AHEA has posted recordings of the State Board meeting last month in which the Board voted to post the proposal packet for public comment.  Be patient because the page with the recordings takes forever and ever to load. AHEA is dominated by statewide correspondence school affiliates and reflects their point of view which is inconsistent with the in-district programs’ best interests. Nevertheless, they provide a useful resource.

AHEA has stated on this same page that more than half of the in-district programs are "out of compliance and required more diligent oversight." This is a misunderstanding of the Board’s discussion regarding the ‘highly-qualified’ teacher issue of NCLB. EVERY public homeschool program, local and statewide, is out of compliance with this aspect of NCLB because the parent is the primary instructor not a ‘highly qualified’ teacher as defined by NCLB.

At Frontier we have openly discussed this issue with our Anchorage administration and also the State DEED. These regs do nothing to change any of that and are certainly no path to a solution to the intractable conflict between parents’ rights and NCLB. I suspect that the only resolution will come in the courts and thus regulation is not a place to fight that battle.

The issue of "highly qualified’ teachers is not mention in the DEED’s memo and is being used now to focus attention away from the real issue which is local control and the political nature of these proposed regs.

Regarding the recordings, note that public comment occurred after the vote and those who were commenting were cut off before they had completed their allotted five or three minute periods. I don’t think this was done on purpose but it certainly was an unfair process: no comment allowed before the vote and comment was cut off. Not exactly ‘open and transparent.’

Public comment on the regulations is permitted until May 8, 2008.

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