Linda Dunn
Most of us would agree that it’s important to provide our children with the education each child needs to be able to reach their greatest potential.
Unfortunately, we adults can’t seem to agree upon how best to achieve that objective.
At the same time we’re devoting more tax funds to building multi-million dollar school campuses and diverting school funds into charter and private schools, homeschooling has increased an average of 51 percent over the last six school years during a time in which private school enrollment has increased only seven percent.
Homeschooling families have a multitude of different reasons why they homeschool and these are as diverse as the families involved. However, I think my friend Jen, who homeschooled in Alabama, offers a couple of reasons that most homeschool families would embrace:
“Sometimes parents choose homeschooling because it’s the best education their kids have access to.”
Also: “If you can’t work because you have to take care of your kids, then you might as well make that your job.”
Jen is just one of many parents who have forfeited or interrupted their careers to homeschool. She also participated in co-op programs run by homeschool parents, many of whom were certified teachers and others who were highly educated or successful in various fields.
Her children’s educational experience was certainly equivalent to or better than what many public school students receive; but the lack of any government oversight and the offering of vouchers up to $8,000 annually in some states means that while homeschools like Jen’s exist, so do the ones that make headlines when abused and uneducated children are removed by Child Protective Services and neighbors say, “I didn’t even know a child lived there.”
The history and demographics of homeschooling is complicated. It was initially connected to the “liberal-leaning educational reform movement” and homeschoolers worked with their local school boards and submitted home education plans. While some parents and schools could not reach agreements, this did not gain much national attention until the “Christian Right” movement led many conservatives — who often held an antagonistic view of public school administrators and were unwilling to cooperate with them — to go to court for the right to educate their children in the manner that they thought best.
Michael Farris, a homeschool parent and attorney, founded the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) in 1983 to engage in legal efforts on behalf of homeschoolers.
For years, his and similar groups lobbied against regulations in all 50 states, and they were highly successful. Lobbyists are now focused on seeking vouchers for homeschoolers, which are already available to home educators in Arizona, Arkansas, Utah, West Virginia, New Hampshire and Florida.
There is no doubt that homeschools can and have provided excellent education comparable to the best of public and private schools. But an abusive parent’s ability to claim they are “homeschooling” can make discovery of their abuse difficult. Only Pennsylvania and Arkansas prevent convicted child abusers or sex offenders from homeschooling and require background checks. Only half of our states require any form of assessment for homeschoolers and many of those allow parents to opt out of requirements.
Thus, this rapidly growing move to homeschooling carries a risk that far too few of us want to acknowledge exists and especially not if you are a responsible homeschooler who eyes government oversight with what many of us consider to be justifiable wariness.
On the other side, those of us who consider our local schools to be the “heart of the community” are concerned about how school vouchers are taking our tax funds and re-distributing them to underperforming charter schools and unregulated homeschoolers.
With welfare fraud, we lose tax dollars. With homeschooling cheats and underperforming charter schools, we not only have misspent tax dollars, but a high risk of children being harmed in ways that inflict lifelong damage.
Children are our most vulnerable citizens and they rely upon us adults to keep them safe and to give them the tools that they need to grow into responsible adults, well-educated in a manner that best suits their needs. We owe it to them to insure that all of our educational facilities — whether a large campus with multiple buildings or a kitchen table in a family home — are safe places that provide them with an education that will serve them well in their adult lives.
If our goal is to provide every child in our state with the education each child needs to be able to reach their greatest potential, shouldn’t we be providing more resources, guidance and reasonable oversight for our rapidly growing number of homeschoolers?
A lifelong resident of Hancock County, Linda Dunn is an author and retired Department of Defense employee.
