Evil Bill by Representative Day will be voted on 1/6/10

I received the following regarding HB 368 please share.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

It is *critical* to contact your Representatives about this bill, preferably by phone. Emails and letters are too easily dismissed and overlooked. Ask your reps to vote YES to support the ITL on HB 368. The HEC vote of 14-6 on 11/19/09 may be the single biggest reason we can get support from the full House. Many of the reps look to the committee vote to determine how they should vote and know little about the bill themselves. Your comments to them may be the only solid information they have going into the vote.



You can find contact information for your Representatives here: http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/ns/whosmyleg/

I posted some talking points on the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance forum. Feel free to use them if you wish.

Reasons to vote YES to support the ITL of HB 368:
#1: The HEC recommendation is ITL.

The House Education Committee had a bi-partisan vote on 11/19/09 of 14-6 to recommend HB 368 as ITL, after creating several subcommittees to study home education.



#2: The amendment by Rep. Day goes far beyond the original bill, incorporating language from HB367 that was ITLed in 2009. These rules are clearly designed to create greater burdens for homeschooling families, and dissuade families seeking alternatives from considering homeschooling.

a. Lists numerous specific curriculum requirements, which exceed the curriculum requirements of NH public schools. This is not fair or equal under the law.

http://www.ed.state.nh.us/education/standards/advisory6.pdf

b. Require annual evaluations by certified teachers AND standardized testing, increasing the cost and time requirements of compliance with no benefit to the students, home education programs, or participating agencies.

c. Allows the DOE to make future changes to evaluation requirements without any legislative input, creating an undefined and moving target.

d. Forces test scores and evaluations to bypass families and go directly to participating agencies, blatantly calling all home educators liars. As Rep Day wrote in the minority opinion, "parents pay the evaluator and can shop for positive evaluations ".


#3: Representative Day has commented that homeschoolers are unreasonable and would oppose any change. Chair Rous said in the 11/19/09 executive session that New Hampshire's home education laws are not excessively burdensome according to her research. However, according to the Home School Legal Defense Association, a national home education advocacy group, the proposed amendment would make NH the most restrictive and burdensome in the country.

http://www.hslda.org/elert/archive/2009/12/20091216134642.asp


The HEC has seen several bills in recent years that would seek radical change to existing home education laws. HB 368 is only the most recent, and with Rep. Day's amendments, the most egregious.