But children deserve a safe and robust education
I doubt 8% of HSed kids are getting beat up at home.
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.
But children deserve a safe and robust education
I doubt 8% of HSed kids are getting beat up at home.
Ping
Government schools need standards that they actually have to live up to.
Get back to us when that happens.
Let the homeschool association set the standard.
The government is the reason so many are homeschooling. Stay out of it.
I have no problem with the homeschool association setting guidelines to help parents know if their child is at grade level in a subject, but keep the government out.
They always wanna get into and run everyone else’s business.
These “bureaucrats can all go ESAD.
“The federal government must develop basic standards for safety and quality of education in homeschooling across the country.”
That would be the death knell of homeschooling. The Feds want to bring all schooling (homeschooling and private schools) down to the level of the government schools. The old “I’ve from the federal government and I’m here to help you” should send a shiver up everyone’s spine.
We need to follow our Constitution. The federal government has no right to stick its nose into education. That’s right - the Department of Education has no Constitutional basis and the federal government has no right to regulate home schooling.
Any parent who allows their child to go to a government school is exposing their child to abuse.
I wondered if they were talking about the abuse in the government schools. There has been plenty of that, starting with indoctrination, all the way up to sexual manipulation and mutilation.
Until the vastly over funded and extremely violent public school system starts giving a flaming flip about the children in their kiddy prisons they can fluff off.
Here they go...calling for rules, regulations, oversight, control, DEI & homo/trannie subjwct matter.
any standards dictated by the government will guarantee government ordering you to teach your kid woke garbage along with environmental lies.
chevron ruling says to unelected agency wonks
” NUNYA “ !!!
“I have no problem with the homeschool association setting guidelines to help parents know if their child is at grade level in a subject, but keep the government out.”
Amen on steroids.
Precisely why homeschoolers are far more successful in life than the indoctrinated morons flowing out of government schools...
Thomas Jefferson was home schooled and he wrote the Declaration of Independence at age 26.
Four of my 10 grandchildren are homeschooled. Three of them are in the Civil Air Patrol, learning to fly, and two of them are planning to apply to the Air Force Academy.
Does the uniform come with a star on the vest.?
My nephew was attacked at school in front of security. He had his jaw broken and missed 6 weeks of school. The kid that started the fight and broke his jaw missed one day of school. The school refused to prosecute him even with a adult eye witness who was there for security.
Then the video that they said they had of the fight was somehow lost.
On the other hand my daughter who we homeschooled started college when she was 17. She now has to bachelor degrees. The two bachelor degrees biochemistry/cell and molecular biology and anthropology.
I did not want her in public school to pick up the bad habits from other students. My two kids were so well behaved that when the IRS did a audit at my house the auditor was shocked and commented how well behaved they were. As compared to the kid who broke my nephews jaw.
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