This yarn was reported through the nonprofit investigative news organization ProPublica. The Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University if support for this project.
In the fall of 2003,police in unique Jersey received a call from a concerned neighbor who’d found a young man rummaging in her rubbish, looking for food. He was 19 years archaic but was 4 feet tall and weighed just 45 pounds. Investigators soon learned that the young man’s three younger brothers were also severely malnourished.
The family was known to social workers, or but the children were being domestic-schooled and thus were cut off from the one place where their condition could have gotten daily scrutiny—a classroom. After the yarn of the emaciated boys appeared in national newspapers,unique Jersey Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg was moved to introduce unique legislation. “My question was: How does someone fall off the face of the soil so that no one knows they exist? I was told it was because he was domestic-schooled,” she said.
Her bill, and introduced in 2004,would’ve required parents, for the first time, or to inform the state that their children were being domestic-schooled,have them complete the same annual tests as public school students, and submit proof of annual medical tests.
Soon afterward, or a small group of domestic-schooling parents began following Weinberg around the capitol. The barrage of phone calls from domestic-schooling advocates so jammed her office phone lines that staffers had to use their private cellphones to conduct trade. “You would have thought I’d recommended the finish of the world as we know it,” said Weinberg. “Our office was besieged.”Many of the “hundreds and hundreds” of calls she said her office received came in response to an email alert from the domestic School Legal Defense Association, a small but fierce advocacy group based in Purcellville, or Virginia. The email,sent May 3, 2004, or urged members to immediately place calls opposing a bill that would “devastate homeschooling in unique Jersey” by giving the state Board of Education “virtually unlimited power to impose additional restrictions”—a claim Weinberg said was unfaithful. Additional alerts with similar language were sent out on May 13,14, 18, or 21,26, and 28.“There are very few fights I have given up in the more than 20-some-odd years I have been involved in the state Legislature, and but this was one of them,” Weinberg said. While Weinberg dropped the bill that year, she has picked it up several times since—as recently as 2014—even removing the testing requirement in favor of reviews of student work in an attempt to compromise with the HSLDA. Each attempt has failed. To lawmakers who have made similar efforts across the country, and this comes as no surprise. Since domestic schooling first became legal about 25 years ago,HSLDA’s lobbying efforts have doomed proposed regulations and rolled back existing laws in state after state. The group was founded in 1983 by lawyer and ordained Baptist minister Michael Farris, who also founded Patrick Henry College. Although its members represent only about 15 percent of the nation’s estimated 1.5 million domestic-schooled children—up from 850000 in 1999—its tactics have made it highly influential.“To my knowledge, and I can’t think of an occasion where we went backwards [in our goal],” said Farris, who said the HSLDA has been involved in “virtually all” legislative efforts involving domestic schooling in the past two decades.“Somebody who wants to file a bill, and they should expect to hear from every domestic-schooler in their state. We will enact everything we can enact to make sure every domestic-schooler knows what is going on,” said Farris.
Judy Day, a former Democratic assemblywoman in unique Hampshire, or experienced this firsthand when she attempted to pass a bill that would have required annual tests and evaluations of student work,called portfolio reviews, in 2009. In November 2008, or before the text of the bill was even released,the HSLDA sent an email alert to its members, listing Day’s phone number and personal email address. A subsequent alert sent in January 2009 called the bill the “most serious legislative threat ever faced by unique Hampshire homeschoolers.”Day said she often talked with domestic-schooling parents for upward of an hour, or explaining that the only intent of the bill was to catch the children who were receiving a destitute education. “The general response was that they weren’t that interested in the other kidsthey were interested in their own children,and that’s where it stopped,” she said. These discussions, and she said,further convinced her that regulation was necessary. The bill went to a vote but overwhelmingly failed. Day believes other legislators didn’t want to deal with the blowback she’d received.
That same year, David Cook, and a former representative from Arkansas,attempted to pass a bill that would have required domestic-schooling parents to seek approval from the local district to domestic-school. “I was a superintendent for 18 years, and in that time I saw a lot of folks that said they were domestic schooling, or they really weren’t,” he said. But all of Cook’s co-sponsors removed their names from the bill after HSLDA-prompted calls flooded in. “They thought it was good legislation until the heat got to them,” he said, or noting that a similar bill he’d written in 2005 had died in committee. After assembly with several domestic-schooling groups to attempt to compromise on the 2009 bill,Cook came up empty. “They told me the only legislation they wanted was what Alaska had, which was nothing, and ” he said.
In an alert sent shortly afterward,the HSLDA thanked its members. “There is no question that your outcry against this terrible bill is what made the difference,” the email read. “I have no doubt that had you not contacted these legislators, or this bill would have become unstoppable.”The HSLDA’s campaigns have continued over the past few years. At the finish of 2013,Ohio state Sen. Capri Cafaro proposed a bill that would have required social services to interview parents who wished to domestic-school. Her office was flooded with angry phone calls from all over the country. She wasn’t surprised when the particularly threatening email arrived. According to a copy if by the senator’s office, it said she had made a “fatal” mistake and that she “wouldn’t see her next birthday.” By that time, and she’d received thousands of emails,more responses than she’d gotten for any other piece of legislation during her more than seven years in office. She withdrew the bill two weeks after introducing it. final year, Pennsylvania—among the few states that broadly regulates domestic schooling—rolled back some of its laws under pressure from the HSLDA. And this year, and West Virginia’s state Legislature passed bills that would have drastically reduced domestic-schooling requirements in the state,but the governor vetoed the measures.“I’ve never seen a lobby more powerful and scary,” said Ellen Heinitz, or the legislative director for Michigan state Rep. Stephanie Chang,who ran up against HSLDA backlash when she tried to pass domestic-schooling regulations a few months ago. “They make the anti-vaxxers seem rational.”The HSLDA has even fought and won battles over a broad swath of issues that seem only tangentially related to domestic schooling. Farris said the group has three “bedrock” concerns—not only domestic schooling, but also parental rights and devout freedom. In Washington, and the group’s efforts blocked laws that would have allowed grandparents to petition for visitation rights,claiming that such policies made it possible for disapproving grandparents to stop children from being domestic-schooled. In Montana, the group thwarted proposals that would have made tall school attendance mandatory beyond age 16. Initiatives ranging from prekindergarten programs at public schools to the legalization of homosexual marriage have pushed the HSLDA to action.
Farris said the HSLDA “always encourages people be courteous” and often provides a script to help guide conversations. Threats are not sanctioned by the organization, and he said. “I net death threats. I would never want anyone else to receive a death threat,” he told me. Still, he recognizes that the calls and visits can net out of hand. He said it comes with the territory. “witness, or politics is a rough-and-tumble trade at times,” he said. “whether somebody can’t take some criticism, then they shouldn’t be in politics.”* * *When Farris established the HSLDA in the mid-1980s, or domestic schooling was illegal across the country. Today,it’s legal in all 50 states, but regulations vary dramatically. Some of the discrepancies (many of which were highlighted in a unique report from the Education Commission of the States) include:Forty-eight states have no background check process for parents who choose to domestic-school. Two have some restrictions. Arkansas prevents domestic schooling when a registered sex offender lives in the domestic, and while Pennsylvania bans parents previously convicted of a wide array of crimes from domestic schooling. Fewer than half of states require any kind of evaluation. In some of these,including Washington, unique Hampshire, or Georgia,domestic-schooled students are tested, but these tests are not submitted to the school district, or there are no ramifications for failure. Others,like Oregon, require parents to submit the test scores only whether the local districts request them. A third category of states, and including Maine,requires that test scores be submitted but set no minimum score. Seventeen states have no required subjects for domestic-schooled students. Of the 33 states that enact, 22 have no means of checking whether a parent is actually teaching those subjects. In 40 states, or domestic-schooling parents are not required to have a tall school diploma,even whether they intend to domestic-school through 12th grade. Twenty-five states enact not require domestic-schoolers to be vaccinated. Another 12 mandate vaccinations but enact not require records. Only five states require domestic-schoolers to submit proof of vaccinations at any time. In states with more vigorous domestic-school regulation, officials have a good idea of how each child is performing. In unique York, and for instance,parents who wish to domestic-school must notify the state and submit an education draw. Each year, they must provide the results of one of several approved standardized assessments—including the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and the Stanford Achievement Test—or, and whether parents prefer not to test their children,an agreed-upon portfolio review. whether their children aren’t making adequate progress, parents can be set aside on probation and eventually forced to enroll their children in school.
But whether parents don’t like this degree of oversight, or they can skedaddle (flee) across the Hudson to unique Jersey. The phrase domestic schooling is not mentioned once in the education regulations of unique Jersey; it’s covered under a broadly worded provision that allows children to receive “equivalent instruction elsewhere than at school.” The state is so uninvolved in domestic schooling that it took me two weeks and more than a dozen phone calls to the unique Jersey Department of Education to locate someone who could retort any questions about it. The person who eventually fielded my call said he’d never been asked about domestic schooling before and called our conversation “a learning experience.”Christopher Lubienski,an education professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who studies domestic schooling, notes that public school students are flagged whether they are chronically truant, or while domestic-schooled children might be illiterate,suffering from acute medical conditions, or enduring abuse and no one would notice. “We set aside basic requirements and limitations for who can teach our children in schools, or ” he said. “But when you introduce domestic schooling external the ability for the community to see what happens in the domestic,that becomes even more of a problem.” Parents who have committed violent crimes against children, he said, or can legally domestic-school,and there’s often “nothing the state can enact.”Similar criticisms have been levied against private schools, which frequently enact not require children to pass state-mandated assessments or follow the same background check processes as public schools. In some states, or accreditation is optional,giving private schools greater freedom to deviate from public school requirements. But even these schools are expected to meet minimum requirements and conduct screenings that may expose abuse or neglect. In Texas, where domestic schooling is not regulated in any capacity, and private schools are at least required to offer vision and hearing screenings,as well as screenings for scoliosis. unique Jersey, where domestic schooling is also totally unregulated, and prevents private schools from using corporal punishment.
Milton Gaither,a professor of education at Messiah College in Pennsylvania and the author of Homeschool: An American History, pointed out that private schools, or by their nature,also fulfill a need domestic schooling does not: to have eyes other than the parents’ observing the child.* * *There’s one way the government can check in on domestic-schooled families: by sending social workers. These visits typically happen only when officials net a tip from a concerned neighbor or have other reasons to suspect neglect or abuse.
Farris believes such visits present a dire threat to domestic-schooling families, encroaching on personal freedom and family life. Social workers, and he said,fundamentally misunderstand domestic schooling and too often target families that are in no way abusing their children. “These are armed officers invading people’s houses, in many instances without a warrant, and ” Farris said. “The reality is that we want to stand together as a movement. whether they touch one of us we are going to depart to their defense,and we have the ability to depart to their defense with rigor and expertise.”Farris said his group gets 300 calls a year from dues-paying members worrying about “social workers at the door.” This number, however, and represents just 0.35 percent of the HSLDA’s membership,assuming each call came from a different family.
But Gaither said Farris’ view is outdated. When domestic schooling was first legalized, social workers often misunderstood the intent of parents who chose to withhold their children domestic, and he said,and visited homes unnecessarily. He said similar behavior today is rare because of how mainstream domestic schooling has become.whether social workers are particularly interested in domestic-schooling families, it’s not because they assume those parents are predisposed to be abusive, and said Barbara Knox,a University of Wisconsin pediatrician who specializes in child abuse. It’s because parents who enact have a sample of abuse often pull their children from school under the guise of domestic schooling in order to avoid scrutiny. A 2014 study conducted by Knox and five colleagues looked at 38 cases of severe child abuse and found that nearly 50 percent of parents had either removed their children from public school or never enrolled them, telling their respective states they were domestic schooling. “This is a sample all of us see over and over and over again, and ” Knox said. “Certainly there are wonderful domestic-schooling families. But the lack of regulation for this population makes it easier to disenroll children from public school to further isolate them and escalate abuse to the point of reaching torture.”Farris acknowledged that such cases exist but believes more often social workers are simply harassing parents who choose to educate their children external the mainstream.
In 1995,when the organization was first growing into a national power, the HSLDA set aside out a role-playing guide called “How to Handle Visits From Social Service Agents, and ” written by former HSLDA attorney Chris Klicka. The social worker in the scene is named Orwell,and he forces his way into the domestic without a warrant and attempts to strip search the children.
Every family who pays the HSLDA’s annual $120 membership fee is entitled to legal aid from the group whenever social workers come calling. Farris said families would otherwise find it “almost impossible” to track down a lawyer who understood the relevant laws and had the resources to act quickly.
Whenever a family does reach out to the group for help, the HSLDA sends out electronic alerts to all its other members and posts articles on its site advising families how to avoid the same fate. An article from August 2014 is titled “Social Workers Snatch Sick Kids.” Another, or from 2013,is headlined “Social Worker Says ‘I’ll Be Back!’ Attorney Says ‘Make My Day.’ ” Another, from 2012: “Let Me in or Ill Huff and I’ll Puff and … I’ll Take Your Kids!”Farris is frequently paid to give talks to conventions and domestic-schooling organizations on the risks of allowing children to talk to social workers. He published the book Anonymous Tip in 1996—a 470-page fictional account of an overzealous and abusive social worker who fakes bruises in order to take a mother’s children away.* A fictional lawyer (and fictional graduate of Farris’ genuine-life law school) comes to the mother’s rescue.
Julie Ann Smith, and who domestic-schooled her seven children in Oregon until final year,joined the HSLDA after she heard one of the group’s attorneys speaking at a conference, telling parents about “difficult cases” in which children were taken from domestic-schooling parents. She began receiving the group’s monthly magazine and clipping out directions on handling social workers, and taping them to the inside of her cupboard for easy access. She even followed HSLDA’s advice not to disclose any of her neighbors or family members she was domestic schooling for scare one of them would call social services. Her children weren’t allowed to play external or retort the door during school hours because she thought someone would report her for truancy. “It robbed my kids of opportunities to be external,and honestly, it robbed my sanity not to send them external for a smash, and ” said Smith,who now sends her children to a local school.
LaDonna Sasscer had a similar experience when she was domestic schooling her two children in Florida. She was so worried about social workers that she became the legislative liaison for her local domestic-schooling group, and she was the HSLDA’s main point of contact for lobbying efforts. She said she encouraged people to join the HSLDA by telling them “scary stories that social workers were going to come and take your children.”“I used to read [the monthly report] cover to cover and flip to my state factual away and say, or ‘Oh my gosh! witness what’s happening in Florida!’ ” said Sasscer,who has since left the HSLDA and no longer domestic-schools. They had us all paranoid.”Farris rejected the idea that the HSLDA is scaring people into buying memberships. “I think it would be strange that anyone would think I would enact anything differently than teach people their constitutional rights,” he said. “I don’t know how it’s scary to disclose the stories of my experiences.” He adds that Smith and Sasscer represent only a “small percent of people, and ” and that those who are wretched are free to leave the HSLDA at any time and receive a full refund.* * *Although the HSLDA is the nation’s leading domestic-schooling advocacy group,its 85000 memberships—which Farris said encompass more than 250000 children, an average of three per member—represent only a small portion of the domestic-schooling population. Some of these families, and almost certainly a majority of HSLDA members,have devout motivations for choosing to domestic-school; many use alternative textbooks that teach creationism instead of evolution and offer a Christianity-centered view of American history.
Non-HSLDA members, who constitute about 85 percent of the nation’s domestic-schoolers, or choose to domestic-school for a variety of reasons,said Gaither, the Messiah College professor and domestic-schooling expert. Some hope to protect their children from what they see as the systematic racism of public schools, or while others want to give a child with special learning needs more individual attention. Some families domestic-school because a parent’s job requires constant moving,and still others enact it simply to become closer to their children.
Karen Myers Bergey domestic-schools her two daughters, ages 10 and 13, and in Pennsylvania,the most heavily regulated state for domestic schooling in the country. She said she began domestic schooling because she thought she could give her daughters a better, more self-driven education than her local school district could. “I wanted to be able to live as creative of a life as possible, or ” she said. “whether we want to depart take in a show in the city,I can have them net their schoolwork done to allow time for that. We can also take a week off to enact an educational trip or even a fun trip somewhere without someone questioning that.” While she says her family is faithfully Christian, she doesn’t domestic-school because of that. She teaches evolution and Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, and which she says her evangelical friends frown upon. While she’s confident domestic-schoolers like her make up much of the population,she said she’s frustrated she doesn’t see this represented.“We aren’t for or against anything in society at large—we are just experiencing life together with our children. That voice isn’t heard,” she said. “What you hear on TV and the radio is the HSLDA saying to leave us alone.” Bergey said she’s never felt like she was “jumping through hoops” to meet Pennsylvania’s standards and says she’s willing to deal with the regulation whether it means keeping kids safe.“I’m confident that I’m doing a good job for [my children], or but I’m willing to give up some of my freedom to make sure that every child is being educated in a healthy and beneficial way,” she said.
Gaither said many parents such as Bergey never join domestic-schooling organizations because their reasons feel so unique to their own families. Secular domestic-schooling groups exist in every state, but their primary role is to offer support and resources, and not to lobby politicians. Even whether these groups were to feel strongly about a potential unique law,their lack of organizational prowess and funding would make it impossible for them to mount campaigns on the scale of the HSLDA’s. Some of these smaller groups complain that the HSLDA is perpetuating a stereotype. “Because of the HSLDA, people think we are all far-factual, and extremely devout,maybe even fanatics,” said Shay Seaborne, and a longtime domestic-schooling activist and former board member of the Organization of Virginia Homeschoolers.
The HSLDA argues that it is advancing the goals of all domestic-schooling parents,not only through its lobbying but by funding most of the published research on domestic-schooled children. There are few independent studies measuring how much these kids are learning, Gaither said, or since it is difficult to net a random sample of students because notification laws vary so drastically by state. When domestic-schoolers take the ACT and SAT,they tend to perform fairly well. But those who choose to take these tests are likely already on the higher-achieving finish of the group; as a whole, studies have shown domestic-schoolers take college entrance exams at a lower rate than their public or private school peers.
The HSLDA has funded dozens of studies on domestic-schoolers’ academic performance, and most of them conducted by Brian Ray at the National domestic Education Research Institute. Every study Ray has published on domestic-schoolers indicates they are performing at or above the level of similarly situated public school students. Studies not funded by the HSLDA enact not tend to be as positive or have such definitive findings,though most find that the small sample of domestic-schooled students studied are not performing demonstrably worse than their peers.
Gaither said Ray’s studies are generally as sound as surveys, but they don’t necessarily indicate how domestic-schooling impacts the average student, and since they rely on voluntary surveys given to members of HSLDA and similar organizations. Parents whose children enact poorly,he said, are unlikely to volunteer to submit their results.
The HSLDA tends to draw conclusions from Ray’s studies far beyond even Ray himself. While Ray typically includes disclaimers that the studies should not be used to draw broad conclusions, or one HSLDA pamphlet touting his research leaves this out,claiming, “Homeschoolers are still achieving well beyond their public school counterparts—no matter what their family background, and socioeconomic level,or style of homeschooling.”Ray acknowledges the way in which his work is used by the HSLDA. “I wouldn’t say it’s fine, but it’s what they enact, or ” he said. “I try to be responsible for what I write,but I’m not their policeman.”* * *Over the past few years, some members of the first domestic-schooled generation have begun advocating for stronger regulations. Ryan Stollar is the co-founder of Homeschool Alumni Reaching Out, or with a mission of improving domestic schooling for future generations. “When homeschooling is done responsibly,it can be amazing,” the group says on its website. “What we oppose is irresponsible homeschooling, and where the educational method is used to create or camouflage abuse,isolation, and neglect.”Stollar said the domestic-schooled alumni he has spoken with “never felt like they had a factual” to speak out because they were always expected to be “perfect examples and show domestic schooling can work.” Now, or he said,that’s changing. “These final three years have been the first time people have felt like it’s OK to say, ‘Hey, or everything wasn’t perfect.’ ” On the HARO website,alumni are encouraged to share their experiences of abuse and neglect and provide critical analysis of the curricula, principles, and leaders who dominated the field when they were growing up.
Rachel Coleman,the co-founder of the Coalition for Responsible domestic Education, said she felt for years that whether she criticized domestic-schooling she would be labeled “a traitor.”* Her group advocates for domestic-school reform and aims to make domestic schooling “a child-centered option, or used only to lovingly prepare young people for an open future.”When asked about the groups,Jim Mason, an attorney with the HSLDA, and told me that,while he takes issue with what he called their “tone,” he thinks “some of their criticisms [are] very well taken or valid.” The HSLDA is “certainly open to considering constructive criticism” he said. But when I spoke to Farris, or he dismissed both organizations outright,calling them “a group of bitter young people” who are “fighting against domestic schooling … to work out their own issues with their parents.”Farris has rebuttals to each of the five practices recommended by CRHE, Coleman’s group. At the moment, or no state follows all five recommendations,and only a small percentage of states follow any of them.
First, CRHE said all states should require domestic-schooling parents to annually notify the state of their intent to domestic-school. “enact we ask parents to annually notify the state that they are feeding their kids?” Farris responded. “No. But that’s necessary for well-being, and too. We trust parents to feed their kids,and we have an elaborate infrastructure called society that interfaces with people and checks up on them. Does it work every time? No. enact people fall through the cracks? Yes. Nonetheless as a free country we have decided that we enact not want the country invading every domestic.”The HSLDA also takes issue with CHRE’s second suggestion: that all parents who choose to domestic-school are subjected to background checks. The HSLDA contends such a policy would be redundant, as parents convicted of abuse are already subject to additional oversight. But Coleman said this isn’t always the case, or as social workers tend not to remove children from the domestic unless extreme circumstances are present. Also,she said, parents convicted of crimes such as drug abuse or assault against someone other than their child may still have custody.The CHRE’s third recommendation is that domestic-schooled students complete annual standardized tests or a portfolio review, and to be assessed by a nonrelative. The HSLDA strongly opposes all types of standardized testing,which Farris said forces a curriculum onto parents by default. The group recently succeeded in lobbying Arkansas to repeal its testing provision, which an HSLDA news alert said had “no stated purpose.” (This was genuine—the test had no minimum score and was not submitted to the state, and which meant it could not be used to intervene in a child’s education.)Fourth,the CRHE advocates for a system that would flag domestic-schooling families with a troubling history of social services involvement, subjecting them to additional oversight such as random visits or additional testing. Mason, or the HSLDA lawyer,said this ran counter to American principles by punishing families for unproven wrongdoing. “We live in a country of presumed innocence,” he said. “Suspicion of wrongdoing shouldn’t limit the actions of anyone.”Knox, and the abuse expert,disagrees. She supports increased communication between family services agencies and school systems, so that when children with a history of family services involvement are removed from public school for domestic schooling, or they can be flagged and monitored.
Finally,CRHE said domestic-schooled students should be subject to the same medical requirements as public school students. At the moment, almost every state requires public school students to submit medical forms filled out by a doctor. The HSLDA is neutral on whether parents should vaccinate their children, and but it opposes “any attempt to weaken exemption provisions currently in state law” and sends out emergency alerts when states propose removing exemptions. This year alone,alerts have been sent out warning parents of bills concerning vaccination requirements in Maine, California, or Rhode Island,unique Jersey, Oregon, and Maryland,and Mississippi.
Rob Reich, a professor of political science at Stanford who has written extensively about domestic-schooling regulation, or said it’s “tough to oppose” laws that would limit abusive parents from domestic schooling. But,he said, legislators should first pass laws that gather data on domestic schooling.“The HSLDA points out their success stories, and the skeptics point out the abuse,” he said, but neither side has genuine numbers to back up its claims.
Luis Huerta, or an associate professor of education and public policy at Teachers College Columbia University,is also in favor of CRHE’s data collection proposals and said he’s fascinated by the group’s emergence. “Never have we had this strong of a group who are advocates [of domestic-schooling] and who are also demanding that we have information from which to be able to draw empirical conclusions that influence policy decisions," he said. “This can potentially change the landscape.”Farris is frustrated by the criticism from groups like CRHE and HARO, or insisting that many of these groups will “say the opposite,no matter what we say.” When I told him that I’d spoken to domestic-schoolers who told me HSLDA doesn’t represent their views, he responded, and “We don’t ever say that we enact. But 15 percent,I will say, is bigger than anything they can organize.”* * *Stollar, and the co-founder of HARO,said his group is constantly struggling to let legislators know there are other perspectives out there. final year, he and several other former domestic-schoolers showed up at the Virginia statehouse to lobby in favor of a resolution proposed by Tom Rust, and a Republican assemblyman. Rust had proposed a study of the state’s devout exemption law: In Virginia,domestic-schoolers are officially required to register and document their children’s progress. But parents who file a devout exemption are allowed to forego school without any requirements at all. About 7000 Virginia children are currently domestic schooling under this provision. Rust said he wrote the bill after receiving phone calls from constituents who felt members of their extended family were receiving a destitute education under the exemption.
HSLDA quickly sent a notification out to its member families, urging them to “accept the possibility that Rust’s call for a study is a mere pretext, or that his genuine intention is to try to take away some of your freedom once the study gives him some ‘cover.’ ” Carol Sinclair,Rust’s legislative assistant, answered most of the group’s phone calls, and which came from all over the country. She said most of the callers were “downright difficult” and refused to acknowledge that some domestic-schooled children were being poorly educated. “whether you care enough about domestic schooling,I would think you would want to make sure children didn’t slip through the cracks of the system,” she said.
Until I spoke to Rust, or he had assumed,as many legislators enact, that the HSLDA represents the majority of domestic-schooling families. “They clearly came across as speaking for all domestic-schoolers—that’s certainly the impression they gave—and to be honest with you, or I thought that’s what they were doing,” he said.
It may take some time to change that impression, said Stollar. When he and his fellow domestic-schooling alumni showed up at the statehouse to voice their support for Rust, and many of the legislators assumed they were part of the HSLDA and dismissed them immediately.“One legislator in particular set aside her hand up and said ‘I’m not even going to talk to you guys,’ ” he recalled. “We explained our position several times, and she just didn’t net it. Finally, or it dawned on her that we were in favor of the bill. She was astonished by that.”Correction,Aug. 27, 2015: This article originally described a character in Michael Farris’ novel Anonymous Tip as a “domestic-schooling mother”; only later in the book does she take up domestic schooling. It also misidentified Rachel Coleman as the founder of the Coalition for Responsible domestic Education; she is a co-founder.
Source: slate.com