Cost of Micro-Management

From Pennsylvania - one of the most regulated states with the most data collected on homeschoolers, we hear that:

"the numbers tell the truth. ALL of the homeschoolers must hand in portfolios, logs, test results, and a third party (teacher) evaluation. The superintendent then determines if the education is "inappropriate" and starts "due process proceedings". ALL of this data from all of the 501 school districts go to the PA Dept of Ed. (This is mandatory and thorough data, not a sampling.)

"Consistently, the number of due process/ inappropriate educations, as determined by the public school superintendents is less than 0.1% (less than 1/10 of a percent). According to a study done by Penn State (Melnick, 2000), the school districts spend approximately $5 million to micromanage the homeschoolers. To put it in real terms, the educrats in PA spend approximately quarter million dollars to locate one inappropriately educated student."

"No amount of control or regulation on the population will eliminate these outliers, hence also the consistency in the number in the last ten years. There is no valid reason to control the entire homeschool population, with regulations based on controlling these outliers. This is an undue burden for the general population of home educators. "

Mary Alice from PA continues (in the comments at the link):

"I suspect that homeschoolers are the same no matter where they live. Parents are parents, kids are kids and homeschooling is homeschooling."

The writer goes on to put questions to Mississippi educrats. I have replaced MI with the UK.

"Questions for the UK educrats: Is the UK going to spend all that money and waste it on statistical outliers? Does the education establishment understand the uselessness of this expense when their own system could benefit from the money? How much will the UK education folks be willing to pay for the illusion of control? On a side point, none of UK regulations have anything to do with the education of the child. It is simply paperwork for the homeschoolers AND the public schools which equates to time and money NOT education.