Responsible homeschooling means acknowledging that homeschooling is not always done responsibly. Homeschooling in the US has such minimal requirements with no oversight or enforcement, the only true requirement of being a homeschooler is being a parent or guardian to a child.

Homeschooling does not just attract parent’s who want to do things the right way. It attracts a spectrum of homeschoolers that reflect the spectrum of people who become parents. Some are great, some are a mix of good and bad, and some are horrible and do great harm.

Since the door is open for all parents to be homeschoolers, standards need to take into account the worse case scenarios, not the average or best case. These exist to protect the kids who need it most, no matter who they have as a parent.

These are the minimum of what is required to homeschool responsibly. Meeting them does not guarantee that homeschooling will be successful or not do harm. They aim simply to avoid the most common sources of the greatest harms done in homeschooling.

Responsible homeschooling

The goal of an education is to create a functional, socially integrated adult capable of being financially and socially independent from their family. This means that a homeschooled adult without the academic or social skills to have a career, live on their own, and go to college if they choose, have been failed by their education. Many teachers and parents have other goals for the education of their child, but the primary goal should be to prepare a child to be a functional, independent adult.

Homeschooling does not need to imitate traditional schools, but it does need to aim to provide an education on par, or better than what is being provided at public school. This includes both in the range of areas of study being offered, and as high level of material. This doesn’t mean that students can’t learn at their own pace. It means that if a teacher is not able to keep their third grader at third grade level material, or their ninth grader doing ninth grade level material, then the school is failing the student and a change is needed. This is the same criterion we use to judge public schools. We evaluate their success by how many students are performing at grade level, and if too many students fall below, teachers may be fired, administrations may be changed, and the state government may step in and intervene.

Some subjects are core curriculum and vital to be employable and functional in society. This is reading, writing, and math skills. Students should receive reading, writing and math instruction every year, and instruction should culminate at a 12th grade level at minimum. If a parent does not have the skill to provide instruction to this level, it is their duty to source a teacher or tutor who can give instruction in that subject. If a parent is not sure why a 12th grade level of reading, writing, and math education are necessary for a functional adult, they are not equipped to be a teacher.

Responsible homeschooling means that a student has the social and academic skills necessary to attend college if that is their wish. College is not a requirement for a successful life. But it is not a teacher’s place to make that decision for their student by choosing not to teach them the core subjects that are required to be accepted to college. This means as well that homeschool parents should teach core subjects through the 12th grade level.

Students deserve a full time teacher:  It is neglectful for a working parent to attempt to homeschool, even if they work from home or have the ability to take their child to work with them. With work from home jobs becoming more common, more working parents are homeschooling. A child deserves the full time attention of a teacher, like they would have at public school. There are also parents who own a business or have a flexible job which allows their child to accompany them to work to do their schoolwork while their parent works. This is not providing an education. It is simply providing a workspace for a child to self-teach.

Students deserve school to be the focus of their school-aged years: Children should not be homeschooled in order for the child to be available to help with adult responsibilities. This can mean working in the family business, working another job to help financially support the family, to be available to provide childcare for siblings, or to care for a sick, disabled, or elderly family member at home. Children deserve to have the focus of their childhood be their education. This means as well that an older sibling should not be responsible for teaching or supervising younger siblings homeschooling.

The student’s experience with their education should be the priority: A child’s experience being homeschooled should take priority over a parent’s experience homeschooling. Many homeschool content creators and authors advocate for the lifestyle that homeschooling allows their family. However, the focus can be on the parent’s satisfaction with the homeschooling lifestyle, not the outcomes for the homeschooled adult. The success of homeschooling is not measured by how much a parent enjoyed the experience, or how happy the homeschooled child is at the moment. It is the outcomes that the homeschooled adult experiences. Many homeschool parents also do not take their child’s schooling preference into consideration, and will homeschool regardless of whether their child is asking to attend a traditional school or hates being homeschooled. Children should have a say in what their educational experience is, which includes not just academics, but their social life as well.

Homeschooling parents should have an education beyond the level which they are teaching. For example, if a parent never finished high school, they should not be teaching high school material. Teaching is a skill that involves being able to engage with material on a higher level, contextualize and help make connections. Teaching is not learning alongside a student or facilitating them teaching themselves. It’s my belief that if we require bachelor’s degrees of teachers in schools, bachelor’s degrees should be required of a parent who signs up to teach k-12 material. A high school level education is not advanced enough to effectively teach high school level material. A higher level understanding is needed to be an effective teacher.

Homeschooling for the purpose of isolating a child from their peers or community is harmful. There is a large subset of homeschoolers that homeschool because it allows them to have total control over their child’s life, what they learn, and what they encounter. The goal is not to protect their child from the bad in the world, but to limit their child’s knowledge of the world so that their child is indoctrinated into their parent’s worldview.

Homeschooling in order to segregate a child from people of different beliefs, religion, race, gender identity, or economic class is harmful. This is often presented as a way to protect their child from negative outside influences, but the effect is neither to protect their child nor to educate them. It is to ensure that the child holds the same prejudices that their parents do. 

Responsible homeschooling means that a student has the social and academic skills necessary to transition to a traditional school if the need arises. No parent can prevent the unexpected from happening for the entire course of their child’s education. Parents can lose their jobs. Parents divorce. A parent can become chronically ill, disabled, or even pass away. No one thinks it will be them, but when it happens the child is bearing the brunt of a difficult transition during a family crisis.

Children should not be homeschooled to prevent or delay age appropriate development. It is developmentally age appropriate for most 5 and 6 years to begin practicing independence from their parents, learning to be away from them for periods of time, learning to listen to other adults besides their parents, to spend time among their peers, and to have to do things independently such as use the bathroom, feed themselves, or ask for help when they need it. Parents should not homeschool because they “aren’t ready for their kids to grow up,” or don’t see signs of readiness for this independence while their child is with him at home.

Children should not be homeschooled because they are their parent’s “best friend,” emotional support, or because the parent will be lonely if they go to school. Parents should not rely on their children to fill their emotional needs.

Homeschool instructors should be qualified and subject to evaluation and removal from their role if they are found to be failing at it. If there are no requirements of homeschoolers, if the requirements are not enforced in any way, and if instructors are not held to any standard besides being a parent, then homeschooling is not a form of education. It is defined only by the absence of an mandatory education