New Illinois bill would require homeschool families to notify state or face truancy
Why it matters: Illinois does not require parents and guardians to notify schools when they pull kids from the district, leaving no mechanism to monitor if students are meeting necessary benchmarks.
Supporters of the bill say it will prevent kids from slipping through the cracks.
State of play: Current required subjects for home school students, according to the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE), are: Language arts, math, biological and physical science, social studies, fine arts and physical development and health.
There are no specific classes or duration of study required in those subjects.
There is no requirement to administer tests, projects or grades or mandate to report any student assessment to the state.
Parents or guardians do not need a high school diploma or GED to homeschool.
Zoom in: The bill would require the ISBE to create a Homeschool Declaration Form that homeschool families submit to the school district where the child would otherwise attend.
If the form's not submitted, the student would be considered truant.
If a child wants to enroll in a public school or school activities, they will need to have required immunizations or a signed Certificate of Religious Exemption.
Context: Rep. Terra Costa Howard (D-Lombard), the bill's sponsor, told WGN she introduced the legislation in February after a ProPublica investigation last year reported on a homeschooled boy in central Illinois who told welfare officials he was beaten, denied food and had no school lessons.
Howard, who is also chair of the Adoption and Child Welfare Committee and an attorney involved in child welfare, said the concern in cases like that is the lack of adults who could spot and report signs of abuse at home.
"For the vast majority of homeschooling families, these changes will have minimal impact," Howard told Axios in a statement.
"The intent of this bill is to help in cases of child abuse, in which adults are claiming to 'homeschool' in an attempt to isolate children, or when families are flagrantly neglecting their legal responsibility to educate their children, in violation of the principles of homeschooling."
The other side: The Illinois Home School Association in a statement calls the bill "a very expensive unfunded mandate," and that many parents have chosen this route because "the public school system is clearly failing many of our students."
"This bill will not save lives. In every single case they have brought to us of an abused child not in school it has become clear that Child Protection Services already knew of the family and was stretched too thin to help," the association added.
Reality check: The bill would ask that parents maintain a simple portfolio providing evidence of education in required subjects, in the case that a truancy investigation is launched.
"Nothing in the bill provides for random investigations or 'checks' by a local school district or Regional Office of Education," Howard said.
Yes, but: ISBE does recommend that home schoolers check what colleges require if students plan on applying.
Zoom out: Homeschooling became more popular during the pandemic and stuck through the 2022-23 school year, a Washington Post analysis found.
The Post estimated there were between 1.9 million and 2.7 million home-schooled children in the United States that year.
Yes, but: Illinois is not included in the analysis since families are not required to notify the state when they decide to homeschool.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Chicago Tribune
2 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Illinois students could see new testing standards with proposed state board revisions
Illinois students could be held to new standards for school testing, a shift the state school board says will better prepare them for college and postsecondary education careers while accurately measuring performance levels. The Illinois State Board of Education announced proposed changes to state standardized testing Tuesday — including the ACT, the Illinois Assessment of Readiness and the Illinois Science Assessment — that would create consistent measures of student performance on all state exams and make it easier to understand and track students' progress. It would also adjust the proficiency threshold for each exam section based on grade level, determining the minimum score a student must achieve to be considered on track for their grade level in learning. There are three major exams that Illinois students take while in school: The Illinois Assessment of Readiness is administered to students in grades three through eight each year to test their skills in English language arts and math, while the Illinois Science Assessment is only administered to students in fifth and eighth grades. Students take the PreACT in ninth and 10th grade and the ACT in 11th grade. Currently, the three exams do not use the same levels or benchmarks to assess student learning based on their exam scores. The current testing measurements have multiple performance levels for students to be sorted into, which are categories of score ranges on the state assessment. The varied scores from test to test can create confusion for parents and students due to the lack of consistency, Illinois State Superintendent of Education Tony Sanders said at a Tuesday media briefing. The change will allow the board to alleviate this confusion with a proposed new uniform scoring system on each test: 'below proficient,' 'approaching proficient,' 'proficient' and 'above proficient.' While the Illinois Science Assessment evaluates students in four levels — emerging, developing, proficient and exemplary — the Illinois Assessment of Readiness places students into five categories based on their scores: 'does not meet' (expectations), 'partially meets,' 'approaching meets,' 'meets expectations' and 'exceeds expectations.' A student is considered proficient when they are on track for their grade level in learning, and a proficiency benchmark is the score a student needs to be on track in their grade. The state determines these benchmarks. According to the board, there is currently a mismatch between proficiency thresholds in the different sections of exams — English language arts, science and math. The threshold for proficiency in science according to a student's exam score is too low, while the proficiency threshold for a student in English language arts and math is too high. This resulted in students excelling in class but not reaching the proficiency mark on exams, which can lead to discouragement in students when they think about their future options postgraduation, Sanders said. He gave the example of multiple former students, now in college, who excelled in advanced placement classes and had high GPAs but did not receive proficient scores on state standardized tests. 'If they had listened to us, they might not have enrolled in college. Maybe they wouldn't even have enrolled in dual credit (classes) while they were still in high school,' Sanders said. '… Thankfully, they didn't listen to what these cut scores told them and instead pursued these higher opportunities. But think about the kids that did not.' That all three required standardized tests — the ACT, Illinois Assessment of Readiness and Illinois Science Assessment — have different benchmarks for proficiency creates a sense of inconsistency and does not accurately reflect a student's level of college or career readiness, Sanders said. 'They're misaligned with what it actually means to succeed in college and career,' Sanders said. 'This misalignment has serious, real-world consequences. Students are being denied opportunities for acceleration, misidentified as needing interventions or believing, as I said earlier, that they're not ready to go into college.' This discrepancy in results can be confusing for families and students trying to determine readiness levels for classes, college or careers, especially when they do well in school but do not meet the state's level of proficiency. The new measurements aim to change that, Sanders said. For English language arts in the Illinois Assessment of Readiness, the proficiency threshold would be lowered from 750 to 735, increasing by two points each grade until they take the exam for the last time in grade eight. The proficiency threshold for math on the Illinois Assessment of Readiness would also be lowered from 750 to 732. The proficiency levels for the math section would rise to 740 for grades four and five, 742 for grade six, and 745 for grades seven and eight. As for the Illinois Science Assessment, which is administered only to fifth and eighth graders, students will have to increase their scores to 812 to be considered proficient. The current proficiency score is 799. The changes to the performance measures were initially put into motion last year when the ACT became a state-mandated exam to measure high school performance. This shift required the establishment of new performance standards for high schools. For students in grade nine taking the PreACT, an English language arts section score of 14 is proficient, while a math section score of 17 and a science section score of 14 meet proficiency standards. There are no prior proficiency levels to measure the proposed scores against because the state switched to the ACT this spring, the board said. For grade 10 students, a PreACT English language arts section score of 15, a math section score of 18 and a science section score of 16 would be proficient. Additionally, the proposed changes aim to align students taking the ACT in their junior year of high school with the scores necessary to get into college, pass college coursework and succeed in the workforce, the board said. The ACT is scored out of 36 and has an English language arts, math and science section. The new proficiency scores would be an English language arts score of 18, a math score of 19 and a science score of 19. The board spoke with educators, community members, student leaders and policy makers over an 18-month period to create new rubrics describing the range of performance expected in each performance level. Educators also took the exams to evaluate their difficulty and help determine what are known as 'cut scores' — the scores that differentiate one performance level from another, such as 'proficient' from 'above proficient.' While two-thirds of Illinois high school graduates go on to enroll in a two- or four-year college within a year of graduating, the current state assessment levels indicate that less than half that number of students are proficient in English language arts, and an even smaller number are proficient in math. The updated proficiency standards and performance levels help capture 'the full spectrum of skills students are developing,' CPS sixth grade teacher Comfort Agboola said at the meeting. '(The standards) acknowledge growth in ways that can motivate rather than discourage,' Agboola said. 'When students believe they are proficient or see themselves as getting closer, they are more willing to take risks, engage deeply with challenging text and push themselves further than they thought was possible.' Scott Rowe, superintendent of High School District 214 in the Arlington Heights area, added at the meeting that these changes would help accurately reflect a student's readiness and allow school districts to know where more support might be needed. 'Past benchmarks often miss the mark, but this step moves us closer to measuring real performance and readiness,' Rowe said. 'It also tells a more accurate story of the high quality instruction and postsecondary readiness our teachers are delivering for our communities across the state.'
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Yahoo
Trump administration targets Harvard's patents
The Trump administration is opening a new front in its battle with Harvard University on the issue of patents, marking a new escalation with the elite school that could result in the loss of additional federal funding or intellectual property rights. In a Friday letter to Harvard President Alan Garber obtained by CNN, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick writes that the Trump administration believes the university is 'in breach of the statutory, regulatory, and contractual requirements tied to Harvard's federal funded research programs and intellectual property arising therefrom, including patents.' The Commerce Department, Lutnick said, is issuing an 'immediate comprehensive review' of Harvard's federally funded research programs. The secretary said the administration was also initiating the 'march-in' process under a law called the Bayh-Dole Act that lets universities patent research and inventions. That means that if Harvard has failed to disclose or patent its inventions, the federal government could take ownership of the patents or grant third-party licenses. The letter, first reported by Reuters, marks the latest action by the Trump administration to exert pressure on the school. The Trump administration has frozen billions of dollars in federal funding for research and has targeted the school's ability to host international students. Harvard and the Trump administration are currently embroiled in a pair of lawsuits. Still, officials remain optimistic about the prospects of a deal with Harvard to restore funding to the school and drop lawsuits and investigations. The Trump administration has recently struck multimillion-dollar agreements with Columbia and Brown universities. 'While there's a lawsuit pending with Harvard, and I'm sure that lawsuit will play out, I do hope that Harvard will continue to come to the table with negotiations. Those talks are continuing, and we'd like to have a resolution there, outside of the courts,' Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a phone interview with CNN last month. Harvard has sent some signals it is willing to work with the Trump administration, including last month when The Harvard Crimson reported that websites for Harvard College centers serving minority and LGBTQ students and women disappeared. The White House welcomed that development, viewing it as a goodwill gesture that one official described as 'good news.' McMahon last month also pointed to the departure of the heads of the university's Middle Eastern Studies center as a positive step.
CNN
4 days ago
- CNN
Trump administration targets Harvard's patents
The Trump administration is opening a new front in its battle with Harvard University on the issue of patents, marking a new escalation with the elite school that could result in the loss of additional federal funding or intellectual property rights. In a Friday letter to Harvard President Alan Garber obtained by CNN, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick writes that the Trump administration believes the university is 'in breach of the statutory, regulatory, and contractual requirements tied to Harvard's federal funded research programs and intellectual property arising therefrom, including patents.' The Commerce Department, Lutnick said, is issuing an 'immediate comprehensive review' of Harvard's federally funded research programs. The secretary said the administration was also initiating the 'march-in' process under a law called the Bayh-Dole Act that lets universities patent research and inventions. That means that if Harvard has failed to disclose or patent its inventions, the federal government could take ownership of the patents or grant third-party licenses. The letter, first reported by Reuters, marks the latest action by the Trump administration to exert pressure on the school. The Trump administration has frozen billions of dollars in federal funding for research and has targeted the school's ability to host international students. Harvard and the Trump administration are currently embroiled in a pair of lawsuits. Still, officials remain optimistic about the prospects of a deal with Harvard to restore funding to the school and drop lawsuits and investigations. The Trump administration has recently struck multimillion-dollar agreements with Columbia and Brown universities. 'While there's a lawsuit pending with Harvard, and I'm sure that lawsuit will play out, I do hope that Harvard will continue to come to the table with negotiations. Those talks are continuing, and we'd like to have a resolution there, outside of the courts,' Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a phone interview with CNN last month. Harvard has sent some signals it is willing to work with the Trump administration, including last month when The Harvard Crimson reported that websites for Harvard College centers serving minority and LGBTQ students and women disappeared. The White House welcomed that development, viewing it as a goodwill gesture that one official described as 'good news.' McMahon last month also pointed to the departure of the heads of the university's Middle Eastern Studies center as a positive step.
