We asked you, our homeschooling constituents, to write the Oregon House Education Committee about House Bill 2868. In particular, we expressed concern that
- the teacher education requirements would apply to homeschoolers, and that
- the bill’s focus on the preparation process for Advanced Placement tests is in violation of the College Board’s intent that the focus be on test results rather than how the student prepared for the test.
Thank you for helping us alert the Committee to these concerns. (Click here to read the original alert.)
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Some of you have received responses from Representative Hudson pointing to the word “otherwise” in line 21 of the bill as indicating homeschoolers are not included in the bill.
I wrote the following email to the Committee members and the bill sponsor:
Representative Hudson has clarified that the legislative intent of HB 2868 is to not include homeschool teaching in the bill’s requirements. I am pleased to know that.
It would be better if the bill itself clearly answered the question, “What about homeschoolers?” So OCEANetwork respectfully requests that the content about “taught by a parent, legal guardian or private teacher provided in ORS 339.030” be moved from the section on who the bill applies to (subsection 3 a) to the section on who the bill does not apply to (subsection 3 b).
But the bill itself is not clear about that. The indirect grammatical construction (“who otherwise are taught”) is not particularly helpful in revealing legislative intent. In particular I am concerned that when the Oregon Administrative Rules are drawn up by the Oregon Department of Education, the ODE might interpret the bill the same way I did without additional input on the legislative intent.
To Representative Evans, I sincerely apologize for my remarks about a lack of understanding of homeschoolers.
OCEANetwork wants you to be up-to-date on developments with this bill. We will alert you to any new concerns that arise. Until then, we no longer advise calling or emailing the Committee about this issue.
Rodger Williams
OCEANetwork Freedom Watch Team
If you have questions about this alert, please contact OCEANetwork here so we can forward it on to our Freedom Watch Team.
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