Please pass this alert on to your homeschooling friends, your support group email lists and your online homeschool groups.

OCEANetwork and the Oregon Home Education Network (OHEN) are preparing for the 2009 Oregon Legislative session. We anticipate that this legislative session will be a particularly difficult session.

Last session we battled HB 2979 which would have made changes in the homeschool law including increasing the percentile score required to “pass.” We also successfully opposed HB 2996 which required anyone teaching any subject K-12th grades for pay to be a state certified teacher. And we fought SB 392 lowering the compulsory attendance age.

This session we expect more of the same. We are working hard to prepare. One of the many tools we would like to be able to use during this session is an up-to-date research report analyzing how well homeschool students are doing academically.

We need the help of every homeschool family in Oregon. Approximately 15,000 children are homeschooled in Oregon. About 1/3 of those students were required to take a standardized achievement test last year. We’d like to obtain the scores of the majority of those 5,000 home educated students in order to present an accurate picture of home education achievement in Oregon. It has been 10 years since we have had good data. Current data will help us in our lobbying efforts.

Here’s how you can help:

1. If you homeschooled for the 2007-2008 school year AND you had your child tested with a standardized achievement test last year, please go to OCEANetwork’s web site and participate in the study. It is completely anonymous. Even if your child did not score well on the test, we need his or her test scores, too.

Please participate NOW if you qualify. We would like to finish collecting the data before Thanksgiving so we can turn it over to the National Home Education Research Institute to analyze. If you have already participated through Basic Skills, HSLDA or OCEANetwork, thank you. You do not need to participate again.

2. Even if you didn’t have your children tested last year, pass this email on to everyone you know who is homeschooling. OCEANetwork does not have contact will all home educators in Oregon, but if you all pass this message on to friends, support groups and email lists, we will be able to reach many more home educators.

3. Sign up for email alerts from OCEANetwork about legislative activity at http://www.oceanetwork.org/membership/signup.cfm. You are the key to homeschool lobby success. Legislators pay attention to families from their district. Make sure you receive alerts from OCEANetwokr, then contact your legislators when asked to do so.

4. Pray for us as we prepare for this legislative session. We need God’s wisdom and strength. And become an OCEANetwork Supporting Family. A $30 or more tax-deductible contribution will help OCEANetwork continue to protect home education freedom in Oregon and will help defray the cost of doing this research project. You can send your contribution to OCEANetwork, 15805 S Abiqua Rd NE, Silverton, OR 97381 or call 503-288-1285 to contribute with a credit card.

Thank you for your help in the defense of homeschool freedom in Oregon.

Yours for Christ and for freedom,

Dick & Dorothy Karman
Chairman of OCEANetwork

P.S.: OCEANetwork exists to serve the Lord Jesus Christ by supporting, encouraging, protecting and advancing private Christian home education in Oregon. We are dedicated to protecting the right of every parent to home educate regardless of religious preference or educational philosophy. We are also dedicated to encouraging Christians to utilize their freedom to homeschool in order to disciple their children in the Lord. It is our desire to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, the hearts of spouses to each other and the hearts of families to God in order to make ready a people prepared for the Lord (paraphrase of Luke 1:17). Thank you for helping us with this ministry.