A controversial bill making the rounds on Capitol Hill would let home-schooled students participate in high school sports and other extracurricular activities without meeting traditional academic and attendance standards. Instead, parents will decide whether their student should be eligible or not. The people who govern high school sports in Utah say the bill would erode their power and turn prep sports into a free-for-all. The bill's sponsor, Mark Madsen, R-Lehi, has a home-schooled child himself and says he's just trying to make the process easier for home-schoolers.

Get good grades, make academic progress and get at least satisfactory citizenship reports - or get benched.

The requirement is pounded into the head of every high school athlete in Utah. It also applies to students who participate in band, debate, chorus or any other extracurricular activity governed by the Utah High School Activities Association.

Home-schooled athletes - there are about 10 per year in the state - have been required to adhere to roughly the same standards as directed by their local school districts. But that could change if a bill making its way through the state Legislature is passed.

Senate Bill 72, sponsored by Sen. Mark Madsen, R-Lehi, would make it much easier for home-schooled athletes to be eligible for prep sports and activities. All they will need is a note from home, with no oversight from education officials.

Those who govern prep sports in Utah are terrified of the ramifications.

"People who don't think [parents will use the proposed changes to skirt academic eligibility rules] have their heads in the sand," said UHSAA executive director Evan Excell. "If this passes, I see our academic-based activities programs eroding. I see [schools] losing

control."

Utah is one of about 25 states that allows home-schooled students and students at the handful of private schools not affiliated with the UHSAA to compete for the UHSAA member school within his or her boundaries.

Madsen said the bill is needed because some - but not most - home-schooled students are "rebuffed before they even get to the UHSAA" by school counselors and others connected to public schools.

The lawmaker, whose oldest child, 7, is home-schooled, said the bill will "standardize and codify" the process.

The bill will let parents or the home-school teacher responsible for the student determine whether the student "is mastering the material in each course or subject being taught" and whether the student is "maintaining satisfactory progress toward advancement or promotion" in their home curriculum, which would not be monitored by the local school district.

"Frankly, I have a lot more confidence that parents will be more rigorous than a public school," Madsen said. "I'm more inclined to trust parents than a public school bureaucracy."

But the state's public education leaders say it's a bad idea, and see no reason to change the current system, which they say has worked well for the past 15 years.

Excell said the UHSAA has never denied eligibility to a home-schooled student in his decade-old tenure and estimates more than 100 have participated in that span.

"The senator has been sold a bill of goods by parents," Excell said. "I just don't think that people understand the ramifications" if the bill passes.

Carol Lear, director of school law and legislation at the State Office of Education, said the public education community generally believes the bill is flawed because "it would give home-schooled students an advantage over public-school students who go to school every day. . . . They are saying they want all these [extracurricular] privileges without having to do anything. It is unreasonable and greedy, frankly."

Lear said whenever she's been approached by a home-schooler with an eligibility problem, she's been able to track down the principal and solve the problem so the student could participate.

"This would take away all the school's authority [to monitor academic progress] and give it to parents," she said, noting that schools reward students with extracurricular privileges based on things other than grades - such as citizenship.

Lear and Excell said lawmakers who support the bill "are naive" regarding what really goes on in high school sports nowadays, and the lengths some people will go to ensure their child can play.

Alluding to surveys that have shown eighth-grade home-schooled students performing better on tests than their public-school counterparts, Madsen scoffed at the notion that parents will work the system to keep their sons and daughters eligible.

"It's amazing what the high school establishment will do to keep a kid eligible," he said. "And they're worried about parents who home-school?"

When Madsen introduced the bill last month, the UHSAA's biggest fear was that parents whose students are struggling academically at public schools would pull them out and begin home-schooling them just to keep them eligible.

Madsen has since amended the bill to state that a public school student who has been declared to be academically ineligible and who subsequently enrolls in a private school or in a home school will lose eligibility until the commencement of the next season.

Excell and Lear said the amendment alleviates their concerns a little, but said it won't stop parents "who see the writing on the wall" that their student is about to be declared ineligible and withdraw the student before he or she is "declared" ineligible.

The bill advanced to the Senate floor on a 3-2 vote three weeks ago, then passed first and second readings by votes of 21-7 and 19-6. It is currently in the hands of the House Education Standing Committee and will be considered at a 5 p.m. Thursday meeting.

Jay Drew can be reached at drew@sltrib.com. To write a letter about this or any sports topic, send an e-mail to sportseditor@sltrib.com.