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Democrat Bill Would Create ‘Prison Pipeline’ For Illinois’ Homeschooling Parents, Critics Say

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Illinois’ Democrat-run legislature is fast-tracking a bill that critics say attempts to criminalize parents’ ability to homeschool their children in the Prairie State.

This bill “continues that prison pipeline for homeschool parents,” said Will Estrada, senior counsel for the Home School Legal Defense Association.

Dubbed “The Homeschool Act” (HB 2827), the measure in question seemingly seeks to increase restrictions governing homeschooling in Illinois.

According to Fox News, the original version of the legislation included provisions that sought to “charge parents with a misdemeanor if they fail to register their kids in a ‘homeschool declaration form’ to the nearest public school they would otherwise be attending.” The original bill also reportedly attempted to require parents to provide “documentation of immunizations and health examinations for children who wish to participate in public school activities.”

The controversial legislation generated widespread backlash across Illinois, resulting in massive protests at the state Capitol ahead of a March 19 hearing before the House Education Policy Committee. The committee nonetheless voted to advance the bill to the floor. (Read more from “Democrat Bill Would Create ‘Prison Pipeline’ For Illinois’ Homeschooling Parents, Critics Say” HERE)

Survey: Homeschooled Adults Are More Religious And Less Anxious

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Horror stories abound about the parents of Gen Z showing up to their adult children’s job interviews. It’s hard not to think there is no hope for the anxious generation who can’t talk to a potential employer without mom or dad. You may, however, have recently met a rare competent, put-together young adult who could make eye contact, give a firm handshake, and make pleasant conversation. Far from the stereotypes of yesteryear, chances are that well-adjusted young adult was homeschooled.

A recent report from the Cardus Educational Survey analyzed educational, economic, mental health, civic, family, and faith status for American adults who were homeschooled and found a range of outcomes within a diverse population. With homeschooling on the rise, the report highlights that people in a variety of demographics opt for homeschooling, either short-term or long-term. Because of the diversity of homeschoolers and their families, the results are not easily grouped into population-wide findings. Researchers did, however, observe trends among adults who had been homeschooled, which they lay out in the new report.

The study shows improved mental health outcomes among adults who were homeschooled compared to their peers who were never homeschooled. In an epidemic of mental health issues among teens and young adults, this is an important finding that warrants more investigation. While leftists continue fearmongering about the imagined dangers of homeschooling, the results show that homeschoolers are a success in some of the ways that matter most.

Breaking Down the Report

Cardus is a non-partisan, Christian research organization. The group’s survey from 2023 studied adults aged 24 to 39 who were homeschooled for part or all of their primary and secondary education. Within that population, researchers looked at short-term homeschoolers (defined as people who were homeschooled one to two years), medium-term homeschoolers (three to seven years), and long-term homeschoolers (eight or more years). Researchers compared outcomes for adults from all homeschool types with outcomes for adults who were never homeschooled, controlling for demographic characteristics.

Researchers found that adults who had been homeschooled (all three groups) were less likely than adults who had never been homeschooled to be employed full-time. While this may initially seem concerning, the report does not indicate whether some of the unemployed survey respondents are stay-at-home parents. (Read more from “Survey: Homeschooled Adults Are More Religious And Less Anxious” HERE)

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Trump Pledges To Boost Homeschoolers With $10,000 per Child Tax Write-off

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Homeschool parents long have faced the double burden of taxes that support their local public school, but also the costs of paying for their own supplies, curriculum and more. A definite double-whammy.

But President Donald Trump is pledging, if elected, to change that.

In a video he explained, “When I am re-elected I will do everything I can to support parents who make the courageous choice of homeschool.”

He noted under the Trump tax cuts of his first term, “We allowed families to use 529 education savings accounts to spend up to $10,000 a year tax free on tuition for grades K-12. This was a tremendous win for school choice.”

But while that applied to parents paying tuition to a school for their student, it did not apply to homeschool families.

“So to support the growing homeschool movement in my next term, I will immediately fight to allow homeschool parents the same incredible benefit,” Trump said. (Read more from “Trump Pledges To Boost Homeschoolers With $10,000 per Child Tax Write-off” HERE)

Poll: Homeschooling Continues to Rise Dramatically

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Homeschooling has become America’s fastest-growing form of education and continues to explode in popularity long after pandemic-era remote learning has ended, a new Washington Post analysis shows.

The dramatic rise in homeschooling that began during the pandemic continued through the school year that ended this past spring, according to the Post’s analysis, which looked at data from nearly 7,000 school districts across the country.

Homeschooling’s continued popularity flies in the face of predictions that most families would go back to in-person classes at schools once controversial pandemic restrictions like mask mandates ended. Another concern parents had after the pandemic is learning loss in public schools, which may also be driving some families to homeschool.

“Home schooling’s surging popularity crosses every measurable line of politics, geography and demographics,” the Post’s analysis stated.

The analysis looked at data from 32 states and the District of Columbia, which represent more than 60% of school-age children. The data is incomplete because some states do not have reliable tallies of homeschoolers, and 11 states, including Texas, Michigan, Connecticut, and Illinois, do not require families to notify the state when they decide to homeschool. (Read more from “Poll: Homeschooling Continues to Rise Dramatically” HERE)

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Yes, Senator, Parents Can Educate Their Own Kids

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High school-educated, working-class parents aren’t capable of overseeing their own child’s education, a state lawmaker said last week.

New Hampshire state Sen. Jeanne Dietsch, D-Peterborough, made the comment at a committee hearing last Tuesday while promoting a bill that would stop the state Board of Education from creating a new way of allocating high school graduation credits.

“This idea of parental choice, that’s great if the parent is well-educated. There are some families that’s perfect for. But to make it available to everyone? No. I think you’re asking for a huge amount of trouble,” Dietsch said.

Dietsch’s remarks represent a growing trend among leftist politicians to belittle, even vilify, a parent’s role. The trend stems from an ideology that insists the nanny state is superior to parents.

Dietsch’s political commentary was a full-on attack on parental rights and education in America, with a side of elitism to boot.

A fellow legislator, state Rep. Glenn Cordelli, R-Tuftonboro, asked the obvious question of Dietsch.

“Is it your belief that only well-educated parents can make proper decisions for what’s in the best interest of their children?” he asked.

Dietsch went on to explain that her views on what makes a parent qualified are based on her personal history, which seems like a biased way to examine a legislative proposal:

In a democracy, and particularly in the United States, public education has been the means for people to move up to greater opportunities, for each generation to be able to succeed more than their parents have. My father didn’t graduate from high school, so it was really important that I went to college.

The presumption that a state senator would know what is best for families across the state of New Hampshire reeks of hubris. It shows a misunderstanding of the role of family, not to mention demonstrates an elevated, starry-eyed view of public education.

For starters, plenty of Americans without a college education are intelligent problem-solvers and successful people. Often, they own their own businesses or are in blue-collar trades such as plumbing, electrical work, construction, and the like.

Of course, additional education—particularly in professions such as medicine and law, or certain businesses—can be necessary, but it’s not vital for every industry.

Not everyone is wired for a vocation that requires a Ph.D. To presume a parent couldn’t teach his child what is necessary to go to college or to thrive in a blue-collar field—jobs that are disappearing and in high demand—smacks of the sort of self-righteousness we have come to expect from too many politicians on the East Coast.

Although state public education is ideal for many families, it does not work for everyone. For some families, including those who travel a lot or are in the military—or, heck, look at kids in Hollywood—homeschooling is best.

I once knew of a family who homeschooled because their child wanted to be a professional surfer—so he preferred to do school online Monday through Thursday and surf the rest of the days.

Elected officials should applaud the many educational choices available to families today and help families become empowered to make the choices that are right for their children.

Dietsch’s comments are typical of leftist politicians who want to subvert the role of parents and replace them with the all-knowing state. One hallmark of progressive ideology that Democrats such as Dietsch clearly subscribe to is the view that the state is superior to the family—including, and especially, when it comes to education.

State officials, politicians, even law enforcement, know best and many moms and dads are just ignorant rubes who can barely feed and clothe their kids, let alone teach them. This mentality reminds me of the kind of socialism that caused the collapse of nations before our eyes: Both of our major political parties should reject it.

A basic tenet of America’s founding principles is that “we the people” wield the power, make decisions, and hold elected officials accountable for their roles, not the other way around. The state doesn’t exist to squelch the family, but to empower the family.

Particularly today, when blue-collar jobs are necessary to fill in obvious gaps, parents with a high school education who want to encourage their children to take a similar path should do so, and with confidence.

State lawmakers should encourage families to choose an educational path that’s right for them and leave their own elitist opinions out of the debate. (For more from the author of “Yes, Senator, Parents Can Educate Their Own Kids” please click HERE)

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School Official Obsessed with Claims of Homeschooler’s ‘Sex Trafficking’

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By WND. An attendance officer in a West Virginia school district posted a Facebook message in support of public schools shortly after a teachers’ strike declaring 80 percent of homeschoolers “are drug addicts, have truancy charges, [engage in] childhood sex trafficking, etc.”

Then a local family contacted the officer to inform the officer, as required by state law, of its intent to homeschool.

The next day, Child Protective Services arrived at the family’s home demanding to investigate “allegations which included many of the same specific criminal activities that the county attendance officer had accused homeschooling families of in her Facebook post,” according to the Home School Legal Defense Association.

“After interviewing the children and viewing the home, the CPS investigators acknowledged that the allegations were ridiculously meritless. But the family had already been traumatized,” HSLDA said . . .

He explained the district worker “aggressively interrogated [the mother] as to why she had mailed in the notification,” and the school worker said she had two weeks to decide whether or not the family would be allowed to homeschool. (Read more from “School Official Obsessed with Claims of Homeschooler’s ‘Sex Trafficking'” HERE)

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CPS and Homeschooling Mom Agree: She’s Not a Criminal!

By HSLDA. Acrimony fomented by a West Virginia public school teachers’ strike and pushback against pro-homeschool legislation appears to have affected how homeschooling families are treated on the local level.

Home School Legal Defense Association recently advocated on behalf of one of these families, who was harassed and then put through a Child Welfare Services investigation simply for following the legal requirements for homeschooling.

The incident began when the HSLDA members mailed a notice of intent to their county attendance officer (the local official who enforces compulsory school attendance laws).

The mom was announcing her intention to begin homeschooling, a decision she and her husband had made in part because some of their children were being bullied at school. . . .

The official was wrong. Though state law does require homeschool students to be assessed regularly and show acceptable progress, it does not give her the power to approve or disapprove of homeschool programs. But what made her behavior especially egregious is that it appeared to be based on her political views that hold homeschoolers in disdain. (Read more from “CPS and Homeschooling Mom Agree: She’s Not a Criminal!” HERE)

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State Now Assumes All Homeschoolers Are Child Abusers, Reveals Plans for Involuntary Home Visits

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Lawmakers in the state of California are now pushing for families who homeschool their children to be subject to involuntary home visits from state employees—treating those parents with the same oversight and involvement that they would give parents who have abused their children.

The new regulations could consist of forced meetings with child protective services and other government agencies, which would leave the burden on the parents to prove to the government that they are fit to be parents who homeschool their children, according to the state’s guidelines.

As the Washington Examiner reported, if this increase in government oversight becomes law, it would “reduce the valid legal option of homeschooling from a fundamental parental right, to direct the education and school choice for children, to compelled consent to government intrusion upon the sanctity and privacy of the home and school choice.”

The push for increased government involvement is being justified by the case of David and Louise Turpin, a California couple facing 12 counts of torture after police learned that their 13 children were severely malnourished, forced to stay chained to their beds, and living in horrific conditions, among other forms of torture that have been ongoing for several years.

Instead of focusing on the tragic nature of the case, some Californians have insisted that the Turpin parents were only allowed to get away with such inhumane actions because they were registered homeschoolers—and they are also arguing that the Turpin family is not the only “homeschooled” family whose children are being tortured.

Instead of considering the fact that the majority of parents who choose to homeschool their children do so because they have no faith in the public school system, the editorial board of the Sacramento Bee argued that in the same way parents choose not to vaccinate their children, the homeschooling movement “grew as an offshoot of counterculture, religious and libertarian interests.”

Since last weekend’s arrest of David and Louise Turpin on suspicion of torture and child endangerment, Californians have wondered how such a thing could have gone for years undetected. The answer is that the couple exploited California’s lax home schooling laws to keep the authorities from finding out what they were doing to their kids. California law requires children aged 6 to 18 to attend a full-time school, either public or private. But there’s a loophole for parents who want sole control over their children’s education: Merely by filing an affidavit, they can register their homes as private schools.

However, an editorial from the Washington Examiner claimed that forcing parents who homeschool their children to adhere to the same regulations as parents who have been convicted of child abuse is “absurdly unconstitutional.”

When reviewing data from some of the most revered psychological institutions in the country, the Examiner argued none of the sources listed “homeschooling as a risk factor for child abuse and neglect. In other words, there is no evidence or data to even suggest that homeschooled children are being harmed or at risk of harm at a rate higher than children in other non-homeschooled and private schooling communities.”

These kinds of alarming ‘solutions’ to an unfounded problem rises to the level of a government search of the family’s home and interviews of children, under the pretext that homeschool choice infers that parents are more likely to be child abusers. It’s a similar illogical path as inferring that because a person chooses to be an independent contractor as a legitimate employment option, they are more likely to evade tax filings, or because a person chooses to exercise any other valid legal option, they are doing so for some other unrelated nefarious purpose, and on that basis alone the government has grounds to treat them as suspect.

In addition to the fact that requiring parents who homeschool their children to be subjected to involuntary home visits would interfere with their constitutional rights against warrantless searches, there is also the fact that this approach has not worked in the past.

Jaycee Dugard was kidnapped from her home in South Lake Tahoe, California, at the age of 11, while she was walking home from the bus stop after school. The man who held her hostage, tortured, raped, and impregnated her with two children was Phillip Garrido, a convicted felon and registered sex offender.

Garrido was still under parole at the time of the kidnapping, and despite that fact that he was visited by parole agents 60 times in the first 10 years, he held Dugard captive for more than 18 years in the backyard of his home in Antioch, California. A report from ABC News noted that “parole agents ignored 335 alerts that his device had lost its signal,” and they failed to check Garrido’s backyard where his device showed that he was spending a large amount of time.

The report also claimed that a few months after Dugard was kidnapped, a neighbor reported “seeing a young blond girl in the backyard who said her name was Jaycee,” and a parole officer reported finding a young girl in Garrido’s house in 2008, which was “a direct violation of his parole.” But in both cases, officers did nothing.

If officials in California failed to see the warning signs in the many visits they had with the convicted felon and registered sex offender who was holding a young girl hostage, why should they be given authority over law-abiding parents who make the legal choice to homeschool their children? (For more from the author of “State Now Assumes All Homeschoolers Are Child Abusers, Reveals Plans for Involuntary Home Visits” please click HERE)

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10 Children of Homeschool, Off-Grid Family Placed in Strangers’ Homes in 4 Counties

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Photo Credit: Off The Grid News

Photo Credit: Off The Grid News

By Off The Grid News Staff. The rural Kentucky parents at the center of a custody battle that has shocked the homeschool and off-grid communities are staying upbeat and hope to get their 10 children back soon, a family friend says.

“They’re being positive. They want to get their kids back. They’re not trying to be overly critical of the authorities,” family friend Pace Ellsworth told Off The Grid News.

The 10 children were seized Wednesday from the parents, Joe and Nicole Naugler, following an anonymous tip that apparently related to their style of off-grid living. The family is also part of the “unschooling” movement, a type of homeschooling.

A hearing is scheduled for Monday. As of now, officials have placed the children with four families in four different counties, and as of Friday morning, the parents had not spoken with them. The four families are families that Kentucky’s version of CPS chose – families the Nauglers don’t know.

The ease with which sheriff deputies were able to take the kids may have been the most shocking. (Read more from “10 Children of Homeschool, Off-Grid Family Placed in Strangers’ Homes in 4 Counties” HERE)

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Police Seize 10 Children From Homeschool Family Because They’re Off-Grid

By Off The Grid News Staff. An off-grid homeschool family of 12 in rural Kentucky was raided, the mother arrested, and the 10 children seized simply because the government disagrees with their lifestyle and their educational choices, family members and friends say.

Until Wednesday, Joe and Nicole Naugler lived with their 10 kids in a cabin on 26 acres in Breckinridge County, about an hour southwest of Louisville.

“They are an extremely happy family,” family friend Pace Ellsworth told Off The Grid News.

Acting on an anonymous tip about the family’s off-grid lifestyle, sheriff’s officers entered the property and home Wednesday, and even blocked the access road to the family property, the family says. Joe and eight of the children were away, but Nicole – who is five-months pregnant – was home with the two oldest kids. Sheriff deputies then seemingly allowed Nicole and the two children to drive away but they got only a short distance before deputies pulled them over and took the two children away from the mom, who was arrested for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. (She says the arrest took place after she did not passively allow deputies to take the children.) Nicole was able to contact her husband and have a brief conversation. (Read more from this story HERE)

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21st Century Inquisition: School Board Requires Homeschoolers to be Interrogated on Religious Beliefs

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A school board in Virginia is considering the repeal of a policy that would have forced 14-year-old minors to stand before the school board to be interrogated about their religious beliefs.

The Goochland County policy is aimed at homeschool families that fall under Virginia’s decades-old religious exemption statute, which acknowledges parents’ rights to direct the upbringing and education of their children.

The longstanding state statue allows parents to homeschool their children without reporting to the state if they have an objection to attending school outside the home that is based on “bona fide religious training or belief.”

The Goochland school board decided that not only do parents have to submit the basis for their religious beliefs for choosing to homeschool their children, but that it could require children, minors, between the ages of 14 and 18 to appear before the school board and undergo an inquisition about their own independent basis for their religious beliefs.

As the local CBS affiliate reports:

A policy approved by the Goochland County School Board in 2013 has several parents who home school their children upset.

The policy requires children ages 14 and up who want to be home schooled to provide a statement about their religious beliefs to the school system.

As part of that, the board reserves the right to bring the child and his or her parent in for a hearing.

(Read more about the school board that requires homeschoolers to answer questions about their religion HERE)

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Common Core Fallout: Homeschooling Rates Are Rising

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

Despite the (at times) acrimonious debate surrounding Common Core, the federal government’s national solution to improving education outcomes, it’s worth noting that the controversial program is drawing some level of bipartisan support.

Most notably, perhaps, presumptive 2016 presidential candidate Jeb Bush isvery much in favor of it, as are a number of other prominent Republicans. Nevertheless, as Fox News reports, many parents are outraged and alarmed by Common Core, which they perceive is creating a progressive-friendly and impossible-to-understand new curriculum. As a result, it seems, they’re pulling their kids out of public schools in droves:

The home-schooling boom is getting a new push due to opposition to Common Core, the controversial national education standard that some parents’ claim is using their children’s public school lessons to push a political agenda, according to critics of the Washington-backed curriculum.

Read more from this story HERE.