Wyoming Education Association wants your children to be tested.  According to the WEA legislative agenda item number 56.  Home School Assesment.  This item reads, “The WEA believes that assessment of home school students needs to be aligned with assessment of students in the public school system.

The WEA, therefore, supports legislation that requires home-school students to participate in the district, state, and federal assessment systems in a specified testing environment that follows standard assessment guidelines.  Home-school student scores will be reported to the Wyoming Department of Education under a home-school designation.”

This doesn’t sound so bad.  I mean shouldn’t home school children be tested to make sure that they’re in compliance and actually being taught something?  But that’s not really why they want them to be tested.  It’s because they know that home school children may not be able to achieve the same level of proficiency that public school children attain on some of these tests.  Why is that?  I will explain.

You see the dirty little secret that public schools don’t really let out is that before it becomes test time the teachers focus on teaching their students exactly what they need to know on these tests.  They also proctor the test so they are there to “help” their students along when they have a problem.  Home school children do not get that advantage.

It would be fair if the teachers were not allowed to know what was going to be on the tests and were not able to prep their students prior to an exam.  It would be fair if the public school teachers were not the ones proctoring the tests but an independent group that was unaffiliated with WEA in any way.  Actually, then it wouldn’t be fair because home school children would have the advantage because their parents actually do care about their educations and work very hard to make sure they have a good one.  This places public school children at a disadvantage because most teachers, not all, are just there to collect a pay check.

This is just another attempt by WEA to undermine home schools and put money back in their pockets.  Don’t think so.  Then why are monies allocated to public schools based on the number of children in attendance?  You might want to consider that before you jump on the public school band wagon.