Listen to Executive Director, Rachel Coleman’s interview with KNX1070 opposite Mike Smith of HSLDA.
Transcript below:
TRANSCRIPT BEGINS AT 00:16.
CHARLES FELDMAN: Inspections: Would inspections have discovered the home in Perris where thirteen siblings were found in torturous conditions, not enough food, some chained to furniture? The house was a home school, but in California no inspections are required except for the fire department and even that apparently did not happen. So, we will go in depth. Also, it’s not every day that the President of the United States is compared with the former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, but today is that day. It was an extraordinary speech by a Republican US Senator on the floor of the US Senate.
MIKE SIMPSON: Later on we’ll be talking about two stabbing deaths, a college student over winter break and a transgender woman, and the hate crime investigations that could surround them. And then as the President hands out his fake news awards, many Americans really don’t know the difference between real news and what’s fake.
(01:07)
FELDMAN: We begin with the tragedy in Riverside County. Thirteen brothers and sisters found malnourished in what authorities described as “their filthy family home.” Some of them chained to their beds, their parents under arrest, the big question – how could this happen, and why didn’t anybody outside know?
SIMPSON: So these siblings were homeschooled by their parents. So in hindsight many are asking, why weren’t there inspections – some rules for homeschooling that might have shed light on this situation? We have two guests: Rachel Coleman, executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, and Mike Smith, attorney for the Home School Legal Defense Association.
FELDMAN: So Rachel, let’s begin with you. As I understand it, you were homeschooled. But, and I know that states differ, should a state such as California have apparently no, or if there are any, very little, regulations that would require some sort of state input, some sort of state inspection into these so-called home schools?
RACHEL COLEMAN: Hi, yes, so we have a set of policy recommendations you make- that we make, but I think to understand our position – we are actually – our board is all homeschool graduates. And we founded our organization in 2013 because we kept seeing cases like this. This is not the first case like this, not the only case like this, and as homeschool graduates we were sort of appalled to see this education method that had served us, in some cases, well – my own experience, I had a great education – to see it used to hide abuse in these ways. And so we do call for accountability. We tend to call for accountability in ways that reflect the sorts of things responsible homeschooling parents already do. We would like to see, for example, mandated annual doctor visits, and annual assessments by a certified teacher. These would be points of contact with a mandatory reporter that could have identified these children’s situation, especially with as malnourished as they were.
SIMPSON: So Mike, Rachel says that her group kept seeing cases like this one. Do you think there needs to be more rules out there to prevent this kind of thing?
MIKE SMITH: Well, I think there, I think there needs to be a better, better way to address child abuse and neglect, but I don’t see that as the same thing as homeschooling. In other words, there – in order to prevent child abuse, you can’t prevent all of it, but to do a better job, basically you have to try to figure out what the risk factors are. And homeschooling has never been declared a risk factor by the Mayo Clinic, which has done research on this. The [muffled], the World Health Organization and the US Congress basically commissioned a study in 2014 to eliminate child abuse and neglect fatalities and they found that the number one risk factor is whether a family has been investigated previously or they have – they’re under suspicion of child abuse and neglect. And homeschooling, in none of these studies, in none of these surveys, has been mentioned as a prime risk factor for abuse and neglect. So that’s where I take issue with what’s being proposed with the kind of regulations – especially the regulations I’ve heard, and I hope Rachel would even agree with me on this – inspections of the home. In other words, we’re talking about basically a Fourth Amendment issue. So I do not believe that all of the fine homeschool families in California, and there are thousands of them, should have to be subjected to this added regulation because of what this family did.
FELDMAN: Well Mike, and let me, and then we’ll get to Rachel’s response, but let me ask you. Whatever studies may or may not have shown, and I’m not going to dispute that from the past, I think you would agree that even one horrific case such as the one that we are talking about here is one too many. So, so long as the regulations are not too onerous, what would be the objection? Everything in life is regulated. You can’t drive a car without regulations, you can’t get married without regulations, you can’t get divorced without regulations. Why not have some regulations that would at least give some sort of protection to students who may be, if not abused by their parents, perhaps just not well educated by their parents?
SMITH: Well, I would say that, I disagree with your statement if you could just eliminate one-
[crosstalk in italics]
FELDMAN: (no, no I didn’t say)
SMITH: I would like to eliminate all
FELDMAN: no I didn’t say that
SMITH: I would like to eliminate
FELDMAN: Go ahead
SMITH: -to eliminate all child abuse and neglect, just like everybody here would. This is abhorrent to me, because I’m in homeschooling because I love children. But I also believe that the liberty issue is important for the rest of the families that are not abusing and neglecting their children, especially when you, you’re talking about the need for individualized education and a tutorial method of education. If we’re going to have the state come in, you’re gonna [muffled], you’re going to see that the test scores that are tremendously high right now on standardized achievement tests by homeschooled families could suffer as a result, and so I see no need to, to bring further regulation. Especially, I’m really concerned about this proposal that’s coming forth that, that homes would be inspected. That’s, that’s just not acceptable.
SIMPSON: Alright, Mike, let’s put you on hold for a second again and get Rachel’s response here. Rachel, doctor’s visits or test scores and standardized tests aside, let’s concentrate on the state coming and knocking on the door and doing the inspection for a second, do you think that should be happening?
COLEMAN: We do not support home visits for these cases. We believe that the primary emphasis in a case like this should be ensuring that they have contact with mandatory reporters. And we believe we can do this by having annual assessments by certified teachers and also regular doctor visits. These kids were so malnourished, that would have been picked up. I do want to touch on a few of the things that Mike Smith just said. First of all, risk factors. Every one, every one of these reports he just mentioned list isolation as a risk factor, and there is no better way to isolate a child than to homeschool them. Now I want to be clear – most homeschooling families do not isolate their children. I was not isolated – I was homeschooled. But there was a study in 2014 by Barbara Knox that found that – specifically she was looking at child torture cases, child abuse so severe you could call it torture – and for the school age cases she looked at, 47% of them involved children who were pulled out of school to be homeschooled, followed by an increase in isolation and an escalation of the abuse. So ,you know, clearly the isolation that homeschooling can enable in these abusive cases is a risk factor. I also want to mention the issue of risk factors being previous investigations by, of the family, by social services. That’s absolutely something we’ve found true in the cases in our database. That’s one of the reasons we recommend requiring a background check for homeschooling parents to check: was there a previous case of child abuse that was founded by a judge – or were children removed from the home in the past? And I want to mention that Mike Smith’s organization has opposed these measures. So he’s sitting there saying that he thinks that we should pay attention to risk factors like previous investigations – they oppose background checks to ensure that families previously founded with child abuse, previously convicted with child abuse, they opposed these regulations, or these proposals, to bar these families from homeschooling when there were these risk factors present. So I don’t think there’s complete honesty there. Also his comment about standardized tests wasn’t fully honest. Homeschooled children, there are no standardized test scores that you can look at for all homeschooled children, because they’re not required to be tested. The studies –
SIMPSON: Okay we’re going to have to hold you there because we do have to take a break, and when KNX In Depth continues we will have a lot more on this unique story.
(END SECTION ONE)
SECTION TWO
(00:07)
FELDMAN: You’re listening to KNX In Depth with Mike Simpson, I’m Charles Feldman.
SIMPSON: As we continue our discussion, a reminder: coming up after news and traffic at the bottom of the hour, a look at two crimes. Did arguments lead to the stabbing deaths of a college student home for winter break and a transgender woman or were they hate crimes? And then: President Trump calls it fake news but many Americans, they don’t know the difference between what’s news and what’s news with a spin.
FELDMAN: Okay, so we’re going to go back to our discussion about what happened in Riverside County with those thirteen siblings who were found in, at home in deplorable conditions. They were being homeschooled, and the question on the table is whether inspections, some kind of inspections, might have found this, discovered this, at a much earlier state. We had been talking with Rachel Coleman, who’s Executive Director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, and Mike Smith who’s an attorney for the Home School Legal Defense Association. Uh, you know, we can go back and forth – which in fact we’ve been doing – on studies and each of you can probably cite a study that is in opposition to the other person’s study. I don’t want to get involved in that too much at this point, I want to just confine our discussion to this one particular case that happened at this one particular house, where it happened that these particular children and young adults were homeschooled where there was no real inspection, no intervention, from local or state authorities, and what in each of your opinions could have been, should have been done to perhaps prevent that. Mike, why don’t you take a crack at that?
SMITH: Okay, thank you. In, in California, in order to be a legal home school, you have to file a private school affidavit or be involved in some other program, oversight program. But like this family, they filed a private school affidavit, and they have to comply under penalty of perjury that they’re going to comply with what that private school affidavit says. Now, had anyone reported this family, had suspected something because their children – one of the reports I saw was that at 2:00 in the morning one of the children was out doing, I think they were planting sod in the front of the yard there. So let’s say a neighbor would have been concerned, I never see these kids out, I never see them go to school. If they called the public school or the department of social services, they would be obligated to go out and confirm that this family in fact had children, be able to see the children, and determine that they were legally being homeschooled, meaning they had filed a private school affidavit. If that had happened in this case, I’m assuming that there would have been an investigation and that this probably wouldn’t have happened. So that was available and it’s something that didn’t happen, and I think some of the neighbors are obviously wishing they had done what they kind of thought they should have done.
SIMPSON: You don’t always know your neighbors though, and we’ve talked about that on this program. Does the state not have some sort of responsibility for these kids though? They’ve got to make sure they’re getting, number one, a good education. So I mean, how do you make sure that home schooling isn’t being used as a way to shield kids from anyone’s oversight, as Rachel has pointed out?
SMITH: Well, the state is not responsible for these children’s education. Because they’re being privately educated. The state has an interest in seeing that every child either becomes literate or self-sufficient when they graduate. So the responsibility was with the parents, and this is the way homeschooling is done in all the states. In some states it’s more regulated than others and some of the states are less regulated than California. So I dis- I don’t think that this a homeschool case. This is an abuse and neglect situation, and to bring homeschooling in is unfair to all the other families in California that are very responsibly homeschooling their children.
FELDMAN: Well Rachel, do you agree with Mike that it’s unfair to bring in the setting in which all of this occurred, which was a home school setting? Do you think that that is not relevant to the discussion?
COLEMAN: It is completely relevant. If those children had been in school, someone would have noticed that they were constantly hungry, that they were behaving weird socially. A teacher would have said something. Those children ended up in that situation because they were homeschooled. Without homeschooling, their parents could not have done that. And I also disagree with the idea that the state has no interest here. Every child has the right to an education, and the state has a responsibility to protect the rights of its citizens, and that includes children. So the state absolutely has a role here.
SIMPSON: Why is it hard to get more regulations passed? I mean there are some lawmakers that are talking about it now after this case, but is there a, is there a homeschool lobby that fights back?
COLEMAN: Yeah, Mike Smith’s homeschool lobby –
SIMPSON: Mike’s group?
COLEMAN: – the Home School Legal Defense Association. They oppose regulation every step of the way. They are the reason that these bills keep getting shot down.
(crosstalk)
FELDMAN: I’m just curious – yeah, Mike,
SMITH: Can I defend my, can I defend myself there –
FELDMAN: Yeah, Mike, go ahead, sure.
SMITH: Well, I’m not the only one, HSLDA’s not the only one. Every state organization that is involved in homeschooling, that I’m aware of, takes the same position we do. That this is a liberty issue and unless it can be proven that home – that parents are not responsibly teaching their children at home, the state has no interest. They do if that can be proven, but that requires probable cause and reasonable suspicion. So, and the other thing is the, whether we like it or not, in America, there’s no fundamental right for a child to have an education. Do I believe they should be? Absolutely. That’s the reason I’m in homeschooling, because I wanted my children to have a superior education, and they got it because my wife taught them, quite frankly. And that’s the reason most families are involved in homeschooling, they want their children to have an excellent education and they want to be able to guide them and direct them. And if you bring the state in, once they get involved, and this has been our experience in representing families for over 35 years, the state simply wants to take more and more of that liberty. And liberty, without liberty, homeschooling will not exist.
FELDMAN: But Mike, let me ask you something. You’re an attorney, and you know that the state, every state really, has some extraordinary powers when it concerns certain individuals, children in particular for example, states can take children away from parents if it can be proven that the parents are harmful to the health and wellbeing of their children. So if the state is vested with that sort of authority vis-à-vis children, why shouldn’t it have the right to make sure that children who are being homeschooled, are being homeschooled in an environment that is one that is helpful for them both physically and mentally?
SMITH: Well, because that’s what California has right now. The private school exemption. The legislature has determined that this is sufficient to protect the state’s interest. And as I indicated before, California is not an aberration, there are other states that are very much like California, there are some states that have more regulation, and several that have less. There are even states that don’t require notice. So we can’t say that California is out of step. So I’m just saying that this is basically a situation where we’re either going to recognize the liberty of parents to direct the education of their children, or we’re going to let the state come in and eventually they will determine how these children are educated.
DV HOST: Alright, that’s Mike Smith, attorney for the Home School Legal Defense Association. We also heard from Rachel Coleman, executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education.
Last Updated: 23 March, 2021 by Kieryn Darkwater
Listen to Rachel Coleman on Press Play KCRW
Listen to Rachel Coleman on Press Play with Madeleine Brand.
(We’re sorry, we don’t currently have a written transcript of the broadcast. If that’s something you’d like to help with, let us know)
Last Updated: 9 February, 2018 by Kieryn Darkwater
Rachel Coleman’s Interview on KNX1070
Listen to Executive Director, Rachel Coleman’s interview with KNX1070 opposite Mike Smith of HSLDA.
Transcript below:
TRANSCRIPT BEGINS AT 00:16.
CHARLES FELDMAN: Inspections: Would inspections have discovered the home in Perris where thirteen siblings were found in torturous conditions, not enough food, some chained to furniture? The house was a home school, but in California no inspections are required except for the fire department and even that apparently did not happen. So, we will go in depth. Also, it’s not every day that the President of the United States is compared with the former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, but today is that day. It was an extraordinary speech by a Republican US Senator on the floor of the US Senate.
MIKE SIMPSON: Later on we’ll be talking about two stabbing deaths, a college student over winter break and a transgender woman, and the hate crime investigations that could surround them. And then as the President hands out his fake news awards, many Americans really don’t know the difference between real news and what’s fake.
(01:07)
FELDMAN: We begin with the tragedy in Riverside County. Thirteen brothers and sisters found malnourished in what authorities described as “their filthy family home.” Some of them chained to their beds, their parents under arrest, the big question – how could this happen, and why didn’t anybody outside know?
SIMPSON: So these siblings were homeschooled by their parents. So in hindsight many are asking, why weren’t there inspections – some rules for homeschooling that might have shed light on this situation? We have two guests: Rachel Coleman, executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, and Mike Smith, attorney for the Home School Legal Defense Association.
FELDMAN: So Rachel, let’s begin with you. As I understand it, you were homeschooled. But, and I know that states differ, should a state such as California have apparently no, or if there are any, very little, regulations that would require some sort of state input, some sort of state inspection into these so-called home schools?
RACHEL COLEMAN: Hi, yes, so we have a set of policy recommendations you make- that we make, but I think to understand our position – we are actually – our board is all homeschool graduates. And we founded our organization in 2013 because we kept seeing cases like this. This is not the first case like this, not the only case like this, and as homeschool graduates we were sort of appalled to see this education method that had served us, in some cases, well – my own experience, I had a great education – to see it used to hide abuse in these ways. And so we do call for accountability. We tend to call for accountability in ways that reflect the sorts of things responsible homeschooling parents already do. We would like to see, for example, mandated annual doctor visits, and annual assessments by a certified teacher. These would be points of contact with a mandatory reporter that could have identified these children’s situation, especially with as malnourished as they were.
SIMPSON: So Mike, Rachel says that her group kept seeing cases like this one. Do you think there needs to be more rules out there to prevent this kind of thing?
MIKE SMITH: Well, I think there, I think there needs to be a better, better way to address child abuse and neglect, but I don’t see that as the same thing as homeschooling. In other words, there – in order to prevent child abuse, you can’t prevent all of it, but to do a better job, basically you have to try to figure out what the risk factors are. And homeschooling has never been declared a risk factor by the Mayo Clinic, which has done research on this. The [muffled], the World Health Organization and the US Congress basically commissioned a study in 2014 to eliminate child abuse and neglect fatalities and they found that the number one risk factor is whether a family has been investigated previously or they have – they’re under suspicion of child abuse and neglect. And homeschooling, in none of these studies, in none of these surveys, has been mentioned as a prime risk factor for abuse and neglect. So that’s where I take issue with what’s being proposed with the kind of regulations – especially the regulations I’ve heard, and I hope Rachel would even agree with me on this – inspections of the home. In other words, we’re talking about basically a Fourth Amendment issue. So I do not believe that all of the fine homeschool families in California, and there are thousands of them, should have to be subjected to this added regulation because of what this family did.
FELDMAN: Well Mike, and let me, and then we’ll get to Rachel’s response, but let me ask you. Whatever studies may or may not have shown, and I’m not going to dispute that from the past, I think you would agree that even one horrific case such as the one that we are talking about here is one too many. So, so long as the regulations are not too onerous, what would be the objection? Everything in life is regulated. You can’t drive a car without regulations, you can’t get married without regulations, you can’t get divorced without regulations. Why not have some regulations that would at least give some sort of protection to students who may be, if not abused by their parents, perhaps just not well educated by their parents?
SMITH: Well, I would say that, I disagree with your statement if you could just eliminate one-
[crosstalk in italics]
FELDMAN: (no, no I didn’t say)
SMITH: I would like to eliminate all
FELDMAN: no I didn’t say that
SMITH: I would like to eliminate
FELDMAN: Go ahead
SMITH: -to eliminate all child abuse and neglect, just like everybody here would. This is abhorrent to me, because I’m in homeschooling because I love children. But I also believe that the liberty issue is important for the rest of the families that are not abusing and neglecting their children, especially when you, you’re talking about the need for individualized education and a tutorial method of education. If we’re going to have the state come in, you’re gonna [muffled], you’re going to see that the test scores that are tremendously high right now on standardized achievement tests by homeschooled families could suffer as a result, and so I see no need to, to bring further regulation. Especially, I’m really concerned about this proposal that’s coming forth that, that homes would be inspected. That’s, that’s just not acceptable.
SIMPSON: Alright, Mike, let’s put you on hold for a second again and get Rachel’s response here. Rachel, doctor’s visits or test scores and standardized tests aside, let’s concentrate on the state coming and knocking on the door and doing the inspection for a second, do you think that should be happening?
COLEMAN: We do not support home visits for these cases. We believe that the primary emphasis in a case like this should be ensuring that they have contact with mandatory reporters. And we believe we can do this by having annual assessments by certified teachers and also regular doctor visits. These kids were so malnourished, that would have been picked up. I do want to touch on a few of the things that Mike Smith just said. First of all, risk factors. Every one, every one of these reports he just mentioned list isolation as a risk factor, and there is no better way to isolate a child than to homeschool them. Now I want to be clear – most homeschooling families do not isolate their children. I was not isolated – I was homeschooled. But there was a study in 2014 by Barbara Knox that found that – specifically she was looking at child torture cases, child abuse so severe you could call it torture – and for the school age cases she looked at, 47% of them involved children who were pulled out of school to be homeschooled, followed by an increase in isolation and an escalation of the abuse. So ,you know, clearly the isolation that homeschooling can enable in these abusive cases is a risk factor. I also want to mention the issue of risk factors being previous investigations by, of the family, by social services. That’s absolutely something we’ve found true in the cases in our database. That’s one of the reasons we recommend requiring a background check for homeschooling parents to check: was there a previous case of child abuse that was founded by a judge – or were children removed from the home in the past? And I want to mention that Mike Smith’s organization has opposed these measures. So he’s sitting there saying that he thinks that we should pay attention to risk factors like previous investigations – they oppose background checks to ensure that families previously founded with child abuse, previously convicted with child abuse, they opposed these regulations, or these proposals, to bar these families from homeschooling when there were these risk factors present. So I don’t think there’s complete honesty there. Also his comment about standardized tests wasn’t fully honest. Homeschooled children, there are no standardized test scores that you can look at for all homeschooled children, because they’re not required to be tested. The studies –
SIMPSON: Okay we’re going to have to hold you there because we do have to take a break, and when KNX In Depth continues we will have a lot more on this unique story.
(END SECTION ONE)
SECTION TWO
(00:07)
FELDMAN: You’re listening to KNX In Depth with Mike Simpson, I’m Charles Feldman.
SIMPSON: As we continue our discussion, a reminder: coming up after news and traffic at the bottom of the hour, a look at two crimes. Did arguments lead to the stabbing deaths of a college student home for winter break and a transgender woman or were they hate crimes? And then: President Trump calls it fake news but many Americans, they don’t know the difference between what’s news and what’s news with a spin.
FELDMAN: Okay, so we’re going to go back to our discussion about what happened in Riverside County with those thirteen siblings who were found in, at home in deplorable conditions. They were being homeschooled, and the question on the table is whether inspections, some kind of inspections, might have found this, discovered this, at a much earlier state. We had been talking with Rachel Coleman, who’s Executive Director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, and Mike Smith who’s an attorney for the Home School Legal Defense Association. Uh, you know, we can go back and forth – which in fact we’ve been doing – on studies and each of you can probably cite a study that is in opposition to the other person’s study. I don’t want to get involved in that too much at this point, I want to just confine our discussion to this one particular case that happened at this one particular house, where it happened that these particular children and young adults were homeschooled where there was no real inspection, no intervention, from local or state authorities, and what in each of your opinions could have been, should have been done to perhaps prevent that. Mike, why don’t you take a crack at that?
SMITH: Okay, thank you. In, in California, in order to be a legal home school, you have to file a private school affidavit or be involved in some other program, oversight program. But like this family, they filed a private school affidavit, and they have to comply under penalty of perjury that they’re going to comply with what that private school affidavit says. Now, had anyone reported this family, had suspected something because their children – one of the reports I saw was that at 2:00 in the morning one of the children was out doing, I think they were planting sod in the front of the yard there. So let’s say a neighbor would have been concerned, I never see these kids out, I never see them go to school. If they called the public school or the department of social services, they would be obligated to go out and confirm that this family in fact had children, be able to see the children, and determine that they were legally being homeschooled, meaning they had filed a private school affidavit. If that had happened in this case, I’m assuming that there would have been an investigation and that this probably wouldn’t have happened. So that was available and it’s something that didn’t happen, and I think some of the neighbors are obviously wishing they had done what they kind of thought they should have done.
SIMPSON: You don’t always know your neighbors though, and we’ve talked about that on this program. Does the state not have some sort of responsibility for these kids though? They’ve got to make sure they’re getting, number one, a good education. So I mean, how do you make sure that home schooling isn’t being used as a way to shield kids from anyone’s oversight, as Rachel has pointed out?
SMITH: Well, the state is not responsible for these children’s education. Because they’re being privately educated. The state has an interest in seeing that every child either becomes literate or self-sufficient when they graduate. So the responsibility was with the parents, and this is the way homeschooling is done in all the states. In some states it’s more regulated than others and some of the states are less regulated than California. So I dis- I don’t think that this a homeschool case. This is an abuse and neglect situation, and to bring homeschooling in is unfair to all the other families in California that are very responsibly homeschooling their children.
FELDMAN: Well Rachel, do you agree with Mike that it’s unfair to bring in the setting in which all of this occurred, which was a home school setting? Do you think that that is not relevant to the discussion?
COLEMAN: It is completely relevant. If those children had been in school, someone would have noticed that they were constantly hungry, that they were behaving weird socially. A teacher would have said something. Those children ended up in that situation because they were homeschooled. Without homeschooling, their parents could not have done that. And I also disagree with the idea that the state has no interest here. Every child has the right to an education, and the state has a responsibility to protect the rights of its citizens, and that includes children. So the state absolutely has a role here.
SIMPSON: Why is it hard to get more regulations passed? I mean there are some lawmakers that are talking about it now after this case, but is there a, is there a homeschool lobby that fights back?
COLEMAN: Yeah, Mike Smith’s homeschool lobby –
SIMPSON: Mike’s group?
COLEMAN: – the Home School Legal Defense Association. They oppose regulation every step of the way. They are the reason that these bills keep getting shot down.
(crosstalk)
FELDMAN: I’m just curious – yeah, Mike,
SMITH: Can I defend my, can I defend myself there –
FELDMAN: Yeah, Mike, go ahead, sure.
SMITH: Well, I’m not the only one, HSLDA’s not the only one. Every state organization that is involved in homeschooling, that I’m aware of, takes the same position we do. That this is a liberty issue and unless it can be proven that home – that parents are not responsibly teaching their children at home, the state has no interest. They do if that can be proven, but that requires probable cause and reasonable suspicion. So, and the other thing is the, whether we like it or not, in America, there’s no fundamental right for a child to have an education. Do I believe they should be? Absolutely. That’s the reason I’m in homeschooling, because I wanted my children to have a superior education, and they got it because my wife taught them, quite frankly. And that’s the reason most families are involved in homeschooling, they want their children to have an excellent education and they want to be able to guide them and direct them. And if you bring the state in, once they get involved, and this has been our experience in representing families for over 35 years, the state simply wants to take more and more of that liberty. And liberty, without liberty, homeschooling will not exist.
FELDMAN: But Mike, let me ask you something. You’re an attorney, and you know that the state, every state really, has some extraordinary powers when it concerns certain individuals, children in particular for example, states can take children away from parents if it can be proven that the parents are harmful to the health and wellbeing of their children. So if the state is vested with that sort of authority vis-à-vis children, why shouldn’t it have the right to make sure that children who are being homeschooled, are being homeschooled in an environment that is one that is helpful for them both physically and mentally?
SMITH: Well, because that’s what California has right now. The private school exemption. The legislature has determined that this is sufficient to protect the state’s interest. And as I indicated before, California is not an aberration, there are other states that are very much like California, there are some states that have more regulation, and several that have less. There are even states that don’t require notice. So we can’t say that California is out of step. So I’m just saying that this is basically a situation where we’re either going to recognize the liberty of parents to direct the education of their children, or we’re going to let the state come in and eventually they will determine how these children are educated.
DV HOST: Alright, that’s Mike Smith, attorney for the Home School Legal Defense Association. We also heard from Rachel Coleman, executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education.
Last Updated: 30 October, 2023 by Rachel Coleman
New Hampshire House Bill 1650 Would Legalize Educational Neglect
For Immediate Release: Removing failure to educate from the definition of a neglected child would remove only layer of accountability remaining for homeschoolers
Canton, Ma., 01/15/2018—New Hampshire House Bill 1650, which would remove “failure to provide the education required by law” from the state’s definition of a neglected child, would harm homeschooled children, warns the Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE), a national nonprofit group that advocates for homeschooled children. “HB 1650 would remove the only recourse concerned family members have for reporting the educational neglect of a child who is homeschooled,” warned Rachel Coleman, the organization’s executive director. “Lawmakers must consider the implications of this bill for homeschooled children.”
Prior to 2012, New Hampshire’s homeschool law gave school districts the authority to review student assessments and initiate a grievance process if a homeschooled child was not making academic progress. In 2012, the state legislature revised the state’s homeschool law, removing this authority. “In most states, educational neglect in homeschool settings is handled either by the local school district or by the Department of Health and Human Services,” said Coleman. Since 2012, the authority to handle calls about educational neglect in New Hampshire homeschooling families has rested with the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) alone.
“In New Hampshire, school districts cannot investigate educational neglect in homeschool settings,” added Coleman. “If HB 1650 passes, DHHS could not do so either. No one could.”
“While many homeschooling families have their children’s best interests at heart and put in the work necessary to give them a good education, this is not always the case,” said Coleman. CRHE regularly hears from family members or neighbors across the country concerned about homeschooled children who are not being taught. “In some cases parents struggling with drug addiction opt to homeschool to keep their children from saying anything about their drug use,” said Coleman. “The National Center for Education Statistics estimates that 15% of homeschooled children do not have a parent who has completed high school. Not all homeschooled children have access to the resources they need to succeed.”
Berlin School District Superintendent Corinne Cascadden has recently expressed concern about the homeschooled children in her district, warning that as many has half of them may not be being educated. Her concerns have prompted lawmakers to introduce House Bill 1263, which would restore school district’s authority to evaluate homeschooled students. “Recent concern about the education New Hampshire’s homeschooled children are receiving makes this an odd movement to remove the only layer of accountability they have left,” said Coleman. “HB 1650 would make it harder for children who are being homeschooled but not educated to find help, effectively legalizing educational neglect in the state.”
The Coalition for Responsible Home Education is a national organization founded by homeschool alumni and dedicated to raising awareness of the need for homeschooling reform, providing public policy guidance, and advocating for responsible home education practices.
Last Updated: 23 March, 2021 by CRHE
Thirteen Starved, Chained California Children were Homeschooled
For Immediate Release: Lax homeschool laws give parents the ability to isolate their children, hide abuse
Canton, Ma., 01/16/2018—The Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE), a national nonprofit group that advocates for homeschooled children, has learned that the thirteen Turpin children, found emaciated and chained in a home in Perris, California, on Sunday, were homeschooled. “This case fits a pattern we’ve seen of isolation and imprisonment in abusive homeschooling situations,” said Rachel Coleman, a homeschool alumna who helped found CRHE in 2013 and currently serves as the organization’s executive director.
CRHE maintains a database of severe and fatal abuse cases in homeschooling situations and has identified a number of themes that characterize such cases. “Many of the cases in our database involve food deprivation and imprisonment,” said Coleman. “Calista Springer, who died in a house fire in 2009, was chained to her bed like these children.” In other cases, children have been locked in bedrooms or kept in cages. “We know that many homeschooling parents provide their children with a safe and child-centered home environment,” Coleman stated. “Unfortunately, current law provides nothing to stop families like the Turpins from using homeschooling to isolate and imprison their children.”
In California, homeschooling parents are required to register as individual private schools with the state or enroll their children in a private “umbrella” school. David Turpin, the children’s father, registered his homeschool, which he named “Sandcastle Day School,” with the state of California each year after moving there in 2010. For families who register as individual private schools with the state, nothing more is required. Parents do not need to submit assessments of their children’s academic progress or show any evidence of homeschooling, and there is nothing done to ensure that homeschooled children have contact with mandatory reporters.
A neighbor of the Turpins reported that “the kids were invisible.” The children’s grandparents, who lived out of state, told reporters that they stayed in regular contact with the Turpin parents, but not with the children. “When a homeschool abuse case comes to light, it is not uncommon for neighbors or relatives to report having little contact with the children,” said Coleman. In a 2014 study of child torture, University of Wisconsin pediatrician Barbara Knox found that 47% of the school-aged victims she examined were removed from school to be homeschooled; another 29% were never enrolled in school.
CRHE recommends mandating annual academic assessments to consist of either a standardized test administered by a certified teacher or a portfolio review conducted by a similarly licensed professional. The organization, which has a board made up of homeschool alumni, also recommends requiring homeschooled students to have regular doctor visits. “Contact with mandatory reporters is critical,” said Coleman. “While children homeschooled in positive, healthy environments typically have regular contact with mandatory reporters, absent any law to the contrary children like the Turpins may be completely isolated.”
Seven of the thirteen Turpin children rescued on Sunday were adults; the oldest was 29. “In cases where homeschooled children are isolated and not educated, it can be very difficult for them to leave,” Coleman stated. “The older Turpin children may not have had driver’s licenses or any form of identification, and were likely not given high school diplomas or any other educational records by their parents.” CRHE has come across many cases where abusive homeschooling parents have used their complete control over their children’s records to control them well into adulthood. “Concern about younger siblings may also keep older children at home,” Coleman added. CRHE recommends that states maintain annual academic records on file for each homeschooled child and make those records available once they turn 18. “No adult should be in a position where they feel they cannot leave home,” said Coleman.
The Coalition for Responsible Home Education is a national organization founded by homeschool alumni and dedicated to raising awareness of the need for homeschooling reform, providing public policy guidance, and advocating for responsible home education practices.
Last Updated: 30 October, 2023 by Rachel Coleman
Florida Lawmakers Should Support Homeschooled Children, Not Leave Them Adrift
For Immediate Release: Proposed legislation would limit protections for a homeschooled children when they are needed most
Canton, Ma., 01/11/2018—The Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE), a national nonprofit that advocates for homeschooled children, has concerns about House Bill 731 and Senate Bill 732, which would limit school districts’ authority over homeschooling. “The body of 10-year-old Janiya Thomas was found in a freezer in Bradenton in 2015,” said Rachel Coleman, executive director of the organization, which was founded by homeschool alumni. “Janiya died because the Florida’s homeschool law did not do enough to protect her. This is the time for Florida lawmakers to improve the law, not shackle it.”
HB 731 and SB 732 would bar school districts from requesting additional information from homeschooling parents and limit the district’s ability to review homeschooled children’s annual assessments. “This bill appears to be directed at school districts like Miami-Dade, which ask homeschooling parents to provide copies of their children’s birth certificates,” said Coleman, who understands homeschooling parents’ frustration when requirements are unclear. “The current law is too vague, but writing the most loose interpretation into law isn’t the solution.”
Janiya’s mother had a criminal record and had previously had a child removed from her home due to abuse but was still permitted to homeschool. Florida law does not require any form of background checks for parents who withdraw their children from school to homeschool. After the 2011 death of Nubia Barahona, a 10-year-old homeschooled child in West Palm Beach, an independent review panel called on DCF to “work with the school system and the Department of Education to devise an efficient alert system, with appropriate follow-up inspections, for at risk children removed from the school system and placed in ‘home schooling.’” The recommended system, which might have saved Janiya, was never created.
“Rather than limiting school districts’ ability to ask for information, lawmakers should create a uniform background check process for homeschooling parents to prevent tragedies like Janiya’s death and to avoid confusion between homeschooling parents and district officials,” said Coleman. “Lawmakers can clarify the law and protect children at the same time.”
The bill also expands homeschooled students’ access to career and technical courses and allows homeschooled students to participate in athletics at any public school in the state (current law restricts homeschooled students to participating at the public school they would have attended). “We support efforts to give homeschooled students access to programs and services to help them succeed,” said Coleman. “We are concerned, however, that allowing homeschooled students to participate in athletics across district lines would create a loophole legalizing recruitment, serving coaches and sports programs and not children.”
The Coalition for Responsible Home Education is a national organization founded by homeschool alumni and dedicated to raising awareness of the need for homeschooling reform, providing public policy guidance, and advocating for responsible home education practices.
Last Updated: 30 October, 2023 by CRHE
New Hampshire Lawmakers Have the Opportunity to Support Homeschooled Students
For Immediate Release: HB 1263 Would Restore Needed Accountability for New Hampshire’s Homeschoolers
Canton, Ma., 01/10/2018—The Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE), a national nonprofit organization that advocates for homeschooled children, supports New Hampshire House Bill 1263, which would restore accountability to the state’s homeschool law. “The New Hampshire legislature has the opportunity to stand in support of the state’s homeschooled children by passing HB 1263,” said Executive Director Rachel Coleman. CRHE was founded by homeschool alumni in 2013 to advocate for homeschooled children.
Current New Hampshire law requires homeschooling parents to have their children evaluated annually, but does not require parents to submit the results to any educational agency and prohibits school officials from using the results as a reason to terminate a homeschool program. “An assessment does not serve as an accountability measure when no one sees the results,” said Coleman. HB 1263 would require parents to submit the results of their children’s annual assessment to an educational agency and would create a grievance process for children who are not making educational progress commensurate with their ability.
HB 1263’s bipartisan sponsors were motivated by concerns raised by Berlin School District Superintendent Corinne Cascadden, who reported that she believes as many as half of the children homeschooled in her school district are not receiving an education. Coleman is unsurprised. “When a state does not provide accountability, homeschooling can be used by abusive or neglectful parents to conceal problems at home or evade truancy proceedings,” she said. In a 2011 study of child torture, Barbara Knox of the University of Wisconsin found that 47% of school-aged victims had been removed from school to be homeschooled. “In the absence of accountability, there is no way to ensure that homeschooling is being used to educate children and not to isolate or neglect them,” said Coleman.
HB 1263 does not create any measures New Hampshire homeschoolers are not already familiar with. The bill would restore the state’s law to its pre-2012 form; that year, HB 1517 removed the state’s accountability provisions. Some homeschool advocates have objected to the bill nonetheless, claiming that there is no evidence of educational neglect by homeschooling parents. Coleman disagrees: “To say that there is no evidence of educational neglect when the state no longer has a way to obtain any evidence at all about homeschooled students’ performance is the height of nonsense,” she says.
On CRHE’s website, many homeschool graduates describe their positive views of state accountability. Homeschool alumna Caitlin T. saw the importance of accountability first-hand when her family moved from Pennsylvania, which required parents to submit annual assessments, to New Jersey, where parents were not required to provide documentation to the local school district. “In New Jersey, things fell apart,” she explained in her testimonial. “No one was there to check up on us or offer help.”
HB 1263 is currently before New Hampshire’s House Education Committee. “I urge the lawmakers of New Hampshire to pass HB 1263 out of committee and vote it into law,” said Coleman. “It’s time to stand up for the homeschooled children of New Hampshire.”
The Coalition for Responsible Home Education is a national organization founded by homeschool alumni and dedicated to raising awareness of the need for homeschooling reform, providing public policy guidance, and advocating for responsible home education practices.
Last Updated: 6 February, 2020 by CRHE
Jesse M.: “Some of these things would most likely not have been done if they were not required”
“I am grateful that a minimal amount of planning was required at the beginning of the school year and that some type of assessment was required at the end of each school year. I’m also grateful that medical checkups were required. Some of these things would most likely not have been done if they were not required.“
I am in favor of homeschool oversight because homeschooled children need their rights to health, safety, and education legally protected. Without oversight, parents or guardians can claim to homeschool as a means to hide abuse, neglect, and failure. This misuse of the freedom to homeschool must be stopped. I support oversight of homeschooling because I had the benefit of some oversight in the states where I was homeschooled. Even well-intentioned, responsible parents can benefit from the guidance and structure that legal protections provide and homeschooling as a whole will have a better reputation if it is not misused. It is simply unacceptable that homeschooled children in many states do not have adequate legal protection for their health, safety and education.
Homeschooling has inherent weaknesses, such as a tendency toward isolation within the family, fewer opportunities for a child to develop independence and a self-concept separate from their family, and the risk that children will have no escape from the effects of damaging parental issues, such as depression, illness, addiction, or domestic violence. Because a homeschooled child’s family life and school life are so tied together, a dysfunction, sickness, or other crisis in the family can devastate the child’s life both academically and personally. While there are pros and cons with every form of education, homeschooled children depend on their parents to provide their education instead of professional teachers and thus do not have that alternative support system of teachers and peers to turn to at times when their parents may not be willing or able to meet their needs.
Deregulation of homeschooling in many states has given parents the ability to have an almost totalitarian control over their children. But to those who think that parents always know what is best for their children, consider this: To be a parent the only real requirement is that a person have a functioning reproductive system. This says nothing about the person’s intellectual capacity, level of education, or ability to teach. To those who think that parents are always well-intentioned and try their best, I point to the parents of all the murdered and abused children whose stories are chronicled at hsinvisiblechildren.org. Any good intentions these parents might once have had are clearly not enough. Their children needed legal protection. And many other homeschooled children still need legal protection.
I was homeschooled in New York up to age 10 and in Pennsylvania from age 10 to age 18. These are both states with the highest levels of oversight of any in the country. Yet even these levels of oversight are not actually that high, and parents can sometimes falsify records to make their homeschool look good and hide problems, for example by claiming to have homeschooled more days than they actually did, or doctoring their children’s schoolwork to make it look good for the portfolio. Since homeschooling parents in Pennsylvania can choose their evaluator, it can be a family friend who may agree to pass the family even when they discover that the child copied their work from the answer key when Mom wasn’t looking. In my experience, accountability for homeschooling parents is a good thing, because it sets clear standards so that they have goals to motivate them even if they cheat to achieve them. It also reveals problems that they may not have been aware of, but will hopefully try to address once they see how they are failing.
Reasonable oversight gives responsible parents a way to measure their efforts and stay accountable. Having a reasonable amount of oversight can benefit a homeschooling family by giving them a sense of structure and positive goals to work toward. Homeschooling is hard work. Even responsible parents are sometimes distracted, overwhelmed or short sighted. As the second oldest of twelve children, I experienced many times when my family became overwhelmed and disorganized. I am grateful that a minimal amount of planning was required at the beginning of the school year and that some type of assessment was required at the end of each school year. I’m also grateful that medical checkups were required. Some of these things would most likely not have been done if they were not required. While oversight can’t fix or mitigate every problem a homeschooling family might have, it can establish clear standards to show when a child is being neglected or abused, and when homeschooling is failing a child, whether or not the parents have good intentions.
Jesse M. was homeschooled in New York and Pennsylvania from 1989-2001. For additional thoughts and experiences of homeschooled alumni, see our Testimonials page.
Last Updated: 6 February, 2020 by CRHE
Rebecca A.: “I feel I have been denied the opportunity to live up to my potential”
“My days revolved around taking care of my siblings and our home. Our mother would leave her bedroom periodically to yell at us for being too noisy and messy. I spent most of my teenage years being overwhelmed and depressed.”
I attended Christian (Protestant) schools through most of my education, having been homeschooled in 4th grade. When I entered 7th grade in 1988, the school I was attending closed a few months into the school year and there was no choice but to attend public school. I had been so sheltered that this new reality was a literal hell for me, especially considering that I was not allowed to acclimate—let alone assimilate. I was bullied and physically assaulted to the point where I refused to go anymore. My parents decided to homeschool us (myself and two siblings). This time it was much different.
In 4th grade, my parents had been involved in a correspondence group that sent curriculum, lesson plans, teaching guides, etc. This time money was tight, and my parents fought with the local school board for the right to borrow textbooks for us to use under a provision of the Homeschool Act passed the year before. It was early 1989, and I was 13.
My father was working a full-time job, as well as being a full-time pastor of a tiny church. My mother had checked out, both physically and mentally, the previous year, following the birth of my youngest sibling. She would wake us up around 7am each morning, tell us what Bible verses to read, and go back to bed. We waited until all was quiet and then also went back to sleep until the baby would wake us up.
Taking care of the baby was my primary responsibility. After everyone was fed for the morning, I would try to direct my siblings in schoolwork, but I was 13. Not only did my siblings recognize that I held no authority over them, but at 13 I knew nothing about lesson planning or even where to begin. They at least had workbooks they could slog their way through. I had actual textbooks and no idea what to do with them. I would read and answer questions at the end of chapters. But I wasn’t so much being homeschooled as I was attempting to self-educate.
There are some subjects that are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to teach yourself—particularly math and science. I struggled with algebra. When the higher math textbooks arrived, I had no idea what to do. When I approached my parents for help, they both answered that they had gone to a vocational high school school and had taken business math. This meant I was basically on my own to figure out algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus. I failed miserably. I basically bluffed/cheated my way through. (These were the days before the internet—so no help there.)
The only subject area in which my parents were proactive was science. They did not want us learning anything about the theory of evolution. Not that they supplemented the stuff we couldn’t read with anything else. They were also adamant that religious studies were the most important.
There were no outside groups to be involved with—we were very isolated. There was one other homeschooling family in our area, and periodically we would get together to play and that was considered our physical education. Being in my early teens, I had no interest in playing with little kids, and spent the time acting as babysitter more often than not.
I graduated in 1992, having “skipped” two grades (7th and 12th). I received a diploma from a homeschooling group located a few hours away. Unbeknownst to me, they were not state accredited at the time so my diploma meant nothing. I only learned this when I attempted to enter nursing school and was told that I’d need to get my GED to attend.
Oversight would have been great. I needed help and guidance and there was no one there for me. I’m still bitter about the experience. I feel like I could’ve learned so much more in a structured setting with knowledgeable people to direct and assist me.
When I attended college, I failed the math portion of the entrance exam, which meant extra classes just to get me caught up to my peers. When I took college biology, I was at a complete loss—while my classmates were basically taking a refresher course, I was learning the subject for the first time. And I hate to break it to my parents, but the “theory” of evolution actually makes a lot of sense. It’s so much more complicated than the “man came from monkeys” line I was fed my entire childhood.
As part of oversight, I would like to see school districts become more cooperative and involved with their homeschooling families. After my parents asserted their right to borrow textbooks from the local school district (as provided under the Homeschool Act passed in 1988), our district lent us outdated textbooks in terrible condition—missing pages and moldy from water damage. I believe this was done out of spite against my parents, but it hurt me, not them. I particularly remember one geometry textbook that was signed and dated by students in the 1960s.
No one knew how and if we were being educated. I don’t think anyone cared. There was absolutely no outside interference or support. There was minimal adult supervision. My days revolved around taking care of my siblings and our home. Our mother would leave her bedroom periodically to yell at us for being too noisy and messy. I spent most of my teenage years being overwhelmed and depressed.
My lack of a decent education has been a stumbling block on so many levels. And that doesn’t even include the social aspect. I feel like I have been denied the opportunity to live up to my potential. Honestly, it makes me angry.
Had someone stepped in and done a basic evaluation of our education and curriculum and provided some sort of guidance, there may have been a world of difference for me. I’ve always been told how smart I am, but most days I feel like an idiot because I’m constantly learning new things that everyone else seems to already know.
Rebecca A. was homeschooled in Pennsylvania from 1985-1986 (4th grade) and from 1989-1992 (8th grade through graduation). For additional thoughts and experiences of homeschooled alumni, see our Testimonials page.
Last Updated: 12 October, 2017 by Rachel Coleman
NCES Data Points to Changing Homeschool Demographics
Every four years, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) conducts its National Household Education Survey. Beginning in 1999, the NCES has collected data on homeschooling as part of this survey. This data offers the most comprehensive statistical information we have on homeschooling in the United States. Last month, the NCES released its most recent findings, which covered data collected during 2015-2016.
Unlike studies of homeschooling that draw from convenience samples gathered via individuals a researcher knows or emails sent out by homeschool organizations, the NCES uses a nationally representative random sample for this survey. Even so, this data is not without its challenges. The NCES switched from phone surveys to mail-in surveys when conducting the 2011-2012 survey, and some researchers have questioned whether this or that method may favor different types of respondents.
The NCES does not collect information on students’ test scores; as a result, their surveys primarily provide demographic data. Below, we report some of the key findings of the 2015-2016 survey; we cover numbers, language, income, parental education, grade level, and parents’ reasons for homeschooling. Remember, as with any survey data, this information should be approached with some degree of caution.
1. The homeschool rate has stopped increasing, ending a long period of homeschool growth.
One of the most significant findings of the 2015-2016 National Household Education Survey is that the homeschool rate has ceased growing and has perhaps even declined slightly. In 2011-2012, 3.4% of school-aged children were homeschooled; in 2015-2016, that number dipped slightly to 3.3%. Overall, the number of homeschooled children declined from 1,770,000 in 2011-2012 to 1,704,000 in 2015-2016. This finding is not as surprising as it might initially seem; state level homeschool enrollment data has, in recent years, been mixed, with some states showing declines while others have seen growth. Additionally, the pace of growth had already been slowing; while the number of children being homeschooled increased by 38% between 2003 and 2007, it grew by only 17% between 2007 and 2011-2012.
2. One in ten homeschooled children does not have a parent/guardian who speaks English.
According to the 2015-2016 data, 11% of homeschooled students live in household where no parent or guardian speaks English. This is the first year the National Household Education Survey asked this question, so we cannot compare this finding to previous years. However, the finding may be related to a dramatic rise in the number of Hispanic students being homeschooled: in 2015-2016, 26% of homeschooled students were Hispanic, up from 15% in 2011-2012. While white, non-Hispanic students were still homeschooled at the highest rate, fewer white, non-Hispanic students were homeschooled in 2015-2016 than in 2011-2012. (White, non-Hispanic students made up 59% of homeschooled students in 2015-2016, down from 68% in 2011-2012 and 77% in 2007.)
3. Children living below the poverty line are more likely than other children to be homeschooled.
The most recent NCES survey found that children living below the poverty line were more likely to be homeschooled than other children. This appears to have shifted over time. In 2007, just 1.8% of school-age children in poverty were homeschooled, compared with roughly 3.2% of those not in poverty. In 2011-2012, in the midst of the Great Recession, the rate was practically identical for each group—3.5% of children in poverty and 3.4% of children not in poverty were homeschooled. In the latest data, however, 3.9% of children in poverty were homeschooled compared to 3.1% of children not in poverty. Children living in poverty were 26% more likely to be homeschooled than children not living in poverty.
4. Parents without a high school diploma or GED homeschool at a higher rate than other parents.
According to the most recent data, 4.4% of children whose parents do not have a high school diploma or GED are homeschooled as compared to only 3.6% of children with at least one parent with a bachelor’s degree. To break it down another way, 15% of homeschooled children do not have a parent who has completed high school. Nearly one-third of homeschooled children are being educated by parents with a high school diploma or below. Less than half of homeschooled children (45%) have a parent with a bachelor’s degree or above.
In 2015-2016, for the first time since the NCES began collecting data, the rate of homeschooling among children whose parents have a bachelor’s degree or above declined. The high rate of homeschooling among children whose parents have not completed high school is also a new thing; in 2007, the first year to release data on homeschooling rates among parents who had not completed high school, only 0.4% of parents without a high school diploma or GED homeschooled; in 2015-2016, that number was 4.4%.
5. High school students are homeschooled at a higher rate than elementary school students.
In 2007, the homeschooling rate was slightly higher for elementary school children than for middle or high school students. More recent data suggests that this has changed. In 2011-2012, high school students were 19% more likely to be homeschooled than young elementary students; in 2015-2016, this number changed to 31%. It is difficult to tell what is driving this shift. While the overall rate of homeschooling declined slightly between 2011-2012 and 2015-2016, the rate of high school students being homeschooled actually increased slightly.
It is possible that the rise in virtual education has led to an increase in the number of high school students being homeschooled; in 2011-2012, at lest one-fifth of all homeschooled students were enrolled in online courses through a public school. It is also possible that changes taking place in the nation’s elementary schools over the past few years have made them more attractive to parents who might otherwise have homeschooled their children.
6. The percentage of parents homeschooling for religious or academic reasons has been declining.
On the 2015-2016 survey, 17% of parents listed a dissatisfaction with academic instruction in other schools as their most important reason for homeschooling, down slightly from 2011-2012 when 19% of parents selected this reason. Overall, 61% of parents listed a concern about academic instruction as one of their reasons for homeschooling, down from 74%. The percentage of parents who listed a desire to provide religious instruction as their most important reason for homeschooling declined similarly from 17% to 16% between 2011-2012 and 2015-2016; those who selected it as a reason overall declined from 64% to 51%.
The percentage of parents selecting a concern about the environment in other schools as their most important motivation for homeschooling increased from 25% to 34% during this period, though but the percentage of parents selecting it as a reason overall declined from 91% to 80%. The percentage of parents homeschooling to provide a nontraditional education or because a child has special needs, meanwhile, remained largely unchanged.
Conclusion
What does all of this mean? For one thing, it means that homeschool demographics are beginning to more closely resemble those of the nation as a whole. Before the last decade or so, families that homeschooled tended to be more likely to be white, less poor, and better educated than other families. Data from the most recent National Household Education Survey suggests that this may no longer be the case. These changes may point to increasing use of online public school programs and other virtual school options, which could be attracting students with a different set of demographics than traditional homeschooling.
In 2016, the NCES released a full analysis of the homeschooling data it had collected in 2011-2012. This report explained that, when initially contacted, some of the respondents had asked for the homeschool survey while others had asked for the enrolled in school survey and then marked that their children were homeschooled part-time. This latter group had a distinct demographic profile. These individuals were more likely to be Hispanic, far more likely to be poor, and much more likely to not have a high school diploma or GED. While the full analysis of the 2015-2016 data will not be released for some time, we may be seeing a similar effect.
These changing demographics throw into stark relief the limitations of current research on homeschooled students’ academic achievement. Studies of homeschooled students’ performance have typically drawn on convenience samples that skew heavily toward white children with college educated parents. These findings cannot be generalized to homeschooled students with vastly different demographic factors. Our lack of knowledge about these students is especially concerning in the wake of a 2015 Stanford study which found that, over the course of a year, virtual charter school students lagged behind their demographically matched peers in reading and showed no progress whatsoever in math.
Are public schools offloading problem students onto online programs? Are virtual charter school programs attracting a new demographic of students to home education? Or are the demographics of homeschooling changing across the board, regardless of the method or means of instruction? The 2015-2016 NCES data leaves these and many other questions unanswered.
Posted: 12 September, 2017 by Rachel Coleman
Factless Attack on Facts Falls Flat: A response to Joel Kurtinitis’ Op-Ed in the Des Moines Register
Joel Kurtinitis’ opinion piece, “Attacks on homeschooling are short on facts,” published in the Des Moines Register on September 8, 2017, was missing some facts of its own.
Kurtinitis claimed that the “neither the Federal Commission to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities nor the Mayo Clinic mentions homeschooling in their list of abuse risk factors.” He neglected to mention that the Commission did not publish a list of risk factors, and that the Mayo Clinic’s list of risk factors includes “social or extended family isolation.” In a 2014 study of child torture, child abuse researcher Barbara Knox wrote that “the majority of children … were isolated from people outside the immediate family” and that “this social isolation typically involved preventing the child from attending school.” Forty-seven percent of the school-aged cases Knox examined involved children removed from school to be homeschooled: “This ‘homeschooling’ appears to have been designed to further isolate the child and typically occurred after the closure of a previously opened CPS case,” Knox wrote.
In another breach of facts, Kurtinitis asserted that homeschooled students “enjoy a 30-plus point margin on standardized tests over public schoolers.” This is quite simply false. The research Kurtinitis cites surveyed only select homeschooled students, primarily from non-poor college-educated families, and more comprehensive data suggests that homeschooled students score below their public schooled peers in math; there is also some reason to believe that homeschooled students are less likely to attend college.
More pertinently, Kurtinitis compared our database of homeschool abuse cases to the number of reports investigated by CPS each year to claim that homeschooled students are 4,000 times less likely to be abused than public schooled students. This is absurd. Fewer than 20% of reports investigated by CPS are founded, only a small minority involve physical abuse, and many involve children who have not yet reached school age. Further, our database only includes homeschool abuse cases which are especially horrific and which hit the news. When we compared the fatalities in our database with a comprehensive list of child abuse fatalities nationwide, we found that, even with an incomplete list, homeschooled children were no less likely to die from child abuse than children who attend school.
Our contention has never been that homeschooled children are abused at a higher rate than other children. Instead, our contention has always been that abusive parents can and do use homeschooling to isolate their children and conceal their abuse. In his opinion piece, Kurtinitis wrote that most homeschoolers are not isolated and that these students “have every avenue to report abuse that public schoolers do.” That is all well and good, but what about those homeschooled students who are isolated? Natalie Finn’s parents nailed shut her bedroom window. Sabrina Rey was so malnourished that she went through the garbage when she took out the trash. What avenues did Finn and Rey have for reporting their abuse? They had no trusted teacher, no guidance counselor, no friend’s parent, no school nurse.
Homeschooling can also exacerbate abuse. Knox found that when the child torture victims she studied were removed from school to be homeschooled, their isolation “was accompanied by an escalation of physically abusive events.” We have spoken with abuse survivors who attended school for part of their education; they report that the abuse they suffered was worse during the years they were homeschooled, because their parents had fewer constraints—they did not have to worry about their abuse being seen or reported.
With the deaths of Natalie Finn and Sabrina Rey, the people of Iowa saw firsthand how homeschooling can be used to isolate victims and hide maltreatment. How many more children like Finn and Rey will die in Iowa and across the country before lawmakers have the willpower to create protections for homeschooled children, too?