This past month was HomeSchool Day at the Oklahoma State Capitol: a day where families could meet with their legislators to talk about issues that affect homeschooling in our state.

This year, there was added emphasis to our visit as two bills were being introduced that could directly affect homeschool families across the state. The first bill sought to require homeschool families to register with their local school districts, while the second bill gave authorities the right to take temporary custody of homeschooled kids who were not in the direct custody of their parents. You can read our response here about why we are opposed to these two bills.

A recent Washington Post op-ed highlights just one of the many reasons we support homeschooling:

"If you want your child to get the best education possible, it's actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school." This
quote is from Bill Gates' January 2009 annual letter from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a group that has spent billions of dollars trying to improve education. Mr. Gates also notes that overall, only 71 percent of children graduate from high school within four years. His conclusion is that America's schools are doing a poor job.

He went on to say that most of the schools helped by his foundation fell short of their goals in trying to increase college-ready graduation rates.

Both proposed bills were bad legislation that sought only to give public school districts some semblance of authority into the rapidly-growing community of homeschoolers. We were assured by the legislators we spoke with that these two bills were going nowhere.