New Jersey Lawmakers Move to Regulate Home Schooling.

By Leslie Brody, The Record, Hackensack, N.J. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Jan. 9--New Jersey home-schoolers have bombarded Bergen County lawmakers with hundreds of e-mails and dozens of phone calls in recent days to stop any attempt to regulate how they educate their children.

Assemblywoman Loretta Weinberg, D-Teaneck, and Assemblyman Gordon M. Johnson, D-Englewood, introduced a bill Thursday that would require home-schooled children to undergo periodic standardized testing and annual medical exams.

New Jersey home-schoolers -- long an aggressive lobbying force -- immediately banded together to protest that any such measures would be a misguided, unnecessary intrusion on their parental rights.

Weinberg said she had long wanted to tighten the safety net for children whose families might be failing them, and the Jackson case in Collingswood cemented her view that home-schooled children deserve more oversight. Raymond and Vanessa Jackson were charged in October with starving their four adopted boys, who were said to be home-schooled.

Weinberg said she was also spurred by a December article in The Record about "unschooling," an extremely relaxed form of home education in which parents reject structure, planned lessons, and timetables for academic milestones. She was appalled that a few "unschooled" children don't pick up reading until they're 12.

"We're not making it illegal for kids to be home-schooled or directing curriculum," Weinberg said. "We just want to make sure kids are being protected" and taught the basics.