you would have to again produce evidence that you are not dumping raw sewage.

Change "sewage" above to "homeschooling" and you have the current state of the education laws in Pennsylvania. This is partly the basis for homeschoolers' opposition to the current law.

Regardless of how you may personally feel about homeschooling, you should support homeschoolers in their attempt to have the law changed for this reason alone.

Michael Schmidt
Homer City