Homeschooling Mom Under Scrutiny by New Jersey Family Court

yeah, what's wrong with this lady for not wanting her kid to be an idiot product of our communist education system...

Homeschooling Mom Under Scrutiny by New Jersey Family Court
[align=left]Ann Shibler
JBS
Thursday, March 15, 2007
From a usually home education friendly state, New Jersey, comes news of the legal criticism of a homeschooling mother's right to educate her children at home. Justice Thomas Zampino of the Family Division of the New Jersey Superior Court seeks penal charges against Tara Hamilton, college graduate and mother of seven, for homeschooling her children. This follows an apparently bitter divorce and charges by the non-custodial parent Stephen Hamilton that the children were not receiving an adequate education.
The judge has taken it upon himself, contrary to New Jersey state law, to "direct" the local school board to file suit against the mother to obtain access to the Hamilton home under the guise of evaluating and monitoring the instruction of the children. Under New Jersey law credible evidence of abuse, neglect, or inadequate instruction must first exist before this can be done â?? there is none in this case.
In his ruling, Judge Zampino recommends certain requirements and safeguards that he believes should be in place for homeschoolers. Subsequently Tara Hamilton has been ordered to submit her children to standardized testing and must show the school district that "equivalent academic instruction" is offered by her in her own home. If the school district discovers "failure" in this area, the children will be forced to attend a public or parochial school. This begs the question of just what exactly is meant or implied by "equivalent instruction."
The judge based his determination on his philosophy that unsupervised â?? no local or state official review of lessons, tests or performance â?? homeschooling of children by their own parents is "shocking to this court." He opines that children must be protected from harm and sexual predators. (Like these?) He also stated that homeschooling should not be without state monitoring to ensure that all children receive "equivalent education." (That equivalence might not be what he thinks it is.)[/align]

• Once again this is an example of judicial activism by a judge who disregards both the law and parental primacy in order to force government interference into the lives of law-abiding citizens. This judge wants to determine for parents the way in which they choose to rear and educate their children. Certainly, any judicial action in this case would establish a dangerous precedence and leave the door open for courts or the state to implement their version of "equivalent education" on all homeschoolers.

Seven kids. Yeah, right. She's going to do a great job of homeschooling and taking care of them all at the same time. Maybe she should have a few more and round off the number to ten.

P.S. Ann Shibler, the author of the article, is the Editorial Assistant for The New American magazine, a publication of the John Birch Society.

GOD I love this spin of B.S.! The father filed suit against the home schooling for good reason. There are 7 kids living with the mother and she's trying to teach 5 different grade levels at once!
http://www.judiciary.state.nj.us/dec...lton070223.pdf

Judge warns of child-abusing homeschoolers

"In today's threatening world, where we seek to protect children from abuse, not just physical, but also educational abuse, how can we not monitor the educational welfare of all our children? A child in New Jersey, who recently was found unfed and locked in a putrid bedroom was allegedly 'homeschooled' and because no one, such as a teacher or nurse, was able to observe any abuse in a school setting, it went undiscovered," wrote Judge Thomas Zampino in a case that came before him.
WorldNetDaily: Judge warns of child-abusing homeschoolers

The main reason why the courts are taking a look into these homeschooling situations.....but what the fuck, it makes for a good story on how the government is supressing your rights. MAYBE the parents might be teaching the kids how to use boxcutters....missed that little header!

Have a good one!:s4:

Pissy has found a niche in the John Birch Society! That's ironic. They were the most far-right lunatics of the Cold War era, and are the grandparents of today's conspiracy theorists, even calling President Dwight D. Eisenhower a communist!

To them, EVERYTHING other than what they preached was a communist plot.

I gotta agree that that was in no way about suppressing anyone's rights except from the slanted spin of the story itself. And if the kids' achievement isn't being tested and measured or if there's even a slight suspicion that any abuse might be occurring, that's enough cause for concern in my book.

The 7 kids at different grade levels in a class doesn't worry me very much. I've taught as many as 38 kids in a class at three different grade levels. It can be done fairly easily, as anyone who knows the history of education in this country (one-room schoolhouses) realizes. But good home schoolers--and in this Bible belt part of the country they're everywhere--allow their kids to be tested so their achievement can be measured. That's the part that sounds awfully questionable to me. We had two families in our last neighborhood. Both fundamentally religious types. One had 12 kids and the other had 10. Both had home-schooling mothers, and the kids did amazingly well. Scored way above grade level, in fact, on the tests they periodically took.

Somehow, Pissy, I rather doubt you've ever visited any schools. If you had, you wouldn't be so fast to throw out the word "Communist."

I home-schooled my 2 boys for 3 years. When I decided to return the younger to public school, they tested him. In spite of learning disabilities, my younger (re-entering into 8th grade) scored at grade 16 in science! He scored 6 gold medals and one silver, in the local "Olympics of the Mind". For all the help I got (zero), I could have been just teaching Nintendo 101 and no one would have said a thing. All I had to do to keep the school system "happy" was turn in an attendance report once a month. There was a LOT of opportunity for abuse of the system. Fortunately for my boys, I gave them a good education. Who is doing the teaching, makes all the difference. - Granny:hippy:

:thumbsup:
This issue is a minor tempest in a teapot. You folks are right about the story being spun...but guess by whom? None other than wifey's multi-millionaire daddy. Rather than a poor homeschooling drudge in tatters, toiling in some NJ inner city slum, she is in fact an attractive young woman who moved out of her million dollar home in Upper Montclair, for equally nice digs in Ridgewood, both affluent NJ bedroom communities. Now grand dad is not only a megalomaniac but possesses a passive-agressive personality. Rather than attack the kidz' dad, he attacks the Courts expecting the usual knee jerk (emphasis on "jerk") reaction. He expects a large outcry from the usual fringe groups to inundate the judge and thus perhaps sway the judge in mom's favor. Judges don't like to judge unless they have balls or are agenda driven. This is a no-BS judge who has been sitting in Family Part for 12 years. He knows the law, he knows BS and he knows how to get to the heart of the matter. Gran'pa can spin all he wants. Now you know the rest of the story...but you knew there was more to this already. Keep inhaling.

It just sounds like another bad divorce where the kids are used to get back at the other parent.

Knowing these people, there is a genuine concern that these kids' intellectual development has been hindered by an intrinsically disordered grampy who will not admit to imperfection. He has literally destroyed people and their reputations in his sorry history. The bottom line: (1) father wants kids tested & removed to a structured educational environment (2) judge can't render decision because these kids have never been tested and he orders them to be tested (3) nutty grampa sees this as a "loss" for his stature and starts the spin (4) it's really about the grandfather, dubbed by one of his antagonists as " He Who-must-control."