Proposed Legislation

Some homeschoolers consider Pennsylvania to have too many regulations about the way they can teach their children at home. I can see that compared to some states, we do have a few more hoops to jump through, but overall I feel the state allows us to homeschool in a way that works for us. Up until now, I had never given much thought to what the federal government had to say about my homeschooling. But now new legislation has been proposed that brings it to my attention.

HB 610 was introduced on January 23 by three congressmen. This bill called The Choices in Education Act, presents a plan to offer vouchers to families who choose to send their children to private schools or to offset the cost of homeschooling. The bill also slips in the repeal of some of the school nutrition standards that were established during President Obama's time in office. While the idea of someone handing me money to pay the costs of homeschooling seems like a lovely gift, I am not so sure this will work out to be beneficial to the homeschooling community.

From what I understand reading the bill, if I wanted to accept a voucher, the amount of the voucher would not be allowed to be for more than the amount it cost me to homeschool. I'm assuming this means I would have to record and prove how much it cost me to teach my children. And who would decide what was an appropriate thing to buy? In the past, I counted one of our vacations to the ocean to be part of our marine biology unit. Will I get reimbursed for that? Call me paranoid, but I don't want the government nitpicking my homeschooling plans to tell me if what I'm doing counts as education. More oversight is not a good thing when things are already working just fine the way they are.

There are other things to be concerned about in this bill. The bill wipes out past legislation with no replacement for essential things. I see nothing covering identification of learning disabilities or giftedness, yet this bill proposes to repeal the legislation that established that practice. I don't like big government, but I also don't believe in trashing the system with no way to take care of issues that exist.

I don't usually use this blog as a place to rant about my political beliefs but I thought this was important to share with those who homeschool or are considering it as an option. You can read the text of the bill here. I am not a member of HSDLA, but an article their leadership shared was where I first became aware of this proposed legislation. You can read that article here. If you feel the way I do, contact the authors of the bill and your own member of congress to express your concerns.