No Home Schooler Left Behind?

This week I responded to a letter from a woman in Amarillo who wrote to express her strong disagreement with our publicly stated support of the Leeper vs Arlington ISD decision that the Texas Supreme Court affirmed in 1994. As many Texas home schoolers know, that decision upheld the Tarrant County lower court decision that clarified that home schools in Texas have historically been considered private schools by the Texas legislature. As private school students, home school students are therefore exempt from the compulsory attendance laws as are all private school students in the state.

This landmark case brought by Texas home schoolers against the state was a move to force the state to stop prosecuting home schoolers simply for teaching their children at home. Prior to this well over 100 Texas families had been sued by local school districts who relied on a legal opinion by the Texas Education Agency which unilaterally reversed a 69 year position by the state that home schools were private schools.

This decision was a huge victory for freedom and was celebrated by home schoolers everywhere. In the last ten years or so the political environment in our country has contributed to legislation across the country allowing more freedom and less government restrictions to home schoolers. However, in the last three or four years we have seen a reversal of this as more and more legislatures and educational bureaucrats seek to increase government control of home schools.

Ms Knowles expressed the opinion of many who believe that parents cannot be trusted to do what is in the best interest of their children from an educational standpoint and therefore the government should set requirements for parents who wish to home school and performance standards for home school students to "ensure" that they are receiving an adequate education.

The recurring theme from these proponents of government control of home schools is that not all home school students are doing well, based on some anecdotal evidence. However, they completely disregard the fact that many students in the public school system are not doing well based on clear evidence. They also point to the fact that public school teachers are "certified" by the state, assuming that there is some factual evidence which links teacher certification and student performance. There is not.

The basic presupposition of these folks is that government control and regulation will somehow ensure that every child receives an adequate eduction. This supposition is demonstrably false based on the results of the public education system in Texas which is highly regulated. Their clamor for regulation of home schooling for the benefit of the children would not accomplish that stated goal but would simply lead to lack of freedom and the kind of harassment home schoolers endured in the 1980s.

We are obviously in a time when many are now making the argument that government control is the answer to most of the problems that we face. We happen to strongly disagree with such comments and believe the facts show otherwise, especially when it comes to education.

We will continue to strongly and aggressively respond to every letter, e-mail, and news article that comes our way to refute such nonsense. As far as it depends on us, we will work in every possible arena to make sure that we never go back to those dark days in the 1980s when justices of the peace and superintendents tried to control home schoolers in Texas!