Three bills related to education recently passed the West Virginia Senate and moved on to the House of Delegates.
SB 229 will require county boards of education to prepare an impact statement when a school is closed or when schools are consolidated. The impact statement should include the effect on students, including how transportation to and from school will change; the schools, including how the displaced students will alter the absorbing schools’ capacity; the county, including details on expected expenses or savings; and the employees, including how many teachers or staff will be reassigned or laid off.
It was in discussion of SB 229 that Delegate Caleb Hanna (R-Nicholas County) noted the irony of the Legislature pushing a bill demanding counties account for the impact of closing schools, when the very same Legislature has considered and/or passed multiple bills that undermine public education. “This Legislature’s goal has been to consolidate schools,” he said.
In addition to the charter schools law already in effect and the “anti-critical race theory” bill being considered this session, the Senate passed and the House now contemplates SB 268 and SB 541.
SB 268 works around “compulsory” school attendance by giving exemptions to students participating in “learning pods” or “microschools.” A learning pod is, in essence, a homeschooling group or a private charter school. Parents can choose to group their kids (up to 100 students total) together to complete their academic studies and/or can pay someone to provide their children with academic activities or services. A microschool is a school of up to 100 students that is initiated by one or more teachers or “an entity created to operate a school” that charges tuition. In other words, an unregulated private school.
In addition, the person(s) instructing students in a learning pod or microschool only need to have a high school diploma at minimum. Fortunately, students must take and pass a standardized test every year or have a certified teacher review the students’ work to determine if they are progressing. Unfortunately, the learning pod or microschool can forgo turning over individual student’s scores in exchange for turning in the pod’s or microschool’s composite assessment scores.
As a complement, SB 541 seeks to remove what very little supervision West Virginia currently has over homeschooling.
Currently, the parents or legal guardians of homeschooled students must submit assessment scores to the superintendent at the ends of grades three, five, eight and 11. SB 541 would instead only require parents or guardians to submit assessment results at the end of the first year of homeschooling, so long as the results indicate satisfactory progress. This new rule would also apply to learning pods and microschools.
Education Chair Patricia Rucker tried to defend rolling back oversight because, she said, higher education institutions say previously homeschooled students are plenty prepared for college.
Her logic has one glaring flaw: It only accounts for homeschooled students who went on to college. What about all the others?
Worst case scenario, adults make children disappear under the guise of “homeschooling” them. More realistically, some “homeschooled” kids may be put to work or left in charge of younger siblings instead of receiving any educational instruction. Asking parents and guardians to submit a student’s test scores every few years is a small inconvenience compared to the potential dangers of having no accountability for the kids’ education and wellbeing.
