This article was prepared for the local propublica reporting network in partnership with Capitol News Illinois. Sign up for sending To get such stories as soon as they are published.
The new Illinois bill is aimed at adding some overseeing families that home schools of their children, the answer to the fact that the state does little to ensure that these students receive education and protected.
The measure known as a law on home schoolcomes after Investigation Capitol News Illinois and Propublica Last year, it turned out that Illinois is among the small number of states that practically do not comply with the rules for parents who are home at their children’s school. Parents should not register in any state agency or school district, and the authorities cannot force them to track visit, demonstrate their teaching methods or show the student’s progress.
According to the new bill, families would have to tell their school district if they decided to achieve their children’s schools, and parents or guardians will need to have a high school diploma or equivalent. If the education bodies have concern that children receive insufficient school, they may require parents to share evidence of material and student work.
Illinois, representative of Illinois Terra Costa Howard, a Democrat from the suburbs of Chicago, who is sponsoring the law, said she began to meet with education and officials to protect children in response to the investigation of information organizations, which reported in detail how some parents claim that they were removed from school.
The investigation recorded a case with a 9-year-old guy whose parents decided to throw him at school after he missed the school that he faced the prospect of repeating the third grade. He told the children to defend the children that he had been beaten and denied food for several years while in a public school and that he almost did not receive education. In December 2022, on the 11th birthday of LJ, the state took care of him and his younger siblings; He was soon enrolled in a public school.
“We need to know what children exist,” said Costa Howard, Vice -Chairman of the Illinois Children. The legislation is more relevant as the number of children on the road has grown since the pandemic has begun, she said. “Illinois has zero rules for home learning – we are not the norm at all.”
The latest issues available during the investigation of information organizations showed that nearly 4,500 children were recorded when in 2022 it was canceled from the state school for home school – the number that doubled over the decade. But there is no way to determine the exact number of students at school in Illinois because the state does not require parents to register.
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The bill will require the state to collect data on domestic families. The Regional Bureau of Education is collecting information, and the State Council will compile an annual report with details on the number, class level and gender of students in school in each region.
Families and home school supporters have stated that they would fight this measure they claim to violate their parents’ rights. Past suggestions for increasing surveillance also complied with Swift Resistance. The 2011 bill sponsor, which would require the registration of the home school, withdrew it after hundreds of people protested in Illinois Capitol. In 2019, another legislator abandoned the bill after a similar counteraction to the rules that would require examinations of curriculum and inspection by officials to protect children.
The Association of Legal Defense of the Home School, which describes itself as a Christian organization that stands for the freedom of home school, said it plans to hold virtual meetings to teach families by law and the ways they can lobby for it.
Katie Wenz from the Illinois Association of Home School, which opposes the rules of the home school, said it was a concerned about the provision that will allow the state to revise educational materials called the “portfolio” review in the legislation. She said the visits of education officials could be devastating for teaching.
“There is nothing in this bill to protect the time of the family so that they can actually home school without interruption,” Venz said. She pointed to the Supreme Court ruling in Illinois in 1950, establishing that home training qualified as a form of private education and that schools were not supposed to register students with the state.
The bill will require all private schools to register in the state.
The Capitolian news Illinois and the propublica found out that everything is impossible to intervene for education officials when parents claim that they are engaged in home school. The State Agency for the Protection of Children, the Department of Children and Family Services, does not investigate learning issues.
According to the proposed law, if the department has a concern for the family, which states that this home training, the agency may request that officials on education conduct a more thorough investigation of the child’s school. Then the new law will allow education officials to check whether the district’s family reports about their decision on home school and force parents to review the home school materials.
Increasing surveillance is also aimed at helping reduce absenteeism and protect students who sounded at home schools who lose contact daily with teachers and others who are instructed to report abuse and neglect, Costa Goard said. Some absentee officials have stated that according to the existing legislation, they do not apply to attend or reconsider what students study at home when the family says they are engaged in home school.
John Stewart, Director of Research Coalition on Home Education, National Home School Alumni Organization, which is in favor of regulating home training, stated that lack of supervision in Illinois threatens children. “This bill is a healthy measure and is crucial not only to resolve the educational neglect, but also the safety of children,” Stewart said.
