Home Schools Balk At Accreditation Proposal Some Interpret District’S Plan As An Affront

The news was greeted by the home school and private school community like an undeserved demerit.

When Larry Nelson heard about it, to him it was more of the same - more condescending treatment from the public education sector.

He saw the proposed school board policy to restrict credits from nonaccredited schools as a direct attack on students who are home-schooled or attend private Christian schools.

“We have a history of being excluded and being placed in a separate category,” said Nelson, who directs the northern region of the Idaho Coalition of Home Educators.

But to school district officials, the proposed policy simply was an effort to make a high school diploma in the Lake Pend Oreille School District mean something.

The policy first appeared on the October board meeting agenda. Nelson attended the meeting to intervene.

“The October meeting was the first meeting I’d been to in 30 years,” he said. “It was not right for me to remove myself from the system. Millions have done the same thing and left a tremendous vacuum.”

It’s that exodus to either private, nonaccredited schools or home schools that’s fueled the proposed policy - which is cropping up in different versions all over the state.

Education administrators say that public schools around the state and the nation are seeing more nonpublic students coming back into the system - and school officials want assurances that they’ve been taught what public schools are required to teach.

“I don’t think I would ever go back to public schooling,” said Jessaca England, a Bonner County homeschool student in her junior year. “But one of my friends is thinking of going back, and if she does, I want her to have full credit.”

Out of concern for her friend, England joined an ad-hoc committee led by Nelson to review the proposed policies.

England studies vocabulary, spelling and math at home. She studies different subjects around “units.” For instance, she’s learning about construction while she helps rebuild her family home.

She meets weekly with other home-schooled students to study drama and government, among other topics.

“My mom doesn’t feel I’m college-bound,” she said. “I want to be a mom. I feel my first obligation to the Lord is to become a mother. After that, I really like theater.”

Nelson said most home-schooled students are like England - uninterested in re-entering the public schools - and has demanded evidence that it’s a problem at the high school.

School officials don’t have statistics, but Sandpoint High School counselor Becky Kiebert said at a recent meeting of the ad-hoc committee that she’s had no problem so far with the home-schooled or private-schooled students she’s helped enroll.

But what’s driving the proposed policy is higher standards from the Northwest Accreditation Association of Schools and Colleges.

Education philosophy is shifting from “inputs” to “outputs,” educators explain.

For instance, accreditation no longer hinges just on how many books are in the library, but how many are getting read, said Tom Farley, the state education department’s Federal Programs Bureau chief. Farley also sits on an advisory committee to the Northwest Accreditation Association.

“The whole thing is about protecting kids,” he said. “We want to make sure the education that our children earn can be validated and has credibility and prepares students for the next level.”

Nelson doesn’t completely buy that argument.

“The system is self-regulating,” he said. “Why worry about giving a diploma to someone who is flunking?”

Coeur d’Alene School District administrator Hazel Bauman said this year 38 students enrolled in Coeur d’Alene and Lake City high schools from nonaccredited schools.

“We did get a letter from the Northwest Accreditation Association telling us that we’d better have a policy on it, and the policy had better be fair,” Bauman said.

So the Coeur d’Alene School Board also is considering a policy to determine what credits to accept from nonaccredited schools. That policy most likely will require new students from nonaccredited schools to take some kind of placement test, Bauman said.

The Lake Pend Oreille School District proposal initially would have accepted only half of the required credits for graduation, if the student could prove they were competent in those subjects.

But after meeting with the ad hoc citizens committee last week, school officials drew up a new proposal.

Students from nonaccredited schools must attend at least their senior year at the public school.

Credit will be granted for nonaccredited subjects if students can demonstrate competency through their portfolio, which would consist of course descriptions, hours spent per course, methods of instruction and final comprehensive exams for each course.

Questions regarding the validity of the exam will be forwarded to a review committee comprised of two public school teachers and two private school teachers.

Nelson and instructors from three private Christian schools seemed pleased with the new language. They agreed that it was fair that all students demonstrate competency in a subject in order to gain credit.

Kiebert and Superintendent Roy Rummler earned something of their own after hashing out the new proposal with the ad hoc committee.

“You are gaining trust with this group,” Nelson told them.