Halloween Football: The Home School Hangover Edition

The new face of home school: You wouldn't want to deny Ralph an extracurricular activity, would you? After all, he will take out your liver bones.

This was a truly crap-tacular football weekend for me. I don’t even want to get into it. Let’s just say that the Maker’s Mark really came in handy. To ease my sorrows, I surfed Wikipedia. It’s funny how Wikipedia went from a cited source in high school/undergraduate papers to being black-listed to now being accepted as a reasonable first place to go when you want to learn something fast. And the links – don’t get me started on the links. You can get from wrestling to Fragile X to Turner’s Syndrome to Mendel in fifteen minutes.

So tonight I took a journey from Brigham Young to BYU to Utah to Urban Meyer to Tim Tebow. The last one yielded two questions: 1 why hasn’t he been called the Thrilla from Manila; and 2 what the hell has been going on with Tim Tebow Bills lately? OK, OK, question the first can probably be ignored, but the second question seems valid. True, this was explored a bit in 2008 when a bill bearing this name was introduced to the Alabama legislature, but it’s died down significantly since. The bill is still battling it out in Alabama, and now Arkansas and Kentucky have followed suit.

Maybe I should take a step back – after all, I don’t expect y’all to be nerding it up over home schooling on Halloween.

So what’s the Tim Tebow Bill? In effect, it says that students who are being homeschooled can participate in extracurricular activities offered by their district schools. If you are living in a district with a football program, but you are home schooled, under the Tim Tebow Bill, you could continue to be home schooled but also play football for your district’s school. Since home schooling became accepted by all 50 states in 1993 and the number of home schooled children has increased, this issue has become more prominent. It’s important to note here, to prevent pigeonholing, that religious reasons are not the only things driving home schooling – people choose to home school to provide an alternative learning environment for children who either have difficulty learning in a traditional setting or just need more time or attention. I’m a fierce defender of public schools, but I understand that people learn differently and a wide range of alternatives should be available.

Why’s it called the Tim Tebow Bill? Well, let’s be completely frank here – it is quite a bit of pandering. Florida passed a bill allowing equal access, which in turn allowed home-schooled Tebow to play football for his local school. He then “transferred” programs by getting an apartment in a different district because he wanted to play for a coach with more of a passing offense. Still, his involvement in high school sports was what got him noticed in the first place and led him right into the open arms of Urban Meyer. As far as he is concerned, this equal access stuff is a big deal.

I haven’t explained the pandering bit yet. Well, counting Florida, there are 24 states that allow equal access. Some of them do require partial enrollment, but many do not. It is also important to note that athletic associations also have a say in this mess: Rhode Island, South Dakota, and Massachusetts have equal access because of the athletic association so there is no legislation required. There are many roads to equal access. The timing of these changes is hard to gauge, but they were not introduced because of Tim Tebow – he might be a poster boy for the cause, but he isn’t the impetus behind the movement. However, given his popularity and recognition, the name “Tim Tebow” is often tacked on to this proposed legislation.

I’m not just bringing this up because of Tebow – he is not the only athlete that comes from an alternative education environment. For example, Tate Forcier (y’all remember him, right? The Michigan QB who is insanely weird to follow and also has a name well suited to Star Wars jokes? And I know the link is old, but the important background info is still the same.) was enrolled in a “charter” school – an alternative education setting which approximated home school, but received public funding, thus making him eligible to play ball for a public school. Tebow exemplifies how important these “equal access” laws can be, while Forcier points out the loopholes already in the system. These stories bookend each other and the equal access debate.

All this build up to ask a simple question: should home school students be allowed to participate in public school extracurricular activities? I say: yes. A resounding yes, actually. I can definitely understand why someone would be hesitant to allow it: the child isn’t a part of the school, and it seems strange to employ an outsider to project a positive image of the school; it may lead conflict on the team; there may be resentment towards someone who opts out of on extremely crucial part of the public school experience and opts into another; and “moving” to get to a better football program might seem underhanded and lacking in loyalty.

But these arguments seem weak when you get below the surface. Parents who home school their children pay taxes and are still required to pay any fees associated with the extracurricular activity, so it cannot be said that the student is somehow a freeloader.  School districts can ask that home school students maintain certain grade point averages and take some core classes, so it cannot be said that the student is not meeting academic requirements.  Home schooling must follow some guidelines – a parent can’t just teach their child something willy-nilly, so while the courses differ in structure, the core classes should hit most of the same material. “Moving” to get to a better program happens in all sorts of cases: students at my high school moved into the district in order to ensure that they received a solid high school education. I don’t have a clear idea of how I feel about this practice, but targeting home schooled children for this is ludicrous.

Most importantly, though, is that the opportunity to participate in extracurricular activities allows home schooled students to interact with a much broader group of people than they would otherwise and it allows the public school students to meet someone with a very different background. Call me sappy, but I would strongly argue for increasing these experiences. The same benefits of Little League and PeeWee sports (introducing children to new people with different backgrounds, teaching them teamwork, socializing them) hold here.

I can’t help but wonder, given all I’ve outlined above, why there is still so little movement on this front. Twenty-six states still lack equal access, and little progress has been made in the past year. A few of the links I’ve pulled are old (in blogging terms anyway) because the issue is at a plateau – everyone recognizes that it isn’t going to disappear, but it lacks momentum. It needs a kick-start. I’d hate for the change to occur just because people are afraid of bypassing the next Tim Tebow – that line of thinking is just too creepy to me – but since allowing home school students to interact with public high school students in an open environment will benefit all parties involved, I’d be willing to take it.

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Tags: ailanthus altissima, equal access, fight fight fight, home school, public school, Tim Tebow, Tim Tebow Bill
Categories: Domestics

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 1st, 2009 at 9:30 am and is filed under Domestics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.