Homeschoolers Desire More Accountability?
Apr 7th, 2007 by Annette
A program to help homeschoolers, but legally they won’t be homeschoolers anymore. The students will be the district’s public school students. The Vision School is stated as a “grass-roots effort” started by parents who currently or have home-schooled their children in the past.
Vision School shows model to District 51
By KYLENE KIANG The Daily Sentinel
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
**snip**
A model for a new contract school that would provide educational support for home-school students in Mesa County was presented to the Mesa County Valley School District 51 Board of Education at a meeting Tuesday night.
The Mesa Valley Vision School would help home-schoolers develop a structured individual learning plan and provide guidance with an educator, or “resource consultant,” employed by District 51, said Craig Richmond, one of the school’s founding members.
**snip**
Assistant Superintendent Steve Schultz said the Vision School would give home-school students additional framework for their education.
“Right now for home-school students, there are no formal structures for accountability,” Schultz said. “There is no question that this challenges our traditional views (of education).”
**snip**
Under the contract, home-school students enrolled in the program would become District 51 students and receive funding from the state. (end of snip, see link above)
I clicked over to Christian Home Educators of Colorado to see what type of accountability is in place for homeschoolers there. I don’t agree with the Assistant Superintendent about “no formal structures for accountability”. There is plenty of accountability in Colorado for parents who are following the law outlined to homeschool. Here is a link to the law summary for homeschooling in Colorado.
[…] The perceptions that homeschoolers are: “pulling money down” for homeschooling are semi-dropouts left behind At-risk desire state standards and accountability willing to trade-off homeschool freedoms for government funds […]
“A program to help homeschoolers, but legally they won’t be homeschoolers anymore.”
I am not familiar with this new program or how it plans to enroll students. That said in CO homeschool families can be enrolled part time in public school programs and not fall under the compulsory Attendance laws, CRS22-33-104, or the supervision of the public school. So yes, legally they ARE still homeschoolers.
Kerry Kantor
Colorado Home Education Advocate
Kerry,
Thanks for leaving a comment. I love getting feedback here from people who live in the states where these articles originate from.
I had the idea that this program would be more than part-time enrollment. I remember that the Visions school was considering becoming a charter school a few months back. I’ll try to find out more about the program this week. If this is more than attending a class or two but something with alot more oversight for the students’ education, wouldn’t that be different than what CO law allows for?
The following is shared here with permission from Kerry K., homeschool advocate in Colorado:
From Kerry:
I had a long discussion with one of the chairs of the Mesa Valley Vision school. The Delta county Vision is what they are modeling it after. Again the confusion stems from the semantics of the discussion. I corrected this administrator several times on the use of the word “homeschool, homeschooler, and homeschooling” Once we agreed upon the vocabulary then the discussion about this concept in public schooling went more smoothly.
Bottom line, you are right, legally these families will not be homeschoolers. The requirement is to enroll as a “Full-time student” under the supervision of a learning manager. If a student was enrolled with a “part-time” designation then the parent would still be in control of the home program, and therefore legally homeschooling. This discussion will be brought to the attention of the entire board of the Mesa Vision School and we may have more discussion on this subject.
Mesa Vision School is still trying to flesh out the programs, but if they can get the proper waivers from the state and stick to their vision it will be a great option for some families. I did discuss with this administrator the danger to independent/emancipated homeschoolers in that we don’t want this program to become a model for why homeschoolers should be regulated. They agreed that ultimately the freedom to choose should be protected.
Kerry Kantor
Co Home Education Advocate
Thank you Kerry for following up on this. ~Annette