I'm in PA which is apparently one of the more regulated states for homeschooling, so I'm frankly a little shocked that there aren't milestones and tests that all homeschooled kids have to complete. I have no problem with people homeschooling if those kids are getting a good education and aren't just being allowed to run rampant. That is what the testing would ensure.
If we want to come down to rights, I think every child has a right to a quality education that enables them to be a functional, productive, well-adjusted member of society. This does not conflict with a parent's right to home school responsibly. I'm sick of people assuming that because they have the right to do something they have the right to take it to an extreme, possibly even to the detriment of society.
I'm having trouble expressing this well because really, I don't have a problem with homeschooling. But I do think that refusing any oversight allows a lot of kids who will someday have to be functioning adults to fall through the cracks. It's like not vaccinating because it's a choice parents are making for people (not just kids, people) without that affected group's input. Until those kids grow up and can make their own decisions there is absolutely nothing wrong with more adults checking in on those children to make sure their needs are being met.
I just don't get how people who are not teachers think they can better educated their children than people who are teachers.
I mean, I'm a lawyer. I'm pretty smart. I did really well in school. I'd never delude myself into thinking I'm remotely qualified to teach my kid algebra or chemistry.
This. My H has a doctorate in American history and has taught at the college level but he states he is completely unqualified to teach any other subject, especially at the early childhood level.
I have a PhD in horticulture, and feel similarly to your husband. For elementary school, I think my knowledge of all subjects would be completely adequate to teach, but it's the teaching methods I lack that make me feel uncomfortable doing it. I'd probably do OK in some subjects, and would be horrible at others beyond elementary, in terms of subject knowledge.
ETA that I agree with @silver on this: "I'm having trouble expressing this well because really, I don't have a problem with homeschooling. But I do think that refusing any oversight allows a lot of kids who will someday have to be functioning adults to fall through the cracks."
I'm fine if someone feels that homeschooling their kids is the best choice for them. BUT, I think there needs to be some oversight. Personally, I never want to homeschool - I know it's just not something I'm cut out to do.
Another thing I will never understand: people who think the state has no interest in ensuring its citizens get at least a basic education.
Again, not a question.
I find it highly amusing that someone who is an advocate and practitioner of homeschooling can't tell the difference between declarative and interrogative sentences.
My parents also had to file paperwork with the state every year indicating they intended to home school. I don't know about medical records though, and I'm sure it's different based on state laws.
I just don't get how people who are not teachers think they can better educated their children than people who are teachers.
I mean, I'm a lawyer. I'm pretty smart. I did really well in school. I'd never delude myself into thinking I'm remotely qualified to teach my kid algebra or chemistry.
This. My H has a doctorate in American history and has taught at the college level but he states he is completely unqualified to teach any other subject, especially at the early childhood level.
This is hugely important. Plenty of people can be experts in their field, but the critical components of learning different subject matter and developing critical thinking, problem solving and the like come from being taught by people who are professionally trained in teaching technique. That's why we have education as a field of study for professional teachers, rather than just throwing someone who has a degree in History to teach civics to 6th graders.
I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing (although I'd like to put more research into bill especially the medical test specifications). It feels like a system to make sure children are on track with the same educational level as their peers.
I wasn't homeschooled but I've been talking about it lately with my husband. He's active duty so we have multiple resources at our fingertips that I find beneficial such as: networking with other homeschooling families, use of materials/labs/gyms, and group activities such as socializing for kids. I've known of some homeschooling communities that network and think having those resources available could bring more potential learning/socialization for homeschoolers.
I could be reaching here but I think that is what the bill is trying to do, and to also help children that may be in abusive/neglectful situations.
I am confused about medical tests. Other than kindergarten entry, we haven't had to provide proof of medical testing to my DS's public school. Are other states different? I do think that parents should have to notify the state about kids being home schooled.
We have a mandatory physical for K, 6 and 11. Mandatory immunization reporting in K and 7, and mandatory dental exam in K, 3 and 7.
I know that they used to do height and weight measurements annually at the school, as well as vision and hearing screenings that students would be flagged for at-home follow up if your results indicated possible vision/hearing loss.
My problem is that it's not the government's business.
That would be crazy. We as parents have the freedom to choose what we feed our kids
Education is the same to me. There are always going to be crappy parents who don't care about their kids. I just don't think limiting freedom of the good parents is the Constitutional solution.
Listen, I think not vaccinating is unwise, but I will fight for the parental freedom to make that choice for your kids and vaccinating is way different than homeschooling. Homeschooling isn't a public health concern. I guess I'm rigid when it comes to my convictions. It just isn't the government's right to involve themselves in my kids' educations. If a nosy neighbor suspects neglect, there are legal actions the government can take and if CPS wants to knock on my door they have that option. And I am blessed to have HSLDA to fight for me if that happens.
You are dead-wrong here. It is ABSOLUTELY the government's business whether or not children are being educated. Why do you think there is compulsory schooling (of some sort) until the age of 16?
A parent's freedom to choose what they feed their children (again, I'm assuming you aren't parenting baby goats) is limited. If I chose to feed my infant only tofu water, that child would rightfully be removed from my custody.
The proposed law in NJ could have prevented a hideous case of neglect. How many other cases could be prevented?
I'll put myself out there and say I was homeschooled from kindergarten through high school. And because I was a female being brought up in the patriarchy, my high school "curriculum" pretty much consisted of home economics. Cooking, cleaning, etc...
I was fortunate that my parents believed children should be allowed to teach themselves. Meaning if a kid is interested in learning about something - feed that interest! I was interested in astronomy, so they helped me get all sorts of books on space and space exploration. I wanted to write, so they tried to help and encourage me to do that.
What that did was teach me that I could teach myself anything. I went on to excel in college (though not socially) and I've recently earned a master's degree. Networking and progressing in a career is a completely different story.
My parents' kids didn't fall through the cracks, but I will not be homeschooling my kids (if I decide to have any).
Ditto this but I was only homeschooled for 8th-10th grades.
I have seen the far reaching impacts of HSLDA and the anti-government paranoia in those groups, though, firsthand. I don't support the right of anyone w/o a teaching credential being able to homeschool their children.
There may be nothing I hate more than the "slippery slope" argument. No matter the subject. It's lazy, and used as a "la, la, la...I'm not listening to logic" tactic.
If a nosy neighbor suspects neglect, there are legal actions the government can take and if CPS wants to knock on my door they have that option.
What if there is no nosy neighbor? What if children are being beaten and starved, and since they don't attend school and there are no nosy neighbors, nobody sees them to notice the bruises, the weight loss, the teenager who weighs 45 pounds?
AW, when your children are older, what's your plan for teaching them Physics or Calculus?
That was a question.
I am confident in my ability to teach Calculus. I tested out of it in college and with the teacher's manual could easily refresh enough to teach.
At the rate my kids are going, they will be done with most of their studies by probably age 16. I will encourage them to take PSEO or other options at the college level while still living at home until age 18.
Locsl homeschool group also has some parents with science degrees. They offer co-op classes for high school students.
There are lots of options and the point of homeschooling is to pick the one that will work best for each individual kid. I have one highly motivated self-teacher that I can already see wanting to teach himself higher level subjects. I was kind of like that as a kid, too. We'll see
ETA. I am the only one of my siblings to take calculus or physics in high school It wasn't required when I was young. Yet one sister got her phd in psychology and another got her masters in literature. My kids won't be required to take those courses unless they want to. If yhey want to go to a college that requires them or go into a field of study that requires them, I am there to teach them. But once they hit high school, they will have the freedom to choose their path. I am there to facilitate and teach as needed.
There may be nothing I hate more than the "slippery slope" argument. No matter the subject. It's lazy, and used as a "la, la, la...I'm not listening to logic" tactic.
Infinite regression regarding "government overstretch" is a logical fallacy as well. Not to get all debate nerdy or anything but yeah, it's bullshit.
If a nosy neighbor suspects neglect, there are legal actions the government can take and if CPS wants to knock on my door they have that option.
What if there is no nosy neighbor? What if children are being beaten and starved, and since they don't attend school and there are no nosy neighbors, nobody sees them to notice the bruises, the weight loss, the teenager who weighs 45 pounds?
Who's looking out for those children?
I won't link it, but there is a really horrifying case out of Detroit where two kids were missing and turned up being dead for several years before authorities realized what was going on in the home (I won't link because its disturbing). These kids hadn't been in school or seen in years and somehow no one missed them. I wonder if a database for homeschooled kids would have helped in a situation like that.
Post by sparkythelawyer on Aug 27, 2015 12:17:50 GMT -5
I don't have a problem with homeschooling per se. I think it is a perfectly valid alternative for children who do not prosper in the current schooling environment. But I think it is reasonable for a state to insist on some sort of documentation that the student is actually learning something during this homeschooling, and that there are some safety measures in place to make sure these kids don't fall through the social welfare cracks.
AW, when your children are older, what's your plan for teaching them Physics or Calculus?
That was a question.
I took neither as a public school grad, somehow I turned out ok :-)
Neither were required in mine either, bit my point was that there's undoubtedly going to come a time where your kids are more advanced than you or there'll be a subject you're not comfortable with.
It seems the answer is "have someone else teach it."
On September 9, the parents of Hana Williams, an Ethiopian teenager living in the state of Washington, were convicted of killing her. During the last year of her life, court documents show, she had lost almost 30 pounds as she was beaten, denied food, forced to sleep in a barn, and given cold outdoor showers with a garden hose. Much of the time she was kept barefoot, although she was allowed shoes if there was snow on the ground. Sometimes she was given nothing but a towel to wear. If Williams had been in school, someone might have noticed that she was underdressed and emaciated. But she was homeschooled, and so her parents, fundamentalist Christians in thrall to a harsh disciplinary philosophy, had complete privacy to punish her as they saw fit. She died naked, face down in the mud in their backyard.
Williams is far from the only homeschooled kid to be tortured or murdered in recent years. Exactly how many is hard to say—research on homeschoolers is incredibly spotty, and what exists is mostly done by homeschooling advocates. But Heather Doney and Rachel Coleman, two women who themselves grew up in homeschooling families, have documented dozens of horrific cases on their website, Homeschooling’s Invisible Children, which launched in May. A database of local news stories and official documents, the site is searchable by category, including Fatality, Food Deprivation, Imprisonment, Physical Abuse and Sexual Abuse. Under Sexual Abuse, to take just one of them, Doney and Coleman found almost 70 victims since 2000—and those are just cases that made the papers.
Coleman, an Indiana University Ph.D. student who studies the role of children in the Christian right, does not believe that homeschooling parents are more abusive than others. Some 1.5 million Americans kids are taught at home, and there’s no reason to think that more than a small fraction of them are subject to severe violence. Indeed, Coleman says she wouldn’t even rule out homeschooling her own children. But she argues that because the practice is almost entirely unregulated in much of the country, it can make abusive situations worse, allowing parents to hide their crimes and denying kids access to outside authority. “Homeschooling enables parents to isolate children,” Coleman says. “That can enable them to abuse them.”
April Duvall, 33, is a member of an online support group for women who grew up in fundamentalist homeschooling families. Before her parents stopped sending her to school, she says, her father, a far-right evangelical pastor, worried that he’d get in trouble if he left marks on her after a beating. “My parents were abusive as long as I can remember, but my dad was afraid they would get caught,” Duvall says. Then, in second grade, her mother started teaching her at home, and “my dad stopped being scared that he would get caught.”
Indeed, when kids are homeschooled, it’s easy for the world to forget that they exist. In August, Erica Lynn Parsons, a 15-year-old girl ostensibly being homeschooled in North Carolina by her adoptive parents, was reported missing by her stepbrother; it soon emerged that she hadn’t been seen since 2011. Her birth mother is now calling for an “Erica’s law” that would provide greater oversight of homeschooling.
Right now there’s remarkably little. In 10 states, homeschooling is completely unregulated, and in 15 more, parents only have to notify their school district that their kids will be learning at home. There are no minimum educational standards for teachers, no curriculum review, no testing or monitoring to make sure that any education is taking place at all. Duvall, for example, says she had to teach herself out of textbooks from Bob Jones University. “If I didn’t do it, nobody made me do it,” she says. “I wanted to go to college.” Her two youngest siblings had it even worse. Their mother, Duvall says, “gave them an impossible list of housework tasks they had do before they were allowed to do schoolwork. I think she just didn’t want them to leave home, ever.”
Even in states with more regulation, like North Carolina, required testing is administered by parents, who are responsible for mailing the results to authorities. “The law gives its officials no right to enter homes or to inspect any records besides test scores,” says a state legal summary put out by the Home School Legal Defense Association, the nation’s premier Christian homeschooling organization.
The Home School Legal Defense Association was founded in 1983, just as homeschooling was catching on among an ascendant Christian right. Many in the movement believed that public schools indoctrinated children in godless secularism and saw homeschooling as a way to give their kids an education steeped in biblical values. At first, homeschoolers faced a great deal of official resistance—some states banned homeschooling outright, while others strictly limited it. During the past 30 years, though, HSLDA has successfully fought to eliminate or drastically loosen those regulations.
Meanwhile, the practice has grown rapidly—according to the National Center on Education Statistics, the number of homeschooled kids increased by 74 percent between 1999 and 2007. No one knows how many of these kids come from deeply religious families, but it’s clear that conservative Christians constitute the single largest bloc.
Among the evangelical homeschooling subculture, there’s an assumption that “anyone who is in favor of increased regulation really wants to ban homeschooling,” says Coleman. Any attempt to curtail the authority of parents, no matter how abusive they might be, is treated as a slippery slope. Michael Farris, the founder of HSLDA, even wrote a novel, Anonymous Tip, about an innocent homeschooling family persecuted by corrupt agents of child protective services. The power of the movement was demonstrated as far back as 1990, when Florida considered a law that would have required the names of homeschooling parents to be run through a child-abuse registry. “Homeschoolers freaked out, opposed the law, and killed it,” Coleman says. Indeed, one Florida homeschooling organization still touts that victory on its website. This sort of lobbying means that in many places, violent parents who keep their kids out of school can rule them unchecked.
In general, such parents fall into two broad categories. Some are simply trying to hide abuse and keep kids wholly under their control, like the Ohio pedophile Kenneth Brandt, who was convicted last year of raping and prostituting his adopted homeschooled sons. In other families, though, the abuse and the homeschooling stem from the same rigid religious ideology.
The parents of Hana Williams, for example, subscribed to the teachings of Michael and Debi Pearl, promoters of an authoritarian, proudly patriarchal variant of Christian fundamentalism that emphasizes a wife’s total submission to her husband and children’s total submission to their parents. The Pearl’s influential book, To Train Up a Child, advocates whipping children with a thin tree branch from the time they’re just a few months old and has sold well over half a million copies. Their followers have been involved in several child killings, including the 2010 murder of 7-year-old Lydia Schatz, whose homeschooling adoptive parents were convicted of beating her to death for mispronouncing a word.
Coleman, 26, who says her own parents were followers of the Pearls, has a few theories as to why many of these cases involve adopted kids. The eldest of 12 children, she and her siblings were accustomed to harsh discipline their entire lives and knew better than to try and rebel. “Because they started with us so young, there weren’t as many long, drawn-out battles of the will,” she says. “We knew that obedience was immediate, complete, and without question.”
Adopted kids, however, don’t have such long training in submission. Further, says Coleman, they don’t have a lifetime of bonding with their parents, which “can tend to be kind of a staying hand.” (The Pearls recognize that love can interfere with their child training, which is why they warn parents not to let crying “cause you to lighten up on the intensity or duration of the spanking.”) Of course, adoptive parents usually love their kids, too, but, especially with older children, the connection isn’t necessarily immediate. Nor is tenderness likely to develop, Coleman says, “if you start out viewing that child as someone that is evil and needs to have their will broken.”
Sometimes in the wake of a homeschooling death, there will be official calls for reform. In 2011 in Florida, the adoptive parents of 10-year-old Nubia Barahona were arrested for her murder, as well as for the horrific abuse of her twin brother, Victor. Afterward, the state convened an expert panel to review how its social-service systems had failed. In their report (PDF), the panelists wrote that school officials had tried to intervene, noting their “diligence as caring professionals.” In 2010, however, the Barahonas began homeschooling, “taking away most of their visibility to outside eyes and increasing the danger that abuse and neglect would go unrecognized. This was further compounded by the lack of formal requirements relating to the monitoring of students being homeschooled.” (The Barhonas are expected to go on trial next year.)
I took neither as a public school grad, somehow I turned out ok :-)
Neither were required in mine either, bit my point was that there's undoubtedly going to come a time where your kids are more advanced than you or there'll be a subject you're not comfortable with.
It seems the answer is "have someone else teach it."
Oh I don't disagree. I do, however, think that someone versed and educated enough in the homeschool community could find the resources they need to help with these things, as the wide world of homeschooling is so different than it was even ten years ago.
My question to homeschooling advocates is this: how do you propose that these cases be prevented? And do you strongly believe that your right to school your children however you please, with whatever standards (or not) you please, outweighs these children's right to have some sort of protection from abuse?
Or are you in the mindset of the HSLDA that what happens to other people's children is of zero concern to you and if children are being abused and killed, well, it's not your kids so it doesn't matter?
Neither were required in mine either, bit my point was that there's undoubtedly going to come a time where your kids are more advanced than you or there'll be a subject you're not comfortable with.
It seems the answer is "have someone else teach it."
Oh I don't disagree. I do, however, think that someone versed and educated enough in the homeschool community could find the resources they need to help with these things, as the wide world of homeschooling is so different than it was even ten years ago.
Could find the resources and would find the resources are two entirely different things. After firsthand experience with homeschooling and then attending a college where we had a huge population of homeschool grads, it was readily apparent that many parents didn't seek out the resources their children needed (or, to speak to a larger issue, didn't understand how to properly evaluate their children for educational gaps).
AW, when your children are older, what's your plan for teaching them Physics or Calculus?
That was a question.
Most people never take physics or calculus. There are small schools that don't even have teachers for this. I had a real teacher, but has left after I graduated and my high school had to do some sort of satellite physics class. They found another calc teacher.
I'm totally opposed to personally homeschooling, but I don't have a problem with it in theory. It does seem like there needs to be some sort of organized curriculum and medical checks annually though.
My sister has a friend with a 7 year old that she "home schools". There is absolutely no schooling going on.
My question to homeschooling advocates is this: how do you propose that these cases be prevented? And do you strongly believe that your right to school your children however you please, with whatever standards (or not) you please, outweighs these children's right to have some sort of protection from abuse?
Or are you in the mindset of the HSLDA that what happens to other people's children is of zero concern to you and if children are being abused and killed, well, it's not your kids so it doesn't matter?
I'm interested in the answer as well. If you're teaching your child well and you aren't abusing your children I don't see why any parent would be opposed to making sure other kids who are homeschooled are okay and receiving some kind of education / reaching educational milestones. As parents have a right to choose what their child does, that child has just as much of a right to a proper education.
It's not like they're taking away the right to homeschool.
Can anyone else not stop thinking about the South Park episode where Cartman convinces his mom to home school him and he basically just lies around in bed all day? I know that's not how most home schoolers operate, but it's making me laugh anyway.
My question to homeschooling advocates is this: how do you propose that these cases be prevented? And do you strongly believe that your right to school your children however you please, with whatever standards (or not) you please, outweighs these children's right to have some sort of protection from abuse?
Or are you in the mindset of the HSLDA that what happens to other people's children is of zero concern to you and if children are being abused and killed, well, it's not your kids so it doesn't matter?
The answer to your second question is no, which is why I feel do strongly about abortion. If we're really worried about children being killed by their parents, homeschooling parents are just a fraction of the problem.
In Ohio homeschoolers have two options. They can notify with the state and submit curricula. Each year when they submit they also have to submit an assessment from the previous year (either test scores or approval from licensed teacher).
Or they can form their own non-chartered, non-tax school. Parents must gave at least a bachelors and notify their school district that their kids are attending a private school each year. No assessments are required.
We obviously choose the latter. While governmemt has no oversight on my curricula and results, they are aware that there are school-aged children in my home. My children are not unaccounted for.
I have no problem with notifying the government that my kids are home. I just think what I teach is none of their business.
I have a hard time believing that a child can go years being starved without someone - an extended fsmily member, a person driving by the house, a stranger in thr grocery store - recognizing there is a problem. Of course, the child could be kept from ever leaving the house, but even then, a test that is taken online and submitted yearly to a school district isn't going to show ant kind of abuse.
The answer is at a community level. We have systems in place to deal with abuse. People need to keep their eyes open and look for signs. I have a hard te believing that a teenager who had probably been rummaging through dumpsters for years had never been noticed. If people looked up from their phones once in a while and observed what is going on around them, these kids may be saved.
Like I said, assessments won't solve this. It will just erode the rights of the people doing it right. I know bad honeschoolers. There are licensed teachers willing to sign off on doctored assessments for money. These teachers are well-known in homeschholimg communitites. The abusers are going to get away with it even with government regulation.
Can anyone else not stop thinking about the South Park episode where Cartman convinces his mom to home school him and he basically just lies around in bed all day? I know that's not how most home schoolers operate, but it's making me laugh anyway.
My question to homeschooling advocates is this: how do you propose that these cases be prevented? And do you strongly believe that your right to school your children however you please, with whatever standards (or not) you please, outweighs these children's right to have some sort of protection from abuse?
Or are you in the mindset of the HSLDA that what happens to other people's children is of zero concern to you and if children are being abused and killed, well, it's not your kids so it doesn't matter?
The answer to your second question is no, which is why I feel do strongly about abortion. If we're really worried about children being killed by their parents, homeschooling parents are just a fraction of the problem.
In Ohio homeschoolers have two options. They can notify with the state and submit curricula. Each year when they submit they also have to submit an assessment from the previous year (either test scores or approval from licensed teacher).
Or they can form their own non-chartered, non-tax school. Parents must gave at least a bachelors and notify their school district that their kids are attending a private school each year. No assessments are required.
We obviously choose the latter. While governmemt has no oversight on my curricula and results, they are aware that there are school-aged children in my home. My children are not unaccounted for.
I have no problem with notifying the government that my kids are home. I just think what I teach is none of their business.
I have a hard time believing that a child can go years being starved without someone - an extended fsmily member, a person driving by the house, a stranger in thr grocery store - recognizing there is a problem. Of course, the child could be kept from ever leaving the house, but even then, a test that is taken online and submitted yearly to a school district isn't going to show ant kind of abuse.
The answer is at a community level. We have systems in place to deal with abuse. People need to keep their eyes open and look for signs. I have a hard te believing that a teenager who had probably been rummaging through dumpsters for years had never been noticed. If people looked up from their phones once in a while and observed what is going on around them, these kids may be saved.
Like I said, assessments won't solve this. It will just erode the rights of the people doing it right. I know bad honeschoolers. There are licensed teachers willing to sign off on doctored assessments for money. These teachers are well-known in homeschholimg communitites. The abusers are going to get away with it even with government regulation.
You don't feel that along with testing and medical assessment would solve the current problem?
Tests may be taken online but medical assessments are harder to fudge...