[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 64 (Wednesday, May 5, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H2780-H2781]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             HOME SCHOOLING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, this week we are celebrating Teacher 
Appreciation Week. There have been a number of speeches on this floor. 
I have, in fact, come to this microphone before to extol the virtues of 
the teachers of America, the public school, the private school teachers 
who work so hard and contribute so much to the well-being of the 
children of this Nation.
  Today, however, Mr. Speaker, I want to rise in recognition of a 
particular part of that educational establishment that is not often 
recognized. And it was brought to my attention again, although I have 
long been aware of its existence, but it was brought to my attention 
again by a card I received in the mail not too long ago.
  Here it is, a little handwritten, hand-drawn and colored-in star 
here. It says, ``thank you, thank you, thank you.'' It goes all the way 
around, ``thank you very much.'' It is from a young man named Jerrod 
Padinama. It says:

       Dear Mr. Tancredo, thank you for giving us the privilege of 
     home schooling. My home school co-op is studying the 
     Constitution, and it is fun. I am 9 years old. I am in the 
     third grade. I am praying for you.
       Jerrod Padinama.

  Well, Jerrod, thank you for your prayers. I sincerely appreciate 
them.
  But I tell my colleagues, this is really a very touching little card 
I received, and I have been holding on to it because I wanted to 
reference it in a way. The neat part is that this young man would take 
the time to send me this little card and draw it in. But in a way it is 
a sad commentary because he has to tell me ``thank you'' for letting me 
be home schooled.
  And he does know intuitively, I suppose, and certainly his parents 
are well aware of the fact that often there are attempts in this body 
and certainly in legislatures all over the country and States all over 
the Nation to actually restrict the ability of parents to actually 
teach their children at home. And they have to say ``thank you'' to us 
for letting them have a right that, frankly, is as natural as 
breathing, a right of a parent to teach their child at home.
  This is as if this is a strange anomaly, this is something weird that 
we do in this country that they have to be allowed to do by the 
legislature. And that is the only kind of negative part of this thing I 
see. Because, otherwise, it is a very beautiful thing.
  I just wanted to point out that home schooling certainly preceded any 
other kind of schooling we had in the United States of America; and it 
did very, very well, and it continues to do very, very well. And it is 
an expanding phenomena. Many, many people are participating in this. It 
is growing astronomically, almost beyond, really, ways to describe it.

[[Page H2781]]

  I find in my own State of Colorado that there are thousands and 
thousands of parents who are taking on the responsibility of teaching 
their children at home.
  Mr. Speaker, recently I received a copy of an article that was 
written by a gentleman by the name of Steven Archer, and he details a 
study that was just done by Larry Rudner, who is the leading 
statistician at the University of Maryland. He studied home schoolers, 
and what it comes down to is this.
  He said,

       Regarding the results of this research, Rudner said, the 
     bottom line of the study is that the 20,000 home-school 
     students I studied were doing extremely well in terms of 
     their scores on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills.
       In fact, the median test scores for home-schooled children 
     who participated in this study were in the 75th and 85th 
     percentile range. This is exceptional compared to the 
     national average which, by definition, is the 50th percentile 
     based on the performance of children in the public schools, 
     which, Rudner explained, deviates little from that value. 
     Home schoolers also did significantly better than their 
     private school counterparts based on Catholic school norms 
     where the median scaled scores were in the 65th to 75th 
     percentile range.
       According to Rudner, major findings in the study include 
     the following:
       Almost one-quarter of home-school students are enrolled one 
     or more grades above their age-level peers in public and 
     private schools.

  It goes on, Mr. Speaker, but I would just say that it verifies what 
we already know about home schooling and that is that it works, it 
works in an academic sense, it works in a social sense. And I want to 
take the opportunity here today to thank Jerrod for his card, to thank 
Jerrod's parents for giving him the opportunity to be home schooled, 
and to thank all those thousands and thousands, perhaps millions, of 
parents around the country who are doing the same for their children.

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