Homeschooling mom Lisa Martinez (center) guides her son Joshua through a lesson. The family's newest addition, infant Samantha, watches from Martinez's lap. Martinez and other state homeschoolers are concerned about proposed Senate amendments to a House bill easing homeschooling regulations.
BY JANA SALISBERRY
The Dominion Post
There are pieces of brain and spinal column splattered all over Lisa Martinez's wooden kitchen table.
Martinez is in the adjoining living room holding her baby daughter Samantha, watching as her three other children, Danielle, 12, Christopher, 8, and Joshua, 6, sit at the table and piece together a plastic skull and vertebrae of yellow Play-doh -- a hands -on science lesson about anatomy.
Martinez runs the New Covenant Academy, a Christian home school for her children. She teaches while her husband, Robert, works at the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Suncrest.
The main reason Martinez said she wants to home school is to "teach our children our values. These are things that need to be taught all day long."
But her right to teach her students past the ninth grade may be taken away by the Legislature before the end of this week.
Again.
Last year, the Legislature suspended a law preventing home schooling parents without four years of higher education from teaching their children through high school.
The suspension gave the Legislature time study home schoolers' test scores, and the state Board of Education time to look at home schoolers.
The suspension allowed parents without four years of college a full school year to teach their high school children, if they have them.
The study revealed home school students are doing just as well, if not better, on standardized tests than students in public and private schools in the state.
House Bill 2595 would lift the four-year degree requirement and preserve an existing law allowing parents to use either portfolios or standardized tests to track their students' progress.
But the Senate is considering some amendments to weaken the bill: restoring the four-year requirement, doing away with the portfolio option, and requiring home schooled students to take their standardized test in a public school classroom.
Martinez has one year of college. She attended Virginia Tech, but said she dropped out "due to lack of funds."
She was trying to get a bachelor's in marketing education.
She wanted to be a teacher. And she is, although without a teaching degree.
And she just might be teaching her children in another state if the Legislature votes to reinstate the four-year requirement.
"Just because I don't have a four-year degree doesn't mean I'm not capable," she said, as she sits in her children's schoolroom.
"I think parents should be allowed the freedom to home school and teach as they see fit," Martinez said. "After all, we are responsible for how our children turn out.
The room has three tables and is filled with teaching materials, books, a computer, educational games. Two large windows give her children a view of the world outside while they are doing their work.
The dining room walls are covered with maps.
And the basement is filled with more shelves of educational games and a work area for school projects.
The Martinezes also have a certified teacher available to them every day.
Fifteen minutes away, Martinez's friend, Mary Powell, is home schooling her two children, Laura, a seventh-grader, and Daniel, a fourth-grader, at the Powell Christian Academy.
Powell has a teaching degree. She used to teach at Alliance Christian School before she and her family converted the formal dining room into a schoolroom.
The two women are fighting, and praying, for the same thing: the right to teach their children the way they think best, unhindered by the state of West Virginia.
If HB 2595 doesn't pass the Senate, or if it is highly amended, some of West Virginia's home schoolers may be packing, and moving, to a state with fewer home schooling regulations.
"To be honest, I think people would move from the state to a state that is more home schooling-friendly," said Dan Powell, Mary's husband.
Even if the law passes, West Virginia will still be one of the most highly regulated states, Mary Powell said, based on information describing home schooling regulations across the nation.
According to Homeschool Court Report, Vol. 16, No. 2, March/April 2000: "West Virginia is the only state in the union that forbids a parent from educating his child beyond the ninth grade, unless the parent has formal education past high school."
Martinez said if the delegates and senators in Charleston are smart, "they will leave (HB 2595) alone."
The proposed Senate amendments to HB 2595 worry both families.
Under existing law, home-schooled students may either take a standardized test for county records or to create portfolios containing work samples throughout the school year.
The portfolio option is designed for children who don't test well, Martinez said. Especially for children who need special education, like Martinez's autistic son, Joshua.
"They can take tests and do a portfolio to see if the child is learning," Martinez said.
According to John Carey, a Charleston home schooler and paid lobbyist for home schoolers who is following the bill's progress and contacts Powell every day, the Legislature may amend the portfolio option and require grade reports and testing.
Martinez said that taking away the portfolio option would be the wrong thing for legislators to do. It would penalize all home schoolers because of a few who may have problems.
Danielle Martinez is also awaiting the decision in Charleston.
"I don't really want to move, and I know that is what's going to happen if (HB 2595) doesn't pass," she said.
The Senate read the bill for the first time Tuesday. The bill has to be read three times before a vote.
The final reading and the final vote will be this week. The Legislature concludes its regular session Saturday.
The Martinezes will soon know if they'll be moving. The Powells will soon know if they are losing six friends.