SB333, an act establishing a unique pupil identification system, was discussed at the HEAC meeting yesterday. Elaine Rapp disagrees with my assessment that defining a UPI as "a randomly generated number assigned to a public school pupil in order to gather pupil level data" limits the DOE to students enrolled in public schools. She does not know of any place where the phrase "public school pupil" is defined, and pointed out that it doesn't state that home educated or non-public school students *can't* be included. Despite Joyce Johnson's assurances on 4/27 that, "Neither the State legislators or senators, nor the Department of Education in New Hampshire have any interest in student ID #s for home school students," Elaine has been told by a DOE employee that s/he sees no reason that home educated students should be denied a UPI number. She did not say when this occurred, but I suspect it was before the House amended SB333 on 4/15. Joyce was not present at the meeting, so this could not be brought to her attention, nor could she provide any clarification.
Add to this mix an observation which I have been mulling over privately for a while, and which I finally made public at the meeting. The DOE did not need authorization from the legislature to create this database or UPI numbers. They have all the authorization they need under existing law. They needed to go to the legislature was to get funding. Then it was discovered that the entire cost could be covered by federal funds. I am not sure why the bill was not withdrawn at that point. It could be that by then it had attracted the attention of privacy rights advocates who wanted to be sure the process of defining the database was kept out in the open so that their concerns were addressed. I think that at this point, a) the bill is likely to become law and b) whether the bill becomes law or not, the DOE would be unwise to act counter to the strongly expressed wishes of the legislature.
There was also mention by Angie LeBel that there were objections to No Child Left Behind in general from school districts. You can read about it in the New Hampshire School Administrators' Association publication Updated Analysis of Cost Impact of ESEA – No Child Left Behind Act on New Hampshire.
I have not been able to reach Rep. Balboni. He does not have an e-mail listed at his legislative web site, and when I call him in the evenings, the phone line is always busy. Therefore I have not been able to establish whether the legislature has even thought about whether homeschoolers should be included or excluded, or address several other concerns I have.
Elaine handed out a proposal I wrote requesting "that the Department of Education create a separate form on which all participating agencies – districts, non-public schools and the DOE -- can report home education program statistics." As Joyce Johson was not present, there was no discussion of the matter. Currently such statistics are reported on the same form as statistics for regularly enrolled students. Having a separate form may help to distance home educators from the increasing reporting requirements for public school students, at least in the minds of SAU administrators.