It’s hard to figure out where to start when discussing this topic because it is both a personal and professional issue for me. I am trained as a policy analyst and am also a former homeschooler, so I could write something long and technical, but I won’t, not today anyway. I’ll just tell the general story of what I know about homeschooling regulations.
I will begin by simply saying we desperately need them – formal registration, requirements for some form of standardized testing at some point (or points) during childhood on core subjects, for girls to be mandated the same level and quality education as boys, for homeschool teachers to have at least graduated 12th grade or the equivalent, and for convicted abusers to be legally banned from homeschooling. Obvious stuff, right? Happening already, right?
Well, no. Read the rest at Libby Anne’s blog here where I am guest posting today.
Also, if you want to be involved in calling for better protections for homeschooled children, feel free to email me at becomingworldly(at)gmail(dot)com. I am trying to put together a plan to do so and would love to hear from people interested in helping to get the word out in your state. 🙂
Becoming Worldly 
LOVE YOU!
Yes – way too many people have been hurt by the nonexistent standards of home schooling! How do you plan to institute standards? I would love to read more about it!
Hi Heather,
I’m a soon-to-be homeschool mom (oldest kid is 4). As a kid, my parents spent several years in a fundamentalist church and I went to its tiny fundamentalist A.C.E church school. (I think these little schools may have been the dominant model for fundamentalists prior to the legalization of homeschool.) Although my parents later moderated (they still self-identity as fundamentalist, but they aren’t particularly legalistic or judgmental), I can relate to a lot of the psychological trauma issues that you and other homeschoolers faced. (I’ve been reading a lot of the stories on Homeschoolers Anonymous.)
As a social worker, child welfare professional and lawyer (whom, in retrospect, really should have just gotten a policy degree), I do agree that some oversight for homeschooling is a good idea, but I don’t think that what you propose would work to stop much of the abuse that you and others in your position faced, particularly the psychological and spiritual abuse. It might be able to stop more significant physical neglect of basic needs and physical abuse, but even those might escape close scrutiny without significant oversight beyond homeschool regulation.
Our child welfare laws make psychological/emotional abuse difficult to substantiate in all but the most extreme circumstances, particularly where there is no other evidence of abuse or neglect. When you add in religion to the mix, it’s even harder because many of the beliefs and teachings that are traumatic are part of the belief system, and would probably be found protected under the First Amendment. Fundamentalist beliefs are very insidious. it is extremely difficult for me to see supported abuse allegations and effective intervention outside of extreme cult-like situations, like the Texas FLDS case about 5 years ago (even that didn’t really work, since many of those kids were returned home in a short time).
The second area that I strongly disagree with you about is standardized testing. The extreme adoption of high-stakes standardized testing is already exposing stuff that is bad for children. Kids are having their educations narrowed to what is taught on the tests and losing other beneficial forms of education and developmental tasks that cannot be easily tested, like free play time, art, music, etc. Because standardized testing is now linked to funding and teacher evaluations in many places, kids are also facing pressure to perform and some times even being told that they need to do well because their teacher will lose his/her job or the school will lose funding. (The Washington Post Answer Sheet blog is a great place to follow these types of stories.)
Now, try applying that last you-must–perform-well part to a shame-based parenting, fundamentalist homeschool family. Imagine what it would be like to not be good at standardized tests, or sick the day you took it, or someone that struggles with a particular subject, and to be a kids in that type of homeschool family. I have no doubt that in some families, a poor performance would be based on the child. Parents saying things like “We can’t homeschool because of you.” And punishment, perhaps lots of it.
There are other alternative assessment measures that can be used that can show a child’s progress, be beneficial to the child and encompass unschooling styles as well as other approaches. One approach is a portfolio requirement. E-portfolios are already widely recognized in the traditional educational agenda and would not be difficult to adapt to homeschoolers. The downside is that this requires actual review and assessment by the government , and would cost more than just looking at a score. Currently, this is a reporting option where I live, Massachusetts. Progress reports and standardized testing are also allowed. Most people use progress reporting, but the downside to that is it gives parents a chance to lie, and would not be a good solution to the problems you envision. Overall, Massachusetts has a fair oversight system, although since it is administered locally, there can be wide variations on how har or easy it is to comply.
I like some of your other suggestions, as I do see a need to keep people with known abuse histories (especially sexual abuse) from homeschooling. Beyond that, however, criminal history based bans are difficult, since people with nonviolent criminal histories may be perfectly fine as parents and homeschoolers, and would need to be assessed on a case-by-case (read: expensive) basis.
Hi Karen,
First off I want to apologize for not approving your comment right away. Somehow it ended up in the spam folder. Anyway, I agree with you that making policy is hard and there are plenty of unintended consequences that can happen from perfectly good intentions and even the best polices aren’t 100% successful because you’re dealing with implementation issues and the overall complexity of human beings.
I think the issue of abuse and neglect in a homeschooling setting runs smack into the poor (underresourced) condition of our child welfare systems and the often dismissive view we have of children as people in society. While we can’t fix everything else before we fix the homeschooling issue, we can tackle the issues incrementally. Personally, I’d think that both sex offenders and felons should not be homeschooling. If they’d be precluded from coaching the local soccer team they simply should not be working as a full time home educator.
Also, I think that because my parents were legalists, if they’d had rules they had to follow, people they had to check in with, they’d have handled it differently, not let it get so out-of-control. I realize some of these protections seem like a small bandaid on a big wound but we have to start somewhere and sadly that somewhere is at the very bottom in a lot of places.
Personally, I like the idea of portfolios and I think that states that want to do right by their homeschoolers and have smart regulation would do well to use them. There are risks with them though, and although this Onion article is satire, a joke, I think it adequately portrays the potential issue at hand.
I also like the idea of standardized tests. Here’s the thing, I’m not into the “teach to the test” freakout that public schools got into recently or the insidious idea that tests determine whether kids are “smart” or “not smart.” Also, while a lot of kids who take the high stakes tests in school are tested on whether they know a certain curriculum, there are other tests, like the IOWA test, that test core competences. That latter sort are the kind of standardized testing that I like, and I think it’s best not to lump these two kinds of tests together into one big mess.
Also, tests don’t have to be scary. I took my very first test at age 12 and it was such a relief to me to finally know where I was and where I wasn’t. Assessments can provide peace of mind in that you are not guessing but instead have a good outline of what you know, so if you have gaps you can consider how to fill them, and if you do well you can smile knowing the metrics are in your favor. Also, if someone is not doing well on such a test, it indicates that there is need for remediation and likely a change in instruction methods.
As far as parents using test scores to verbally abuse kids, sure that is a risk, but as someone who came from an abusive setting I can say that just about any excuse for verbal abuse was taken and used and I’m glad that the ability of my parents to make fun of me and guilt me was not a reason for me not to get tested.
In short, I think that while you can make a case for why something might go wrong in a lot of cases, fact is that something is wrong right now and I feel that we are mortally obligated to look for improvements, ways to protect the most vulnerable members of our society, as imperfect as those solutions may be.
Hi Heather,
I’m a soon-to-be homeschool mom (oldest kid is 4). As a kid, my parents spent several years in a fundamentalist church and I went to its tiny fundamentalist A.C.E church school. (I think these little schools may have been the dominant model for fundamentalists prior to the legalization of homeschool.) Although my parents later moderated (they still self-identity as fundamentalist, but they aren’t particularly legalistic or judgmental), I can relate to a lot of the psychological trauma issues that you and other homeschoolers faced. (I’ve been reading a lot of the stories on Homeschoolers Anonymous.)
As a social worker, child welfare professional and lawyer (whom, in retrospect, really should have just gotten a policy degree), I do agree that some oversight for homeschooling is a good idea, but I don’t think that what you propose would work to stop much of the abuse that you and others in your position faced, particularly the psychological and spiritual abuse. It might be able to stop more significant physical neglect of basic needs and physical abuse, but even those might escape close scrutiny without significant oversight beyond homeschool regulation.
Our child welfare laws make psychological/emotional abuse difficult to substantiate in all but the most extreme circumstances, particularly where there is no other evidence of abuse or neglect. When you add in religion to the mix, it’s even harder because many of the beliefs and teachings that are traumatic are part of the belief system, and would probably be found protected under the First Amendment. Fundamentalist beliefs are very insidious. it is extremely difficult for me to see supported abuse allegations and effective intervention outside of extreme cult-like situations, like the Texas FLDS case about 5 years ago (even that didn’t really work, since many of those kids were returned home in a short time).
The second area that I strongly disagree with you about is standardized testing. The extreme adoption of high-stakes standardized testing is already exposing stuff that is bad for children. Kids are having their educations narrowed to what is taught on the tests and losing other beneficial forms of education and developmental tasks that cannot be easily tested, like free play time, art, music, etc. Because standardized testing is now linked to funding and teacher evaluations in many places, kids are also facing pressure to perform and some times even being told that they need to do well because their teacher will lose his/her job or the school will lose funding. (The Washington Post Answer Sheet blog is a great place to follow these types of stories.)
Now, try applying that last you-must–perform-well part to a shame-based parenting, fundamentalist homeschool family. Imagine what it would be like to not be good at standardized tests, or sick the day you took it, or someone that struggles with a particular subject, and to be a kids in that type of homeschool family. I have no doubt that in some families, a poor performance would be based on the child. Parents saying things like “We can’t homeschool because of you.” And punishment, perhaps lots of it.
There are other alternative assessment measures that can be used that can show a child’s progress, be beneficial to the child and encompass unschooling styles as well as other approaches. One approach is a portfolio requirement. E-portfolios are already widely recognized in the traditional educational agenda and would not be difficult to adapt to homeschoolers. The downside is that this requires actual review and assessment by the government , and would cost more than just looking at a score. Currently, this is a reporting option where I live, Massachusetts. Progress reports and standardized testing are also allowed. Most people use progress reporting, but the downside to that is it gives parents a chance to lie, and would not be a good solution to the problems you envision. Overall, Massachusetts has a fair oversight system, although since it is administered locally, there can be wide variations on how har or easy it is to comply.
I like some of your other suggestions, as I do see a need to keep people with known abuse histories (especially sexual abuse) from homeschooling. Beyond that, however, criminal history based bans are difficult, since people with nonviolent criminal histories may be perfectly fine as parents and homeschoolers, and would need to be assessed on a case-by-case (read: expensive) basis.