North Dakota Home School Association

The Bible is the Best Voter's Guide (pdf) by James Bartlett

Politicians or Christian Statesmen? By: Reed R. Heustis, Jr., Esq.

The Sine Qua Non of Enduring Freedom
by John W. Robbins
The Bible gives us all we need to know for life and godliness, which includes the limits on governments. If we wish to see God bless America with freedom again, then the church needs to (1) repent of rejecting the Bible as its only source of truth and authority, (2) read it, (3) believe it, and (4) live according to it.

It is not to Plato's Republic nor to Aristotle's Politics , not to the Greek city-states nor the City and Empire of Rome, and not to the Code of Hammurabi or Solon that we must look for a model of good government and a competent defense of a free society, but to the Bible and the Hebrew republic. Because the Bible is divinely revealed information, it furnishes us with the principles we need to defend a free society.

Child Educational Neglect and Abuse: Public School vs. Home School

FACE TO FACE – STUDENT SUMMER ASSIGNMENT

2010 NDGOP RESOLUTION NUMBER 8: HOME SCHOOL EDUCATION

Quick Facts to Dispel Some of the Myths

1. The ND Constitution does not require that ALL ND students have the RIGHT of a QUALITY education. That is United Nations language, not the ND Constitution or US Constitution.

2. No Child Left Behind does not apply at all to home education because it has a home school exemption clause.

3. While teacher qualifications improve student performance in the public schools, it has been proven conclusively that teacher qualifications do not improve student learning or accomplishment in the home school tutorial atmosphere.

4. Home education laws do not correlate to a reduction in educational neglect. In fact, where high regulation exists more neglect occurs.

5. Home school tutorial student-customized learning methods do not look like conventional education and needn't be for effectiveness.

6. Monitoring does nothing to ensure a quality education as proven over the last 20 years. It is an unnecessary expense to the state and an interruption of learning for home educating families. This is one of the reasons home school families don't move to ND or leave.

United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child

PRINTABLE Home School Laws National Map with
ND Neighboring State Comparison HERE (PDF)

This map shows why home school families have been leaving North Dakota or choosing not to come to North Dakota for the last 20 years.

We are simply a bad state to home school in based on the present ND home school laws!

The NDHSA 2009 legislative efforts aim toward turning North Dakota from a red home school state to a green home school state. Please help home schoolers by explaining the details to your legislators.

LEGEND ( For clickable map please visit: http://www.hslda.org/laws)

Green = States requiring no notice: No state requirement for parents to initiate any contact.

Gold = States with low regulation: State requires parental notification only.

Orange = States with moderate regulation: State requires parents to send notification, test scores, and/or professional evaluation of student progress.

Red = State with high regulation: State requires parents to send notification or achievement test scores and/or professional evaluation, plus other requirements (e.g. curriculum approval by the state, teacher qualification of parents, or home visits by state officials).

LEGISLATIVE ALERTS

Attorney General Opinion (February 1, 2007) It states that only a qualified parent may provide instruction to that parent's child and that a qualified parent may not supervise someone else who is providing instruction to the child.

March 14, 2007

Grand Forks Challenges Home Education Supervisors

In November 2006, Home School Legal Defense Association assisted two member families in Grand Forks after school officials asserted that the fathers did not qualify as supervisors of their respective home education programs. In both families, the fathers had a baccalaureate degree but worked full-time outside the home while the mothers provided the majority of the instruction to their children. As a result, the school district contended that since the mothers did not have baccalaureate degrees, their programs had to be monitored by a state-certified teacher.

HSLDA Senior Counsel Dewitt Black responded to the families’ request for assistance and wrote letters to the school officials. Black explained that both fathers were qualified to serve as supervisors of their home education programs without personally conducting all of the instruction. Section 15.1-23-01 of the North Dakota Century Code defines home education as “a program of education supervised by a child’s parent, in the child’s home, in accordance with the requirements of this chapter.” The fathers were supervising the programs of education. The statute does not state that the supervisor must personally provide all of the instruction or even any of the instruction.

Contrary to HSLDA’s analysis of this legal issue, on February 1, 2007, North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem issued an opinion stating that state law “does not permit a parent to supervise education provided to that parent’s child by another individual.” The attorney general acknowledged that the language in the homeschool law “creates an ambiguity.” He went on to say that the statute is not clear whether a parent must supervise the education by providing the instruction directly to the student or whether the parent may supervise someone else who is doing so. In the end, he based his unfavorable opinion on inferences he drew from testimony of witnesses at the legislative hearings for the original homeschool law in 1989.

The attorney general’s opinion is not law. However, it is likely that the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction and local school districts will follow this opinion. HSLDA remains prepared to represent in legal proceedings any of our member families who wish to challenge the attorney general’s opinion or who are prosecuted by their local school district because of this monitoring issue.

Each instance in which the teaching parent is not also the supervisor of the home education program must be analyzed individually to determine whether the intent of the law is being met. Accordingly, families considering the same or similar arrangements for teaching their children should consult with HSLDA prior to doing so.

In the case involving the Grand Forks families, both of them decided not to challenge the attorney general's opinion in view of the fact that they are military families and short-term residents of North Dakota.

The bottom line is that home- and private schooling is a “win-win” arrangement for both taxpayers and individual public school districts”

“Finally, in addition to being logically flawed, the argument that students who fail to enroll in public schools are a “cost” implies that public schools are somehow entitled, as a property right, to every child and are being deprived of something that is their due. This is eminent domain in the extreme. The underlying assumption here is statist—one characteristic of totalitarian societies. In America, it is parents who are legally entitled to manage the upbringing of their children, not the public schools. The notion that homeschool children somehow “cost” the public schools turns reality on its head. In truth, the situation could be more accurately characterized as one in which Nevada’s public education establishment profits from unwarranted taxes on parents who choose to exercise their parental rights” [p. 32].

Source: Wenders, John T., & Clements, Andrea D. (2007). An analysis of the economic impact of home and private schooling in Nevada . Home School Researcher 17 (2), 13-35.