Education Week - May 13, 2015 - 15

Home-School Oversight
Varies State-by-State
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
datory reporters -people such as
doctors, certified teachers, or clergy
members-who might catch signs
of abuse and report it, according to
the advocacy and research group
Coalition for Responsible Home
Education.
"A lot of policies to protect children
from abuse, are based on the
assumption that children are in
school," said Rachel Coleman, the
coalition's executive director.
And when it comes to the overall
regulation of home schooling, some
experts and advocates say that
oversight across the country has
softened over the last several years,
especially in terms of academic
accountability.
While tracking the size of the nation's
population of home-school
students is difficult because of
wildly different reporting requirements
state by state, national estimates
put the number at more than
1.5 million.
Closer Monitoring
Michigan is almost entirely
hands off when it comes to oversight
of its home-schooled families.
That's why legislation proposed by
Democratic state representative
Stephanie L. Chang would require
parents to notify the local school
district of their intent to home
school and to have some contact
with adults outside the family who
are mandatory reporters.
Until news broke about the
deaths of the two children in Detroit,
which Ms. Chang represents,
she said she didn't have a good
grasp of her state's home school
laws. Ms. Blair, the mother of the
two deceased children, has been
charged with premeditated murder,
child abuse, and torture.
"We realized that Michigan was
one of only 11 states that doesn't
require parents who home school to
notify the state and the school district
about their decision," she said.
Ms. Chang said her bill is aimed
at the small number of people who
use home schooling as a means to
isolate their children and perpetuate
abuse, not the majority of responsible
home-schooling families.
But her bill is receiving pushback
locally and nationally from those
who see it as a too-broad assault on
the rights of parents.
In recent years, some efforts to
more tightly regulate home schooling
have tended to follow extreme, albeit
tragic events like what happened in
Detroit.
After the 2012 shooting at Sandy
Hook Elementary School in Newtown,
Conn., a special commission
convened to issue policy recommendations
to Gov. Dannel Malloy.
Among the recommendations
were proposals to more closely regulate
home-schooled students with
special needs-a direct response
to Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook
shooter who was not home schooled,
but had been a homebound student
due to his debilitating anxiety, said
Scott D. Jackson, a former mayor of
Hamden, Conn., who served on the
governor's commission.
Mr. Jackson said that the commission's
examination of Mr. Lanza's
isolated status exposed a hole
in the state's home-school laws
with regard to children who have
individualized education programs,
or ieps.
The panel recommended that
school officials have some authority
to check in on students with ieps
who withdraw to be home-schooled,
he said, provoking strong opposition.
"What the commission said was
this: 'If a child leaves a school district
with an iep, there should be
some check-in mechanism until that
iep is no longer valid or necessary,'"
said Mr. Jackson.
"I think it's fair to say that the
reaction was certainly overblown.
The tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary
was so significant that no
group of actors want to be identified
with it."
Society at large, Mr. Jackson said,
has a vested interest in making sure
home-school students are learning
core academic subjects, as well as
developing socially and emotionally.
The commission's home-school
proposal has not yet been adopted,
he said.
Some home-schooling advocates
argue that such proposals following
on the heels of high-profile
cases of abuse or violence both tarnishes
the reputation of healthy
home-schooling families and unfairly
punishes them. Others worry
that what appears to be a single,
benign law will lead to government
overreach.
"It's a slippery slope, but it's also
just the notion that when one person
commits an illegal act, that millions
of others should be subjected
to checking in with officials," said
James Mason, the director of litigation
at the Home School Legal Defense
Association, which opposes the
Michigan bill.
"There's something repugnant
about that idea."
Changing Times
The association was founded in
1983, in part to provide affordable
legal services to home-schooling
parents when the movement was
in its infancy and the rights of parents
to educate their children at
home were not recognized in many
states.
"We started in the days when
it was illegal to home school in
Michigan, and people were getting
arrested and thrown in jail," Mr.
Mason said. "We're pleased that
home-schooling freedom is continuing
to move in the right direction,
toward more innovation and more
freedom, but our whole mission here
is to be vigilant."
Other advocates argue that Mr.
Mason's way of thinking is outdated
and that home schoolers are
EDUCATION WEEK | May 13, 2015 | www.edweek.org | 15
"
It's a slippery slope, but
it's also just the notion
that when one person
commits an illegal act,
that millions of others
should be subjected to
checking in with
officials. There's
something repugnant
about that idea."
JAMES MASON
Home School Legal Defense
Association
no longer under constant threat.
"We live in an atmosphere of increasing
school choice," said Ms.
Coleman, of the Coalition for Responsible
Home Education. "In this
atmosphere, home schooling is not
going to be banned."
Ms. Coleman, who was homeschooled,
said her organization
supports the Michigan bill and others
like it because a lot of policies
to protect children from abuse are
based on the assumption that they
are in school and in contact with
mandatory reporters-particularly
classroom teachers-on a daily
basis.
"We're not trying to say that
home-schooling parents are abusive,
but when there are problems, there
are fewer things in place to catch
that and help these children," she
said, adding that in the push to protect
parents' rights, children's rights
are sometimes sidelined.
Shifting Regulations?
According to the coalition, 48
states do not require background
checks before parents remove their
children from public school, and no
single state has rules to monitor
families who start home schooling
during an active child abuse or neglect
investigation.
That lack of oversight dovetails
with a broader trend toward removing
states' oversight roles in other
areas such as academic standards
and assessment, Ms. Coleman said.
Since 2012, New Hampshire,
Iowa, Utah, Pennsylvania, and Arkansas
have all rolled back requirements
for teaching certain subjects
or assessing home schoolers, according
to the coalition.
Despite those examples, other
observers say home-schooling regulations
across the country have remained
largely unchanged.
"There is a trend, but I wouldn't
call it a sweeping trend," said
Micah Ann Wixom, a policy analyst
with the Denver-based Education
Commission of the States. "What's
more interesting is the difference
in state policy-there's such wide
variation from one state to the next."
Take Michigan and Pennsylvania,
she said. In addition to keeping
portfolios of school work, homeschooling
parents in Pennsylvania
have to have a high school diploma,
teach certain subjects, have their
children immunized, and notify the
district annually that they're home
schooling.
Nearly the reverse is true in
Michigan.
However, analysts with both ecs
and the National Conference of
State Legislatures say that just because
there isn't a state law on the
books, that doesn't mean there's no
accountability for home schoolers.
For example, some states, especially
rural ones, leave that task up
to local school districts-a nuance
that is not captured in a simple
comparison of state laws.
But even as some members of the
home-school community protest
any increased government involvement
in their children's education,
in other ways the lines between
home and public schooling are being
blurred, said Josh Cunningham, a
senior policy analyst with ncsl.
"There is evidence that a number
of home-school students are
registering with the online schools,
which then brings them under the
umbrella of state education policies,"
he said.
In addition, Mr. Cunningham said,
as assessments and education materials
align to the new Common Core
State Standards, they could, to some
degree, affect what is being taught
in the home.
And that, along with virtual charter
schools, may well pull more
home schoolers further into the fold
of public education without direct
legislative action.
The Associated Press contributed
to this report.
Coverage of parent-empowerment
issues is supported by a grant from
the Walton Family Foundation, at
www.waltonfamilyfoundation.org.
Education Week retains sole editorial
control over the content of this coverage.
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Education Week - May 13, 2015

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