Education Week - April 1, 2020 - 16

OPINION

Lessons From a
Homeschooling Researcher
As schools close, many parents are getting their first taste of homeschooling
progress of their traditional school. It's much
more important to create a place where
children can get some respite from the scary
world outside of the door. Trying too hard to
keep kids engaged academically could serve
to push children away during a time when
families can come closer together. A couple of
hours a day of academic work should be plenty.
What if your school district isn't providing
resources or e-learning and you have to
make it up on your own? Fear not, there are
resources out there.
It seems like every day a new organization
has put its content online for free. If you need
a high-quality, soup-to-nuts curriculum,
and you have the time to play a more active
role, the Core Knowledge Foundation's
complete curriculum is online and available
for free. If you can't play as active a role, the
Khan Academy is working with families and
providing robust support to help folks access
its online platform. Museums and zoos are
putting new video content online every day.

16 | EDUCATION WEEK | April 1, 2020 | www.edweek.org/go/opinion

"

The decision
to homeschool
is not one that is
taken lightly.
... COVID-19
changed that
calculus."

TopVectors-Getty, Vanessa Solis Education Week

I

t's a heckuva time to be a homeschooling researcher.
As part of an advocacy and
research organization that
promotes choices in schooling, I
am used to hearing from families
that would like to homeschool
but can't because of financial or logistical
roadblocks. I never in a million years thought
that in the course of a week, millions of
families would be forced into homeschooling
involuntarily.
Homeschooling is hard. The decision to
homeschool is not one that is taken lightly.
Families have serious discussions, weigh
their various options, and often agonize
over whether homeschooling is the best
environment for their child. COVID-19
changed that calculus.
Around dining room tables across the
country, parents are asking, "So what do we
do now?"
Understanding why homeschoolers do
what they do might actually help families get
started now that circumstances have pushed
them into the deep end.
For those concerned about their ability (or
inability) to keep their child pushing forward
academically, it
might be reassuring
By Michael Q.
to realize that
McShane
juicing academic
McSHANE is director
performance is
of national research
not the primary
at EdChoice. He is
motivation of most
currently writing
homeschoolers.
a book on hybrid
When the U.S.
homeschooling.
Department of
Education surveyed
homeschooling families, only 17 percent listed
their primary motivation as "dissatisfaction
with academic instruction at other schools."
By far, the most popular response-given
by just over a third of all homeschooling
parents-was "a concern about school
environment," things like safety and negative
peer pressure.
One of the fastest growing groups of
homeschoolers is African-American families.
Lisa Puga, a researcher from Rutgers
University, has done detailed fieldwork with
African-American homeschooling families
who believe that traditional schools are not
nurturing places for their children. They
find them impersonal and mechanistic, with
lowered expectations and unfair stereotypes.
African-American families are increasingly
looking to homeschooling to provide a safe
and nurturing environment. Yes, academics
are important, but creating a space that is
engaging, respects their children and their
abilities, and, perhaps most importantly,
keeps them safe is priority number one.
Families shouldn't feel pressured to try and
keep up, or even surpass, the rate of academic

Brainpop, Commonlit, LearnZillion, and too
many others to list have made their engaging
and usually fee-based lessons, videos, and
quizzes available for free. So what do you do
with the rest of the time?
Multiple homeschoolers I have interviewed
over the years have talked about "the gift
of time." The traditional school day is often
at odds with the rhythms of family life. In
normal times, many students are out of the
house early in the morning and are then
occupied by after-school activities only to
come home to slam down some dinner before
doing their homework and going to bed.
Families don't have the opportunity for quality
time, and children grow up before parents
even realize it.
Homeschoolers are able to control their
schedules and put plenty of entirely nonacademic family bonding time into their days.
They can understand their children's rhythms
and have them work on specific tasks at the
time of the day that is best for them. Children
can play outside and can have unstructured
time to develop their own games and satisfy
their own curiosities. Children can get more
sleep when they need to. They can take breaks
when they are frustrated. They can go to a
quiet corner and read. The standardization
required in running a traditional school simply
doesn't allow for this.
This massive homeschooling experience
can be seen as an opportunity for families
to come closer together. I know that sounds
crazy right now as parents scramble to work
from home or meet all of their commitments
and adjust to the new normal. But rather
than seeing it as "having" to be with your
kids during the school day, see it as "getting"
to spend time that you're never going to get
back. It's a blessing in disguise, but a blessing,
nonetheless.
And let's be clear, children are going to learn
a lot in the next couple of months. Parents
have the ability to model ethical behavior by
looking after neighbors and older relatives,
practicing social distancing, and making
the sacrifices that will be necessary to cope
with the coronavirus. If we can demonstrate
selflessness to our children and explain to
them that we're taking these steps to help
protect people who are more vulnerable than
we are, we can imprint massive lessons in
moral development that will stick with kids far
longer than most of the academic content we
would try and teach them.
If you are being forced to homeschool
against your will, I am sorry. It is an incredible
burden to have to bear, particularly in light
of all of the other upheavals wrought by the
coronavirus. But our children are watching.
We can let difficult circumstances get the best
of us. Or we can faithfully stand in the gap for
a couple of months until things are back to
normal. n
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Education Week - April 1, 2020

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