Thursday, February 4, 2010

GIVE WV HOMESCHOOL STUDENTS THE SAME OPPORTUNITY TIM TEBOW HAD

Something overlooked in all the brouhaha about Tim Tebow's Super Bowl add, is the fact that he was home schooled & because Florida's law allows homeschooled students to play for the school in their district, he was able to play football. Now I don't know all the nuances of the Florida law, but if they can do it I would think West Virginia could.
A few years ago there was a court ruling that allowed this to happen, but the WVSSAC appealed it and won, so it was overturned. Now I can see both sides of the arguement. When this case was being tried there was much emotion on both sides. I am not going to get into all the arguements but the one I felt was the most important & that made sense from the WVSSAC side, was that it would be an easy way, if an athlete had grade problems, to take advantage of this system. Now granted the majority of the ones probably wouldn't abuse it, but there would be some.
A solution I think would be that the homeschool parent would be responsible for contacting the school, the student would be playing athletics anyway, and arrange for the student to take tests adminstered by the teacher of the class the student would take anyway.
Being a teacher, parent & a former coach, I realize this is oversimplified, but I'm sure the bugs could be worked out. Also WV could contact Florida officials to see how they did it. please feel free to post any comments