This post began as a read comment to the NY Times Op-Ed, Home-Schooled Kids Are Not Alright (gift link)

In recent years there has been an increasing amount of scrutiny on home school families, and more specifically, their parents. The New York Times has been at the forefront of much of this. I have a dog in this fight, I am a home school parent, and there are is a crucial component that most commentators don’t seem to understand.

There are, broadly, two distinct groups of parents that choose to home-school¹. The first is primarily motivated to give their child a better or more personalized education at home than what the child would otherwise get in a public school. Not a high bar in many places. COVID injected new families into this group. Pulling out of larger community is usually considered unfortunate in this group, and not a motivating factor.

The second group is primarily motivated by ideology. There is not a single ideology, but common strands include conservatism, distrust of government, the more conservative bent of evangelical Christianity and hints of libertarianism. An explicit goal is often to retreat into smaller communities of like-minded people.

The groups coexist together because they have to, the home school movement grew more out of the second set of motivation, so more available resources (curriculum, coops, sports leagues, private school support) are overtly religious, and there is per-existing support structures through evangelicalism, yet, they remain distinct groups.

The opinions I’ve read on reforms consistently come from people who were home-schooled by parents in the second group, or come from research based on it. Reforms must take these separate groups into consideration to be effective. First, because they operate differently, second, because the latter group is often dead set against any government intrusion into their lives, which will make large reforms difficult.

My family lives in Tennessee, but my wife and I grew up in Minnesota, and both received fantastic public-school education and are believers in a well-run public school system. (In fact, both us us entered college with a year plus of college credit we earned during high school.)

15 years ago when we moved to Tennessee and were expecting our firstborn we decided that home-schooling was going to be for us. Private school was financially out of reach, and the public schools locally don’t measure up to what we grew up with.

Today, we home school a mix of special needs kids and highly-gifted kids. There is a zero percent chance that the local schools could effectively teach to either end of this spectrum. On the other hand: my wife, Katie, was a public school teacher who spent time with special needs students in Minnesota before our move.

Candidly: I don’t want reforms that would infringe on our ability to give our kids a better education at home than they get can in a public school. I am beyond uncomfortable with the attempted injection of values² and politics into public schooling.

As former foster care parents, we’re also well aware of — yes — the drugs, sex and violence in many public schools.³

To flip the arguments for reform on their head: what parent wants their kid in that environment?

What Are Effective Reforms

Effective reforms will make it easier to home school by providing resources (sports, co-ops, curriculum, access to test prep) instead of putting up obstacles. If one of the primary critiques of home schools is that they take kids out of the public eye, an easy and light-handed approach remedy is simply to make it easier to keep kids in larger community.

Reforms must take into account the different motivations for home schooling, and they also must take into account that many of the motivations in both groups have legitimate foundations.

Finally, we need research and not anecdotes on home schoolers vs non-home schoolers. If you read only the anecdotes and comments on home schooling you’d think that there is only abuse, because op-eds about normal, successful, home schooling just won’t run. (Headline: I Was Homeschooled And There Was Nothing Special About It).

There is very little research on home schooling outcomes conducted by people without a vested interest. Too many of the pro-home school studies appear to be weak, depending on self-reporting and/or ignoring confounding factors.

1. This is recognized in academic literature, however, as pragmatic vs religious. ↩︎
2. For example, this public advocacy document for student transgender rights cites family involvement in transition to be limited to were “appropriate.” The same document says that age should never “justify delaying or denying a
   student’s gender transition.” This document endorsed by the NEA and ACLU is exactly why proponents on the right accuse the left of indoctrinating pre-pubscent kids with secular views on gender identity. ↩︎
3. Tennessee ranks 10th highest out of the 50 states for teen births and that’s after teen pregnancy dropped precipitously. ↩︎

From a 2022 survey of Knox County high schoolers:

• 3% carried a gun in the last 12 months (a passing score)
• 5% were threatened on school property by someone with a weapon
• 9% reported they attempted suicide during the past 12 months
• 3.6% smoked and 20% vaped
• 19% drank and 9% binge drank
• 15% used weed