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FW: Repeal Compulsory-School Laws?
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From: Carla Howell <[email protected]>
To: "General lpma (E-mail)" <[email protected]>
Subject: FW: Repeal Compulsory-School Laws?
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1998 10:45:41 -0500
Sender: [email protected]
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From: Jack Shimek [SMTP:[email protected]]
Sent: Saturday, December 26, 1998 11:06 AM
To: Jack Shimek
Subject: Repeal Compulsory-School Laws?
Separation of School and State Alliance - New Hampshire
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*****REPEAL COMPULSORY-SCHOOL LAWS? *****
Backers Say Learning And Innovation At Stake
Date: 12/2/98 Author: Aaron Steelman
(c) Copyright 1998 Investors Business Daily, Inc.
Three years ago, state Rep. Russell George, a Republican, offered an
amendment to repeal the Colorado law that mandates school attendance for
children between ages 6 and 16. George's reason: Disruptive kids who would
rather not be in school were causing problems for attentive students. "I
posed a simple theory," George said. "If you want better education, then
you are better off having people in the system who want to learn. We
shouldn't be using schools as juvenile justice detention centers. "That
forces learning at the lowest common denominator. And until we figure that
out, we are not going to get a handle on why the public schools aren't
doing well," he said.
What's more, some critics of the attendance laws say repealing them could
lead to a flowering of innovative private schools. Repeal also could free
the estimated 1.7 million children who are schooled at home from burdensome
regulations. Such benefits, analysts say, could entice other states to
follow Colorado's lead and reconsider the wisdom of compulsory school
attendance. Every state requires children to attend school until they earn
a high-school diploma or until they reach a certain age, typically 16 or
18. Massachusetts passed the first compulsory-schooling law in 1852. Most
states (and former territories) followed suit over the next several
decades. George's amendment to repeal the compulsory-attendance laws died
in committee, but many parents and frustrated teachers supported the change.
The idea was particularly popular in rural western Colorado. But it had
supporters statewide, says Arthur Ellis, assistant commissioner of the
Colorado Department of Education. "I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a
similar bill brought forward in the next session," Ellis said. If so, it
will have a powerful champion in George, who is the new speaker of the
Colorado House.
Colorado's education establishment is not keen on repealing the state's
century-old attendance laws, however. By repealing its attendance laws,
the state would be "abandoning" its responsibility to kids, says Jeanne
Beyer, director of communications for the Colorado Education Association.
Democrat Michael Feeley, minority leader of the Colorado Senate, said: "We
would grow an underclass of uneducated, unemployable, illiterate kids who
would be sticking a gun in your ribs because that's the only thing they
would be capable of doing."
On the contrary, "It's actually the system that has abandoned the kids,"
said Sheldon Richman, senior fellow at the Future of Freedom Foundation.
"It sticks them in a custodial facility and lets them languish."
Richard Seder, education studies director at the Reason Public Policy
Institute in Los Angeles, said that compulsory attendance can contribute to
violence in the schools. "A student who doesn't want to be at school and
is forced to be there will act out, (either) through intimidation of other
students or intimidation of teachers and administrators," Seder said.
It's not clear that repealing compulsory-attendance laws would actually put
kids on the streets, says E.G. West, an emeritus economics professor at
Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, and author of "Education and the
State." West studied compulsory-attendance laws in Britain and found that
education was widespread before schooling was mandatory and free. "There
were upward trends in both literacy and school attendance" before
compulsory-schooling laws passed, West said. In the mid-1800s, school
attendance rates were growing twice as fast as the population. By 1870, the
British literacy rate was more than 90%, and nearly all kids received some
formal schooling. What's more, many youths benefited from apprenticeship
programs. "A lot of the firms that employed younger people provided them
with education on the job," West said.
If all that's true, why were the compulsory-attendance laws passed in the
first place?
"I think the primary reason was to eliminate competition in the labor
force," said Mary Novello, author of "For All the Wrong Reasons: The Story
Behind Government Schools." She says some of the support for mandatory
schooling came from labor organizers who thought young workers were taking
jobs from adults.
Marshall Fritz, director of the Fresno, Calif.-based Separation of School &
State Alliance, thinks that the attendance laws create an artificial
distinction between campus schooling and everyday, less-formal learning.
If the laws are repealed, he says, that distinction will be blurred, and
innovative schools will prosper. That's badly needed, Fritz says, because
most private schools now mirror the public schools in their approach. "I
think the government schools are teaching the kids to run a 17-minute
mile," he said. "The private schools are teaching them to run a 13- or
14-minute mile. And they look great in comparison, because in the race of
the slow, someone has to be first."
Richman, the author of "Separating School and State," shares Fritz's
frustration about private schools' lack of creativity. But he's less
optimistic about alternative schools sprouting up. For that to happen, he
says, it may be necessary to eliminate the taxes that fund public schools
as well as to repeal attendance laws. "When Christopher Whittle set up the
Edison Project (a system of private, for-profit schools), he said he was
going to reinvent the school. But he ran up against the problem that a lot
of people who were already paying taxes for schools didn't also want to
spend money for tuition," Richman said.
However, repealing compulsory-attendance laws would instantly make life
easier for many home-schoolers, says Michael Farris, father of 10
home-schooled children and president of the Home School Legal Defense
Association in Purcellville, Va. The laws not only say that kids must go
to school, but they also define what is and is not a school, Farris says.
Consider the case of Stephen and Lois Pustell of Lynn, Mass. They home
school their three school-aged children. They've been in a court battle
with their local school district since '91. The school district says it
should be able to inspect the family's home to see how the kids are being
taught. The Pustells object. "In our case, they were willing to waive all
the other requirements (for home-schoolers, including an annual review of
the curricula and the students' progress) except for the home visits," Mr.
Pustell said.
"Without the compulsory-attendance law, there would be no justification at
all for what they are trying to do."
Despite the Pustells' situation, Farris says home-schoolers are having
fewer problems now than in the past. "There's no question that things have
moved in a more lenient direction in the last 15 years. If you were a
home-schooler in the early '80s, there was a high probability that you
would be prosecuted," Farris said.
In '96, Hawaii lowered its compulsory-attendance age to 16 from 18. Other
states have considered similar changes. Will Colorado go all the way and
repeal its attendance laws?
Ellis said that the Colorado Department of Education isn't "going to lead
the charge to repeal the laws, but we're not going to put any energy into
preserving them, either."
But you can count on teachers unions to put up a fight. "Even though you
could probably find lots of frustrated teachers (who would like to see the
attendance laws repealed), organizationally we wouldn't support that," the
Colorado Education Association's Beyer said.
--- end forwarded text
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Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: [email protected]>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'