Home-school parents happy with death of bill

For Cynthia DePinto, Monday's decision by a Senate committee in Helena to shelve a home-schooling bill couldn't have been more welcome - or more crucial.

"It was absolutely one of the most momentous points in my whole life," said DePinto, who teaches her two young daughters in the family's home near Kila.

"It was just incredible."

If Sen. Don Ryan's bill had made it out of committee and passed through the Senate and House, DePinto and her husband, Daniel, had a very reluctant Plan B: Move out of Montana.

"I am a home-school mom," DePinto said. "I believe my children were given to me by God and I will not give them over to the state. This is not a global village. I will educate them myself."

Well over 1,200 home-school proponents packed every nook and cranny of the statehouse for the 3 p.m. hearing that started 20 minutes behind schedule.

An early estimate had put the number at 800. But Linda Creighton of Kalispell was helping a home-school group pass out the 1,200 name tags they had printed beforehand - and they ran out well before the crowd stopped coming.

Some came to speak, some came to learn.

Others came as a silent show of opposition to the bill.

"It was exciting to hear the testimony on every aspect of the bill," said Creighton, who has graduated two of her home-school children and is educating two more. She's a home-school consultant for Christian Book Supply, facilitates a home-school support group for Kalispell and strongly opposed the bill. "It's just not necessary."

The Senate Education and Cultural Resources Committee heard testimony for 2 1/2 hours Monday before Sen. Jim Elliott, D-Trout Creek, proposed killing the bill.

Ryan, a Great Falls Democrat, was the only one who voted to keep his bill alive.

Ryan had proposed stringent requirements on homeschool families:

- Each child would have had to register with the local school district - not just with the county superintendent as now required - thereby crediting the district with that child for enrollment purposes.

- Those doing the educating would have been required to be certified teachers or hold college degrees, or be monitored by the local school district for two years. Biannual reports would have been filed.

- They would have had to submit to standardized testing, administered by the public school in its own facilities. If the child falls below the 30th percentile, a cutoff that Creighton said is higher than the mark for public schools, further assessment requirements would have kicked in.

The list went on.

Ryan said the changes were needed for the "shadow children," often-times abuse victims whose parents claim to home-school their children but in fact neglect their education.

Flathead County Superintendent of Schools Donna Maddux was one of the five supporters speaking in favor of Ryan's bill. A certified teacher, Maddux home-schooled her own children and has a daughter doing the same with her children.

But she cited stories of children who fell through the cracks outside the public system, to tragic results at home. She also contradicted what she called a "myth" that home-school children score better on standardized tests.

"No one denies that there are children in the home-school group that are not doing well," Creighton said. "But there are children in the public schools that don't do well. We don't change the whole public system (for them), so why are you proposing to change the home-school instead?"

Home-school parents, children and supporters were ready with point-by-point rebuttals.

"Everything he put up in that bill was profoundly and factually contradicted," DePinto said.

Parents testified, as did young children, adults who had been home-schooled, even Miss Montana Evangelina Duke.

"I was glad to be able to be there and hear (testimony)," Tracie Scherer said. The Columbia Falls mother of three home-schooled daughters traveled with her husband, Frank, to Monday's hearings.

"The bill itself seemed to be something out there. He made it sound like he was trying to help people," Scherer said, "but it definitely would have injured families and created harm.

"It would be very damaging to the parents' freedom to see to their children's needs and see to their education."

DePinto said Ryan soft-pedaled the bill's impacts, saying home-school supporters had blown it out of proportion.

She also decried his example of a home-schooled Great Falls girl whose dreams of nursing school were dashed at graduation when testing showed she was four to six years behind grade level.

"Finally a woman came up and said, 'Thank you for talking about my daughter,'" DePinto said, noting that Ryan had not revealed all the facts. "'She was born with cerebral palsy. She never would have learned at all in public school. We taught her to speak by using a mirror. She's now in college.'"

Scherer recounted another man's testimony about a request from Ryan that circulated among some teachers, asking for "isolated and bizarre" instances of home-schooling gone wrong. She said Ryan wanted them for backup in case his bill faltered.

"He wasn't looking for the typical lifestyle," in home-school families, Scherer said.

Creighton said a fiscal note accompanying the measure made it clear the costs would have been prohibitive.

"What amazes me is the cost of this bill," Creighton said.

"The local school districts would be responsible for another $3 million a year to administer this. There already is no money. And then there would be another $423,000 to assess the children falling below the 30th percentile."

She said proponents did not bring up that aspect, but that Sen. Bob Keenan, R-Bigfork, "said this was an unfunded mandate, and that bill always comes back to the taxpayer."

Creighton said she tests her own children every two years, using a tool that compares them with other home-schooled students and with public school students. But she was concerned with Ryan's proposal.

"They say it is a nationally standardized test, but they don't necessarily say it is the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills," Creighton said. And that gray area can be "a slippery slope. If it gets to values assessment, there's no right or wrong answer. It's moral decisions."

Such tests, she added, are not geared to the curriculum, do not allow for a child's giftedness in one area to balance out a weakness in another area, and might force parents to teach to the test.

Also, for a test to be accurate and fair to the child, he needs to be tested in his normal learning environment, not in an unfamiliar public school room.

Sen. Elliott, as he moved to kill the measure, challenged the home-school community to help legislators find a solution to a perennial urge to regulate all home-schoolers as a way to protect children against the abusers.

"What can we do as a home-school group to avoid this in the future? We never will be able to," Creighton said. "There's a group of people who feel they need to have some control over us.

"My heart would say that, if we hear someone who is not doing a good job, we would come alongside them and say, 'Here, can we help you?'"

Creighton was heartened by the strong showing in Helena.

"It's kind of thrilling to see that many people who love their children so much to be there," she said. "They care about their children. They will stand up and fight for their children, and for the right to educate their children.

"That's the kind of people you want in your community."

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com