Don't overdo home-school regulation

We hope everyone took advantage of a recent legislative tiff in Helena to get educated about home schooling.

Sen. Don Ryan, D-Great Falls, introduced a bill that would have forced home-school teachers and students to meet certain standards. Most importantly, each child would have been required to take standardized tests administered by the local school district and each home teacher would need either an educator license or a college degree. Lacking those, the home teacher (usually a parent) would have been monitored by the local school district for two years.

That might have sounded harmless enough to the average parent with children in public schools, but it obviously wasn't considered harmless by the more than 1,000 people who turned out at a Senate hearing last week to vent their displeasure over proposed regulation of their home schools.

Most parents who home-school their children do so out of sincere concerns about either the quality of public education or the values instilled by public education. They should not be denied an opportunity to bring their children up in a way consistent with those sincere beliefs.

Ultimately, however, society does have to consider and protect the well-being of its most vulnerable members. Most home-schooled students do fine, with parents who are dedicated to the education process, and values that ensure their success. But that doesn't mean other students are not at risk.

The latter are the students Ryan's rejected bill presumably meant to help, and society has a right to be concerned about them. We know firsthand of students, for instance, who have been handed books and other curriculum materials by their parents and left on their own to educate themselves, test themselves and grade themselves. That is an invitation to trouble.

Yes, some of those students, the brightest among them, might be able to excel. But more likely they would eventually pay a price for the hollow education they received. And so would society.

Inadequately educated students - whether they are products of home education or a school system - can be a burden in ways large and small.

Those burdens range from the added cost of dealing with students far behind their peers in educational development to more serious consequences - crime, drugs, welfare - that are linked to educational deficiencies.

It's in society's best interest that no children be left behind because of improper schooling. That's purportedly why the government oversees school systems and why it's trying to oversee home schools.

That said, however, it should be noted that the recent legislation in Helena was a somewhat overbearing and misguided attempt to do that.

Should there be standards for home schools? Surely. But should there be a school-district overseer in every home where parents are teachers? That's a little too Draconian.

Should home-school students be tested? Of course. But making them take standardized tests that are designed to evaluate schools seems out of line. We need reasonable testing of basic skills such as reading and mathematics to ensure that graduates of home schools are equipped to function in our complicated world.

But that needs to be accomplished in a way that makes sense to home-school families as well as to the Legislature. It can't be forced on them willy-nilly - or it will have the unintended consequence of forcing them out of the system and further away from reasonable monitoring.

One overriding principle to remember in this debate is that the state and schools are not the bosses of parents - it's the other way around.