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Keeping Homeschooling Private
Homeschoolers have been vigilant in protecting their rights, rising
to the occasion when they discover threats to clamp down on their
activities.
by Isabel Lyman
from _The New American_, Sept. 8, 2003
''There's no place like home" has become the mantra of successful
homeschoolers. By most measures -- scholastic, social, economic
-- the modern homeschooling movement is a triumph. The actual undertaking
requires initiative, patience, and, in many cases, financial sacrifice.
But this grand educational adventure continues to work because resourceful
homeschoolers have largely been left alone.
Unfortunately, it is the "home alone" aspect that scares
opponents, who waste precious human resources criticizing this successful
private-sector, parent-managed endeavor. Meanwhile, thousands of
ill-supervised children have languished, decade after decade, in
public schools .
Rob Reich, a Stanford University assistant professor of political
science, is one such critic. In a paper entitled "Testing the
Boundaries of Parental Authority over Education: The Case of Homeschooling,"
Reich states, "... I argue ... that at a bare minimum one function
of any school environment must be to expose children to and engage
students with values and beliefs other than those they are likely
to encounter within their homes. Because homeschooling is structurally
and in practice the least likely to meet this end, I argue that
while the state should not ban homeschooling it must nevertheless
regulate its practice with vigilance."
This attitude is seen in the resolution passed by the Representative
Assembly of the National Education Association (NEA). Last July,
at their annual summer convention, the NEA passed Resolution B-69,
which states that "home schooling programs cannot provide the
student with a comprehensive education experience."
But the NEA cannot begin to inflict the same kind of damage on
homeschoolers as can zealous state officials. Phonics specialist
and homeschooling advocate Samuel Blumenfeld has observed: "Today
the law is not being used to force delinquents and truants into
the schools, but to harass and regulate home schoolers..."
In Blumenfeld's home state of Massachusetts, Kim and George Bryant,
homeschooling parents, endured a seven-hour standoff with police
officers and social service employees merely because the Bryant
children -- teenagers Nicholas and Nyssa -- declined to take a standardized
test ordered by the Department of Social Services.
|| Revolt in the Constitution State ||
Like minutemen of old, homeschooling families must also be ready
to fight unexpected assaults on their rights. For example, last
year in Connecticut, home educators challenged the Act Concerning
Independent Instruction, which contained a tedious list of new mandates,
including ones requiring homeschooling parents to possess a high
school diploma, as well as have their individual curriculum plans
scrutinized by school superintendents.
The _Hartford Courant_ reported that state Rep. Cameron Staples
(D-New Haven), the act's sponsor, championed this proposal because
in Connecticut "the only law on home schooling requires parents
to let local school districts know that they plan to teach their
children at home." Apparently, this approach was too _laissez
faire_ for the lawmaker, and one wonders what Staples would do if
he were in Oklahoma, where there is no requirement for parents to
initiate contact with the state if they choose to homeschool their
children.
Staples and his ilk, however, were probably not expecting scores
of parents to challenge his clumsy attempt to increase homeschool
regulations. Diane Connors, president of the Connecticut Homeschool
Network, sent an e-mail to parents and other concerned citizens,
alerting them to the public hearing regarding the bill. Her dispatch
was wildly successful. On March 4, 2002, over 1,000 people -- many
coming from the Legislative Office building in Hartford -- attended
the hearing to voice their opposition to the House version of the
act (H.B. 5535). According to Connors, only one Connecticut superintendent
showed up to support the legislation.
Summarizing the prevailing sentiment against the bill, homeschooling
parent John Paradis was quoted in the _Courant_ as explaining, "We
have removed our kids from the public schools because we think the
public schools are not educating our students properly. This [the
bill] puts their education back in the hands of the public schools."
Legislators didn't ignore the outcry. On March 22, 2002, H.B. 5535
died, missing the deadline for receiving a favorable vote.
|| Big Sky Showdown ||
Even though no evidence exists indicating that state regulation
improves homeschoolers' performance, legislators continue their
campaigns to control and restrict home education. This year, another
showdown -- like the one in Connecticut -- occurred in Montana.
State Senator Don Ryan (D-Great Falls) sponsored Senate Bill No.
276. If the legislation passed, it would have required homeschoolers
to take state assessment tests to measure academic competency. Even
though Montana is a state with an undemanding existing homeschooling
law and where homeschoolers had outperformed public school students
on national standardized tests, the responsible were to be penalized.
Ryan, employing the emotional language of left-wing children's rights
advocates, said he was concerned about protecting at-risk children
from "inadequate" or "abusive" parents.
On February 12, 2003, hundreds of Montana homeschoolers, alerted
by phone and e-mail chains by another attentive parent (Steve White,
the legislative liaison for the Montana Coalition of Home Educators),
converged on the capitol in Helena to lobby against the bill. The
arguments the Senate Education Committee heard ranged from the unfairness
of testing homeschoolers on material they had not studied, to being
held to higher standards than their lower-performing public school
counterparts, to concerns about state infringement on teaching religious
beliefs.
The hearing lasted a record four hours, and nearly 500 Montana
citizens signed the hearing registry as opponents of the bill. Home
School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) lawyer Dewitt T. Black
wrote in an e-mail alert that "over 50 people testified against
it." Only one person -- Senator Don Ryan -- spoke in favor.
The education committee voted 9-1 to "postpone indefinitely,"
insuring that S.B. 276 was dead on arrival.
|| Never-Ending Battles ||
J. Michael Smith, president of HSLDA, notes that his organization
lobbied against a cache of bad bills during the 2002-03 school year.
"We had nine states where there were specific threats to home
school freedom that we lobbied: Montana state assessment test required
for home schools; North Dakota state assessment test; Nevada state
assessment test; Wyoming state assessment test; California habitual
truants would be treated as educational neglect; Texas would have
required registration of home schoolers; Colorado habitual truants
would be treated as educational neglect; Louisiana attempted to
do away with private school exemption for homeschoolers; and Virginia
wanted home schoolers to pass the standards of learning tests given
to public school students. None of these bills were successfully
passed. "
Clearly, some state legislators are trying to regulate a nonexistent
problem. These lawmakers are trying to hinder, not help, the vast
majority of homeschoolers. They are also unprepared to deal with
the fierce opposition and almost zero public support that their
meddling produces.
The only assistance state lawmakers can offer home educators is
to deregulate homeschooling -- eliminate cumbersome laws and not
introduce new, costly legislation. Some states are catching on.
The opening of a story from the _Oakland Tribune_ was pleasantly
surprising: "Just nine months after declaring homeschooling
largely illegal, the California Department of Education recently
reversed its position, pronouncing the practice as essentially none
of the state's business." The California Department of Education,
in fact, has begun referring interested parties to statewide homeschooling
organizations to receive their information.
Frederic Bastiat, the 19th-century French economist, could have
been writing about deregulating homeschooling when he opined, "It
[the law] can permit this transaction of teaching-and-learning to
operate freely and without use of force...." Perhaps more American
legislators will get the message: Homeschooling works best when
it is left alone.
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(*) Isabel Lyman is the author of _The Homeschooling
Revolution_ (2000) http://tinyurl.com/lv0m .
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Copyright © 2003, American Opinion Publishing, Inc.
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Related Web Sites
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Connecticut Homeschool Network: http://www.cthomeschoolnetwork.org/
Montana Coalition of Home Educators: http://www.mtche.org/
Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) http://www.hslda.org
"Testing the Boundaries of Parental Authority over Education:
The Case of Homeschooling" by Robert Reich: http://tinyurl.com/lv21
NEA passed Resolution B-69: http://tinyurl.com/lv26
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NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107,
this material is distributed without profit or payment
to those who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving this information for non-profit research and
educational purposes only.
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