Keeping homeschooling private: homeschoolers have been vigilant in protecting their rights, rising to the occasion when they discover threats to clamp down on their activities.(Education)

"There's no place like home" has become the mantra of successful homeschoolers. By most measures--scholastic, social, economic--the modern homeschooling movement is a triumph. The actual undertaking requires initiative, patience, and, in many cases, financial sacrifice. But this grand educational adventure continues to work because resourceful homeschoolers have largely been left alone.

Unfortunately, it is the "home alone" aspect that scares opponents, who waste precious human resources criticizing this successful private-sector, parent-managed endeavor. Meanwhile, thousands of ill-supervised children have languished, decade after decade, in public schools.

Rob Reich, a Stanford University assistant professor of political science, is one such critic. In a paper entitled "Testing the Boundaries of Parental Authority over Education: The Case of Homeschooling," Reich states, "... I argue ... that at a bare minimum one function of any school environment must be to expose children to and engage students with values and beliefs other than those they are likely to encounter within their homes. Because homeschooling is structurally and in practice the least likely to meet this end, I argue that while the state should not ban homeschooling it must nevertheless regulate its practice with vigilance."

This attitude is seen in the resolution passed by the Representative Assembly of the National Education Association (NEA). Last July, at their annual summer convention, the NEA passed Resolution B-69, which states that "home schooling programs cannot provide the student with a comprehensive education experience."

But the NEA cannot begin to inflict the same kind of damage on homeschoolers as can zealous state officials. Phonics specialist mad homeschooling advocate Samuel Blumenfeld has observed: "Today the law is not being used to force delinquents and truants into the schools, but to harass and regulate home schoolers...." In Blumenfeld's home state of Massachusetts, Kim and George Bryant, homeschooling parents, endured a seven-hour standoff with police officers and social service employees merely because the Bryant children--teenagers Nicholas and Nyssa--declined to take a standardized test ordered by the Department of Social Services.

Revolt in the Constitution State

Like minutemen of old, homeschooling families must also be ready to fight unexpected assaults on their rights. For example, last year in Connecticut, home educators challenged the Act Concerning Independent Instruction, which contained a tedious list of new mandates, including ones requiring homeschooling parents to possess a high school diploma, as well as have their individual curriculum plans scrutinized by school superintendents.