The ESA-Regulation Debate

Christian homeschoolers in Arizona found themselves fighting a Hope Scholarship-type universal ESA being pushed in their legislature this past year. Why were they against it?  They think it will hurt homeschooling and ultimately invite more regulation.

Their view is hotly debated. But that debate is certainly not limited to Arizona.

Here in West Virginia, we had the distinction of passing the first universal ESA in the nation, dubbed the Hope Scholarship, just four short years ago. Whether Hope will inevitably result in more regulation of private homeschooling was a debate then and continues to be a debate now.

So let’s discuss that debate just a little.

 

Regulations

First, what regulations are we talking about?

Good question and excellent place to start!  Regulations are the rules. Specifically, the things that homeschooling families have to provide to the state (i.e. the government) in order to homeschool. You may be thinking that there aren’t many regulations in West Virginia. And you would be correct.

• • We turn in a one-time Notice of Intent to homeschool. We aren’t asking for permission to homeschool, we are just letting them know that we are going to do it. We must give the name, address, and age of each child of compulsory age, demonstrate that the homeschool instructor has a high school education or equivalent, and that the children will be instructed in at least five basic subjects.
    
  • We must also do an annual assessment, from four options. If our child makes acceptable progress (which now means “average” or above), we are good.  If not, we have to remediate or submit additional evidence that we are instructing responsibly. We submit the results of the assessments four times total. The rest of the time we keep them on file to produce if necessary to some future court order.

But is that the way it’s always been?

Oh no. That’s the result of blood, sweat and tears.

Past Regulations in WV

In the past

• • If a homeschooler didn’t score in the top 40% of students nationwide two years in a row on a standardized test, they had to return to public school. 

• • There was no portfolio review option. It was testing only, regardless of special needs. If a child didn’t score well enough, it was back to public school (where they could score low without having to leave).

• • Homeschooling families had to submit a grade level for each child and a Plan of Instruction to their counties (who then might argue that the plan was insufficient).

• • If a parent didn’t have four years of post-high-school education, they couldn’t homeschool their children through to graduation—no matter how well their student was doing.

• • If a parent wanted to remove a child from public school, they had to wait two weeks after giving notice, regardless of bullying or any other safety concern.

Okay, so there were more regulations in the past. Was that a big deal?

Yes, often it was.

If you took your child out of school because they were failing, and if they made vast improvements the first two years of homeschooling but still scored below the 60th percentile, you had to take them back to the school where they were failing in the first place. They could have started at the 10th percentile and improved to the 50th, but that made no difference. Did that kind of thing really happen? Yes, it did! That’s why parents were motivated to work for changes!

If you had a child with special needs, it was virtually impossible to homeschool them because if they couldn’t score well on a test, you were sunk.

The regulations didn’t take into consideration individual circumstances or abilities. They were just one-size-fits-all. They were definitely a problem.

Plus

• • County officials sent frequent errant letters to homeschoolers claiming that they were not meeting the requirements of the homeschool law even when they were. 

• • It was common for county officials to misunderstand the law’s requirements and send intimidating letters and misleading accusations and “requirements” that were outside the law. 
    

• • In more than a few counties, attendance officers were such a problem year after year that CHEWV had to assemble dozens of homeschooling families in those counties for meetings to confront Board of Ed officials. 
    

Certain WV senators and delegates, who were themselves public school teachers, made statements of public record during WV Legislature debates on the Chamber floors that “the children belong to the State, not to the parents.”

We are not imagining what could have happened under those regulations, but rather we are recounting what did happen under those regulations.

 

Yes, the Regulations Were Frequently Misused

 

Let’s look at just two examples. Most of us know that the mean of a child’s test scores must be within average ranks. But I remember the year my first grader scored well below the 60th percentile in a single subject (60 used to be the required standard), and the county sent a threatening letter that if that score did not improve, she would have to be enrolled in school. It was very intimidating and made me feel like a failure. (I already felt like a failure because of the low score itself.) Gratefully, I knew that the letter was inaccurate. I also knew that these letters were sent errantly to homeschoolers all the time. But honestly, that didn’t make me feel better. It felt like I was being disciplined for doing something wrong and if I didn’t do better, I would have to live with the consequences. But the point here is that they were wrong. We should not have received the letter at all. My daughter had met every requirement of the law—the mean of her five required scores was in the 80’s!

That type of intimidation was common for decades. Later, as a board member, I remember sitting in the Preston County school office and being told that homeschool graduates were not allowed to homeschool their own children. (I was there on behalf of a Christian school graduate who was told she had not been “approved” to homeschool.) The official made clear that homeschool records were meaningless, so homeschool graduates would not meet the requirement of a high school education or equivalent. It didn’t matter to her if the public school graduate barely passed while the homeschool graduate aced the SAT; I asked. Why did we subsequently work hard to pass the diploma fairness law? That’s why.

The point is that previous homeschoolers didn’t argue for fewer regulations for privacy (although that’s a valid argument). We didn’t argue for fewer regulations because our children were doing poorly and we didn’t want anyone to find out.  We didn’t try to hide because we were abusing our children.

We argued for fewer regulations because those regulations were being used against us even though the right was on our side!  

 

Fool Us Once

 

We came to realize that, regardless of the wonderful teachers we knew personally, when it came to how homeschooling was viewed, the bottom line wasn’t educational success. The honest truth is that county officials weren’t impressed with how our kids did. And legislators were influenced more by powerful teacher unions and the fact that the school system is one of the top employers in the state. Our success was superfluous. When we say that homeschool freedoms were won by the blessing of the Lord, we are very serious.

The teachers weren’t for us. The school system wasn’t for us. The legislators weren’t for us. But homeschoolers worked hard for more than two decades to gradually and carefully win the homeschooling freedoms you enjoy today—by the grace of God alone.

 

Fool Us Twice

 

But homeschoolers today don’t remember any of that.

And so the new crop of homeschoolers is willing to have more regulations. They think things will be fair because they don’t know or remember the history.

At the same time, the state superintendent unabashedly argues for a return to greater regulation. Teacher unions continue to promote policies against home education. And legislators stand up to argue for increased homeschool regulations in every single legislative session, making slow but effective progress.

In the past, the angst against homeschoolers was clear and difficult to miss. Unfortunately, when the regulation foothold was finally taken away, I’m afraid homeschoolers became lax and laissez faire.

And that led to parents welcoming increased regulation in exchange for money.

 

Wait! There’s No Increase in Regulation Yet!

 

Yes, there is. Not for private homeschoolers yet, but for publicly funded ones. Hope families have to turn in more information on the Notice of Intent. They have to have an EIS number. They have to turn in annual assessments that contain more information than ever had to be submitted in over 30+ years of homeschooling history.

Since Hope became an option with its greater regulation, nearly all the legislative concern about homeschooling has been aimed at private homeschoolers, not Hope IIP students, even though both are receiving the exact same education in the exact same environments. Legislators continually call for increasing regulation of private homeschoolers, while they seem to ignore Hope IIP families. Why?

Is it because the families on Hope have already agreed to greater regulation?  Have they proven that they are already willing to give up gains in exchange for funding?

Regardless, the homeschool population is now divided—between those with less regulation and those under more. And for now, the state is leaving the more regulated homeschoolers alone but still attacking the less regulated ones.

That should give us pause regardless of which group we are in!