AUGUSTA — A legislative committee decided Tuesday that the state should forgo new requirements for homeschoolers and concentrate on enforcing existing regulations to ensure that children taught at home get a good education.
The Education and Cultural Affairs Committee voted unanimously to recommend defeat of a bill that would have required homeschooled children to take the state's standardized test, the Maine Educational Assessment.
Instead, the committee voted to ask state education officials to submit a report by May, detailing how they are enforcing the current law on homeschooling and any problems – such as a lack of staffing – they're having.
The committee's decision was a victory for homeschoolers. More than 500 homeschooling parents and children came to Augusta last week to argue that the MEA test was inappropriate for homeschooled students because it is based on a public school curriculum. They said homeschoolers don't need more state oversight because existing Maine law already requires an annual assessment.
Still, some lawmakers and education officials are concerned that the system, as currently administered, offers no certainty that all homeschooled children are being provided with a quality education. And that's why they are asking for the report on enforcement.
Edwin "Buzz" Kastuck said he gets eight to 10 complaints a month from sources ranging from school superintendents to grandparents saying that some children are getting an inadequate homeschooling education.
Kastuck is the sole home-schooling consultant for the Department of Education, a job that was done by four people about a decade ago. He said he investigates by asking for such data as lesson plans and study schedules.
Also, about 1,200 homeschoolers – nearly 30 percent of the state's total – have failed to submit a yearly assessment report to the state, as the law requires.
Concerns like that led Sen. Peter Mills, R-Skowhegan, to propose the bill, which would have required all Maine's 4,100 homeschoolers to take the MEA and also would have given extra state funding to school districts for homeschoolers, even though many don't use school services.
With the intense opposition, Mills last week had backed off on the MEA requirement, conceding that test is designed to evaluate school districts, not individual students. But on Tuesday he said he told the committee he was still concerned that some homeschooling students weren't getting a good education, despite the existing law.
"You have a law that has some words in it but they are not effective," Mills said.
Kastuck told the committee he plans to notify homeschooling families who are late with their annual assessment reports that they have until April 1 to comply or they will lose approval to homeschool next year. Kastuck said he will give the families a list of resources to help them complete the assessment on time.
Ann Bagala, president of the Maine Home Education Association, a non-sectarian homeschooling group, said she was "shocked" to learn 1,200 assessments hadn't been submitted. She said she believes that many families simply haven't gotten around to filling out the forms and submitting them to the state.