Homeschooling best practices
Regulated
Research-based
Rigorous
Reflective
Regulated
Regulated homeschooling doesn’t mean that the state tells you what books you have to use to teach your child to read, or what math curriculum to use. It just means putting basic safeguards in place that help reduce the amount of children whose abuse and neglect are enabled by homeschooling. It means things like having to inform the district of your intent to homeschooling instead of enrolling your child in a school, so that the state is aware of the existence of your child. Abusive parents use homeschooling as a cover to escape scrutiny from child protective services by keeping their child completely off grid, to prevent intervention in situations where there would normally be an investigation triggered. This means situations like a child living with a registered sex offender, or living in a home without working heat, electricity or running water. If the state doesn’t know there is a child living in that residence because there are no records of them, social services can’t step in. Regulation means things like preventing a parent from withdrawing their child from school to homeschool them when there is an active child protective services investigation against them. The only homeschoolers who are affected by homeschool regulations are the ones that intend to use homeschool as a cover to harm or neglect their children.
Any regulation or oversight at all is opposed by much of the homeschool community who homeschools for ideological reasons. But as long as there is nothing in place to prevent abuse, mistreatment, and educational neglect, homeschoolers are welcoming those homeschoolers into their community.
In the education community “rigor” does not mean an education is difficult. It means that it is engaging with students on a deep level, teaching problem solving, connecting education to the real world, challenging students to truly understand things, and not just memorize definitions or give rote answers. Good homeschoolers already seek rigor in their child’s education, and often homeschool out of a desire to provide more rigor than what they see in a public school classroom. Some homeschoolers, however, do not homeschool in pursuit of a rigorous education. They use a curriculum that allows their child to complete tasks and fill in answers without engaging any real understanding, and the focus is on completing the worksheet or problem for the day, and finishing as soon as possible. These homeschoolers sometimes come from communities that do not value higher education, and think that adults only need a very basic level of skills to function as adults. These are often high control religious groups that discourage critical thinking skills and higher education as a way to ensure members’ dependence on the community, and discourage members from questioning the beliefs or actions of the group.
Harmful homeschooling seeks to limit, narrow, and reduce
Harmful homeschooling finds what is offered in public schools to be too much, and want to limit their child’s view of the world.
It eliminates areas of study, like science instruction or sex education
It reduces what’s taught to core subjects
It narrows a student’s view of the world to only what their parent believes in and values.
It shrinks the child’s options in the life that their parents want for them.
It cuts off the option of college by not preparing a student academically
It reduces the amount of time a child spends on their education to only an hour or two a day.
It shuts down questions or critical thinking that challenges their parent’s worldview.
It segregates a child from people of different races, religions, beliefs, and lifestyles.
It keeps a child within the structure of the family and does not allow them to develop an independent self
It shuts out the voices of other adults, especially education or child development experts
It ignores criticism or questioning, and relies entirely on the parent’s knowledge for the entire education.
It constrains a child’s identity to that of their role in the family and their parents’ idea of who they should be.
Research-based
Research-based homeschooling means educators make decisions based on data and peer reviewed research. Hopes, intentions, plans, and beliefs have a place in education, but they must be measured against outcomes.
There is plenty of research in education that applies to homeschoolers without studying homeschoolers explicitly. There is a lot of homeschool research that is not conducted in a way accepted by the scientific community. It’s important to understand how to evaluate data and identify bias. ICHER (the International Center for Home Education Research) does a good job at collecting information and explaining why so much of what exists is deeply flawed and incomplete. The lack of regulation and reporting on homeschoolers make it impossible to have as clear of a picture of the range of homeschoolers as we have of students of other school models.
It’s also important for homeschoolers to understand that individual experiences with homeschooling do not represent the practice as a whole. When talking about homeschooling as a practice, it needs to be considered as a whole, the worst and the best together, just as we evaluate any other educational practice.
Rigorous
Reflective
Our ideas about education are shaped by our own personal experience, values, and our limited view of the world. Good teachers learn to constantly be on alert for ways in which their preconceptions are influencing how they teach. It’s impossible for any teacher to be unbiased, but all teachers can learn to become aware of their biases and work to counteract them. I think sometimes homeschoolers think that this aspect of education does not apply to them, because they are teaching their own children, and so want their own worldview to be integrated into the curriculum. But homeschool teachers also need to be reflective on the way their view of things could get in the way of their teaching. For example, if a teacher had a very hard time in public school and really would have loved to learn at home, they may go into homeschooling certain that their child also has a personality that would mean they would hate public school and love learning at home.
Homeschool parents need to be reflective on whether their idea of homeschooling is being lived out in their classroom. If a parent has a strong idea that homeschooling is always best, they may miss the signs that the way they are currently homeschooling isn’t living up to what they planned to do.
Teaching is a high stakes profession. It is not a good fit for people who dislike criticism or feedback, who feel defensive when asked to reflect on their work, or whose ego is tied to an identity as a teacher. These are all issues among both traditional teachers and homeschool teachers. It is difficult to be open minded, accepting of feedback, and flexible as a teacher. Teachers pour so much into their students and lessons that it’s hard to admit that that effort doesn’t always yield good results. It’s easy to fall into a trap of thinking that since teaching, and especially homeschooling, is such a sacrifice of time and earning potential, that the good being done will be equal to the effort. But this isn’t true. The effort is necessary, but can often lead to harmful outcomes unless it is accompanied by reflection and focus on the results, not the intention.
Responsible homeschooling seeks to expand, broaden, and diversify
Responsible homeschooling wants to improve on what a public school can offer.
It offers an opportunity for deeper understanding and engagement with learning
It expands to higher level materials
It includes more diverse experiences
It offers a more complex and nuanced view of the world and it’s diversity
It offers a high variety of subjects for learning
It offers a greater variety of activities for learning
It challenges the limits of what education can be
It opens up opportunities for a child that they may not have had at a traditional school
It says yes to new experiences and different ways of doing things
It welcomes in other opinions, especially those of education experts.
It seeks out other educators to help supplement the areas that the homeschool educator is not as strong in.
It nurtures a child’s independence and sense of self separate from their family
It seeks education as a tool to empower a person to live whatever life they choose.