“What about socialization?” The question often brings up unpleasant associations for homeschoolers—being judged for their lifestyle by a teacher or a doctor; a social worker threatening to break up the family. It is such a loaded question that quite a few homeschooling resources mention socialization specifically to reassure homeschoolers that it’s not something to worry about and that their critics are just misguided or ignorant.
But what does anyone really mean by ‘socialization’? According to the Home School Legal Defense Association’s analysis of the topic, socialization means
- Regular interaction with people, especially adults and children of all ages—not social isolation
- Preparation for the “real world”; e.g. engagement in civic life, competition in the job market
- Development of self-esteem, without the burden of peer pressure
- The ability to think independently, as well as to work as part of a team
This understanding of socialization, however, is incomplete.
Socialization, as understood by social scientists,[1] is defined as “the process by which individuals acquire the knowledge, skills, and character traits that enable them to participate as effective members of groups and society” (p. 6). That is, socialization is not something that you seek in and of itself. Instead, it is a set of opportunities for you to learn a number of useful skills. “Gosh, I feel really isolated, I need more socialization” doesn’t make sense according to this definition. If anything, you ought to say “I think I will need to know how to ____ to be an effective member of society, but I haven’t had enough opportunities to learn this skill. I need to spend more time in a social environment that fosters this skill in me.”
Socialization occurs everywhere, in every interaction with people. In the family, the child’s primary agent of socialization, he or she gains a status and a cultural heritage. Children develop patterns for establishing relationships and learn to model desirable behaviors and initiate activities. In the peer group, children gain experience in independence and egalitarian relationships and gain a sense of who they are by comparison with others. They also learn cooperation and role taking. In the community, children broaden their range of experiences and gain different perspectives on life, taking on new statuses or roles (p. 44-51).
A person can be said to be well-socialized if she has successfully learned a sense of self-concept, the ability to self-regulate, the drive to accomplish things, the performance of social roles, and culturally-specific developmental skills (p. 36-43). These aims of socialization are further described below.
1) Develop a self-concept
“Self-concept is an individual’s perception of his or her identity as distinct from that of others. It emerges from experiences of separateness from others. The value one places on that identity [is] self-esteem. … A self-concept develops when the attitudes and expectations of significant others with whom one interacts are incorporated into one’s personality” (p. 36-37). Critical elements of self-concept developed during childhood and early adulthood include: a sense of trust in oneself and other people; a sense of autonomy and the development of a will; a feeling of initiative to try new things and ask questions; the capacity to enjoy work; the ability to explore choices and make commitments; and the ability to establish intimacy. Elements of self-concept critical to adulthood and later life are a sense of generativity or productivity—the desire to make a lasting impact on the world—and a sense of acceptance of responsibility for one’s life.
2) Enable self-regulation
“Self-regulation involves the ability to control one’s impulses, behavior, and/or emotions until an appropriate time, place, or object is available for expression. This can be interpreted as routing our feelings through our brains before acting on them according to the situation. Regulated behavior often involves postponing or modifying immediate gratification for the sake of a future goal. This implies being able to tolerate frustration. … As children develop cognitively and have more real experiences, they learn how to interpret events and how to express emotions appropriately. They develop strategies for coping with disappointment, frustration, rejection, and anger” (p. 40-41).
3) Empower achievement
“Socialization furnishes goals for what you are going to be when you become an adult …These goals provide the rationale for [following society’s rules and give] meaning or purpose to adulthood and to the long process a child has to go through to get there” (p. 41). Important skills include the motivation to achieve and the ability to explain success or failure.
4) Teach appropriate social roles
“In order to be part of a group, one has to have a function that complements the group. … We have many social roles throughout life, some of which occur simultaneously” (p. 41); for instance, many people take on the social roles of child, sibling, partner, parent, friend, and worker at some point in their lives.
5) Implement developmental skills
“Socialization aims to provide social, emotional, and cognitive skills to children so that they can function successfully in society” (p. 41). These skills depend on the culture of the society. In 21st-century North America, social skills like how to obtain information from other people, use the telephone and the internet, and make small talk might be important to learn. “Emotional skills may involve controlling aggressive impulses, learning to deal with frustration by substituting another goal for one that is blocked, or being able to compensate for mistakes. Cognitive skills may include reading, mathematics, writing, problem solving,” etc. (p. 42).
Eventually, socialization results in the development of values (“qualities or beliefs that are viewed as desirable or important”), attitudes (“tendencies to respond positively or negatively to certain [stimuli]”), and morals (“evaluations of what is right and wrong”) (p. 67-68).
If a social scientist says a child is “not well-socialized,” what she means is that he lacks some age-appropriate skill which he will find necessary to be an effective member of society. It is not a judgment about conformity to others’ expectations—rather, it is a sympathetic assessment of someone’s ability to accomplish what he wants to accomplish in his life.[2] For instance, if he lacks a sense of trust, it might be hard for him to establish intimate relationships. If he lacks the ability to self-regulate, he might have anger management issues. If he lacks the motivation to succeed, it might be hard for him to find and keep a job.
Socialization is extremely important to children’s well-being. Homeschool parents should devote serious effort to understanding what is involved in socialization and making sure their children receive the socialization they need to succeed in life.
[1] This discussion of socialization is drawn from Child, family, school, community: Socialization and support, 9th ed., a 2013 textbook on socialization written by Roberta M. Berns, an emerita professor in the Psychology and Social Behavior Department at the University of California-Irvine (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning).
[2] “In light of homeschool advocates’ criticism of institutional schooling’s socialization efforts, it bears mention that asking, ‘Do homeschooled children acquire the necessary social skills to function effectively in broader society?’ does not mean homeschoolers (or anyone else) must mimic the behavior and customs of the wider culture. Rather, the relevant question is whether children gain the social fluency to navigate that context, learning how to develop relationships and work effectively with others.” (Kunzman & Gaither 2013: 19).
Last Updated: 23 March, 2021 by Chelsea McCracken
What about Socialization?
“What about socialization?” The question often brings up unpleasant associations for homeschoolers—being judged for their lifestyle by a teacher or a doctor; a social worker threatening to break up the family. It is such a loaded question that quite a few homeschooling resources mention socialization specifically to reassure homeschoolers that it’s not something to worry about and that their critics are just misguided or ignorant.
But what does anyone really mean by ‘socialization’? According to the Home School Legal Defense Association’s analysis of the topic, socialization means
This understanding of socialization, however, is incomplete.
Socialization, as understood by social scientists,[1] is defined as “the process by which individuals acquire the knowledge, skills, and character traits that enable them to participate as effective members of groups and society” (p. 6). That is, socialization is not something that you seek in and of itself. Instead, it is a set of opportunities for you to learn a number of useful skills. “Gosh, I feel really isolated, I need more socialization” doesn’t make sense according to this definition. If anything, you ought to say “I think I will need to know how to ____ to be an effective member of society, but I haven’t had enough opportunities to learn this skill. I need to spend more time in a social environment that fosters this skill in me.”
Socialization occurs everywhere, in every interaction with people. In the family, the child’s primary agent of socialization, he or she gains a status and a cultural heritage. Children develop patterns for establishing relationships and learn to model desirable behaviors and initiate activities. In the peer group, children gain experience in independence and egalitarian relationships and gain a sense of who they are by comparison with others. They also learn cooperation and role taking. In the community, children broaden their range of experiences and gain different perspectives on life, taking on new statuses or roles (p. 44-51).
A person can be said to be well-socialized if she has successfully learned a sense of self-concept, the ability to self-regulate, the drive to accomplish things, the performance of social roles, and culturally-specific developmental skills (p. 36-43). These aims of socialization are further described below.
1) Develop a self-concept
“Self-concept is an individual’s perception of his or her identity as distinct from that of others. It emerges from experiences of separateness from others. The value one places on that identity [is] self-esteem. … A self-concept develops when the attitudes and expectations of significant others with whom one interacts are incorporated into one’s personality” (p. 36-37). Critical elements of self-concept developed during childhood and early adulthood include: a sense of trust in oneself and other people; a sense of autonomy and the development of a will; a feeling of initiative to try new things and ask questions; the capacity to enjoy work; the ability to explore choices and make commitments; and the ability to establish intimacy. Elements of self-concept critical to adulthood and later life are a sense of generativity or productivity—the desire to make a lasting impact on the world—and a sense of acceptance of responsibility for one’s life.
2) Enable self-regulation
“Self-regulation involves the ability to control one’s impulses, behavior, and/or emotions until an appropriate time, place, or object is available for expression. This can be interpreted as routing our feelings through our brains before acting on them according to the situation. Regulated behavior often involves postponing or modifying immediate gratification for the sake of a future goal. This implies being able to tolerate frustration. … As children develop cognitively and have more real experiences, they learn how to interpret events and how to express emotions appropriately. They develop strategies for coping with disappointment, frustration, rejection, and anger” (p. 40-41).
3) Empower achievement
“Socialization furnishes goals for what you are going to be when you become an adult …These goals provide the rationale for [following society’s rules and give] meaning or purpose to adulthood and to the long process a child has to go through to get there” (p. 41). Important skills include the motivation to achieve and the ability to explain success or failure.
4) Teach appropriate social roles
“In order to be part of a group, one has to have a function that complements the group. … We have many social roles throughout life, some of which occur simultaneously” (p. 41); for instance, many people take on the social roles of child, sibling, partner, parent, friend, and worker at some point in their lives.
5) Implement developmental skills
“Socialization aims to provide social, emotional, and cognitive skills to children so that they can function successfully in society” (p. 41). These skills depend on the culture of the society. In 21st-century North America, social skills like how to obtain information from other people, use the telephone and the internet, and make small talk might be important to learn. “Emotional skills may involve controlling aggressive impulses, learning to deal with frustration by substituting another goal for one that is blocked, or being able to compensate for mistakes. Cognitive skills may include reading, mathematics, writing, problem solving,” etc. (p. 42).
Eventually, socialization results in the development of values (“qualities or beliefs that are viewed as desirable or important”), attitudes (“tendencies to respond positively or negatively to certain [stimuli]”), and morals (“evaluations of what is right and wrong”) (p. 67-68).
If a social scientist says a child is “not well-socialized,” what she means is that he lacks some age-appropriate skill which he will find necessary to be an effective member of society. It is not a judgment about conformity to others’ expectations—rather, it is a sympathetic assessment of someone’s ability to accomplish what he wants to accomplish in his life.[2] For instance, if he lacks a sense of trust, it might be hard for him to establish intimate relationships. If he lacks the ability to self-regulate, he might have anger management issues. If he lacks the motivation to succeed, it might be hard for him to find and keep a job.
Socialization is extremely important to children’s well-being. Homeschool parents should devote serious effort to understanding what is involved in socialization and making sure their children receive the socialization they need to succeed in life.
[1] This discussion of socialization is drawn from Child, family, school, community: Socialization and support, 9th ed., a 2013 textbook on socialization written by Roberta M. Berns, an emerita professor in the Psychology and Social Behavior Department at the University of California-Irvine (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning).
[2] “In light of homeschool advocates’ criticism of institutional schooling’s socialization efforts, it bears mention that asking, ‘Do homeschooled children acquire the necessary social skills to function effectively in broader society?’ does not mean homeschoolers (or anyone else) must mimic the behavior and customs of the wider culture. Rather, the relevant question is whether children gain the social fluency to navigate that context, learning how to develop relationships and work effectively with others.” (Kunzman & Gaither 2013: 19).
Last Updated: 25 April, 2022 by CRHE
Utah: Don’t Legalize Educational Neglect!
Utah State Senator Aaron Osmond’s bill SB 39 fully exempts homeschooling parents from any and all state educational requirements.
Both the Utah House and the Senate have passed SB 39. It is now on its way to Governor Gary Herbert to be signed into law.
As stated by Senator Osmond, parents who homeschool their children would be “formally exempt from any and all state educational requirements such as classroom time, curriculum standards, testing, or reporting.” We at CRHE believe that subject requirements are an important part of ensuring homeschooling parents’ accountability and provide guidelines for an education. Eliminating guidelines would decrease access for homeschooling parents.
CRHE believes that while parents should be able to choose how to educate their children, they should not be able to choose whether to educate their children. Senator Osmond believes otherwise.
If SB 39 is signed by the governor, the state of Utah will legalize educational neglect by homeschooling parents.
“When asked if this policy meant that it was possible that a parent could choose to ignore the so called “three-R’s” in education or even choose not to educate a child at all, Osmond says that nothing prevents that now.” It is reprehensible that Senator Osmond would use the current deficiencies in the state’s homeschooling law as an excuse to remove the law’s requirements altogether.
Senator Osmond’s claims about the state’s current educational neglect law displays a stunning lack of understanding of that very law. Currently, Utah’s Child & Family Services does not generally investigate educational neglect unless called in by the school district, which acts first in cases of educational deficiency in homeschooling situations. While SB 39 would remove the school district from the equation, the state’s educational neglect statute states that “a child may not be considered to be educationally neglected . . . if the child’s parent or guardian establishes by a preponderance of evidence that . . . the child is being instructed at home in compliance with Section 53A-11-102.” Section 53A-11-102 is, of course, the state’s homeschooling law, the very law Senator Osmond wants to dismantle.
If Senator Osmond is successful in removing any requirement that homeschool parents educate their children, he will also remove homeschooled students from the purview of the educational neglect statute entirely.
SB 39 would remove any remaining shreds of accountability from Utah’s homeschool provisions, effectively making it legal for homeschool parents to choose not to educate their children. While many homeschooling parents will provide their children with an excellent education regardless of what the law does or does not require, this is not true for all homeschooling parents. Utah, of all states, should be aware of this: After FLDS leader Warren Jeffs endorsed homeschooling in 2000, all FLDS parents started homeschooling their children. Parents in this cult frequently cease educating their children once they reach age 12 or 14, thus severely curtailing these children’s options. It is already difficult to prosecute such cases under the current law.
Removing the law entirely would not just make such educational neglect more difficult to prosecute, it would make that very neglect legal.
Please take action! Utah Governor Gary Herbert may sign SB 39 by this Friday. Contact Governor Herbert by phone at 801-538-1000 or by email using the online form at http://governor.utah.gov/goca/form_governor.html and urge him to veto SB 39 for the sake of Utah’s homeschooling families.
Last Updated: 23 March, 2021 by CRHE
Pennsylvania: HB 1013 and Accountability
Eleven U.S. states include a portfolio option in their homeschool law. Under this option, homeschool parents put together a portfolio of each student’s work to be evaluated by a qualified individual, typically a certified teacher. The evaluator then determines whether the student has made adequate academic progress, and in many states must write a report on the student’s ability and progression. Portfolio evaluations provide accountability for homeschool parents, offer parents an opportunity to receive input and advice about their children’s education, and help safeguard homeschooled students’ interest in an education.
However, of those eleven states, only one of them—Pennsylvania—ensures accountability for the individuals who evaluate homeschooled students’ annual portfolios. Pennsylvania law currently requires the supervisor of the home education program (i.e. the parent) to provide the superintendent of the local school with both a portfolio of the student’s work and a “written evaluation of the student’s educational progress” composed by a teacher or other professional. See 24 P.S. § 13-1327.1(e). This provides the superintendent with the ability to compare the written evaluation with the portfolio, offering a measure of accountability for the evaluators.
HB 1013 would remove this level of accountability.
If enacted, homeschool parents in Pennsylvania would be required to provide the superintendent with only “an evaluator’s certification stating that an appropriate education is occurring.” Parents would no longer need to provide the portfolio to the superintendent, which removes the accountability for evaluators that was originally built into the law. Further, evaluators would provide simple “certification” of the student’s progress rather than a more thorough “written evaluation” of the student’s progress. This cuts down on both the information available to the superintendent and the advice and guidance offered to the parent.
In most states with a portfolio option, superintendents can ask to see a student’s portfolio if suspicions of educational neglect arise. However, HB 1013 would remove even that option. Under HB 1013, if allegations of educational neglect were to arise the superintendent could only ask the parents to have another evaluation and provide another certification. The superintendent would be barred from ever seeing any evidence of the student’s academic progress beyond an evaluator’s certification. This is a problem because some evaluators have been known to shirk their responsibilities.
Accountability for evaluators is important because educationally neglectful parents frequently look for evaluators who will sign off on students’ progress without examining their work thoroughly, if at all. You can see this below in the testimony of two homeschool graduates.
Kierstyn King: “My home state, Florida, required an annual portfolio review by a certified teacher. We had one portfolio review done by a teacher who was a neutral third party, and she started asking me questions about my education that year. My mom became upset and we never went back. Instead, one of my relatives who is in the adult education field and has been a certified teacher for as long as I can remember “reviewed” our portfolios for us. I say review lightly, because no thorough review was expected or given—if that had been the case, my math and my siblings’ writing and reading comprehension skills would have been noticed. Instead, we presented our portfolios, and they were signed off on without a glance.”
Teresa M.: “At the time my parents were homeschooling us in the state of Ohio a certified teacher was needed to sign off that the children were being educated. They were supposed to look over the last year’s work to verify. The woman who did ours was also a member of our church and homeschool support group and never even looked at the stuff mom brought her, which wasn’t much. I even remember mom commenting that ‘P only cared about her check clearing.’”
Without accountability, the portfolio evaluation process cannot be counted on to ensure that homeschooled students are not slipping through the cracks. Without accountability, evaluators can sign off on students’ work without looking at their portfolios or actually evaluating their academic progress—and educationally neglectful homeschool parents will seek out evaluators who do just that. If we knew that every evaluator would carry out their job responsibly and as required by law, accountability might not be such an issue. Unfortunately, we do not. This is why accountability is so important, and why Pennsylvania’s current law should be maintained.
CRHE applauds the Pennsylvania law as the only homeschool law in the country that provides accountability for portfolio evaluators. It would not be in the best interests of Pennsylvania’s homeschooled students for this to change.
HB 1013 is sponsored by Representative Mark M. Gillen, who can be reached at his home office at (610) 775-5130 or at his capitol office at (717) 787-8550. It was referred to the Education Committee at the end of last year’s legislative session. The Pennsylvania House of Representatives will reconvene for this year’s legislative session on February 10, 2014.
Last Updated: 23 March, 2021 by CRHE
Virginia: HB 63 and Sports Access
Virginia homeschoolers are barred from participation in public school sports leagues by the Virginia High School League’s requirement that each student athlete be “a regular bona fide student in good standing of the school which he/she represents.” HB 63, a bill before the 2014 Virginia General Assembly, would change this. As advocates for homeschooled students, we are passionate about expanding homeschool sports access. HB 63, which you can read in full here, has our support.
Currently, 29 states offer homeschooled students full or partial access to public school sports leagues. In the remaining 21 states (Virginia included), high school athletic association eligibility requirements bar homeschooled students from participating in public school sports leagues. Fortunately, homeschool sports access has increased in recent years. 6 states that had previously prohibited or severely limited access revised their laws or policies in 2012 and 2013 alone. Click here for CRHE’s analysis of homeschool sports access laws.
HB 63 would open up opportunities for homeschooled students to participate in healthy athletic and social extracurricular activities. We support homeschool access to public school extracurriculars because options for homeschooled children that include group athletic and social activity encourage healthy child development and wellbeing. Further, we believe that a positive and cooperative relationship between public schools and homeschool families is in the best interests of the child, the parents, and the school; such a relationship can in some cases bring homeschooled children in negative home environments into contact with mandatory reporters or provide role models and positive influences they might not otherwise have had. In states and districts where sports participation is permitted, the response has often been positive.
While elementary aged Virginia homeschool students have access to a variety of community sports leagues, the competitive athletic options available to high school level homeschooled students are often severely limited. We do not believe families should be forced to choose between homeschooling and competitive sports participation. Some children’s best interests may be best served by both homeschooling and participation in public school sports leagues.
Common objections to sports access have to do with academic requirements, funding, and abuse of the law. HB 63 addresses all three of these concerns. First, participation is limited to any student who “has demonstrated evidence of progress [pursuant to the state’s homeschool law] for at least two consecutive academic years immediately preceding the academic year during which the student seeks to participate.” This ensures that public school athletes struggling with academic requirements don’t switch to homeschooling and immediately resume athletic participation, and it also creates an academic standard for homeschooled students. HB 63 also limits sports participation to the homeschooled student’s district of residence and states that homeschool athletes will be “subject to all policies governing such participation that the local school board may establish.” Finally, HB 63 addresses funding, stating that homeschool athletes may be charged “reasonable fees” to “cover the costs of participation in such interscholastic programs.”
CRHE supports efforts to allow homeschooled students to participate in public school curricular and extracurricular activities, including sports, and is hopeful that this legislation, and other legislation like it, will pass. We have only one caveat: HB 63 does not cover students homeschooled under the state’s religious exemption. We believe that all homeschooled students, regardless of which option they are homeschooled under, should have access to extracurricular activities, including sports, at their local public schools.
For more information on HB 63, see The Organization of Virginia Homeschoolers’ Homeschoolers’ Sports Access page, which includes frequently asked questions, an explanation of how HB 63 will work in practice, and a collection of stories from Virginia homeschool families who hope to gain access to public school sports leagues.
Last Updated: 16 January, 2015 by CRHE
CRHE’s Heather Doney on America Tonight
This week CRHE’s executive director, Heather Doney, was featured heavily on an America Tonight spot on oversight of homeschooling. We are pleased with this opportunity for positive exposure, and hope that this segment will introduce viewers to the need for homeschooling reform.
Note: While the videos have been temporarily removed from the site, the news article covering the same content is still available and can be viewed here.
Last Updated: 25 April, 2022 by CRHE
Utah: SB 39 and Senator Osmond
Senator Aaron Osmond of Utah has proposed SB 39, a sweeping bill that would effectively abolish compulsory education through revisions to the state’s homeschool law. As Osmond has previously stated, his goal is to make homeschooling parents fully exempt from “any and all state educational requirements,” including subject requirements. We at CRHE oppose Senator Osmond’s proposals because we believe that subject requirements are an important part of ensuring that children are homeschooled in a legal environment that is supportive and protects their interest in receiving a well-rounded education that will prepare them for adulthood. Eliminating subject requirements, which serve as both guidelines and legal standards, would be detrimental to the interests of Utah’s homeschooled students.
Utah’s current homeschool law requires that students receive instruction “in the subjects the State Board of Education Requires to be taught in public schools” and “for the same length of time as minors are required by law to receive instruction in public schools.” Utah’s subject requirements are thus currently in line with CRHE’s policy recommendations. Finally, while Utah’s law does not require annual assessments it does require homeschool parents to file annual notice of homeschooling with their local school districts. (Click here for a full analysis of Utah’s homeschool law.) SB 39 would require parents to notify their local school districts of homeschooling once only and would remove mandated subject and instructional time requirements.
A news article reported that: “When asked if this policy meant that it was possible that a parent could choose to ignore the so called “three-R’s” in education or even choose not to educate a child at all, Osmond says that nothing prevents that now and parents, even under his new system, would be held to educational neglect laws.” It is reprehensible that Osmond would use the current deficiencies in the state’s homeschooling law (i.e. the lack of an assessment requirement) as an excuse to remove the requirements of the homeschooling law entirely. Further, Senator Osmond’s claims about the state’s current educational neglect law displays a lack of understanding of that very law.
In current practice, Utah’s Child & Family Services does not generally investigate educational neglect unless called in by the school district, which acts first in cases of educational deficiency in homeschooling situations. SB 39 would remove the school district from the equation altogether, but that is not all. The state’s educational neglect statute states that “a child may not be considered to be educationally neglected . . . if the child’s parent or guardian establishes by a preponderance of evidence that . . . the child is being instructed at home in compliance with Section 53A-11-102.” Section 53A-11-102 is, of course, the state’s homeschooling law, the very law SB 39 would dismantle. If Senator Osmond is successful in removing any requirement that homeschool parents educate their children, he will also remove homeschooled students from the purview of the educational neglect statute entirely.
Osmond stated in a news article that “if Homeschool and Private school parents decide to return their child to Public Education, their child will be assessed with an age-appropriate assessment, and the student will be placed in the appropriate academic level based on that assessment. In addition if remediation is necessary, the local school district may charge all or part of that cost to remediate back to the parent.” Osmond called this “true accountability,” apparently unaware that such a provision would dissuade floundering homeschooling parents from placing their children in public school for a better education, and that the consequences of this would fall not on the parents but on the children. It is unclear what role this proposal may play in Osmond’s legislation.
Senator Osmond also displayed a significant lack of care for students’ educational well-being when he stated that “it is possible that some students will have lower quality education than others [under his proposal, but] that happens today.” The fact that some students today do not receive a quality of education is no reason to give up on efforts to offer a quality education to every student. We should be making an effort to provide every student with an education rather than looking at current deficiencies and throwing up our hands in defeat, which is the essence of Senator Osmond’s proposals.
If enacted, Senator Osmond’s proposals would remove any remaining shreds of accountability from Utah’s homeschool provisions, effectively making it legal for homeschool parents to choose not to educate their children. While many homeschooling parents will provide their children with an excellent education regardless of what the law does or does not require, this is not true for all homeschooling parents. Utah, of all states, should be aware of this: After FLDS leader Warren Jeffs endorsed homeschooling in 2000, all FLDS parents started homeschooling their children. Parents in this cult frequently cease educating their children once they reach age 12 or 14, thus severely curtailing these children’s options. It is already difficult to prosecute such cases under the current law, but removing the law entirely would make such educational neglect not only more difficult to prosecute but actually legal.
You may contact Senator Osmond at (801) 897-8127 or avosmond@gmail.com.
Last Updated: 20 October, 2023 by CRHE
Virginia: House Joint Resolution No. 92
Delegate Thomas Rust of Virginia (R, 86th District) has proposed House Joint Resolution No. 92, which would request the Virginia Department of Education to conduct a study on Virginia’s religious homeschooling exemption and make recommendations to the legislature.
CRHE is in full support of further research on the effectiveness and impact of current homeschooling law. We maintain that every homeschooled child deserves safeguards to protect his or her interest in obtaining a basic education and reaching adulthood with an open future. We oppose religious homeschool exemptions such as the one currently available in Virginia, which remove homeschool parents from accountability and leave homeschooled children vulnerable to educational neglect and other forms of child maltreatment.
Virginia is the only state in the U.S. that allows parents to claim a religious exemption from compulsory education laws. While parents who homeschool under Virginia’s homeschool statute must have their children assessed by standardized test or portfolio review annually, parents who claim religious exemptions are not legally required to educate their children or provide any proof of educational instruction or advancement. Va. Code Ann. § 22.1-254(B)(1) excuses from school attendance “any pupil who, together with his parents, by reason of bona fide religious training or belief is conscientiously opposed to attendance at school.” Click here for our full summary of Virginia’s homeschool law.
The current empirical research on the topic, including outcome measures under the religious homeschooling exemption, is woefully incomplete. While supporters of the status quo have used research conducted by Dr. Brian Ray’s National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) to claim that students homeschooled under religious exemptions score 33 percentage points higher on standardized tests than the national average, we are doubtful of these claims. Dr. Ray’s cited paper is twenty years old, does not control for background factors, and uses a sample of 213 students, with only 18 high school students—hardly recent enough or containing enough variety to represent Virginia’s 6,429 students currently homeschooled under the religious exemption. CRHE’s assessment of Ray’s research in general is that it does not conform with best practices in the social sciences or utilize standard peer review (for more, see our page on academic achievement or our review of one of Ray’s more prominent studies). More research is needed to provide an accurate picture of homeschooling under Virginia’s religious exemption. CRHE strongly recommends against basing such important public policy decisions impacting children’s futures on one small study with clear methodological flaws and sampling limitations.
CRHE maintains that it is a desirable and reasonable interpretation of parental rights and responsibilities to legally allow parents the ability to choose an education for their children that conforms to their religious beliefs. However, any law that also allows parents the ability to deny their children an education due to their religious beliefs is not in the best interests of homeschooled children, faith-based groups, the state of Virginia, or society and should not be permitted or tolerated.
Concern about the lack of oversight for children homeschooled under the religious exemption clause has also been expressed by the University of Virginia School of Law’s Child Advocacy Clinic. In September 2012, they published a report titled, “7,000 Children and Counting: An Analysis of Religious Exemptions from Compulsory School Attendance in Virginia,” noting that Virginia is the only state in the United States that provides this kind of exemption for religious homeschoolers. They found that state and local officials were inconsistent in their application of the exemption and that no recent research had been done on the academic outcomes of religiously-exempt homeschoolers despite considerable growth in the homeschooling population in Virginia over the past two decades.
In July 2013, former homeschooled student Josh Powell made headlines when the Washington Post published an article about him titled “Student’s Home-Schooling Highlights Debate over Va. Religious Exemption Law.” Powell was educationally neglected by parents who claimed a religious exemption for him and refused to allow him or any of his siblings attend public school, despite Powell’s formal complaint to his local school board that his home education under the religious exemption was substandard and his openly stated view that he personally desired to attend public school. Virginia’s current legal standard is that, in families employing the religious exemption, parents and children are both required to be conscientious objectors who oppose school attendance because of their religious convictions. Powell’s desire to be educated at a public school was ignored because of the murkiness of the current law.
CRHE views Thomas Rust’s resolution as a logical response to the conversation started by coverage of Powell’s story. We believe that formal dialogue on the issue is itself not a threat to homeschool freedoms but rather a responsible reaction by lawmakers who recently had the unintended consequence of the homeschooling religious exemption law brought to their attention.
As such, CRHE supports House Joint Resolution 92 as a step in the right direction towards laws that are homeschooling friendly, respect religious freedom, and also consider the educational and human rights of homeschooled children.
Interested parties may contact Delegate Thomas Rust at 804-698-1086 or DelTRust@house.virginia.gov. Contact information for other Virginia delegates may be found here.
Feel free to contact us at info@responsiblehomeschooling.org.
Click here to read this document as a PDF.
Last Updated: 23 March, 2021 by CRHE
Ohio: Senate Bill 248, “Teddy’s Law”
Theodore “Teddy” Foltz Tedesco was murdered by his mother’s boyfriend, Zaryl G. Bush, in January of 2013. Teddy’s mother, Shain Widdersheim, had withdrawn him from public school to homeschool him months before after teachers reported signs of abuse, specifically so that she could remove him from contact with mandatory reporters. The family denied relatives access to Teddy, and isolated him even from friends and neighbors. According to Teddy’s father, Shawn Tedesco, social workers tried to investigate but were not allowed to see Teddy. When social workers investigate allegations involving children who attend public school, they may visit the child’s school to observe and speak with the child there if necessary. This was not possible for Teddy. Lawmakers working with Shawn Tedesco have proposed Senate Bill 248 in an effort to protect children like Teddy. We appreciate and affirm Shawn Tedesco’s efforts and absolutely concur that reform is needed, but we regretfully cannot support S.B. 248 as currently written and it is our hope that the bill will be amended.
There are numerous documented cases in our Homeschooling’s Invisible Children database where homeschooling has been successfully used to hide horrific levels of abuse. Not infrequently, children are pulled from school after their abuse is reported in order to prevent future reports. This is what happened to Calista Springer, Jeannette Maples, and Emani Moss, all of whom, like Teddy, died at the hands of their parents. In an effort to address this problem, Pennsylvania state senator Andrew Dinniman proposed S.B. 32, a law with a similar intent but much narrower scope. Similarly, a state child fatality review in Florida, the Nubia Report, recenlty suggested developing a system for flagging at-risk children withdrawn to be homeschooled. For more on this topic, see Homeschooling & Concealing Abuse.
Shawn Tedesco and other family members are currently pressing for legal reform in an effort to protect other children from Teddy’s fate. They are pushing for both changes in the state’s homeschool law and reforms to social services. Teddy’s family’s reaction—their desire to find ways to protect other children from suffering Teddy’s fate—is a natural and healthy response. Many parents in similar situations have fought for and effected positive legal change in their grief. This is how the Amber Alert system developed, for example. We strongly appreciate and confirm the efforts and concerns of Shawn Tedesco and other family members. For more, see the family’s website, teddyslaw.org.
This week Ohio state senator Capri Cafaro, who is working closely with Shawn Tedesco and other family members, unveiled S.B. 248, the family’s proposed reform to the state’s homeschool law. This bill would do the following:
CRHE supports a system of additional protections for at-risk children who are homeschooled. However, S.B. 248 as currently written is not an effective solution. The bill creates too much extra work for already overworked social services—there are an estimated 60,000 to 80,000 homeschool students in Ohio, each of whom would need to be interviewed annually, along with their parents and any members of their households—and puts every homeschooling family through the process rather than only flagging those who are at risk.
We would would like to see S.B. 248 amended to flag only those children who are at-risk. We support running the name of each child, parent, and household member through the statewide automated child welfare information system and flagging each family that was involved in a past investigation for some form of carefully designed additional protections or oversight. We appreciate that lawmakers in Ohio have been thinking about various forms these additional protections or oversight might take, and are receptive to the idea of requiring at-risk families to go through a carefully developed intervention program.
It is our hope that lawmakers will continue to introduce provisions designed to protect at-risk children, and that these provisions will respect the needs of homeschooled students, homeschool parents, and the child welfare system. As our organization grows, we plan to conduct further research on effective and fair protections for at-risk homeschooled children.
Note: Senator Cafaro has now released a facebook statement saying that she is committed to revising her bill to meet the concerns of all involved. Her recommendations are in line with ours—flagging only families already in the statewide automated child welfare information database for additional protections or oversight. This is a welcome development.
Feel free to contact us at info@responsiblehomeschooling.org.
Last Updated: 20 October, 2023 by CRHE
Homeschool Graduates Launch Nonpartisan Organization to Advocate for the Legal Interests of Homeschooled Children
December 18, 2013
Canton, Massachusetts — Homeschool graduates are launching the Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE), the first-ever non-profit public policy organization to advocate on behalf of the interests of homeschooled children. With an estimated 1.8 million children home educated in the United States, this is the first time since the home education movement began in the 1980’s that a lobbying force will seek to defend and advocate specifically on behalf of homeschooled children.
CRHE’s Executive Director, Heather Doney, was inspired to create the organization after being homeschooled in what she describes as “an educationally neglectful setting until the age of 12.” She was then tutored intensively by her grandfather, later being placed in a public school from which she graduated. She went on to earn an MPP from Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management, writing a capstone paper entitled “The Wild West of Homeschooling: Bringing Adequate Oversight to Parent-Educated Children and Youth.”
“I was inspired to create CRHE,” Doney says, “through a combination of my academic research and personal experience.” She came up with the idea in 2011. Through “a supportive environment made up of young public policy professionals and the former homeschool student community,” her desire has now turned into a tangible goal.
CRHE’s Director of Research, Rachel Coleman, who has worked closely with Doney in founding the organization, was homeschooled from kindergarten through high school. She attended Ball State University for her undergraduate and master’s degrees and is now at Indiana University working on a Ph.D. in history. Coleman is not new to homeschool research. She wrote her 2010 master’s thesis, “Ideologues, Pedagogues, Pragmatics: A Case Study of the Homeschool Community in Delaware County, Indiana,” on homeschooling. Coleman says that while she had “a very good homeschool educational experience,” she also knew peers who did not. This balance of experiences has made her “very passionate about working to help as many homeschooled students as possible have a similarly positive educational experience.”
Doney and Coleman are not the only board member of CRHE to be homeschooled. Each member of the founding board has significant homeschooling experience.
CRHE’s mission is to raise awareness of the need for homeschooling reform, provide public policy guidance, and advocate for responsible home education practices. As Coleman points out, “There is currently no homeschool organization that focuses solely on safeguarding the interests of homeschooled children. We plan to fill that gap.”
Current U.S. public policy on homeschooling is sparse and inconsistent. Most states have some combination of (1) notification, (2) parent qualification, (3) days of instruction, (4) subject, (5) bookkeeping, and (6) assessment requirements. Yet few have all six. In 11 states parents need have no contact at all with state or local education officials. 39 states have no parent qualification requirements at all. Only a limited number of states require parents to maintain attendance records, immunization records, test results, or portfolios of children’s work.
Those leading CRHE believe that better public policy is necessary to safeguard homeschooled children. Coleman says, “Legal oversight of homeschooling should provide accountability to ensure that homeschooled children receive a basic education. There should also be background checks ensuring that adults who have been convicted of past sexual crimes or child abuse cannot homeschool without a judge’s approval.”
While advocating for legal oversight of homeschooling is often seen in homeschooling circles as anti-homeschooling, the former homeschool students that lead CRHE do not see it that way. “We are not anti-homeschooling,” Doney emphasizes, “but rather want more protections for homeschooled children in order to make homeschooling better for everyone.”
Through a combination of both personal homeschooling experiences and a passion for better public policy, Doney, Coleman, and their team are accomplishing something unique. Doney says, “CRHE is the first and only policy advocacy organization founded by homeschool students to help ensure the wellbeing and safety of homeschool students, and our efforts are based on a desire for quality research, best practices, and a holistic child-centered approach to homeschooling policy.”
The Coalition for Responsible Home Education is a nonpartisan organization committed to ensuring that the interests of the homeschooled child are respected alongside the interests of the homeschooling parent. Founded in December of 2013, CRHE advocates for policy changes and oversight in order to raise awareness of the needs of homeschooling families, promote adequate protections for homeschooled children, assist current and former homeschoolers in accessing the resources they need, collect data, and report on potentially underserved homeschool populations. For media inquiries, contact CRHE’s News and Social Media Director, R.L. Stollar, at media@responsiblehomeschooling.org.
Last Updated: 16 May, 2016 by CRHE
Alisa Harris: “Even growing up, I knew I was one of the lucky homeschoolers”
“Even growing up, I knew I was one of the lucky homeschoolers. My family knew homeschooled children who worked in the family businesses instead of doing school, kids who could barely read and who had learning disabilities that their families were not equipped to even identify, let alone address.”
My mother was a certified elementary school teacher who was able to help children love learning, which wasn’t a problem because I loved it anyway. I dutifully did all of my lessons, cried when I got less than perfect scores, devoured 19th century literature, and read Jane Eyre before I could properly pronounce lunatic. My father was actively involved in our intellectual development, kept track of the books I read, and encouraged me to read deeper.
There were downsides, however. My science education was often scientifically inaccurate and haphazard. I was convinced I was bad at math, in part because my conservative homeschool circle did not encourage girls to get a STEM education, and in part because it’s difficult to learn higher-level math when your teacher isn’t trained to teach it. It’s a problem that still crops up every time I take a standardized test.
Even growing up, I knew I was one of the lucky homeschoolers. My family knew homeschooled children who worked in the family businesses instead of doing school, kids who could barely read and who had learning disabilities that their families were not equipped to even identify, let alone address. There were cases of neglect and shocking domestic violence and sexual abuse. In so many of these cases, the physical, educational, and emotional neglect was never confronted, not even by fellow homeschooling parents, the only people in a position to see it. The abuse remained hidden until it ended up on the nightly news or the wives and children fled.
Perhaps because my own experience was positive, I’ve only recently made the connection between those problems of neglect and abuse and the complete lack of homeschooling regulation or oversight in so many states. In my home state, neglectful homeschooling families had only to notify the state before they proceeded to ignore their children’s education. Standardized tests might have motivated these parents to pay more attention to their children’s education, but when I was in high school a homeschool coalition lobbied to repeal all required testing, and my younger siblings and their friends took no standardized tests at all.
Throughout my homeschool experience, my social circle was limited to other homeschoolers, and since I was one of the older children, I had almost no social interaction with children my age. In the few instances where I was able to interact with strangers, my parents were encouraging and did their best to coax me to be friendly, open up, and focus on other people rather than my own insecurity and fear. Still, without regular social interaction with peers, I struggled with shyness longer than I should have with parents who encouraged me. My siblings have been able to cultivate a wider social circle by joining local sports groups, public school drama groups, and choirs. These rich and diverse experiences have been incredibly valuable to their education and their social skills.
For all of the above reasons, I am in favor of sensible homeschooling oversight that preserves all the best aspects of homeschooling—the rich, individualized, and creative education—while mitigating some of the isolation, neglect, and potential harms. Homeschooled students should be allowed to benefit from the diversity of relationships and experiences they can gain by taking a class at a public school or by participating in public school sports and extracurricular activities.
We also have a responsibility to protect children who may be at risk for neglect or abuse. We need to intervene and assist if a child’s education is being neglected, and we need to ensure that parents are qualified to teach. My parents and the many other responsible homeschooling parents I knew would have easily exceeded the standards proposed by Coalition for Responsible Home Education. For less fortunate kids, these standards would have protected them and kept them from slipping through the system’s cracks.
Alisa Harris was homeschooled in New Mexico K-12, 1991 to 2003. For additional thoughts and experiences from other homeschool alumni, see our Testimonials page.