Homeschooling is Growing and Important Movement, deserves cooperation

 Posted ~ May 30, 2003

The following article was written for a publication serving southeastern Mercer County and northwestern Butler County.  If any additional publications would like to publish a version of this article, please contact the author at: coulter.

Just 30 years ago, most states regarded parents who taught their children at home as breaking truancy law.  Today homeschooling is a vibrant growing movement with roughly 1.5 million students being taught at home.  Homeschooling is growing in Pennsylvania and locally as well.  Local communities and local schools need to adjust to this new reality and develop new partnerships with students taught at home.

            What is homeschooling?  It is when parents take complete responsibility for their child’s education and teach them at home.  There is a long tradition of recognizing  parents as the primary educators of their children, and the right of parents to homeschool is grounded in this idea. 

            Pennsylvania passed a comprehensive home education law in 1988 after a federal judge ruled that the previous regulations regarding home education were vague and inconsistently applied by school districts.  The 1988 law required parents who teach their children at home to file with the local school district before August 1 of each school year.  At the end of the year, a portfolio must be submitted for each child containing examples of school work and records of standardized tests, which are required for students in grades 3, 5, and 8.  Parents who homeschool children with special learning needs may request services of the local school district and the school district may provide those services, but they are not required to do so.   Pennsylvania’s laws are considered to be among the most stringent in the country.  In many states, one needs to only notify the school district that home education has been chosen.

            Who teaches their children at home?  Examples can be found of all kinds of families who have homeschooled.  The general profile of a homeschooling family is a two-parent family where the mother does the bulk of the teaching.  Religious reasons are frequently cited for homeschooling, but others have chosen homeschooling for academic reasons.  In this area, most, but by no means all, homeschoolers could be characterized as religiously conservative.  In other parts of the country there are those of the political and cultural left who teach their children at home.

            What do children learn at home?  Pennsylvania law requires the certain core subjects be taught – such as mathematics, language arts, and history.  Parents can choose among the great variety of textbooks and education materials available now and choose any method they endorse. 

            The growth of homeschooling is significant.  In Pennsylvania, there were about 9,000 registered homeschooled students in 1992-1993 while there were nearly 24,000 registered homeschoolers in 2001-2002, the latest year in which statewide data was available.  The actual number is higher, probably closer to 30,000 statewide because parents are not require to register students who are five, six or seven at the beginning of the school year.  Registered homeschoolers have grown at roughly 10 percent each year while the number of students in public and private schools has stayed about the same. 

            Locally, there were 10 registered homeschoolers in the Slippery Rock Area School District in 1992-1993 and 55 in the most recent year for which data is available.  Grove City School District had 12 in 1992-1993 and 58 according to the most recent data.  In 1992-1993, registered homeschoolers in Butler County were only 0.5 percent of school aged children.  Now, they are nearly 1.5 percent of school age children.  In Mercer County, registered homeschoolers have grown from 0.4 percent to about 1.1 percent of school age children.  This is small number, but hardly insignificant. 

            Pennsylvania law permits school districts the decision to allow homeschoolers to participate in curricular and extra-curricular participation.  Curricular participation would allow a student to take one or two classes and the school district would receive a partial state subsidy for that student.  Extra-curricular would allow a student to participate in chorus or band or even an interscholastic sport (the exact level of extra-curricular participation is up to the school district).  Jason Taylor of the Miami Dolphins was taught at home, but played football for his PA school district.

            Grove City Area School District allows both kinds of participation (only four of the 12 county school districts permit both).  Slippery Rock Area School permits extra-curricular participation.  Seneca Valley permits both curricular and extra-curricular participation.  All other districts in Butler allow no participation by homeschoolers.  Statewide 233 of the 501 school districts permit curricular participation while 242 permit participation in extra curricular activities.  Since the parents of homeschoolers pay taxes, their children should be permitted to participate.  This would enable those districts to serve more children and develop a working relationship with parents willing to make a great sacrifice for their children. 

Some homeschooling families I have spoken with have commended the Grove City Area School District for its good relationship with parents.  Let’s hope that this approach continues and let’s hope that all districts take this approach. 

Michael Coulter, Ph.D., is vice president of the Shenango Institute for Public Policy and associate professor of political science at Grove City College.  For our most recent policy briefs on Pennsylvania privatization, state stores, education, and more, please visit www.shenangoinstitute.org