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Is it time for exemption law to be revisited?

April 18, 2006 6:02 am

By MELISSA NIX

VIRGINIA LAW gives any school-age child a unique right: the right not to attend school.

If parents attest that it is against their faith to send their children to school, they can remove them without penalty or oversight. These children are religiously exempt from the state's compulsory attendance law. And unlike with home-schooled children, the state no longer monitors religiously exempt children's academic progress.

Some think the law is working just fine. Others say elected and school officials have abdicated their responsibility to children.

Children--and their education--are caught in the middle.

"To be honest, [school boards] should be reluctant to deny exemption, unless there is something that doesn't fit," said John Whitehead, president and founder of the Rutherford Institute, a conservative civil rights legal organization based in Charlottesville. "It would be crazy if anyone could walk up and say, 'I had a dream last night and Pat Robertson told me I had to remove my children from public school.'"

Whitehead maintains the law gives school boards leeway to deny requests that don't make sense.

"They may get into a lawsuit about it, but if they act prudently and reasonably they can deny it," he said.

But recent trends show that school boards are reticent to challenge requests for religious exemption. Critics say they rubber-stamp them. School officials say they are simply following a vaguely worded law to the best of their abilities.

Keith Rowland, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on home schooling and serves as director of elementary education for Radford schools, does not share Whitehead's comfort level.

"It's a no-win situation for them. If they do [challenge a request], they run the risk of a family taking it to the paper and blasting them," he said.

"School divisions will run from this until someone steps up to the plate and says the law needs to be revisited."

Part of Marceline Rollins Catlett's job used to be approving home-instruction and religious-exemption applications. The assistant superintendent for instruction and personnel at Fredericksburg schools would not discuss any specific case, but spoke in general about process.

"It's really hard for a school division to say [to a family] it's not a bona fide religious belief," Catlett said.

Susan Van Lear, director of curriculum and assessment, concurred. She took over reviewing and approving home schooling and religious-exemption requests from Catlett three years ago.

"I don't have any way to judge a parent's religious belief or that they don't want to provide proof of progress [as their motivation]," she said.

Neither can recall a religious-exemption request being denied by the district in the 13 years they've reviewed them.

"We simply follow the law," Van Lear said. "Once you've been cleared to educate your children under the religious exemption statute, then the School Board is out of it. It becomes a legislative issue."

Other area school districts also follow this hands-off approach.

Valerie Cottongim, spokeswoman for Stafford County schools, said the School Board receives religious exemption requests at nearly every one of its twice-monthly meetings.

"The board is not turning these down," said her colleague Daryl Nelson, the division's attorney. "If the person says [it's their religious belief], it does put the board in a very difficult position to issue a denial."

In the 11 years he has served as counsel, Nelson cannot recall any requests being denied.

Vicky Langford has served as Spotsylvania County schools' home school coordinator for 18 years. Parents requesting religious exemption come to her, but the School Board makes the decision.

When Langford first began the job, she asked the Virginia Department of Education for guidance on religious exemptions and the process for denying or approving them. An official told her to steer clear of challenging such requests unless there is something highly unusual about them.

Advocates such as Will Shaw, who co-founded the Organization of Virginia Homeschoolers, think religious exemption may be threatened for those who truly need it. His organization recommends the exemption option only when a family's beliefs cannot be accommodated under the home-instruction statute.

"The greatest threat to religious exemption is the sheer number of exemption claims, which are increasing at a rate faster than home schooling under the home-instruction statute," Shaw said. "The numbers have not escaped certain legislators.

"Home-schoolers are not becoming more religious, just more opportunistic. In the process, I fear they will endanger a very special legal avenue that ought to be there for the few who really need it."

Shaw's organization and the Home School Legal Defense Association are diametrically opposed on this issue. While Shaw suggests families cautiously employ the exemption statute in order to protect it, Scott Woodruff, a lawyer with the defense association, recommends it heartily.

"If you are home schooling for religious reasons, why intentionally go under the [home-instruction] statute when you know it creates opportunities for conflict which will distract you from your core mission of teaching your children?" asked Woodruff.

"This vitally important faith issue is marginalized when someone suggests families 'use' the religious exemption to avoid testing and notification. This misses the point."

Despite Shaw's warnings, Virginia's legislators are not particularly eager to "jump into the fray," said Del. Bobby Orrock, R-Caroline. Orrock also teaches agricultural education at Spotsylvania High School.

"Anybody can walk through the [religious-exemption] door," Orrock said. "There are those individuals using the statute in a manner not envisaged when the bill was originally put into legislation.

"How do we get there from here? I don't have the answer right now."

Charles Haynes, senior scholar at the First Amendment Center in Arlington, finds the religious-exemption statute extremely troubling. Haynes regularly writes about the intersection of religious freedom and public education.

"Under the First Amendment, the freedoms of exercise are limited when it comes to society's compelling interest in protecting the safety and health of its children," he said.

Haynes maintains that the free exercise of parents' beliefs does not trump the rights of the child to be educated, to have emergency medical care or to not be exploited.

"With all due respect to religious freedom--which is something I greatly believe in--does the state of Virginia allow child abuse?

"Even if 99 percent of the parents utilizing the religious exemption statute do a fantastic job of educating their children, if there's just 1 percent who take their kids out of school and leave them ignorant, that's enough of a problem for the state of Virginia to worry about," Haynes said.

Former state Del. Jim Dillard R-Fairfax, the legislator who wrote the home-instruction law, said he regrets preserving the religious-exemption statute.

"I don't have a problem with religious exemption," he said. "I have a problem with the state having no idea what's going on with these kids and shirking its responsibility to educate them."

Woodruff vehemently disagrees. He points out that fewer than half of the 50 states require annual exams of home-schooled children.

And he finds the idea of "oversight" problematic in that it doesn't work "both ways."

"In a public school, if Johnny is given a standardized test in October and scores at the 20th percentile--which is below the passing rate of the home schooling statute--does Johnny have a right to change teachers or schools?" Woodruff asked.

"No. In a public school, a child who is doing poorly keeps the same teacher. If a child is doing poorly, it does not prove that the teacher is bad. It refutes the concept that the teacher is the most important component of education."

Woodruff said the connection between teaching and learning is too complex to blame a teacher or a parent for a low test score.

If anything, when a child needs extra help, the 1-on-1 ratio of home instruction is ideal, he said. To force a child back to school because the child didn't pass state-mandated tests doesn't make sense, he argued.

Besides passing a Standards of Learning test isn't the only way to show progress, some administrators would counter. The law also allows for a child's progress to be measured through an independent assessment--such as a portfolio of work. The superintendent then judges whether adequate progress has been made.

Woodruff maintains that parents who choose to home-school, under religious exemption or otherwise, are not taking the easy way out. And home-schooled students' test scores and academic achievements consistently outshine their public school counterparts, he argued.

"The easy thing is to put them on the yellow school bus and hope and pray that [they are getting a good education]," Woodruff said.

"When a family decides they want to stop delegating their child's education to the state, they show they have a willingness to invest heavily in their kids' education. Statistics show that the investment is paying off handsomely."

High test scores or no, something just doesn't sit right with Dillard.

"It goes back to the idea of an enlightened electorate," he said. "In order to have society function as a democracy, the state needs to be able to inculcate certain values in its children, in order to prepare them for citizenship and to have a meaningful role in society.

"To me, it's gotten totally out of hand. If I were going back now to write that legislation, I would write it to have some sort of check and balance on the exemption."

To reach MELISSA NIX: 540/374-5418
Email: mnix@freelancestar.com