The Washington Post has published a series of articles on homeschooling that most in the homeschool community see as a predictable assault on the practice of homeschooling. The legacy newspaper did a deep dive into the numbers of homeschoolers through local public school districts in states that require registration. It then lamented the number of states, like Texas, that do not regulate homeschooled students and therefore have no hard data on the number of homeschoolers.
The authors quote public school officials who question parents' abilities to teach their children effectively in spite of numerous studies that demonstrate their successes. They do acknowledge that homeschooling exploded during the pandemic and has maintained that growth although at a slightly slower pace, while public school enrollment is still dropping.
In fact, homeschooling is now about 10% of the total school age population in the United States and some of the fastest growth has happened in blue states like New York where much of that growth was stimulated by legislation requiring mandatory vaccination of students in public schools.
The Post trotted out old news stories of abuse by some homeschool parents that were promoted by those who seek stringent control of homeschooling. One Harvard Law professor, Elizabeth Bartholet, wants parents to have to receive “permission” from the state in order to teach their children at home. This is clearly an attempt to promote the “government knows best narrative” that the public school lobby is clearly losing as more and more families flee a system that seeks to indoctrinate rather than educate.
It is interesting that the authors seem to celebrate that homeschoolers as a group today seem to be “less conservative, less religious and more open to regulation.” That would seem to indicate the problem the left has with homeschooling is that families rather than institutions are in control of what children are taught.
That, of course, is why tens of thousands are fleeing public schools for homeschooling and why there are debates at public school board meetings and election challenges in many school board races between those who want to continue the leftist indoctrination and parents who want education without indoctrination in their public schools.
Finally, the Post has also fielded what can only be called a personal attack on Dr. Brian Ray, a longtime academic researcher and homeschool parent. Dr. Ray is the head of the National Home Education Research Institute and has done an amazing job for over 30 years in publishing research to show the validity of homeschooling as an educational alternative. They refer to him as a “true believer” and his research as “flawed.”
The Washington Post and other left-leaning groups continue to seek to undermine the homeschooling movement and some have even referred to those who support this movement as seeking to destroy public education. The same crowd strongly opposes the growing Educational Savings Account efforts to give parents and families more choices in the education of their children.
These attacks will not work. More and more families are trying homeschooling and finding that it not only works for them educationally but is a blessing to their family in many other ways.
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