HSOK recently became aware of a new “Tim Tebow” style bill, HB-4491. A “Tim Tebow” bill is a a bill that gives homeschool students access to extracurricular activities (such as sports) provided by public schools. The underlying problem with Tim Tebow bills is that, unlike access to libraries, parks, or playgrounds, participation in these activities are always academically gated.
This means that the schools must establish standardized ways of comparing academic performance of homeschool students and public school students. This has a lot of negative downstream consequences, as it:
- Sets up an infrastructure for public school monitoring of homeschool students (even if the first users are voluntary)
- Creates requirements and criteria which encourage homeschoolers to start following the system that they left (why would we want to adhere to the standards of the public school?)
- Distort homeschool co-ops to favor curriculum and methodologies preferred by public school in order that their students can participate
- Diminishes the building of homeschoolers’ own extracurricular infrastructure
For instance, in this bill, which uses “education by other means” to include homeschoolers, says,
During the time period a student who is educated by other means participates in extracurricular activities pursuant to the
provisions of this section, the student shall meet academic standards by a method of evaluation agreed upon by the parent or legal guardian of the student and the superintendent of the resident district, or other applicable school district in accordance with
subsection D of this section. The method of evaluation may include a review of the student’s work by a certified teacher employed by the resident district, the student’s performance on a nationally recognized standardized test, or evaluation of grades earned through correspondence courses.
Essentially, this will set up the beginning of a bureaucracy to have homeschoolers evaluated by the public school. NO THANK YOU.
For a more extensive discussion of why Homeschool Oklahoma opposes “Tim Tebow”-style legislation, see this article.
This bill also has provisions for charter school students to participate in public school activities. Homeschool Oklahoma has no official opinion on this. Therefore, if the writers of the bill want to remove the “education by other means” provisions, we will withdraw our objection.
