Tag: negative testimonial

Brittany Randolph: “As time went on, our schedule became looser and looser”

“My sister and I were fine with this at first. No school! We could spend time on the things we actually wanted to do. One thing, though, is that none of these things involved friends, at least not… Read More

Jennifer I.: “All that was required was a note every year”

“Most of my homeschooled peers were much like me, in that they were handed a textbook and then expected to essentially teach themselves from grade eight on.” I was homeschooled from K-12 alongside my siblings by my mother,… Read More

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… Read More

Sarah M.: “These assessments turned out to be easily avoided”

“Although Pennsylvania had homeschooling oversight on the books, they failed to reliably enforce it. Even within my local school district I knew families with vastly different experiences with the district office” I‘m the oldest of six children, raised… Read More

Alex H.: “I often wonder at what cost”

“The goal was lofty, but our secular home education was primarily based on a fear of negative outside influence. What my parents did not understand is that safety by isolation has many consequences long into adulthood.” While I… Read More

Jessica A.: “Homeschool is an abusive parent’s dream”

“I support homeschool oversight because most child abuse is committed by parents against their own children. I believe people oppose homeschool oversight because most people only worry about their own kids. They won’t admit it, but as long as their own kids aren’t at risk, even “good” homeschoolers just don’t care.”

Lynne A.: “I wasn’t protected at all”

“If not for the Religious Exemption clause, my parents would have had to, at the very least, turn in my standardized test scores to the county officials. I think it would have strongly encouraged my parents to educate me better.”

Samantha Field: “It was far too easy to outright lie”

“I believe that requiring my parents to have more than a high school education would have made a significant difference, as well as requiring a state-certified or licensed professional to evaluate an annual portfolio. It was far too easy to outright lie in the portfolios we submitted to our umbrella school.”

Sarah Jones: “I’ve been lucky”

“Standardized testing isn’t enough. I performed well on those tests, but still received a substandard education. Parents should be required to submit curriculum plans to the local district every year, and they should also be required to adhere to certain basic academic standards. School district officials should also be trained to recognize signs of abuse in homeschool families.”

Bethany Brittain: “It didn’t take long for me to lose my excitement”

“Oversight of my home education would have given me someone to see the severe authoritarian parenting happening in our home. The beatings that were handed to us daily as obedience to god. Maybe an agency of oversight would have missed the abuse. But I can tell you that not having anyone really paying attention to my education cost me years of having to make it up.”

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