What do Arizona, Connecticut, Tennessee, and Kentucky have in common? They're states where potentially bad homeschool bills have been introduced in this legislative session. For the first four to five months of every year beginning in January, the HSLDA lawyers and their legal assistants are involved in an intense struggle to protect the freedoms that homeschoolers have gained for these last 20 years. It seems like homeschoolers have done well enough over the years to be left alone. But unfortunately, that is not the case.

Despite the fact that homeschoolers on the average score 20-30 percentile points above the norm, there are those that want to put more regulation on homeschoolers. Typically, these folks come from the education establishment, i.e., principals, superintendents, truant officers, and lobbyists from teachers' unions. Many of them do not have a very high view of home education.

I believe this attitude comes from a basic distrust of parents generally. Many in the education establishment just don't think parents are capable of making wise decisions regarding their children's education, especially those who choose home education. Fortunately, this opinion is wrong. In addition to this lack of trust of parents by the education establishment, many of them also believe that the state should control the education of every child, public, private, or homeschooled.

In the US Supreme Court case of Parham v. J.R., 442 US 584 (1979), Chief Justice Berger speaking for the majority of the court said that parents generally act in the best interests of their children. He did recognize that there are those who don't. However, he went on to state that the fact that some don't doesn't negate the historical fact that parents do act in the best interests of their children because they love their children.

Before I go any further, I want to explain our motivation for opposing increased regulation of homeschooling. We oppose these laws because they interfere with the liberty of parents to effectively teach their children at home. I believe that liberty is the primary ingredient behind the academic success of homeschoolers in the success overall of homeschooling. The liberty that the homeschoolers have fought for and obtained is the flexibility to adapt the educational program to their child, rather than having the child adapt to the educational program. More regulation means less freedom to choose creative ways to educate our children and reduces the flexibility of the educational program, which is clearly not in the best interest of children's education.

So what strategy has HSLDA used to turn back these efforts to increase the regulation of home educators? HSLDA has a service that we subscribe to that allows us to monitor all the legislation in every state by way of key words and phrases. On a daily basis, our legal staff is checking the legislature to see if any bills have been introduced which have anything to do with homeschooling and parental rights freedoms. When we find bills of this type, we then read them to determine what impact they might have on homeschooling families. If there is any impact, we notify the leadership in the state organizations as to what we have found.

As a result of the participation by the homeschool families at the grass roots, very few negative homeschool bills have been able to be passed. This success is clearly attributable to the homeschoolers in the states that are willing to make their telephone calls, write their letters, and lobby actively against the bill.

Since your participation is essential to the preservation of this liberty, we encourage you to become attached to a local support group and/or your state organization. These organizations play a key role in this effort of maintaining our freedom as well. Furthermore, they need your support.

Additionally, we encourage you to join HSLDA and become a partner with us in fighting the battle for freedom. If you have an interest in finding out more about HSLDA, you can contact our office at 540-338-5600 or visit our website at www.hslda.org. Will you join us in this fight for freedom?

>Mike Smith is the President of Home School Legal Defense Association, an organization he has been involved with since its beginning. HSLDA was established to protect the right of parents to teach their children at home. HSLDA now represents over 69,000 member families. Mike became involved in defending homeschoolers after he and his wife, Elizabeth, decided to homeschool their children. They have four children. Three have been homeschooled, and all have graduated from college. Mike has been doing keynote speaking to homeschool conferences for over 15 years. His desire is to communicate in every message the benefits of home education and his overriding belief that God has raised up this movement for a special purpose at this time in history. Mike communicates that the benefits of homeschooling far exceed the burdens, with a special emphasis on encouragement.