Social Worker Attempts To Monitor Homeschooling

Social Worker Attempts To Monitor Homeschooling

In April of the 2008–2009 school year, a social worker with the Alabama Department of Human Services contacted a Home School Legal Defense Association member family in Roanoke (Randolph County), insisting that she be permitted to monitor the family’s home instruction program. This contact was prompted by the fact that the member family had recently obtained court-ordered custody of two children previously enrolled in public school by their birth mother. The social worker insisted that the children be administered standardized achievement tests to determine whether they were performing at grade level and, in the event they were not, wanted the children to be re-enrolled in public school. If the children had tested to the satisfaction of the social worker, she wanted the parents to provide a report card on the children every six weeks. Both students were enrolled in the home instruction program of a church school in Alabama.