In December, 1983 – 27 years ago – we collated twenty pages of typing paper into the first issue of Home Education Magazine. We were very proud of our little fledgling publication with typewritten pages and hand-drawn illustrations, and over the years we’ve been honored to publish hundreds of outstanding writers and the best articles, interviews, and reporting on homeschooling to be found anywhere. We’re proud that HEM has contributed to the understanding and encouragement of countless homeschooling parents, and those wanting to know more about homeschooling, be they parents, teachers, legislators, researchers, or the media. It’s a good feeling to have co-founded a magazine which has touched so many people’s lives in a positive and informative way.

We’ve witnessed, and to a large degree chronicled, the growth and development of the homeschooling movement. What started as a handful of parents resisting the state mandate of compulsory school attendance for their children has grown and matured into an increasingly complex multitude of reasons, methods and approaches to learning, and that is how it should be. Any idea whose time has come – home birthing, organic gardening, computers – will change and grow as more and more people see the wisdom and sense of it and make it a part of their lives.

But education in this country, both public and private, has also been undergoing many changes in the last few years, and the repercussions of those changes are finding their way into our homes. Our ever-increasing supply of technological marvels, from multitasking super cellphones to computer and video programs which defy imagination, have affected education in ways that are only beginning to become apparent. Online reference tools, homework assistance web sites, online college courses, cyber-schools, and even video games all contribute to a sense of education as an ongoing, never-ending pursuit, and that’s good; most homeschoolers already know that to be true. But as the changes take place, as computers and the Internet move the building blocks of learning out of brick and mortar schools and into our homes, education policymakers wrestle with increasingly tough challenges. Former U.S. Secretary of Education William Bennett, co-founder of the technology-based education company K12, commented, “…parents are the greatest resource possible; they are like unpaid adjunct faculty whose engagement is crucial to future success.” Unfortunately, as the mandates of a public school education filter into the home, so too will the attendant assessment, accountability, testing and tracking measures, that’s just how it works.

The lines between homeschooling and public schooling are becoming blurred, and even deliberately erased, to the benefit of a variety of organizations, individuals and business interests. Some say that schools moving out of the classroom and into the home is a good thing. We’re told what we’re seeing is just the natural evolution of education, and homeschoolers should reintegrate with the schools for the long-term benefits to all children. But public money cannot be spent on services, however well-intentioned, without some form of accountability, which means some form of oversight and assessment. And if parents can not be trusted to mold and shape their children’s learning, thinking, and values without state oversight and the inevitable interference, where will that leave us?

Adapted from an editorial © 2003 by Helen Hegener

Where Will That Leave Us?

By the 1990′s homeschooling had become an accepted alternative to public schooling and traditional private schools. Dozens of books touted homeschooling as a desirable approach to living and learning together as a family; newspaper articles and interviews showcased happy, smiling children and their proudly beaming parents. The movement had arrived, found its place in the sun. People who might never have considered the option were seeing homeschoolers portrayed on television and in movies, homeschooled kids were going to Ivy League colleges, becoming rock stars, winning spelling and geography bees, traveling the world. The cachet of homeschooling was solid marketing gold.

Around this same time a whole new class of public school programs, often delivered directly into the home, gained acceptance and began increasingly targeting homeschooling families. These programs came under many descriptive terms such as charter schools, cyber schools, cyber-charters, eschools, Independent Study Programs (ISPs), dual enrollment programs, Blended Schools Programs (BSPs), Programs for Non-Public Students (PNPS), Public School Alternative Programs (PSAPs), virtual schools, community schools and various other names. But these public school programs also came with public school regulations, which imposed testing and accountability requirements in alignment with national education goals and standards.

While the public school programs have effectively served the needs of some families, it is unwise to allow the perception to grow that they are equivalent to homeschooling. The very construct of these public school programs runs counter to the ability of families to handcraft an education for their children. Homeschoolers have more than thirty years of experience in living and learning with children outside the public school parameters, and the important lessons they’ve learned in the process are in danger of being lost.

We, as homeschoolers, also have over thirty years of history affirming our freedom to assume the responsibility to educate our children. Many diverse ad hoc and formal organizations collectively discussed and argued the issues and then interacted with local officials. Countless families took countless trips to state capitols fighting for and against legislation that directly and indirectly affected homeschooling families. These homeschool pioneers voluntarily put themselves on the line to ensure each other’s right to assume responsibility to educate their own children, and this is something worth hanging onto and celebrating; it is democracy in action. When the perception arises that these public school programs are equivalent to homeschooling, we lose this important history and the untold benefits it accords us all.

The functioning of our government is something that we all need to be concerned with, and, as noted above, homeschoolers have engaged with the process and have thereby earned the credibility to speak to this situation. When these public school programs use government funds, regulations are inevitable, and homeschool advocates, concerned about the danger of blurring definitions between homeschooling and these public school programs, have long sought ways to raise awareness about the situation. Larry and Susan Kaseman of the Wisconsin Parents Association have been at the forefront of this effort, authoring articles such as “Homeschooling in Public Schools: A Dangerous Oxymoron,” “Let’s Not Let Cyber Charters Do In Homeschooling“, “Homeschoolers, Is Our Good Name for Sale?“, and “Risks Virtual Schools Pose to Homeschools.”

The most common – and tragic – misunderstandings related to the questioning of these public school programs have always spiraled around the underlying intentions of those concerned about homeschooling freedoms. Accusations and attacks have derailed many discussions of the issue, and have repeatedly stymied attempts to hold meaningful conversations on the topic. As a result, this widely recognized and very legitimate threat to the nature, language, and definition of homeschooling is relegated to controversial issue status and summarily avoided.

The inability to discuss the situation, to build an understanding and an awareness of the problem, is exacerbated by the expectation that the threat will show itself in a headline-making manner, and does not recognize the slow grinding process of wearing away at freedoms and responsibilities. Unless we can find a way to talk about this situation, we will find ourselves helpless observers as the word ‘homeschooling’ continues to lose its historically important meaning.

Valerie Moon made an observation in her July, 2007 post at the HEM News and Commentary, “Programs Co-opting Homeschooling?“:

I wonder about the fading of the independence that was inherent in the word ‘homeschooling’ when the choice first caught the national imagination. I hope that it won’t come to pass that the word ‘homeschooling’ will change so much that it will be commonly understood as ’school-at-home-with-oversight.’

By September, Valerie was sounding a little more resigned [edited for space]:

Fluidity of language: What is homeschooling?

I often read articles that use any style of the word ‘homeschooling’ to describe services offered by schools. When I look through the news alerts, I pause each time to think whether to blog these articles because of the gray area of ‘what is homeschooling.’ I must weigh each one; is it, or is it not ‘about homeschooling’ because this blog’s purpose is homeschooling, not cyber-schooling, not blended schooling, not ‘not more than 25-hours a week attendance’ at a school, (25 hrs. divided by 5 days = 5 hours per day), not a “home-schooling center” with a campus and a lunchroom. Just homeschooling.

In most cases of general usage, the language shifts do not matter except maybe to people who have something invested in a word.

Politically correct insistence that ‘homeschooling’ includes anything-goes ‘cafeteria-schooling’ may feel inclusively warm and fuzzy, but it sure doesn’t help the sense of the conversation.

posted by Valerie — sorting through longer and longer lists of ‘homeschooling’ articles

So here we are, many years later, with an increasingly ambiguous word and a body of families whose hard-earned descriptive terminology is being effectively usurped.

In the comments section of my Nov. 24 post, Mary Nix noted:

In my state of Ohio, the cybercharter enrollment grew by leaps and bounds the first couple of years. When looking at the cost of public education that had sharply risen in a senate finance committee meeting, the senators blamed those growing costs on homeschoolers. OHEC and others have had to continually listen, watch and contact the media and the legislature to let them know many home educators remain independent and are not the ones causing the increase.

Senators blaming homeschoolers for the rising cost of public education. Anyone seeing the problem yet?

Public School Programs Are Not Homeschooling

Milton Gaither, author of the book “Homeschool: An American History,” published an article in the winter edition of the respected Stanford University journal Education Next, titled “Homeschooling Goes Mainstream.” Gaither announced the article at his blog: “In it I describe the growing diversity of homeschoolers and the increasingly heterogeneous forms homeschooling is taking, including collaborative efforts between families and public school districts.”

A brief except from Gaither’s article:

After three decades of explosive growth, the rate of increase in home schooling has begun to slow somewhat, and home-schooling rates are even declining a bit in some states. In Pennsylvania, there were 24,415 reported home schoolers in 2002, the largest figure the state had ever seen. But in 2003 the number of registered home schoolers dropped to 24,076. In 2004 it declined again to 23,287, a decrease of 3.3 percent from the previous year.

Among the possible explanations for declines in home schooling is the increased use of home-based public charter schools, often called “cybercharters” because of their extensive use of online curricula, by families that had previously been home schooling independently. Home schooling is blending with other education movements to lead the way toward a 21st-century education matrix that is far more dynamic and adaptive than the schooling patterns of the past.

Homeschooling Goes Mainstream