New Jersey Backlash

"...getting to know your representatives personally, and their getting to know you as constituents who are homeschooling, can go a long way to forestall panicky, ill-informed bills like the one we're facing."

After commenting on the media blitz surrounding the Jackson abuse case in New Jersey ("Clearing Our Throats: Homeschooling and Child Abuse," AHEM News, Winter 2004) we wanted to follow up on the backlash against homeschooling in that state, specifically the filing of a bill by Democrat Loretta Weinberg that would tighten regulations on homeschoolers. We hope to learn from New Jersey homeschoolers about how to deal with an adverse situation such as the current New Jersey challenge, which could just as easily happen here in Massachusetts. Timothy Haas of the New Jersey Homeschool Association graciously agreed to be interviewed for this purpose.

What is the New Jersey Homeschool Association and what is your role in the organization?
NJHA is a statewide information and advocacy network founded in 1998. The organization is inclusive and nonpartisan, serving homeschoolers regardless of religion, race, ethnic heritage, disability, method of homeschooling, or other characteristic or distinction. I am one of the co-founders. I answer incoming emails and phone calls, and also write updates and alerts.

When, why, and how did Weinberg introduce the bill?
It was formally introduced in the New Jersey Assembly (our lower house) by Loretta Weinberg (D-37; Bergen) and four co-sponsors on January 8th, 2004, just a few days before the end of the legislative session, as A4033. After having been automatically referred to the Assembly Education Committee, it died without action on January 12th when the legislature ended. It was reintroduced in the new legislature as A1918 on
January 22nd.

It is generally thought that "the Jackson case," in which a husband and wife were charged with the systematic starvation of their four adopted sons, three of whom were homeschooled, after the oldest one was found rummaging through garbage cans for food in Collingswood, Camden County, in mid-October 2003, was the main impetus for Weinberg's bill. Also, she told a radio program that a newspaper report on unschooling, which ran in late December 2003 in the Bergen Record, played a role in the introduction
of the bill.

What does the bill say?
The bill would require homeschoolers to undergo the same assessment testing as public-schooled children (currently grades 4, 8, and 11, though as of 2005 there will be language arts and math tests in grades 3 through 8 to comply with the No Child Left Behind Act).
The bill would also require homeschooling families to present their district with evidence of a medical exam annually for each homeschooled child. In addition, the bill would require the State Board of Education to draft administrative code to enforce the two previous clauses.

How is this different from the present NJ homeschool law?
New Jersey does not have a homeschooling law; rather, homeschooling is permitted under an exception to the compulsory attendance statute that references "equivalent instruction elsewhere than at school." In a 1967 court case, "equivalent instruction" was held to mean equivalent in subject matter only, not methods or outcomes.

In practice, once a family decides to homeschool in New Jersey, the child's education is solely the family's responsibility, and it has no further obligation to the state. School districts are not required or authorized to approve curricula, monitor the education program of the child, engage in testing, etc.

How did NJ homeschoolers react?
Swiftly and well. In 2000, when the state was rewriting the homeschooling guidance document it sends to local districts, I served on a state DoE task force with representatives of a number of religious and secular statewide groups and an HSLDA attorney. These task force members began talking informally to re-establish ties a few days after the Jackson case broke in the fall, so we were more or less ready to share information and strategy when news of this bill became public.¹

How did they organize? What actions did they take? What results?
When we first received word about the bill on the 6th, group leaders called for an immediate phone and email campaign to put local representatives on notice that the bill was going to be introduced on the 8th. (We shared the text of our announcements with one another to make sure we were all imparting the same message.) This news was then spread by each group's own email list, HSLDA's e-lert service, and a number of statewide and regional Yahoo discussion group lists. Over the next few days, legislators around the state, including senators, even though there was no companion legislation in their body, were bombarded with contacts.

Group leaders met in person on the 10th to discuss strategy, and because we had information that the sponsor might try to push the bill through with emergency measures, we decided to announce that the leaders would be at the State House on Monday the 12th to hand out information packets to legislators and keep an eye on things, and other homeschoolers were welcome to join us. Over the course of that day, somewhere between 200 and 300 homeschoolers showed up of their own accord to help out.
No further action was taken on the bill that day, and it died with the end of the session. It was introduced in the new session without any co-sponsors and again automatically referred to committee.

Some legislators have credited our mobilization with making sure the bill wasn't pushed through, while others have said there was no chance it would ever have moved anyway and that our appearance was overkill. Certainly the legislature took notice of us.

What is being planned for the future?
The dream outcome would be to have the sponsor withdraw the bill. For a number of reasons, including her general political demeanor, we don't find this likely. Next best would be to have the bill die untouched in committee. To that end the group leaders, in association with local constituents, are now trying to meet personally with every member of the Education Committee. So far only one such meeting has taken place, but it went well. Currently, we know that four of the ten committee members do not support the bill.
If the committee does decide to consider the bill, we will organize a large demonstration and line up speakers for the committee hearing, with the goal of inducing the committee to table the bill or at least report on it unfavorably. We are keeping in contact with committee aides and watching the legislative calendar closely so that we have the maximum warning of impending committee action.

Many homeschoolers have used this opportunity to forge a closer relationship with their local representatives and are updating the group leaders as they gain new information.

Hindsight is 20/20. If you had known that you were going to face a challenge such as this, are there things you would have done to prepare for it? If so, what? Homeschoolers in New Jersey haven't faced this kind of legislative threat in a decade. Before this bill, there was a general feeling of "it can't happen here," and I encouraged that impression as much as anyone when talking to nervous new homeschoolers. Frankly, I think, as a population, New Jersey homeschoolers have been just a bit too removed from the political process. I'm not suggesting constant activism, but getting to know your representatives personally, and their getting to know you as constituents who are homeschooling, can go a long way to forestall panicky, ill-informed bills like the one we're facing.

I also think a bit more ongoing communication between the various kinds of homeschoolers would be a great help in situations like this. I think the factions have pulled together admirably in the face of this threat, but it's no secret that there's a lot of mutual mistrust out there.

Do you have any suggestions for homeschoolers in other states given this experience?
I would encourage state group leaders to try to work through some of their differences (if there are any) and build at least a modicum of trust, so that if their state is faced with a legislative threat, they can share strategies and stand together when necessary. The informal motto of the Jersey task force is "one message, many voices." As much as possible, we build consensus on major strategic points, but we continue to talk to our individual memberships as we always have, and we work out problems in many different ways with all of the disparate resources we have.

For individual families, I would say to adopt one of your legislators. Write letters, volunteer at the local office, attend events, donate time and/or money to campaigns, take an interest in different issues that your rep is championing-anything that will give him or her a more rounded picture of the wonderful diversity and success of homeschooling.

Overall, did you find it helpful, with your current situation, to have several groups, maybe with slightly different approaches and ideas, working to oppose the bill? If so, what were the benefits? Challenges?
Absolutely. Having different groups working together enabled us to reach a much wider swath of the homeschooling population when word of this bill broke, and it has allowed us to share and aggregate local legislator responses in a much more accurate and timely fashion. When mass action is called for, it allows a greater number of individual homeschoolers to stay "on message."

The political advantages are also obvious. We have a bill introduced by a hard left legislator who seems to think all homeschoolers are conservative Christians; the only support shown so far by other legislators has been from Democrats. The diversity of our effort gives us the opportunity to show legislators that their impressions of homeschooling are outdated (not that such a reductive view was ever accurate in the first place), and to put them on notice that their own constituents who otherwise support them could be harmed by this legislation. In short, by pulling from such a diverse pool of homeschoolers, we can find some common ground with just about any legislator or regulator.

The greatest challenge is building trust. As I said before, most of the leaders in the current task force worked together during the 2000 guidelines effort, so some bridges already existed. Once these leaders agreed to a "no compromise" position on this bill-not hard, really, given how well the current (lack of a) law works-it was a simple matter of figuring out who would lead specific parts of our multi-pronged strategy.
However, building trust among individual homeschoolers is a more difficult business. Homeschoolers are, of course, a famously independent bunch with strong opinions, and, sad to say, there's a lot of prejudice and misinformation among all camps: secular/religious, unschooling/school-at-home, etc. (I'm indulging in false dichotomy for example's sake only.) All I can say is that we all continue to work on it as best we can in private conversations, messages, public updates, loop discussions, and so on.
One other challenge we've faced is freelance lobbyists at the State House looking to piggyback on our cause. There have been two so far who, we've discovered, have been introducing themselves as our representatives in conversations with individual legislators. The danger here, of course, is that someone like this could make a deal on the legislation for his own reasons and sell the rest of us out. Members of the task force have spoken to each one personally to discourage their attempts, and we've also let it be known through our already existing legislative contacts that no one person speaks for the task force itself or all homeschoolers in New Jersey.

Has this experience given you any insight about the present day homeschooling climate in general?
It's really made me aware that the opponents of homeschooling have essentially conceded defeat on academics and have turned to the specter of child abuse as their latest tactic.

Overall, until very recently, the legislative trend has been toward less regulation, but coming along with what I perceive as a homeschooling backlash in the press in the last, say, two years has been a renewed interest in tightening things down again. I thought we'd pretty much won the public battle, but, alas, I was quite wrong.

¹Members of the New Jersey State Homeschool Task Force included Mark August, President of the Tricounty Home Educators Association, Tim Haas of the New Jersey Homeschool Association (NJHA), Ray Stoever, President of the Education Network of Christian Homeschoolers of NJ (ENOCH of NJ), Nancy Plent of the Unschoolers Network, Diane L. Toler of the Catholic Homeschoolers of New Jersey, Carolee Adams, President of Eagle Forum of New Jersey, and Scott Woodruff, Staff Attorney, HSLDA.

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