Ginger Wheeler of Glen Ellyn, Illinois, is a freelance writer and frequent contributor to The Illinois School Board Journal.
Illinois is known in the home schooling community as a friendly place: there are practically zero restrictions or regulations on homeschooling families here if learning occurs in English.
Home-schoolers revel in this freedom, and it may attract them to move to and settle in Illinois. But the Illinois Regional Offices of Education find the light regulations troubling, and some ROE superintendents say some families are illegally using home schooling as a way to mask truancy. Their hands are tied to do much about it.
How many families abuse the freedoms home-schoolers are allowed? No one knows and no one counts. Likewise, although home school organizations and advocates claim home-schoolers do better on standardized tests than public school students, home-schoolers only take tests voluntarily. So these claims, too, ring a bit hollow.
In fact, Illinois has no idea how many children are even being home-schooled in the state. Mary Fergus, Illinois State Board of Education spokesperson, said bluntly: “We don’t track it.”
And that’s just fine for home-schoolers. One home school mom, and now a grandmother, Laurie Bluedorn, of New Boston, said her family moved to Illinois from Iowa so they could home school unfettered by pesky government intrusion. Bluedorn’s family moved across the Mississippi when her oldest son, Nathaniel, was 6 in 1982, a time when the practice was illegal in Iowa. She home- schooled all five of her now-grown children, and now her daughter Johannah, plans to continue the tradition with Bluedorn’s grandchild.
In addition to lax regulations, Illinois actually helps defray some of the costs of home schooling, allowing families to receive a tax credit of 25 percent of expenses in excess of $250 (not to exceed $500). This rule is also true for any family with a child in private school, which is how Illinois classifies home schools.
In effect, any child who is home-schooled, is actually attending a private school, according to the state.
How many are there?
Ian Slatter of the Virginia-based Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) said 30,000 to 40,000 children in Illinois attend home schools, but he admits his estimate “is pure guesswork.”
A report by the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES), released in December 2008, indicates 1.5 million children were home-schooled nationwide as of 2007. But Slatter and others championing the home school movement believe this is undercounted.
Brian Ray, a noted authority on the home schooling movement, uses a figure of 2 million home-schooled children on his National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) website. In a 1999 IASB Journal story on homeschooling, Ray indicated 1.6 million children were home-schooled, which would indicate the trend may be growing, but even Ray admits on his website that it is “difficult to measure and estimate.”
Slatter confirmed that the NCES study reports a 7 percent increase per year for the past 10 years, but if that were the case, based on a figure of 1.6 million in 1999, then home schooling should have more than 3.1 million students. None of the websites for HSLDA, NCES and NHERI are claiming anywhere near that number.
But truthfully, no one can know because big states like Texas, California, Illinois and Florida have no requirement that home school children be registered or counted.
In fact, Illinois ROE superintendents report that as soon as they know a family is home schooling, they will simply back off. Otherwise they risk being, at best, the recipient of a letter fired off by the HSLDA reminding them of Illinois’ non-intrusive requirements or, at worst, that they could be party to a lawsuit.
With a strong belief in less government and more freedom to educate in the way they see fit, well-organized home school families will rally if they sense their Illinois freedoms are going to be challenged in any way.
Former state legislator Ricca Slone (D-92, Peoria) was on the receiving end of some of that ire in the late ’90s as a first-term legislator, when she proposed legislation that would require all Illinois children to be immunized, and included home school children in the legislation’s language. Slone said home school and private school families “hit the roof,” and she withdrew the legislation. She said her intention was well meaning, in that she believes immunizations are an important public health concern.
In Illinois, immunizations are required for children attending public school. All others can decide for themselves whether or not to become immunized to known diseases such as polio, hepatitis, pertussis, diptheria, tetanus, measles and more.
Although Slone was ousted from her Peoria-area district seat eight years later by now-Congressman Aaron Schock, she said she doesn’t believe those early bills she wrote in her career were the reason for her defeat.
But, home school lobbyist and advocate the Reverend Bob Vander Bosch claims home-schoolers were behind Slone’s defeat and since then, no legislator has had the “fire in the belly” to attempt any additional home school regulations in Illinois. HSLDA’s Slatter confirms that, adding, “It’s a First Amendment issue.”
With the passage of last fall’s remote education programming legislation, which allows school districts to claim state aid for virtual coursework, the state may make learning even more accessible for home-schoolers, and help schools find new ways to get into the game and pay for it.
Home school expansion
In “The Harms of Home Schooling,” published in 2009 by the University of Maryland’s Philosophy & Public Policy Quarterly, Robin L. West, a Georgetown University law professor, maps the rise of home schooling to the rise of the moral majority/religious right political phenomenon in the 1980s.
“Over the course of the last 30 years,” she wrote, “‘home schooling’ has gone from illegal — meaning criminal — in all 50 states, to fully legal, and from heavily regulated, when allowed, to either completely unregulated or only lightly regulated, everywhere. That’s quite a revolution, in law and education both.”
West said the change happened due to “massive political pressure from religious parents and their lobbyists” during the 1980s. Once compulsory education laws took root in the United States in the 1840s, it had been illegal to keep children home from school and it was only done in special cases, such as for child actors, and then it was highly regulated.
Indeed, now it seems most home schooling is conducted for religious reasons, although secular rationales are on the rise. In 2003, the National Center for Education Statistics said concerns “about the school environment (e.g., safety, drugs or negative peer pressure)” were cited by 84 percent of home schooling parents. Religious reasons were a fairly close second at 72 percent.
Secular home-schooler Jamie Lane, Macomb, said it was a great experience, although at times, a challenge. Her oldest son, John, now 22, was home-schooled until he began college, and her youngest, Stephen until he started eighth grade.
“We only found three families in all our years of home schooling that weren’t doing it for religious reasons,” Lane said. “Most families were doing it because they didn’t want their kids to learn evolution, or something like that.”
But home schooling has benefits that appeal to secular parents, too. These include one-on-one teaching, freedom to travel, more opportunities to integrate learning into daily life, taking advantage of a child’s natural interests and to teach learning for learning’s sake.
Anecdotally, many home-schoolers do well. John Lane began taking community college classes at 16, then enrolled and graduated from Knox College at 21. He is a musician who performs frequently, an avid reader, a passionate environmentalist, and holds a degree in international relations.
Laurie Bluedorn’s two oldest sons now live in California and work in the filmmaking industry. Bob Vander Bosch is proud to note his son, a college graduate who was home-schooled, is now also home schooling, like Bluedorn’s daughter.
Statistics on the Home School Legal Defense Association website note that a 1997 study by Brian Ray, based on tests conducted in the 1994-95 academic year, shows home school students out-scored their public school peers across the board in all subjects by more than 30 percentile points. His research was based on 5,402 home school students from 1,657 families.
A larger study of 20,760 home school students, conducted by Lawrence M. Rudner in 1998, also found that their scores “were well above those of public and Catholic/private school students.” However, the Education Resources Information Center Digest, noted the following “limitations” with the research:
• Home school students and their families are not a cross-section of the United States population.
• The achievement differences between groups do not control for background differences … and cannot be attributed to the type of school a child attends.
• Home schooling is typically one-on-one. Public schools typically have classes with 25 to 30 students with an extremely wide range of abilities and backgrounds.
• There is no way to evaluate whether this sample is truly representative of the entire population of home school students.
Issues of quality standards
Janet Ulrich, superintendent of ROE #2 in the southern tip of Illinois, said she sees a wide range of educational quality from home-schoolers. “We have some very strong academically driven home school situations where the children are given field trips and engaged learning, done at their own schedule and own pace,” she said. “Sometimes those home school children come in and take the ACT and score very high.”
“Generally parents have good intentions, but they can fall tremendously behind,” she added. “When parents, or whoever is teaching the child at home, do not follow through with curriculum aligned with standards and then try to re-enroll in public school, the children are often far behind their peers. This does cause problems for the child.”
Raymond Scheiter, ROE #1 superintendent of Quincy, echoed Ulrich’s findings and, like Ulrich, has seen some abuse.
“We have noticed an increase in home school in the last few years,” he said, but it’s in a group they refer to as “no-schoolers.” “These are people who are upset with the school, the teacher, the truant officer, or whatever.’” Scheiter said about one-third of the home-schooler growth he has encountered falls into this category.
“I do believe that there should be some accountability,” Scheiter said. “I believe there should be some kind of training (of the teacher) for the child’s sake. I do care for freedom and believe in it, but ... .”
Scheiter reported feeling helpless when he became aware of a child with special needs who was pulled out of school by parents with little education themselves. He said his office felt the family wasn’t capable of handling that child’s special needs. The child is now an adult.
Was the child left behind? Who knows? Once notified the child was being home-schooled, Scheiter’s office lacked any jurisdiction over the child’s education, short of challenging the family in court, an expensive proposition and most-likely a losing battle in Illinois.
Joe Williams, ROE #44 assistant superintendent in McHenry County and also the county’s lone truancy officer, said very few abuse cases happen among the 60,000 or so school- age children there. “Maybe two or three per year,” he said, adding that if truancy is an issue, he is prepared to take it to court if needed.
“On whole, it’s been a largely positive experience regarding the home school families in McHenry County,” he said. “They work hard, they love their kids, and if they need something, they’ll call.” But he also said he has no hard numbers on how many home school kids are in the county.
A 2004 Peoria Journal-Star article documented the case of an 11-year-old girl who had been pulled out of a magnet school by her mother, who claimed to be home schooling the child and her 8-year-old brother.
The child’s parents were divorced. The father claimed the girl was being kept home from school to babysit her brother and some young cousins, and not to be educated at home as the mother claimed. The girl corroborated this claim in an interview. The children’s grandparents tried fruitlessly to get authorities involved, but because of the home school claim, none would assist, according to the article.
Home school mom Bluedorn said home school families should follow the law, and she believes the vast majority do.
What’s required for home school?
Illinois statute requires that children learn, in English, the following subjects taught to children of corresponding age and grade in the public schools: Language arts, biological and physical science, math, social sciences, fine arts, health and physical development.
But the manner of teaching, the textbooks chosen, and even whether textbooks or other prepared curriculum are used, is strictly up to the parents. Home school mom Lane of Macomb said she used mostly library books to teach her children. She said she was flabbergasted at the sums of money some home school families spent on prepared curriculum.
Indeed, an enormous amount of resources are available to home school families both through the Internet and through organized curriculum fairs held regularly around the country. “We have a significant group of people with this wealth of knowledge,” said the HSLDA’s Slatter, “so what many families have done is converted their home school program and packaged it into an actual curriculum” for others to purchase or use.
Park districts, libraries, YMCAs and others offer special resources for home-schoolers. And, while home schooling may still be a challenge for most parents, those up for the challenge say it’s easier now than it used to be. Some home schooling groups will go together to hire a teacher for particularly challenging subjects, if they lack expertise, or will teach each other’s kids in a cooperative setting, if they happen to have special expertise.
Urbana home schooling parent Elizabeth Nichol said she talked with many who had home-schooled before choosing it for her children and, as a trained educator herself, felt capable. “It still felt like a leap into the unknown,” she said. “I thought, let’s do this for two years, and then we’ll decide again.” She never looked back. “It suited us,” she added.
Her two older children chose to attend high school and both have graduated from college. Nichol’s third son was home-schooled through 12th grade and will attend Wheaton College this fall. She is still home schooling her youngest, age 9.
Nichol said her teaching style has changed over the years. “There’s a lot of flexibility about what can be taught, but through elementary school, it doesn’t really matter which year you learn about the American Revolution or about the solar system,” she said. “There’s so much to learn about and so you just sort of choose. We have an opportunity to go to Scotland, so we are learning about castles.
“My plans have changed. We do a lot of exploring. We take advantage of a lot of opportunities. We read a lot of books. (With the youngest son) it’s much more disorganized, but I’m comfortable with that, because I have experience. People who are just starting out, are a little more uptight about (the curriculum),” she said.
Nichol said there are more informal home schooling groups now, where members mentor each other and exchange ideas. These groups meet socially and to experience group learning, such as gym class or science labs, or to put on plays. High school-aged home-schoolers even organize events, such as prom, that are usually associated with traditional schools.
Socialization issues
Nichol said home-schoolers are sensitive to comments about socialization issues — the idea that home-schoolers are not socialized properly because they are not in “real” school with their peers.
Nichol said her son and his home school friends make jokes about this and even wrote and produced a play — a comedy, “Home-schoolers with Social Skills: Live!”
Others who interact with home-schooled kids, and even some of the kids themselves, say the truth is they are more comfortable with adults than with their traditionally schooled peers. John Lane, the product of home schooling, said he feels like his college friends are just now catching up to him emotionally.
“In a public school you’re self-conscious, hyper-aware of the situations. It’s like being on your mental toes,” he said. “If someone is mean, you can throw a fast line back. It’s an awareness of having your emotional guard up. I kind of skipped that completely. Once you’re around adults, it’s not such a big deal. That awareness is something I’ve had to work on.”
His mom, Jamie, said the experience with John prompted her to encourage Stephen to attend public school as an eighth grader. John isn’t sure which route is best.
“I’ve seen home-schoolers take advantage,” he said. “They just get way, way ahead (academically). It’s an opportunity to take something very seriously themselves, whether it’s music or the world’s greatest literature, which is wonderful and not allowed in public school, where everything is carefully paced so you don’t get ahead (of your peers).”
Home schooling lobbyist Vanden Bosch said home-schoolers are more comfortable around adults, and adds they make great employees.
“Schools teach to the lowest common denominator — it slows down learning. Home schooling teaches kids to be self starters. Children set their own goals and accomplish them. That’s the kind of worker I’d want to hire,” he said.
With no one actually counting and only voluntary testing, no one knows whether the success stories offered by the Lanes, the Nicols, the Bluedorns and the Vanden Bosches are typical of the home schooling experience. And with no accurate numbers, the complete story of home schooling may never be written.
Home schooling websites
Home School Legal Defense Association: http://www.hslda.org/Default.asp?bhcp=1
ISBE Home Schooling: http://www.isbe.net/homeschool/
National Center for Educational Statistics, research and studies: http://nces.ed.gov/
National Home Education Research Institute: http://www.nheri.org/