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"A Texas Response to the Akron Beacon-Journal"
By Tim Lambert, President, Texas Home School Coalition
 

 As a leader of the state home school organization in Texas and a home school veteran of twenty years, I must correct some of the inaccuracies of the home school series by the Akron Beacon Journal.

While the authors refer to Texas as “the Wild West of home schooling” because of the freedom parents in Texas have to teach their children at home, they incorrectly state that compulsory attendance laws in Texas are non-existent because new home school students are not required to register with the local school district.  No private school in Texas is required to register its students with local school officials nor does the state regulate or monitor any private school in Texas. 

Indeed, Texas has a long history dating to before statehood of not regulating or monitoring private schools.  The compulsory attendance statute first adopted in 1915 excludes private schools, which included then and today home schools.  In the early 1980s the Texas Education Agency (TEA) unilaterally changed this approach and determined that home schools were not private schools and encouraged local school districts to prosecute families who were teaching their children at home regardless of the education those families were imparting to their children.  This action by the state agency overseeing public education resulted in the prosecution of almost 100 families over the next few years.  Texas home school families responded with a lawsuit against the TEA and school districts.  Ten years ago the Texas Supreme Court upheld the lower court decision, which held that home schools are and have historically been private schools in Texas and therefore those students are exempt from the compulsory attendance statute.

In spite of this clear and convincing legal victory, some home schoolers in Texas continue to suffer harassment and intimidation by some school officials and social service workers who believe that they should be able to decide which parents are allowed to teach their children and which should be denied that right.  This history of abuse of power by state and local officials is an important reason that the home school community in Texas strongly opposes giving them any more authority to “oversee” home schools than they already have.

A clear example of such hypocrisy that home schoolers see is the ongoing effort by some to  adopt state regulation of home schoolers was Senator Barrientos’ bill last year that the authors referenced.  While the authors quote Barrientos as saying, “A significant number of students were not being home-schooled but using it as an excuse not to be grabbed and put back in school – dropping out and using that (home schooling) as an excuse,” no evidence was offered to support the claim and what he told home schoolers was quite different. 

He told us his bill was an attempt to deal with several high profile reports of public schools that had been caught falsifying records of students leaving their schools in order to artificially lower the schools’ drop out numbers.  His bill would have required that home schoolers register with the Texas Education Agency on a form to be developed by the commissioner of education, and the failure to do so would make one automatically guilty of truancy.  Given the home school community’s historical experience in dealing with this agency, we were not inclined to support such a measure.  While some home schoolers were perhaps less than polite, Senator Barrientos’ staff sought to negotiate with our group.  When we said that the problem was a public school problem and proposed an audit system of these schools, they rejected that proposal as too expensive and threatened to pass the measure against our wishes if we did not agree to accommodate them.  We declined, and the bill never even received a hearing.

The authors of the series also imply that the freedom Texas parents have to teach their children at home could be responsible for a number of cases of child abuse and deaths.  Yet, by their own admission, they counted all of Andrea Yates children when only one of them was of compulsory attendance age and the tragedy happened in the summer.  Most situations involving abuse and neglect of this type have already been reported to Children Protective Services (CPS) which is responsible for investigating such reports.  In fact, this agency is under review in Texas as a result of a number of child deaths.  The authors also acknowledge that their anecdotal examination showed no more incidents of this type among home schoolers than their estimated percentage of in the population at large.

This brings me to the authors’ discussion of studies done on home schooling.  Home schoolers have made much of the many studies done that seem to indicate that home school students do very well academically.  While the authors acknowledge that public acceptance of home schooling is increasing, they discount studies supporting the academic success on several grounds.  Dr. Brian Ray’s research is criticized because he is a home school dad, a proponent of home education, and the head of National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI).  “Half the studies he cited were his own, and another was conducted by a founder of the Washington state home school movement.”  Obviously there were other studies not done by home school proponents which Dr. Ray cited as well. 

Lawrence M. Rudner, however, who did a 1998 study of 20,000 home school students which is often quoted to show how well home schoolers are doing academically, according to the authors, says the study does not prove that home schoolers do better than the public school counterparts.  It does show, however, that the 20,000 home school students tested scored 20-30% above the national average.  The article’s authors state, “Rudner said his only conclusion was that if a home-schooling parent who is willing to put the time and energy and effort into it – and you have to be a rare person who is willing to do this – then in all likelihood you’re going to have enormous success.  I’ll continue to say that.”  So Rudner’s own bias is that he does not believe most home schooling parents will make the kind of commitment of time and energy necessary for their children to succeed at the levels demonstrated in his own study. 

Critics of these studies that support the excellence of home schooling say that they are flawed because every home school student is not required to participate, so many, they say, maybe failing.  SAT and ACT test scores of home schoolers as a group are above the averages, yet they say it does not prove home schoolers are smarter, but it certainly shows that home school graduates are above the average of all students taking these college admission tests.  The authors cite concern among “school officials, and some researchers that the number of home-school failures is growing at a rate and a cost that is unknown.”

We have conflicting interpretation of facts between those who believe that parents should have final authority in the educational decisions regarding their children and those who believe the state should exercise almost total control over the education of children.  In Texas, we support parents’ right to make educational decisions for their children whether it is for public, private, or home schools.  The evidence continues to mount that parents who choose to teach their children at home are doing an outstanding job in spite of those who challenge that simply because every state does not control and regulate home schooling as the National Education Association wishes and the authors seem to support.

See the Akron-Beacon Journal article series

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