There is a threat to the homeschooling community.  Sheila Oliver and L. Harvey Smith have created a bill to make homeschooling extremely difficult and tedious for New Jersey residents.   I am asking anyone who loves homeschooling or is a strong supporter of homeschooling to please contact your state senators and assemblymen.  If you live in the areas that  Ms. Oliver and Mr. Smith represent, please know that these people are not representing you well.  The education committee will discuss this bill on Oct. 16, 2008. Please ask them to reconsider this gesture because it will cost lots of taxpayers more money.

Here is a summary of what A. 3123 would do:

1. Give the superintendent and school board power to force a family to
stop homeschooling if they believe the child is not getting an
"appropriate education."  This means whatever the superintendent and
school board say it means because it is not defined. A bureaucrat
would have power make a life or death decision over your homeschool
program.

2. Give the Commissioner of Education power to mandate courses and
course content ("objectives").   Families would no longer be free to
decide what to teach.

3. Require parents to list objectives in every mandatory subject.  Any
family whose list does not satisfy the superintendent will be in
trouble.

4. Require parents to send a notarized letter and register every
homeschooled child annually.

5. Require parents to prove that the children have received all
medical services and immunizations the law requires.

6. Require parents to certify that adults in the home have not
committed certain crimes.

7. Require that parents provide 180 days of instruction and turn in
these records annually (and also as often as the superintendent
requests, if he has "reason to believe" the student is not getting "an
appropriate education"):
 list of reading materials
writing samples
worksheets

 workbooks
creative materials
standardized testing in grades 3, 5 and 8 (with parents being
prohibited from administering the test)
an annual evaluation by a person other than the parent, after an
interview and review of materials. The evaluator must certify the
student is receiving an "appropriate education".  The evaluator must
be a: (a) licensed psychologist, or (b) certified school psychologist,
or (c)  New Jersey public or private school teacher, or (d) New Jersey
public or private school administrator.