FW: Repeal Compulsory-School Laws?

--- begin forwarded text From: Carla Howell <carlahowell@mediaone.net> To: "General lpma (E-mail)" <general@lpma.org> Subject: FW: Repeal Compulsory-School Laws? Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1998 10:45:41 -0500 Sender: owner-general@lpma.org -----Original Message----- From: Jack Shimek [SMTP:jshimek@jaqboot.mv.com] Sent: Saturday, December 26, 1998 11:06 AM To: Jack Shimek Subject: Repeal Compulsory-School Laws? Separation of School and State Alliance - New Hampshire ******************************************** The following article is brought to you courtesy of SepSchool-NH If you wish to be removed from this mailing list, please reply with your request to be removed. Thank you. ******************************************** *****REPEAL COMPULSORY-SCHOOL LAWS? ***** Backers Say Learning And Innovation At Stake Date: 12/2/98 Author: Aaron Steelman (c) Copyright 1998 Investors Business Daily, Inc. Three years ago, state Rep. Russell George, a Republican, offered an amendment to repeal the Colorado law that mandates school attendance for children between ages 6 and 16. George's reason: Disruptive kids who would rather not be in school were causing problems for attentive students. "I posed a simple theory," George said. "If you want better education, then you are better off having people in the system who want to learn. We shouldn't be using schools as juvenile justice detention centers. "That forces learning at the lowest common denominator. And until we figure that out, we are not going to get a handle on why the public schools aren't doing well," he said. What's more, some critics of the attendance laws say repealing them could lead to a flowering of innovative private schools. Repeal also could free the estimated 1.7 million children who are schooled at home from burdensome regulations. Such benefits, analysts say, could entice other states to follow Colorado's lead and reconsider the wisdom of compulsory school attendance. Every state requires children to attend school until they earn a high-school diploma or until they reach a certain age, typically 16 or 18. Massachusetts passed the first compulsory-schooling law in 1852. Most states (and former territories) followed suit over the next several decades. George's amendment to repeal the compulsory-attendance laws died in committee, but many parents and frustrated teachers supported the change. The idea was particularly popular in rural western Colorado. But it had supporters statewide, says Arthur Ellis, assistant commissioner of the Colorado Department of Education. "I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a similar bill brought forward in the next session," Ellis said. If so, it will have a powerful champion in George, who is the new speaker of the Colorado House. Colorado's education establishment is not keen on repealing the state's century-old attendance laws, however. By repealing its attendance laws, the state would be "abandoning" its responsibility to kids, says Jeanne Beyer, director of communications for the Colorado Education Association. Democrat Michael Feeley, minority leader of the Colorado Senate, said: "We would grow an underclass of uneducated, unemployable, illiterate kids who would be sticking a gun in your ribs because that's the only thing they would be capable of doing." On the contrary, "It's actually the system that has abandoned the kids," said Sheldon Richman, senior fellow at the Future of Freedom Foundation. "It sticks them in a custodial facility and lets them languish." Richard Seder, education studies director at the Reason Public Policy Institute in Los Angeles, said that compulsory attendance can contribute to violence in the schools. "A student who doesn't want to be at school and is forced to be there will act out, (either) through intimidation of other students or intimidation of teachers and administrators," Seder said. It's not clear that repealing compulsory-attendance laws would actually put kids on the streets, says E.G. West, an emeritus economics professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, and author of "Education and the State." West studied compulsory-attendance laws in Britain and found that education was widespread before schooling was mandatory and free. "There were upward trends in both literacy and school attendance" before compulsory-schooling laws passed, West said. In the mid-1800s, school attendance rates were growing twice as fast as the population. By 1870, the British literacy rate was more than 90%, and nearly all kids received some formal schooling. What's more, many youths benefited from apprenticeship programs. "A lot of the firms that employed younger people provided them with education on the job," West said. If all that's true, why were the compulsory-attendance laws passed in the first place? "I think the primary reason was to eliminate competition in the labor force," said Mary Novello, author of "For All the Wrong Reasons: The Story Behind Government Schools." She says some of the support for mandatory schooling came from labor organizers who thought young workers were taking jobs from adults. Marshall Fritz, director of the Fresno, Calif.-based Separation of School & State Alliance, thinks that the attendance laws create an artificial distinction between campus schooling and everyday, less-formal learning. If the laws are repealed, he says, that distinction will be blurred, and innovative schools will prosper. That's badly needed, Fritz says, because most private schools now mirror the public schools in their approach. "I think the government schools are teaching the kids to run a 17-minute mile," he said. "The private schools are teaching them to run a 13- or 14-minute mile. And they look great in comparison, because in the race of the slow, someone has to be first." Richman, the author of "Separating School and State," shares Fritz's frustration about private schools' lack of creativity. But he's less optimistic about alternative schools sprouting up. For that to happen, he says, it may be necessary to eliminate the taxes that fund public schools as well as to repeal attendance laws. "When Christopher Whittle set up the Edison Project (a system of private, for-profit schools), he said he was going to reinvent the school. But he ran up against the problem that a lot of people who were already paying taxes for schools didn't also want to spend money for tuition," Richman said. However, repealing compulsory-attendance laws would instantly make life easier for many home-schoolers, says Michael Farris, father of 10 home-schooled children and president of the Home School Legal Defense Association in Purcellville, Va. The laws not only say that kids must go to school, but they also define what is and is not a school, Farris says. Consider the case of Stephen and Lois Pustell of Lynn, Mass. They home school their three school-aged children. They've been in a court battle with their local school district since '91. The school district says it should be able to inspect the family's home to see how the kids are being taught. The Pustells object. "In our case, they were willing to waive all the other requirements (for home-schoolers, including an annual review of the curricula and the students' progress) except for the home visits," Mr. Pustell said. "Without the compulsory-attendance law, there would be no justification at all for what they are trying to do." Despite the Pustells' situation, Farris says home-schoolers are having fewer problems now than in the past. "There's no question that things have moved in a more lenient direction in the last 15 years. If you were a home-schooler in the early '80s, there was a high probability that you would be prosecuted," Farris said. In '96, Hawaii lowered its compulsory-attendance age to 16 from 18. Other states have considered similar changes. Will Colorado go all the way and repeal its attendance laws? Ellis said that the Colorado Department of Education isn't "going to lead the charge to repeal the laws, but we're not going to put any energy into preserving them, either." But you can count on teachers unions to put up a fight. "Even though you could probably find lots of frustrated teachers (who would like to see the attendance laws repealed), organizationally we wouldn't support that," the Colorado Education Association's Beyer said. --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com> Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'