Posted by Howard Richman on November 22 2009 at 19:17:18:
At the membership meeting of Pennsylvania Homeschoolers Accreditation Agency (PHAA) on July 17, 2009 (at the High School at Home Conference), the members present unanimously voted to propose an amendment to the PHAA bylaws. So, that amendment was placed on a ballot that was mailed to the membership in the fall issue of The Excelsior, the newsletter of the agency. Completed ballots were mailed by members to Natalie Bishop, Secretary of PHAA, and had to be postmarked by November 15. She reports that there were 37 yes votes and 5 no votes that were postmarked in time for the deadline, so the amendment passed by more than the required 3/4 margin.
When this change was discussed at the membership meeting, members expressed concern that poor quality written evaluations hurt the perception of the PHAA diploma when colleges or employers got those evaluations, which are attached to the PHAA transcripts.
They wanted to keep PHAA from being harmed by a growing trend within the homeschooling community in which evaluators have extremely brief meetings with the family being evaluated and then issue only identical form-letter evaluations.
As a result, of these votes the PHAA bylaws have been amended to include the words highlighted in boldface in the following section, under Article XIV, Section 10, "Quality Counts". The new words are boldfaced in the passage from the bylaws below:
In the letters of evaluation which will be attached to the transcripts, evaluators are urged to recognize: (1) high-qualitywork, (2) service activities, and (3) individual initiative demonstrated by the student. Furthermore, these letters of evaluation must include a substantive narrative containing observations of the specific home education program. Evaluators who violate this provision shall be prohibited from renewing their PHAA membership.As a result, all PHAA evaluation letters, beginning with those written for the 2009-2010 school year, will have to include a brief narrative. (One page evaluation letters are long enough.) The narrative, of course, can't tell everything that the student did, but whenever possible, it should point out high quality work, service activities, and initiative demonstrated by the student.
Evaluators who continue to write non-narrative evaluation letters will always be given the opportunity to rewrite those ltters so that can renew their PHAA membership the next year. They could also appeal to the PHAA Board of Directors if there is a dispute with the Executive Director (that's me) over whether a particular evaluation letter meets the requirements of this bylaw.
Howard Richman
Executive Director
Pennsylvania Homeschoolers Accreditation Agency