Let me tell you the stories of three homeschooled children. Then, see if you can guess which ones are real, and which ones are made up.
Child A received a wonderful education from loving parents with advanced degrees who homeschooled for secular reasons. He went to college on scholarship with the full support of his parents. He's now a college professor.
Child B was homeschooled by loving parents who were Christian fundamentalists and who participated in the Quiverfull movement; she had a dozen siblings. Although she also received a great education and went to college on scholarship, her parents virtually disowned her when she began dating a man they didn't approve of and questioning her religious faith. She's now a graduate student with a successful career, but her relationship with her parents remains strained.
Child C was adopted from Ethiopia at ten years old by a homeschooling family of Christian fundamentalists. Her new parents soon classified her as rebellious and began beating and starving her to teach her compliance. Eventually, when she was thirteen, they locked her outside until she froze to death. The parents are now in jail, and their other children are in foster care.
Follow me over the fold to see if you guessed correctly!
Actually, I cheated a bit: all three of these stories are true. Child A is me! I had a great, positive homeschooling experience. Child B is Libby Anne, a popular atheist blogger at Patheos; her homeschooling experience was decidedly mixed. Child C is Hana Williams, and tragically, her story is also true.
Homeschooling is an increasingly common educational option in the United States; two million children are homeschooled in this country today, and the numbers continue to grow. However, as the previous examples show, homeschooling outcomes vary greatly by family. The fact is, we don't know much about educational outcomes for homeschooled children or about how homeschooling impacts their lives. Most existing research is deeply flawed, and nearly all of it has been conducted for the fundamentalist homeschooling lobbying organization HSLDA. Though many homeschoolers have excellent experiences, as I did, troubling stories continue to crop up. As Homeschooling's Invisible Children has chronicled in depressing detail, there are now over a hundred documented cases just like Hana Williams' -- children who were systematically abused, and then murdered, while lax homeschooling laws prevented state child protective agencies from doing anything to help them. Recently, too, a group of homeschooling graduates at Homeschoolers Anonymous have begun recounting their own harrowing stories of abuse and neglect. Earlier this year, journalist Kathryn Joyce wrote a long exposé of the abuses that are often covered up by the religious homeschooling community.
Homeschooling can be an innovative and flexible educational option, but right now, homeschooled children desperately need two things: state laws that provide more oversight for abusive parents, and more research about homeschooling demographics and outcomes that can help identify homeschooling successes and failures and craft educational policies accordingly. Luckily, there's a new organization that's been formed to help advocate for and provide both those things: the Coalition for Responsible Home Education.
CRHE was founded one year ago by a group of concerned homeschooling alumni who saw the need for a policy organization/think tank dedicated to protecting homeschooled children. The organization conducts research on homeschooling, creates resources for homeschooling families, and engages in advocacy for oversight. Their goal, they write, is "for homeschooling to be a child-centered educational option, used only to lovingly prepare young people for an open future" Let me quote CRHE's statement of mission and vision:
CRHE was created to educate and inform citizens, lawmakers, and service providers about protections homeschooled children and youth require to ensure that they receive an adequate education and preparation for adult life. We are committed to providing resources, conducting research, and promoting policy to protect homeschooled children and youth from falling through the cracks if their parents or guardians are unable or unwilling to responsibly educate them. We are a nonpartisan organization committed to ensuring that the interests of the homeschooled child are respected alongside the interests of the homeschooling parent.
Homeschooling laws around the country currently allow for broad parental freedoms but are seriously lacking in protections for the rights of children and youth. Because of this oversight, some homeschooled American children receive stellar educations while others do not learn basic reading, writing, or mathematics skills and are at a greater risk of experiencing abuse and neglect, gender discrimination, and struggles with obtaining gainful employment. There is currently little or no recourse for children faced with neglectful or abusive homeschooling environments, as many states do not require any form of testing or monitoring of educational quality, some allow homeschoolers to operate under exemptions, and others do not require registration at all. There is little reliable data collection on homeschooled children who have fallen through the cracks, and almost no resources for people concerned on their behalf.
Homeschooling has become a popular method of education, and there are today around two million children being homeschooled in the United States. The number of homeschoolers will likely continue to grow as homeschooling is increasingly viewed as a valid educational option by an expanding number of parents, and CRHE believes that homeschooling policies need to grow and change in response. We exist 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. We advocate for policy changes and oversight that neither harm nor pose undue burden to the homeschooling community but rather serve to strengthen it by preventing the educational neglect and child maltreatment that can occur under the name of homeschooling today.
If you agree with CRHE's goal of protecting homeschooled children, you can help! CRHE is currently holding its first annual fundraiser to coincide with Giving Tuesday. Watch the video below, and
become a sponsor of CRHE to receive updates on their activities. Although a donation is required for sponsorship, it's more important right now to increase the number of sponsors rather than the total donation amount, so please feel free to give whatever you can, no matter how small. With your help, we can stand up for those children who are being abused and neglected, while protecting the rights of those children who are benefiting from homeschooling.
