Dear Homeschoolers:

Welcome to the first ever CHAP Email Newsletter. This publication is
product of a great deal of work on the part of many people. We hope to
publish at least monthly with alerts that would go out on an as needed
basis.

We expect to have some incorrect addresses and some that donšt want to
receive this newsletter. To our knowledge we are not sending to anyone
who did not request it. If you are on the list and donšt want to be,
please simply reply to this letter and insert in the "subject" of the

reply "unsubscribe."

The content of the Email newsletter will be different from the paper
based CHAP Newsletter. If you want to get everything CHAP is doing you
will need to get both publications. The email newsletter will tend to
focus more on political issues than the hard copy CHAP Newsletter.
Because email is so fast we will use it as our method of choice for
communicating legislative issues and alerts. Another goal is to keep
these newsletters short.


The Freedom Papers


A little over 200 hundred years ago in an effort to win support for the
fledgling United States Constitution, John Jay (the first Chief Justice
of the US Supreme Court), Alexander Hamilton (the first Secretary of the
Treasury) and James Madison (often called the father of the US
Constitution) teamed up to write a set of essays called the Federalist
Papers. The Federalist Papers were written by them under roman
pseudonyms to persuade the states to ratify the US Constitution.

In a similar vein several concerned citizens are writing essays called

the Freedom Papers to win support for a new homeschool law which better
serves Pennsylvania and its homeschooling citizens. The papers will be
brief, about a page, so they can be quickly read and digested. They are
being introduced in the CHAP Email Newsletter. This first one responds
to the concern that some homeschoolers would abuse the freedom to
homeschool if they didn't have strict requirements.

What About Abuse of the System?

"What about those homeschoolers who abuse the system?" is a question
heard from time to time as an argument for close supervision of
homeschooling families. A statement such as "I heard of a family that
didn't do any teaching" usually follows this comment. When I pursue the
second comment I find out that it is usually hearsay. To date I have
never found a first hand witness to a homeschooling family that didn't
teach at all. This is not to say that there aren't any of these parents,
just that they are rare.

In medicine we would call the statement above a case report (if it were
true) or an anecdote. In science, an anecdote is not proof of anything,
but merely an interesting observation. A study of the group would be
needed to draw any meaningful conclusions.


Is there such a study related to homeschool abuse? There is useful data
from a source that many would not expect me to quote. Each year the
Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) releases data about
homeschooling for the previous year. This is collected from the 502
school districts in Pennsylvania. They have the remarkable return rate
of 100%.

The data from 1999, the most recent year available, shows that there
were 21,459 homeschooled students in Pennsylvania. Of these 21,459
students, the school districts identified 344 whom the school

administrators felt were receiving an inappropriate education. The
homeschool evaluators identified 95 students that were receiving an
"inappropriate education."  It should be noted that public school
superintendents are not considered to be strong supporters of home

schooling. It could be argued that they are what lawyers would call a
hostile witness. According to the evaluators about .4% of homeschooled
children are failing. Even the public school administrators would
estimate only about 1.6% are considered to be failing.

Dewitt Black, lawyer for the Home School Legal Defense Association notes
that no member family in Pennsylvania has ever been forced to stop
homeschooling because of inadequate education. This is more evidence

that homeschoolers are doing a great job.

These numbers are remarkable. Few human endeavors succeed at the 99.6%
level. This is a great tribute to homeschoolers. In contrast it was
recently reported that as many as 40% of Harrisburg public school
students are unable to read. This was the rationale for the state

authorized Harrisburg City take over of the Harrisburg School system.
Thus some public schools have a failure rate that is 100 times higher
than that of homeschoolers.

It has been estimated that public schools in Pennsylvania spend 3.5
million dollars a year evaluating homeschoolers. Perhaps the state
should quit trying to regulate homeschoolers and send the money to the
Harrisburg school system instead.

Thank you for your attention. CHAP

Christian Homeschool Association of Pennsylvania PO Box 115 Mount Joy,
PA 17552-0115 717-661-2428 www.chapboard.org
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