Posted on 07/10/2024 6:06:58 PM PDT by DoodleBob
The number of children being educated at home has been growing for the past few decades. No one knows by how much, and that is part of the problem. Homeschooling is barely tracked or regulated in the U.S. But children deserve a safe and robust education, whether they attend a traditional school or are educated at home.
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reported that by last count, in 2019, nearly 3 percent of U.S. children—1.5 million—were being homeschooled. This number, calculated from a nationwide survey, is surely an undercount because the homeschooling population is notoriously hard to survey, and more children have been homeschooled since the COVID pandemic began. Eleven states do not require parents to inform anyone that they are homeschooling a child, and in most of the country, once a child has exited the traditional schoolroom environment, no one checks to ensure they are receiving an education at all.
Homeschooled students have won the National Spelling Bee; one was the most prolific mathematician in history. Many are well-rounded and well-adjusted children who go on to thrive as adults. But others do not receive a meaningful education—and too many have suffered horrific abuse. The federal government must develop basic standards for safety and quality of education in homeschooling across the country.
When a traditional classroom setting cannot meet the educational, social or emotional needs of a child, homeschooling can allow parents to take over. For children facing bullying or gun violence or who need more challenging or more advanced schoolwork, a homeschooling environment may be best.
But many parents are attracted to homeschooling because they want to have more say in what their child learns and what they do not. Nearly 60 percent of homeschool parents who responded to the 2019 NCES survey said that religious instruction was a motivation in their decision to educate at home. Some Christian homeschooling curricula teach Young Earth Creationism instead of evolution. Other curricula describe slavery as “Black immigration” or extol the virtues of Nazism.
Some children may not be receiving any instruction at all. Most states don’t require homeschooled kids to be assessed on specific topics the way their classroom-based peers are. This practice enables educational neglect that can have long-lasting consequences for a child’s development.
In the worst cases, homeschooling hides abuse. In 2020 an 11-year-old boy in Michigan was found dead after his stepmother used homeschooling to conceal years of torture. A small study of children who had been seriously abused found that eight of 17 school-age victims were ostensibly being homeschooled. In these cases, homeschooling was a farce—a hole in children’s social safety net for abusers to exploit.
Although it’s impossible to say how commonly homeschooling conceals abuse, data from Connecticut paint a concerning picture. Following the abuse and 2017 death of an autistic teenager whose mother had removed him from school, Connecticut’s Office of the Child Advocate found that 36 percent of children withdrawn from six nearby districts to be homeschooled lived in homes that had been subject to at least one report of suspected abuse or neglect. Not one state checks with Child Protective Services to determine whether the parents of children being homeschooled have a history of abuse or neglect.
Homeschooling advocacy organizations promote studies that claim to show equal or higher levels of academic achievement among homeschooled students. But these studies often are conducted by homeschooling advocates and are methodologically flawed. It’s difficult for social scientists to recruit representative samples for more rigorous research because of lax reporting requirements and the underground nature of homeschooling, making the kind of sweeping comparison between homeschooling and nonhomeschooling students that some groups report impossible. Still, studies of different homeschooled populations have shown that children’s success depends heavily on their parents’ education background. Despite this, in 40 states parents do not need to have even a high school–level education to educate their children at home.
The federal government usually leaves issues of education for states to decide, and homeschooling is no exception. A dizzying maze of laws and legal precedents governs parents’ ability to homeschool, and the rules differ in each state and sometimes even differ between school districts. Whenever a piece of state legislation is suggested or introduced to regulate some aspect of homeschooling, advocacy organizations such as the Homeschool Legal Defense Association fight back. This year Michigan’s Education Department proposed a registry of homeschooled students in the state and was met with fierce pushback. In 2023 Ohio removed all assessment requirements for homeschooled students. South Dakota, Vermont and New Hampshire have also removed some oversight requirements in the past few years.
It is clear that homeschooling will continue to lack accountability for outcomes or even basic safety in most states. But federal mandates for reporting and assessment to protect children don’t need to be onerous. For example, homeschool parents could be required to pass an initial background check, as every state requires for all K–12 teachers. Homeschool instructors could be required to submit documents every year to their local school district or to a state agency to show that their children are learning.
Education is a basic human right. We need to make sure kids have chances to investigate what makes them curious, study history and science and reading, and ask questions and learn from others. We want them to reach adulthood ready to take on the world.
Plank #10 of the Communist Manifesto: Free education for all children in public schools...
We wanted them to be tested anyway to ensure we were "up to snuff". The curriculum I wrote up the first year was just a list of subjects and books we would use to cover them.
After that, the last official project for the kids was to write up their own curriculum for the next year and submit it. Most of the books were from the mid 1800s.
I became very good friends (and still am) with the assistant superintendent, who became a proponent of homeschooling.
One day he was telling me how frustrated he was with the teachers and administrators who were fighting him over some tests. He just wanted to "test the test" with a number of tests. They were afraid of how poorly the students might do.
I told him we paid to have our kids tested, so why not use them, and we would make it a school project for them to critique the tests for him.
Saved us some money, they were the most tested students around, and he got his info on the tests.
Best of luck w the USAF Academy, I somehow believe that they would be major successes and super assets to our fine Country when they're in Cadet uniform (and beyond).
I finally got the principal to do his job after the threat of a lawsuit, and the boy apologized, they even became friends.
Because of learning of the incompetent teaching, we homeschooled not long after that.
I get the sarcasm.
I’m not going to miss a chance to be pro American-
that is an American innovation and was a noble pursuit until the commies took over our education system.
Yep ... the very idea is an over-reach of government power. Many (most?) States, however, have government schools baked into their constitutions. Removing them will be a challenge.
Time to start challengingnthe constitutionality of federally controlled public schools …as well as voting other than at polling stations….FBI etc, etc.
Lost me right there.
Whoever wrote this drivel suffers from psychological projection. Government-run schools have been hell holes and daycare centers for decades. They are desinged to produce crops of timid, ill-educated conformists.
“When a traditional classroom setting cannot meet the...needs of a child, homeschooling can allow parents to take over.”
Parents do not need to “take over” their rightful obligation, nor justify the exercise thereof. Outsourcing to disinterested clock-watchers is a peculiar form of parental love.
They gasp at Young Creationism while insisting some immaterial ‘truth’ exists outside one’s physical sex which can dictate reality. Very scientific, dontchaknow?
The “standards” they reference are, in many cases, nothing but teach-to-the-test methods. Like every other homeschool parent I’ve met,I do not care if my children can pass a test. I care whether they can understand and apply the knowledge they receive. This is often not a goal among the “standard-driven” public educators.
Yeah, we need high academic standards, like the public schools have...
As someone who homeschooled our kids, I always can tell a homeschooled kid when I meet them. They are intelligent, conversive and respectful.
Let the family that is homeschooling set the standard.
I agree. However, benchmarks are nice so you know where you should.
It’s just nice to know where the child should be as an average, imo. However, I am not saying that the government should be involved.
Pfft. I homeschooling my 4 in Oregon. At first we had to report standardized test results annually even though public Scholls only had to every 3 years. Then they dropped the requirements to match PS requirements. Then we only had to provide proof that we were testing but not the actual test scores.
The reason the decided to no longer keep actual test score records was so that no one could FOIA the records and co.pare HS scores to PS scores anymore.
What about transparency? (Don't answer my question lol)
Uniform?! Uniform?! Whatever happened to Diversity?
Usurping parental authority is the primary goal of authoritarian government.
Not to mention having to explain why minorities cannot achieve equality in school.
When little Bobbie or John graduate from government schools unable to read write ,count past10 without using their toes home schoolers ain’t the problem
!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.