We’re hearing that some people say GSHE is misrepresenting the attacks home education has faced the past three years since the EFA began in 2021. People say we’re “fear mongering.” Not only do they deceive themselves, but they seek to deceive you, too.
Look up these bills on the NH General Court website for yourself.
- 2022 HB 1664 background checks for parents
- 2023 HB 628 background checks for parents
- 2024 HB 1610 mandatory participation in statewide assessment
Sponsors of these bills claimed they intended to target participants in the Education Freedom Account (EFA). Regardless, the bills as written would impact independent home education families even though we don’t receive state funding. Call it sloppy or intentional, it doesn’t matter. The hit to unfunded home education would still happen if not for us speaking up to defend ourselves.
(If you are not familiar with the EFA or how it is different from traditional, independent home education, refer to the GSHE page on NH’s four educational pathways or the NH Department of Education’s pages.)
GSHE rallied the homeschool community to fight off all three of these extreme bills, any one of which would have made NH the worst state in the country for home education.
There were over 35 bills filed regarding the EFA that tried to add more regulation or eliminate the program over this same three-year period. Check the NH General Court website to find them.
This is fact, not fiction.
GSHE focused on the outrageous bills that ensnared independent home education — HB 1664 (2022), HB 628 (2023), and HB 1610 (2024) — and mobilized the community against them and we won.
Maybe some of you participated by emailing the legislature or attending public hearings. YOU contributed to these victories and that is what it takes to protect our freedoms.
No matter how the election goes in November, we will see more hostile bills in Concord.
Be prepared and don’t rely on someone else to do the hard work of defending home ed freedom. The autonomy we enjoy today did not happen easily or quickly. It’s taken decades and the work of hundreds and hundreds of families to achieve.
Here are some of the freedoms we won in the past 20 years:
- Eliminated annual scope and sequence reporting to Participating Agencies
- Changed notification from annual to one-time only when beginning a home ed program
- Removed requirement to report assessment results to Participating Agencies
- Removed ability of Participating Agencies to force students to return to a traditional school if they didn’t show “progress” two years in a row
- Required districts to adopt an Equal Access policy
- Simplified termination language that mirrors the initial notification language
- Removed language that could imply home-ed programs need approval by Participating Agencies
- Clarified language regarding who to notify and when
- Removed unequitable academic achievement requirements
- Added explicit protection for home-educated children with special education differences
- Added language to make the portfolio the private property of the family
If these freedoms matter to you, then be vigilant and involved.
