Home Schooling Survives Opposition as Growing Numbers Opt In
by Jim Brown
September 2, 2005
(AgapePress) - Mike Smith, president of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), is hailing the measurable success and growth of the home-schooling movement in America, even amid the challenges that movement has faced and still faces. Of all those challenges, he points to increasing government regulation as the largest hurdle home-schooling families will have to encounter in the coming years. Some convincing facts in support of home schooling are available to parents weighing that option for their families. For instance, on college entrance exams like the SAT and ACT, home-school students score much higher than their public-school counterparts. And on the average standardized achievement test, home-school kids continue to score 20 to 30 percentile points higher than other students.
However, Smith points out that achievement tests are by no means the toughest thing home-school students have to confront today. He says home-educated kids and their parents are laboring under burdensome regulations in many parts of the country, often being required to file copious paperwork and lesson plan documentation according to rigorous and complicated guidelines.
Meanwhile, the HSLDA spokesman notes, home-school advocates have met with legislative stonewalling while some state officials tried to create even more obstacles for home-schooling families. "In both New York and Pennsylvania," he asserts, "we've been rejected three years running now to get some good legislation through; and this year we found that in the states of Montana and Idaho and several other states, there was some negative legislation introduced, trying to tighten up on home education."
Fortunately, Smith says, "the home schoolers turned out en masse, and that didn't happen." But he emphasizes that government oversight of home schooling has only increased over time and poses an ongoing challenge for home-educating families to remain vigilant.
According to Smith, religious and moral convictions continue to be the main reasons increasing numbers of American families are choosing to home school their children. Still, he says many home-schooling parents with gifted or special needs children also made that choice because they felt individualized instruction was the best way to go.
However, another major factor contributing to the rise of home education, the HSLDA president contends, is parents' reactions to negativity in many public school settings. "We're getting a lot more folks that are pulling kids out of public school," he says. "Our applications are showing that we're getting tons of folks who are not going to send their children back to public education. Now, they don't indicate necessarily that they're dissatisfied; but we know that if they were satisfied they'd be leaving them there in that public school setting."
For many parents, Smith says, the reason "could be academics, it could be the children are being hazed or teased, or it could be problem with a teacher. There's just a myriad of issues." But in large part, the home-education advocate adds, the phenomenal growth of the movement is due to the fact that more people are now becoming aware of and familiar with home schooling and are realizing that it is a choice available to them.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
